He was the son of Capt. John ("Mad Jack") Byron and his second wife, Catherine Gordon of Gight. His father died in 1791, and Byron, born with a clubfoot, was subjected alternately to the excessive tenderness and violent temper of his mother. In 1798, after years of poverty, Byron succeeded to the title and took up residence at the family seat, Newstead Abbey. He subsequently attended Dulwich school and Harrow (1801-5) and then matriculated at Trinity College, Cambridge. Although the academic atmosphere did nothing to lessen Byron's sensitivity about his lameness, he made several close friends while at school.
His first volume, Fugitive Pieces (1806), was suppressed; revised and expanded, it appeared in 1807 as Poems on Various Occasions. This was followed by Hours of Idleness (1807), which provoked such severe criticism from the Edinburgh Review that Byron replied with English Bards and Scotch Reviewers (1809), a satire in heroic couplets reminiscent of Pope, which brought him immediate fame.
Byron left England the same year for a grand tour through Spain, Portugal, Italy, and the Balkans. He returned in 1811 with Cantos I and II of Childe Harold (1812), a melancholy, philosophic poem in Spenserian stanzas, which made him the social lion of London. It was followed by the verse tales The Giaour (1813), The Bride of Abydos (1813), The Corsair (1814), Lara (1814), The Siege of Corinth (1816), and Parisina (1816).
Byron's name at this time was linked with those of several women, notably Viscount Melbourne's wife, Lady Caroline Lamb. In Jan., 1815, he married Anne Isabella Milbanke, a serious, rather cold, young woman with whom he had little in common. She gave birth to a daughter, Augusta Ada, the following December. In 1816 she secured a separation. Although her reasons for such an action remain obscure, evidence indicates that she discovered the existence of an incestuous relationship between Byron and his half-sister, Mrs. Augusta Leigh. Although his many attachments to women are notorious, Byron was actually ambivalent toward women. There is considerable evidence that he also had several homosexual relationships.
In Apr., 1816, by then a social outcast, Byron left England, never to return. He passed some time with Shelley in Switzerland, writing Canto III of Childe Harold (1816) and The Prisoner of Chillon (1816). With the party was Shelley's sister-in-law, Claire Clairmont, who had practically forced Byron into a liaison before he left England, and who, in Jan., 1817, bore him a daughter, Allegra.
Settling in Venice (1817), Byron led for a time a life of dissipation, but produced Canto IV of Childe Harold (1818), Beppo (1818), and Mazeppa (1819) and began Don Juan. In 1819 he formed a liaison with the Countess Teresa Guiccioli, who remained his acknowledged mistress for the rest of his life. Byron was induced to interest himself in the cause of Greek independence from the Turks and sailed for Missolonghi, where he arrived in 1824. He worked unsparingly with Prince Alexander Mavrocordatos to unify the divergent Greek forces, but caught a fever and died the same year.
Ranked with Shelley and Keats as one of the great Romantic poets, Byron became famous throughout Europe as the embodiment of romanticism. His good looks, his lameness, and his flamboyant lifestyle all contributed to the formation of the Byronic legend. By the mid-20th cent. his reputation as a poet had been eclipsed by growing critical recognition of his talents as a wit and satirist.
Byron's poetry covers a wide range. In English Bards and Scotch Reviewers and in The Vision of Judgment (1822) he wrote 18th-century satire. He also created the "Byronic hero," who appears consummately in the Faustian tragedy Manfred (1817)—a mysterious, lonely, defiant figure whose past hides some great crime. Cain (1821) raised a storm of abuse for its skeptical attitude toward religion. The verse tale Beppo is in the ottava rima (eight-line stanzas in iambic pentameter) that Byron later used for his acknowledged masterpiece Don Juan (1819-24), an epic-satire combining Byron's art as a storyteller, his lyricism, his cynicism, and his detestation of convention.
See his letters and diaries, ed. by L. Marchand (12 vol., 1973-85), supplemental vol., What Comes Uppermost (1994); biographies by A. Maurois (1930, repr. 1964), L. Marchand (3 vol., 1957; and 1 vol., 1970, repr. 1979), P. Grosskurth (1997), B. Eisler (1999), and F. MacCarthy (2002); studies by P. Quennell (rev. ed. 1967; and 1941, repr. 1957), G. W. Knight (1952, 1957), L. Marchand (1965), M. G. Cooke (1969), J. J. McGann (1980, 1986), M. Corbett (1988), and I. Gilmour (2003).
Popular song, usually of religious joy, associated with a season, especially Christmas. It typically alternates verses with a repeated refrain or chorus. The carol originated in medieval England, with texts in English or Latin or both, and it was often associated with dancing and processions. The French noël, the German Weihnachtslied, and the Spanish villancico can also be regarded as carols.
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(born Dec. 30, 1906, London, Eng.—died April 25, 1976, London) British film director. He made his stage debut as an actor in 1924 and as a director in 1927, staging Edgar Wallace's detective thrillers. He began directing films in 1935, winning praise for The Stars Look Down (1939), Night Train (1940), and the wartime semidocumentary The True Glory (1945). Noted for his technical mastery of the suspense-thriller genre, he had great success with Odd Man Out (1947), The Fallen Idol (1948), and the classic The Third Man (1949). His later films include The Key (1958), Our Man in Havana (1959), and Oliver! (1968, Academy Award). He was the first British film director to be knighted.
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(born Dec. 30, 1906, London, Eng.—died April 25, 1976, London) British film director. He made his stage debut as an actor in 1924 and as a director in 1927, staging Edgar Wallace's detective thrillers. He began directing films in 1935, winning praise for The Stars Look Down (1939), Night Train (1940), and the wartime semidocumentary The True Glory (1945). Noted for his technical mastery of the suspense-thriller genre, he had great success with Odd Man Out (1947), The Fallen Idol (1948), and the classic The Third Man (1949). His later films include The Key (1958), Our Man in Havana (1959), and Oliver! (1968, Academy Award). He was the first British film director to be knighted.
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Joyce Carol Oates, 1992.
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Joyce Carol Oates, 1992.
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(born Oct. 15, 1893, Sinaia, Rom.—died April 4, 1953, Estoril, Port.) King of Romania (1930–40). He became crown prince on the death of his great uncle, Carol I, in 1914. Because of his scandalous affair with Magda Lupescu (1896?–1977), he was obliged to renounce his rights to the throne and go into exile in 1925, but he returned in 1930 and became king. He gradually undermined Romanian democracy and in 1938 proclaimed a corporatist dictatorship, but in 1940 he was forced to abdicate in favour of his son Michael.
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(born April 20, 1839, Sigmaringen, Hohenzollern-Sigmaringen—died Oct. 10 1914, Sinaia, Rom.) King of Romania (1881–1914). Originally a German prince, he became prince of Romania in 1866, and when Romania gained full independence from the Ottoman Empire he was crowned its first king. He brought notable military and economic development along Western lines, but his neglect of festering rural problems led to the bloody peasant rebellion of 1907.
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