LORD BYRON (George Gordon Byron) –UNKNOWN BIOGRAPHY
ONE: (LIFE AND CAREER)
George Gordon Byron was born in London on January 22, 1788. His father was captain John Byron. As his second wife captain, Byron married Catherine Gordon of Gight who became Byron’s mother. Byron was born with a club-foot. His father died in 1791 and on the death of his granduncle, William, Lord Byron, the poet inherited the family title and estate in 1798. Lord Byron inherited the title when he was only ten years old.
Byronattended several schools for his education. He was sent to Harrow, a famous public school; where he made many friends. He studied at Trinity College, Cambridge. He received an M.A degree from Cambridge in 1808.
Byron was an extremely handsome man with an attractive and mysterious personality. His fashionable career was attended by several love affairs. He fell in love with his cousin Mary Pull when he was only seven years old. The most famous love affair was with Caroline Lamb. He had an incestuous love-affair with his half-sister Augusta who was the daughter of Captain John Byron’s and lady Carmarthen. In 1814, Augusta gave birth to a girl and was generally supposed to be Byron’s daughter. In 1815 he was married to Annabella Milbanke. She was prim, spoilt, mathematical, and wealthy. But after only fifteen months Annabella left him to live with her parents and legal separation was eventually arranged. Byron left England in 1816, never to return and traveled to Geneve. There the Shelley’s and Claire Claremont had rented a villa. Claire became the mistress of Byron and gave birth to a daughter Allegra in January 1817. In 1812, Teresa, Countess Guiccioli, lest her husband for Byron and Shelley rented houses in Pisa both for Byron and Teresa’s family.
His first published collection of poems Hours of idleness appeared in 1907, and was bitterly attacked by Brougham in the Edinburgh Reviews.
TOPIC: BYRON’S PLACE IN ENGLAND POETRY OF THE ROMANTIC ERA:
William Wordsworth revolted against the eighteen century pseud-classical age of poetry and freed poetry from the ‘gaudiness and inane phraseology’’ of the 18 century. The younger poets like Shelley, Keats and Byron were more or less influenced by the spirit of revolt. All the poets of this era looked up to Nature for inspiration. Thus, poetry left the urban surroundings of the drawing rooms and came out with new insight into the world of nature. The murmuring rivulet, the sailing clouds, the toppling cataract, the glamour of the setting sun inspired these of man’s glory against the background of Nature. Shelley’s intellectualism, Keats search for beauty, Coleridge’s expression through their individual verses. They were all poets of nature in the sense that nature worked as a background of human emotion and sensitivity.
But Byron’s attitude to nature is different from that of Shelley and Wordsworth. There is little of that inward sympathy with nature and placid contemplation of her varying moods that are so characteristic of Wordsworth. Nor do we find in Byron that intense vitalizing oxygen of faith which is Shelley’s contribution to the nature poetry of his time.
Byron reveled rather in Nature’s grand and awe-inspiring aspects. His heroes all rebel against the associative tendency of the 19th century. They are self-worshippers and at war with society. In the vast space of silent heaven, in the boundless expanse of oceans, in the gloom of dark forest or in her more terrifying manifestations of thunder tempest. And avalanche. And this is why Byron’s Nature poetry is rhetorical. His verse is grand.
His greatest contribution to romantic poetry is his element of subjectivity. “The lion is awake and so am I”, says he in his drama Manfred. The transference of authority from without to within due to the change of outlook brought about the French Revolutions was a chief contribution of Romantic poetry.
Thus , Byron’s romanticism is not only bookish or theoretical but he proved it actually by transferring it from poetry to life. His forceful reply to the Scotch Reviewers is a glowing example of how he reacted to the cruel criticism on the then poets of the romantic era. Conservative England, although was not very sympathetic to him, yet he occupies a unique place among the poets of Romantic era and eventually in the history of English literature.
In loving memory of A selected bibliography who has been Appended for the interested personsmay want to go for the original sources.
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