George Byron And Lord Byron

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Born George Gordon, Lord Byron was born on January 22nd, 1788 in London. He was known as the most flamboyant and notorious of the romantics in his era. His father, Captain John (Mad Jack) Byron was absent for most of his son’s life and in turn caused a bitter and angry teenage George. Byron was born with a clubbed right foot, causing him to be self conscious throughout his life. As a boy, young George endured an absentee father, an abusive nurse, and an unstable mother. In the summer of 1789, Byron moved with his mother to Aberdeen. His mother was emotionally unstable and erratic. She raised him in an atmosphere filled with her temper, extreme insensitivity and excessive tenderness. She did not do much to help her son’s deformation, but more so mocked it. In 1798, his great-uncle the fifth Lord Byron passed on, allowing George to take the spot as the sixth Baron Byron of Rochdale. He took much pride in his coat of arms and his nobleman status. He fell deeply in love with his cousin, Margaret Parker in 1800, and when she died two years later, it inspired his first real dive into the poetry realm. He composed “On the Death of a Young Lady”. Throughout his life, his poetry would serve as a catharsis of extreme deep emotion. He then attended Harrow from 1801 to 1805, while attending he excelled in oratory and even played sports such as cricket. This is where he formed passionate and sexual relationships with other young men. Shortly after he fell in love with a distant cousin named Mary Chaworth of Annesley Hall, he had been so infatuated with her that he moved to be near her. His unrequited passion for her found expression in such poems as “Hills of Annesley”, “The Adieu”, “Stanzas to a Lady on Leaving England”, and ...

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...te Byron had superb force; his letters prove it. He had in many ways a very fine nature too; though as no one laughed him out of his affectations he became more like Horace Cole than one could wish. He could only be laughed at by a woman, and they worshipped instead. I haven't yet come to Lady Byron, but I suppose, instead of laughing, she merely disapproved. And so he became Byronic.”(3) She says she is “much impressed at the badness of Byron’s poetry”. John Murray described him as being “Wild, audacious, rebellious, half mad by nature; a creature made to tempt and to be tempted, to seduce and to fall, about whom there was but one certainty, that he was irreclaimable.” As you can see the opinions are endless on this truly unique character known as George Gordon Byron, but none can dismiss the incredible, lasting influence he has had on the literary world.

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