biography of lord byron in 100 words
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Explanation:
Lord Byron, was born in London on January 22, 1788, the only son of Captain John Byron and his second wife, the heiress Catherine Gordon. On the insistence of the Gordon family, John Byron legally changed his name to John Gordon. As a result, Lord Byron was born a Gordon and not a Byron. On the death of his granduncle, William, Lord Byron, the poet inherited the family title and estate.
Byron attended a number of schools, including the famous public school, Harrow, where he made many friends. From Harrow he went to Trinity College, Cambridge. He received an M.A. degree from Cambridge in 1808.
Byron's first volume of poems, Fugitive Pieces, was privately printed in 1806. A selection of poems from Fugitive Pieces and other juvenilia were published as Poems on Various Occasions. Poems was republished as Hours of Idleness the following year, with Byron's name on the title page. Hours of Idleness was unfavorably reviewed by the influential Edinburgh Review in 1807. Byron never forgot the reception given to his first acknowledged volume of poetry and in 1809 anonymously took revenge on the anonymous Edinburgh reviewer in English Bards and Scotch Reviewers, in which he showed himself to be an able satirist in the manner of Pope, of whom he was always a strong admirer.
In July 1809, Byron set out on his "grand tour," which included Portugal, Spain, Albania, Greece, and Turkey. His impressions of these countries formed the substance of Childe Harold's Pilgrimage, Cantos I and II, published in 1812. Childe Harold became immensely popular and Byron was lionized by London high society. The success of Childe Harold encouraged Byron to write a series of tales with a Turkish or Greek background, all of which sold well.
Early in 1815, Byron married Anne Isabella Milbanke. A year later his wife left him, taking with her their daughter, Augusta Ada Byron. A separation was later arranged. The society which had made Byron famous blamed him for the separation and ostracized him. In 1816 Byron left England, never to return.
Canto III of Childe Harold and "The Prisoner of Chillon" appeared in the fall of 1816. These two works are among Byron's best non-satirical poetry. In them, Byron showed a verbal felicity and a command of metaphor not to be found in his earlier poetry. In 1818, Byron published Childe Harold, Canto IV, inferior in interest to Childe Harold, Canto III, because it was overloaded with archeological materials suggested by a trip Byron made from Venice to Rome.
"Beppo," published also in 1818, marks the appearance of the new poetic manner on which Byron's present reputation as a poet largely rests. "Beppo," in ottava rima, introduces Byron the humorist to the poetry-reading public. Shortly after the appearance of "Beppo," Byron began his great masterpiece, Don Juan.
In 1821 and 1822, Byron made a bid for fame in the field of drama. In fifteen months he wrote four five-act plays, Sardanapalus, Marino Falieri, The Two Foscari, and Werner. These are generally considered Byron's least readable poetry. During the same period he wrote Cain, a play in three acts, and two dramatic fragments, Heaven and Earth and The Deformed Transformed.
In 1822, one of Byron's most perfect poems, and one of the best satires in English poetry, "The Vision of Judgment," was published in John Hunt's periodical, The Liberal. "The Vision of Judgment," in ottava rima, is an amusing attack on George III, George IV, and on the poet laureate, Robert Southey.
Byron returned to Don Juan in 1822 and by May 1823 had written a total of sixteen cantos. The poem was published in six separate volumes between 1819 and 1823.
Byron had lived in various parts of Italy from his arrival in that country in 1816. In July 1823, he left Italy for Greece to help the Greeks in their struggle to free themselves from Turkish rule. He died of a fever at Missolonghi, Greece, on April 19, 1823.
George Gordon Noel Byron, sixth Baron Byron, was born on January 22, 1788, into a family of fast-decaying nobility. Captain "Mad Jack" Byron was a "gold digger," marrying Catherine Gordon chiefly for her annual income. After spending most of her money and fathering George, he died in 1791. George was left with an unbalanced mother, the contempt of his aristocratic relatives for the poor widow and her son, and a birth defect necessitating that he walk on the balls and toes of his feet for the rest of his life. All this worked together to hurt the boy's pride and sensitivity. This created in him a need for self-assertion, which he soon sought to gratify in three main directions: love, poetry, and action.
Despite the awkward way he walked and the numerous "remedies" that Byron suffered through, his boyhood was full of play and mischief. His favorite activities were riding and swimming, both sports where he was physically able. But he willingly played cricket, appointing a schoolmate to run for him. At eight years old he fell hopelessly in love with a cousin. At sixteen when he heard of her engagement he reportedly was physically ill. Though said by most of his peers and teachers to have been a genius, Byron was halfhearted in his schoolwork. But he read constantly. He had a strong appetite for information and a remarkable memory. Nevertheless his biography reports Byron as having been the ringleader of numerous school revolts. He spoke of his school friends as "passions."
On the death of his granduncle in 1798, Byron inherited the title and estate. After four years at Harrow (1801–1805), he went to Trinity College, Cambridge, where he became conscious for the first time of the difference between the high goals of idealism (romanticism) and the less important realities of experience. His quest for some genuine passion