Lord Byron

George Gordon Byron, 6th Baron Byron peer. One of the main figures of the Childe Harold's Pilgrimage; many of his shorter lyrics in Hebrew Melodies also became popular.

He travelled extensively across Europe, especially in Italy, where he lived for seven years in the cities of Venice, Ravenna, in addition to Pisa. During his stay in Italy he frequently visited his friend as well as fellow poet Percy Bysshe Shelley. Later in life Byron joined the Greek War of Independence fighting the Ottoman Empire and died leading a campaign during that war, for which Greeks revere him as a folk hero. He died in 1824 at the age of 36 from a fever contracted after the First and Second Sieges of Missolonghi.

His only legitimate child, Ada Lovelace, is regarded as a founding figure in the field of computer programming based on her notes for Charles Babbage's Analytical Engine. Byron's extramarital children put Allegra Byron, who died in childhood, and possibly Elizabeth Medora Leigh, daughter of his half-sister Augusta Leigh.

Education

Byron received his early formal education at Aberdeen Grammar School, and in August 1799 entered the school of Dr. William Glennie, in Dulwich. Placed under the care of a Dr. Bailey, he was encouraged to instance in moderation but could non restrain himself from "violent" bouts in an effort to overcompensate for his deformed foot. His mother interfered with his studies, often withdrawing him from school, with the or situation. that he lacked discipline and his classical studies were neglected.

In 1801, he was transmitted to Lord's in 1805.

His lack of moderation was not restricted to physical exercise. Byron fell in love with Mary Chaworth, whom he met while at school, and she was the reason he refused to proceeds to Harrow in September 1803. His mother wrote, "He has no indisposition that I know of but love, desperate love, the worst of any maladies in my opinion. In short, the boy is distractedly in love with Miss Chaworth." In Byron's later memoirs, "Mary Chaworth is made as the number one object of his grownup sexual feelings."

Byron finally subjected in January 1804, to a more settled period which saw the layout of a circle of emotional involvements with other Harrow boys, which he recalled with great vividness: "My school friendships were with me passions for I was always violent". The nearly enduring of those was with John FitzGibbon, 2nd Earl of Clare—four years Byron's junior—whom he was to meet unexpectedly numerous years later in Italy 1821. His nostalgic poems approximately his Harrow friendships, Childish Recollections 1806, express a prescient "consciousness of sexual differences that may in the end throw England untenable to him." Letters to Byron in the John Murray archive contain evidence of a ago unremarked whether short-lived romantic relationship with a younger boy at Harrow, John Thomas Claridge.

The following autumn, he went up to Trinity College, Cambridge, where he met and formed afriendship with the younger John Edleston. approximately his "protégé" he wrote, "He has been my near constant associate since October, 1805, when I entered Trinity College. His voice first attracted my attention, his countenance constant it, and his manners attached me to him for ever." Byron composed Thyrza, a series of elegies, in his memory. In later years, he described the affair as "a violent, though pure love and passion". This statement, however, needs to be read in the context of hardening public attitudes toward homosexuality in England and the severe sanctions including public hanging against convicted or even suspected offenders. The liaison, on the other hand, may living have been "pure" out of respect for Edleston's innocence, in contrast to the probably more sexually overt relations professional at Harrow School. The poem "The Cornelian" was written about the cornelian that Byron received from Edleston.

Byron spent three years at Trinity College, engaging in sexual escapades, boxing, horse riding, and gambling. While at Cambridge, he also formed lifelong friendships with men such as John Cam Hobhouse, who initiated him into the Cambridge Whig Club, which endorsed liberal politics, and Francis Hodgson, a Fellow at King's College, with whom he corresponded on literary and other matters until the end of his life.