Byron's mother had to sell her land and title to pay her new husband's debts, and in the space of two years, the large estate, worth some £23,500, had been squandered, leaving the former heiress with an annual income in trust of only £150. To claim his second wife's estate in Scotland, Byron's father took the additional surname "Gordon", becoming "John Byron Gordon", and occasionally styled himself "John Byron Gordon of Gight". Jack then married Catherine Gordon of Gight on, by all accounts only for her fortune. Much later, 19th-century sources blamed Jack's own "brutal and vicious" treatment of her. Though Amelia succumbed to a wasting illness, probably tuberculosis, the press reported that her heart had been broken out of remorse for leaving her husband. Amelia herself died in 1784 almost exactly a year after the birth of their third child, the poet's half-sister Augusta Mary. The marriage was not a happy one, and their first two children – Sophia Georgina, and an unnamed boy – died in infancy. īyron's father had previously been somewhat scandalously married to Amelia, Marchioness of Carmarthen, with whom he had been having an affair – the wedding took place just weeks after her divorce from her husband, and she was around eight months pregnant. After he became embroiled in a tempestuous voyage during the American Revolutionary War, John was nicknamed 'Foul-Weather Jack' Byron by the press. Having survived a shipwreck as a teenage midshipman, Vice Admiral John Byron set a new speed record for circumnavigating the globe.
Byron's paternal grandparents were Vice-Admiral John Byron and Sophia Trevanion.
George Gordon Byron was born on 22 January 1788, on Holles Street in London – his birthplace is now supposedly occupied by a branch of the department store John Lewis.īyron was the only child of Captain John Byron (known as 'Jack') and his second wife Catherine Gordon, heiress of the Gight estate in Aberdeenshire, Scotland. Byron's extramarital children include Allegra Byron, who died in childhood, and possibly Elizabeth Medora Leigh, daughter of his half-sister Augusta Leigh.Īn engraving of Byron's father, Captain John "Mad Jack" Byron, date unknown His only marital child, Ada Lovelace, is regarded as a foundational figure in the field of computer programming based on her notes for Charles Babbage's Analytical Engine. He died in 1824 at the age of 36 from a fever contracted after the First and Second Siege of Missolonghi. 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. During his stay in Italy he frequently visited his friend and fellow poet Percy Bysshe Shelley. He travelled extensively across Europe, especially in Italy, where he lived for seven years in the cities of Venice, Ravenna, and Pisa.
Among his best-known works are the lengthy narrative poems Don Juan and Childe Harold's Pilgrimage many of his shorter lyrics in Hebrew Melodies also became popular. One of the leading figures of the Romantic movement, Byron is regarded as one of the greatest English poets. George Gordon Byron, 6th Baron Byron, FRS ( Greek: Λόρδος Βύρωνας 22 January 1788 – 19 April 1824), simply known as Lord Byron, was an English poet and peer.
0 kommentar(er)
