Selected Poems (4 page)

1778

Captain John (‘Mad Jack’) Byron elopes with the wealthy Lady Carmarthen and marries her the next year.

1783

Byron’s half-sister, Augusta, born.

1784

Lady Carmarthen Augusta’s mother dies.

1785

Mad Jack marries the wealthy Catherine Gordon, squanders her fortune.

1788

22 January, George Gordon (later Lord Byron) born with a deformed foot.

1789

Byron and his mother move to Aberdeen, Scotland. The storming of the Bastille, 14 July, launches the French Revolution.

1790

Mad Jack leaves for France. Pye becomes poet laureate.

1791

Mad Jack Byron dies in France.

1792

Allies invade France. September Massacres.

1793

Louis XVI and Marie Antoinette executed; Marat murdered; the Terror begins. France declares war on Britain.

1794

Danton executed; Robespierre executed. The Terror ends.

1794

5 Byron attends Aberdeen Grammar School; becomes heir to the title, Baron Byron.

1795

Napoleon’s Italian campaign.

1796

Lewis’s
The Monk
ublished.

1797

Byron’s first sexual experience, with his nurse, May Gray.

1798

At the death of his great-uncle, the fifth Baron Byron, Byron becomes sixth Baron Byron and inherits the heavily mortgaged ancestral estate, Newstead Abbey, to which he moves with his mother and nurse May Gray. Battle of the Nile; Irish Rebellion;
Lyrical Ballads
(Wordsworth and Coleridge) and Joanna Baillie’s
Plays on the Passions
(Vol. 1) published.

1799

Byron endures painful but futile treatments of his club-foot. Napoleon returns to France and becomes First Consul.

1800

Second edition of
Lyrical Ballads
(with Preface) and Thomas Moore’s
Odes of Anacreon
published.

1801

Byron at Harrow until 1805. Pitt resigns on the refusal of George III to assent to Catholic emancipation. Publication of Southey’s
Thalaba
, Moore’s
Poems by Thomas Little
and Bowles’s
Sorrows of Switzerland
.

1802

Peace of Amiens between England and France; France reoccupies Switzerland. Volume 2 of Baillie’s
Plays
and Scott’s
Minstrelsy of the Scottish Border
published.
Edinburgh Review
founded.

1803

Byron in love with Mary Chaworth, his cousin and neighbour at Newstead; she ridicules his lameness. Relationship with Lord Grey. England declares war on France.

1804

Pitt becomes Prime Minister; Napoleon crowned Emperor; end of the Holy Roman Empire. Baillie’s
Miscellaneous Plays
published.

1805

Mary Chaworth marries. Byron enters Trinity College, Cambridge, befriends John Cam Hobhouse, and falls in love with a chorister, John Edleston (‘Thyrza’). Nelson’s victory at Trafalgar.

1806

Fugitive Pieces
printed privately and immediately suppressed when Revd John Becher objects to some of the poems. High life in London. Scott’s
Ballads and Lyrical Pieces
and Bowles’s editions of Pope published.

1807

Poems on Various Occasions
(a cleaned-up
Fugitive Pieces
with twelve new pieces) printed privately in January, and in a public printing in June, with twelve further new pieces, as
Hours of Idleness
Byron leaves Cambridge without a degree, heavily in debt by end of the year. Wordsworth’s
Poems in Two Volumes
, Moore’s
Irish Melodies
and Southey’s
Letters from England by Don Espriella
published. French invasion of Spain and Portugal. Peninsular

Campain begins. Abolition of slave-trade in Enland.

1808

Poems Original and Translated
, second edition, with five new pieces, published.
Edinburgh Review
ridicules
Hours of Idleness.
Byron awarded MA degree by Cambridge in July. Lives in London and eventually takes up residence at Newstead Abbey. Hunt becomes editor of the
Examiner
;
Scott’s
Marmion
published.

