George Gordon Byron

Poet, Author

1788 – 1824

80

Who was George Gordon Byron?

George Gordon Byron, 6th Baron Byron, later George Gordon Noel, 6th Baron Byron, FRS, commonly known simply as Lord Byron, was an English poet and a leading figure in the Romantic movement. Among Byron's best-known works are the lengthy narrative poems Don Juan and Childe Harold's Pilgrimage and the short lyric She Walks in Beauty. He is regarded as one of the greatest British poets and remains widely read and influential.

He travelled all over Europe especially in Italy where he lived for seven years and then joined the Greek War of Independence fighting the Ottoman Empire, for which Greeks revere him as a national hero. He died one year later at age 36 from a fever contracted while in Missolonghi in Greece.

Often described as the most flamboyant and notorious of the major Romantics, Byron was celebrated in life for aristocratic excesses, including huge debts, numerous love affairs with both sexes, rumours of a scandalous incestuous liaison with his half-sister, and self-imposed exile.

Famous Quotes:

  • I awoke one day to find myself famous.
  • Curiosity kills itself; and love is only curiosity, as is proved by its end.
  • Pleasure's a sin, and sometimes sin's a pleasure.
  • Reason is so unreasonable, that few people can say they are in possession of it.
  • Now I shall go to sleep. Good night.
  • To have joy one must share it. Happiness was born a twin.
  • There is no instinct like that of the heart.
  • There is no sterner moralist than pleasure.
  • When one subtracts from life infancy (which is vegetation), sleep, eating and swilling, buttoning and unbuttoning -- how much remains of downright existence? The summer of a dormouse.
  • The drying up a single tear has more of honest fame, than shedding seas of gore.

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Born
Jan 22, 1788
London Borough of Harrow
Also known as
  • Lord Byron
  • George Gordon Byron, 6th Baron Byron
  • Lord George Gordon Byron
  • Lord Byron George Gordon
  • George Byron
  • George Gordon Noel Byron Lord Byron
  • George Gordon Noel Byron
  • George Gordon; Lord Byron
  • George Gordon Byron Byron
  • George Gordon Noel Byron, 6th Baron Byron
Parents
Siblings
Spouses
Children
Nationality
  • England
Profession
Education
  • Aberdeen Grammar School
    ( - 1801)
  • Harrow School
    (1801 - 1805)
  • Trinity College, Cambridge
    (1805 - 1808)
  • University of Cambridge
Lived in
  • London
  • Newstead Abbey
  • Missolonghi
    ( - 1824)
Died
Apr 19, 1824
Missolonghi

Submitted
on July 23, 2013

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