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Introduction
LIFE & WORKS: Early Years Tour Early Fame Marriage & Exile Revolutionary & Martyr Byron and Newstead Abbey The Abbey through Byron's Eyes
Introduction
George Gordon, the 6th Lord Byron after Napoleon, is possibly the most revered and reviled icon of
the Romantic Age. The poet's personal beauty, brilliant mind and reckless
spirit fascinated his contemporaries, for whom he had the irresistible
allure of a Fallen Lucifer.
Like the superhuman heroes of his own dark tales, Byron has often been portrayed as mysterious, self-destructive and proudly defiant. He invited his audience to see his writings as autobiographical and, to some extent, the poet was a model for his own creations: doomed supermen driven by titanic passions, guilty of unspeakable sins and burdened by hopeless sorrows.
Byron's scandalous love affairs and shockingly disastrous marriage certainly demonstrated his refusal to conform even to the permissive moral codes of Regency London. This, together with his very serious financial difficulties, obliged the poet to leave England in 1816 and spend the rest of his brief life in exile on the Continent. There he wrote brilliantly upon the quintessentially Romantic themes of personal freedom and political liberty. He died helping the Greeks to win their independence from Turkish rule.
As a poet and as a man Byron challenged the established order and became an enduring symbol of rebellion against tyranny, injustice and oppression.
Continue with the story of Byron...
Useful links
For more information on Byron, see these websites:
- www.hucknall-parish-church.org.uk/byron.htm
- http://byronjournal.lupjournals.org/
- www.internationalbyronsociety.org/
- www.nottingham.ac.uk/english/research/byron
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