1809

Spanish uprising (May); Convention of Cintra (August). Nine poems by Byron published in
Imitations and Translations from the Ancient and Modern Classics
, by John Cam Hobhouse.
English Bards and Scotch Reviewers
published in March. Byron takes his seat in House of Lords. Grand Tour with Hobhouse: sails to Lisbon, travels in Spain, Portugal, Gibraltar, Malta, Greece, Albania (visits the Ali Pasha), Missolonghi and Athens. Writes Canto I of
Childe Harold’s Pilgrimage
.

William Gifford becomes editor of the
Quarterly Review
(published by John Murray). Campbell’s
Gertrude of Wyoming
, Hobhouse’s
Travels through Albania
and Wordsworth’s
Convention of Cintra
published. Coronation of Joseph Bonaparte in Madrid; Wellesley in command in Portugal Napoleon beaten by the Austrians

1810

Byron travels through Greece and Turkey, returns to Athens; swims the Hellespont; writes Canto II of
Childe Harold’s Pilgrimage
. Hobhouse returns to England.

1811

Byron sails to England, arriving by summer. Deaths of his mother and Edleston. Writes ‘Thyrza’ poems. Meets Thomas Moore. Prince of Wales becomes Regent after George III is deemed incompetent. Luddite Riots against the weaving frames.

1812

Association with Lord Holland and brief career in the House of Lords; Byron’s maiden speech opposes the Frame-Breaking Bill which prescribed the death penalty.

Childe Harold’s Pilgrimage I
and
II
, published by John Murray in March; Byron woke to find himself famous. The
Edinburgh Review
(Jeffrey) buries the hatchet and gives a favourable review. Friendships with Samuel Rogers and Thomas Moore; affairs with Caroline Lamb and Lady Oxford; through Lady Melbourne meets Annabella

Milbanke, proposes marriage to her in October and is refused

Anna Barbauld’s anti-imperialist
Eighteen Hundred and Eleven
and Volume 3 of Baillie’s
Plays
published.

Napoleon invades Russia in June and retreats from Moscow in December, with catastrophic losses.

1813

Byron in the whirl of London Regency society; frequent visits to Princess Charlotte (the Regent’s daughter); affair with Augusta; last speech in Lords; visits Leigh Hunt in jail. Flirtatious friendship with Lady Frances Webster; meets Mme de Staël. Publishes
The Waltz
anonymously in a private printing,
The Giaour
in June (first edition) and
The Bride of Abydos
in November. The
Edinburgh Review
(Jeffrey) gives
The Giaour
a favourable review.

Southey publishes
Life of Nelson
and becomes poet laureate; Leigh Hunt imprisoned for libel. Shelley’s
Queen Mab
and Austen’s
Pride and Prejudice
published.

Austria joins the Alliance against France.

1814

Publication of
The Corsair
with ‘Lines to a Lady Weeping’ (the Princess’s distress at her father’s betrayal of his Whig allies) in February (10,000 copies sell immediately), ‘Ode to Napoleon Buonaparte’ in April,
Lara
(with Rogers’s
Jacqueline
) in August. Byron attacked in Tory press for ‘Lines to a Lady Weeping’. The
Edinburgh Review
(Jeffrey) gives
The Corsair
and
The Bride of Abydos
a favourable review, commenting on the character type of the hero.

Medora Leigh (now thought to be Byron’s daughter by Augusta), born in April. Annabella Milbanke accepts his second proposal in September.

The Allies invade France; Napoleon abdicates and is exiled; the Bourbons are restored. Shelley elopes to the Continent with Mary Godwin.

Publication of Wordsworth’s
Excursion
, Scott’s
Waverley
, Austen’s
Mansfield Park
and Cary’s translation of
The Divine Comedy
.

1815

Murray publishes a four-volume edition of Byron’s poems;
Hebrew Melodies
published. Byron marries Annabella Milbanke in January; birth of daughter Ada in December. Life in London; through Murray meets Walter Scott;

becomes member of the Drury Lane Theatre Management Committee. Financial difficulties and arrival of bailiffs; frequent visits from Augusta and beginning of alienation from Annabella.

