The Big, Bad Baron

Summary- Despair and Genius are too oft connected. It is

in Lord Byrons own words that his life can best be
described.
Mad, bad, and dangerous to know.
These were the words that Lord Byrons contemporaries used
to describe the late poet.
George Gordon Noel, sixth Baron of Byron, was born on 22
January 1788 in London, England. His father died when he
was only three, with the result that he inherited his title as
lord and subsequent property from his great uncle in 1798.
Following this, he went on to Dulwich, Harrow, and
Cambridge, where he amassed huge debts and stirred
alarms with bisexual love affairs. It was while living in
Newstead in 1802, that he first met his half-sister, Augusta
Leigh with whom he was suspected of having an incestuous
relationship.
Man, being reasonable, must get drunk; the best of life is
but intoxication.
Lord Byron was to become one of the most celebrated poets
of British literary history. Even though his writing style was
largely classical, he would become one of the prominent
figures of the Romantic school of British poetry together with
the liked of Wordsworth, Shelley, and Keats. Lord Byrons
best-known work is of course the more than famous Don
Juan.
Byron has often been compared to the Scottish poet Robert
Burns (1759 - 1796). This is mostly because both of them
would write from their personal impressions and emotions,
exposing themselves almost completely in their work. The
flip side of that, however, is that in this way both of them
would also be slaves to their pressing passions. Additionally,
perhaps also because of that they would both tend to

The Big, Bad Baron

sometimes doubt themselves and suffered extensively from
depressed.
The flamboyant and fashionable poet was credited with
creating an immensely popular Byronic herodefiant,
melancholy, haunted by secret guiltfor which, to many, he
seemed the model. In his dynamism, sexuality, selfrevelation, and demands for freedom for oppressed people
everywhere, Byron captivated the Western mind and heart
as few writers have.
I doubt sometimes whether a quiet and unagitated life
would have suited me - yet I sometimes long for it.