Lord Byron, also known as George Gordon, had a highly adventurous, but short- lived life. He was an extraordinary British poet of his time, known mainly for his satires. One of his great major works was “The Destruction of Sennacherib.” Many thought of his work as inferior and immoral, but that didn’t stop his writing (Harris 57). Byron had a challenging childhood and used his views on life and love based on experiences while traveling to write his most popular works, such as “The Destruction of Sennacherib,” which is often not appreciated.
Byron was born on January 22, 1788 in London, England. He was the son of Captain John Byron and Catherine Gordon (Magill 312). His father had a daughter from a previous marriage, named Augusta. Byron was born with a clubbed right foot, which gave him a limp every time he walked for the rest of his life. His father was greedy and sought out money from all of his wives, so in 1789 Byron moved with his mother to Aberdeen. He grew up with a rough childhood, being abused by his mother often. However, he found help when he began reading the Bible and developed a love for history. This eventually led to his ideas for writing and his journeys across the globe (“Lord”).
In 1798, his grandfather died, which gave him his title and his estate. He later attended Trinity College at Cambridge University and earned his master’s degree in July of 1808 (“Lord”). Aside from his schooling he was an excellent marksman, horseman, and swimmer (Gurney 72). Many thought he was “mad- bad- and dangerous to know” (Napierkowski 38). His personality was very out of the realm of normal for the eighteenth and nineteenth centuries in which he lived. He isolated himself from others’ opinions about his cruel, sexual eccentric...
... middle of paper ...
...ew York: Twayne Publishers, 1993. Print.
Harris, Laurie Lanzen. “George Gordon (Noel) Byron, Lord Byron.” Nineteenth- Century Literature Criticism. Vol. 2. Detroit: Gale Research Company, 1982. Print.
“Lord Byron.” Gale Contextual Encyclopedia of World Literature. Vol. 1. Detroit: Gale, 2009: 269-272. Student Resources in Context. Web. 25 Mar. 2014.
Magill, Frank. “Lord Byron.” Magill’s Survey of World Literature. Lou Thompson. Vol. 1. New York: Marshall Cavendish Corporation, 1993. Print.
Napierkowski, Marie. “Destruction of Sennacherib.” Poetry for Students. Mary Ruby. Vol. 1. Detroit: Gale, 1998. Print.
“Plot Summary: ‘The Destruction of Sennacherib’.” DISCovering Authors. Detroit: Gale, 2003. Student Resources in Context. Web. 25 Mar. 2014.
Scott- Kilvert, Ian. “George Gordon, Lord Byron.” British Writers. Vol. IV. New York: Charles Scribner’s Sons, 1981. Print.
Click here to unlock this and over one million essays
Show MoreForum 19.4 (Winter 1985): 160-162. Rpt. inTwentieth-Century Literary Criticism. Ed. Thomas J. Schoenberg and Lawrence J. Trudeau. Vol. 192. Detroit: Gale, 2008. Literature Resource Center. Web. 30 Nov. 2013.
Heberle, Mark. "Contemporary Literary Criticism." O'Brien, Tim. The Things They Carried. Vol. 74. New York, 2001. 312.
Wolfson, Susan and Peter Manning (eds.). The Longman Anthology of British Literature: The Romantics and Their Contemporaries. Volume 2A. New York: Longman, 1999.
Meyer, Michael. The Bedford Introduction to Literature. Ed. 8th ed. Boston: Bedford/St. Martin's, 2008. 2189.
"Morton, Thomas - Introduction." Literary Criticism (1400-1800). Ed. Thomas J. Schoenberg. Vol. 72. Gale Cengage, 2002. eNotes.com. 2006. 21 Feb, 2011
Shelley, Percy Bysshe. "A Defense of Poetry." In English Romantic Writers. Ed. David Perkins. New York: Harcourt, Brace, 1967. 1072-087.
Lord Byron had a variety of achievements during his time. Among these various achievements, he had a very significant and profound impact on the nineteenth century and it’s “conception of archetypal Romantic Sensibility. (Snyder 40). “What fascinates nineteenth century audiences about Byron was not simply the larger than life character of the man transmuted into...
Hughs, Richard E. The Lively Image: Four Myths in Literature. Cambridge, MA: Winthrop Publishers, 1975.
Damrosch, David, et al., ed. The Longman Anthology of British Literature: Vol. B. Compact ed. New York: Longman - Addison Wesley Longman, 2000.
Damrosch, David, et al., ed. The Longman Anthology of British Literature: Vol. B. Compact ed. New York: Longman - Addison Wesley Longman, 2000.
Moulton, Charles Wells. Moulton's Library of Literary Criticism of English and American Authors through the Beginning of the Twentieth Century: Volume 1. New York: Frederick Ungar, 1966. Print.
Byron, George Gordon. Don Juan The Norton Anthology of English Literature The Major Authors, 6th ed. New York:W.W. Norton & Company, Inc. 1996.
the “wet, ungenial summer” and “incessant rain” of their stay with Lord Byron at Villa
Wolfson, S. & Manning, P. 2003. The Longman Anthology of English Literature Vol 2: The Romantics and their Contemporaries. London: Longman.
- - -. “Literature Criticism from 1400 to 1800.” http://go.galegroup.com. N.p., 1988. Web. 9 Dec. 2010. .