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Introduction Useful links
LIFE & WORKS: Early Years Tour Early Fame Marriage & Exile Revolutionary & Martyr
Byron and Newstead Abbey
Byron's Life and Works: Marriage and Exile
Byron
had love affairs with Lady Caroline Lamb and Lady Oxford before seducing
his half-sister, Augusta Leigh. In January 1815 he married Annabella Milbanke,
who bore his only legitimate child, Ada, that December. The marriage soon
broke down amid rumours of his alleged cruelty and indecent behaviour.
Byron signed the Deed of Separation on 21 April 1816 and left England
a few days later, never to return.
Once again his travels inspired him to write and he published two more cantos of Childe Harold's Pilgrimage in 1816 and 1817. His tour of the Alps and guilty feelings about Augusta inspired Manfred, his poetic drama about a superman tortured by incestuous love for his sister Astarte.
Settling in Venice, he wrote Beppo, a mock-heroic verse comedy about Venetian society. This was a departure from his previous style and themes and its success encouraged him to begin work on Don Juan, his epic satire. In Don Juan, Byron makes fun of hypocrisy, sentimentality and social conventions. For many years, this satire was considered immoral, impious and unfit to be read by females. Today it is regarded as the best expression of what Byron called 'the two sentiments to which I am constant - a strong love of liberty and a detestation of cant'.
Continue with the story of Byron...
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