Lord Byron

1788–1824 · England

Famous in his own lifetime; the first poet whose personal life was as celebrated as his verse.

Byron was born with a clubfoot, which embarrassed him throughout his life. He published his first book of poetry at nineteen, inherited his title at twenty-one, and left England at twenty-seven under a cloud of scandal.

He died in Greece, fighting in the War of Independence, aged thirty-six. His body was returned to England but refused burial at Westminster Abbey; he was buried instead near Newstead Abbey, his family home.

Style

The Byronic hero: a self-mythologising figure of fierce intelligence and dark melancholy.
Rhyme that is deliberately irregular — the couplet is his natural form, but he subverts its closure.
Long narrative poems (Childe Harold's Pilgrimage, Don Juan) that mix epic scope with self-mockery.
Short lyrics of love and loss in the She Walks in Beauty mode.