Napoleon escapes from Elba, is defeated at Waterloo and exiled to St Helena; restoration of Louis XVIII.

Wordsworth’s collected Poems and Charles Lloyd’s translation of
The Tragedies of Alfieri
published.

1816

Publication of
The Siege of Corinth
and
Parisina
(February),
Poems
and fifth edition of
English Bards. The Prisoner of Chillon and Other Poems and Childe Harold’s Pilgrimage
III published in November; at a booksellers’ dinner, Murray sells 7,000 copies of each volume. Byron works on
Manfred,
‘Prometheus’ and ‘Darkness’.

In January, Lady Byron leaves with Ada to live with her parents; Byron writes ‘Fare thee well!’ in March, and, amidst dark rumours about his character, a deed of separation is drawn up in March and signed in April; he meets and begins an affair with Claire Clairmont, Mary Shelley’s stepsister. Cut by London society over the separation scandal, with financial difficulties worsening, Byron auctions off his library and leaves England in April, for ever. Travels in Belgium, Waterloo, the Rhine and Switzerland. Rents Villa Diodati, on Lake Geneva, meets the Shelleys, near neighbours, and begins
Childe Harold’s Pilgrimage III
. Ghost stories at Villa Diodati (the origin of
Frankenstein
), friendship with the Shelleys; the affair with Claire Clairmont cools during her pregnancy with his child. Tours the Alps and Lake Geneva with Percy Bysshe Shelley, visits Chateau de Chillon. After the Shelleys and Claire leave for England, he sets off for Italy with Hobhouse and moves to Venice later in the year; affair with Marianna Segati, his landlord’s wife; studies Armenian at a monastery.

Hemans’s
The Restoration of the Works of Art to Italy,
Leigh Hunt’s
Story of Rimini
(with a Dedication to Byron), Shelley’s
Alastor,
Wordsworth’s
Thanksgiving Ode,
Austen’s
Emma,
Caroline Lamb’s
Glenarvon
(with a hero meant to be read as Byron, and publishing one of his letters

to her) and Coleridge’s
Christabel
and
Kubla Khan
ublished.

Elgin Marbles displayed; prosecution of William Hone for blasphemous libel (tried in 1817); Spa Field Riots (December).

1817

Manfred
published in June; writing
Childe Harold’s Pilgrimage IV
. Allegra, his and Claire Clairmont’s daughter, born in England (January). Venice Carnival and dissipations. Travels to Rome with Hobhouse, returns to settle in Venice. Visits with ‘Monk’ Lewis; affair with Margarita Cogni. Hears the story that is the basis for
Beppo
, reads Frere’s
Whistlecraft
(a poem in
ottava rima
). Sells Newstead Abbey for £94,500 in December.

Publication of Coleridge’s
Biographia Literaria
and
Sibylline Leaves
, Keats’s first volume of
Poems,
Moore’s
Lalla Rookh
, Hemans’s
Modern Greece
, Hazlitt’s
Characters of Shakespear’s Plays
and
The Round Table
and Southey’s
Wat Tyler
(written in the 1790s), by his enemies to embarrass him.
Blackwood’s Edinburgh Magazine
founded. ‘Z”s articles on the ‘Cockney School’ appear in
Blackwood’s
1817-19, attacking Hunt, Keats and eventually Shelley. Habeas Corpus Act suspended in England (March). Death of Princess Charlotte from complications in the delivery of a stillborn child.

1818

Writes ‘My dear Mr Murray’.
Beppo
published in February,
Childe Harold’s Pilgrimage IV
in April (including stanzas on the death of the Princess).

Venice Carnival, dissipations, etc. Byron leases a palazzo on the Grand Canal and begins
Don Juan
in July; spends much time with the Shelleys, encounters Contessa Teresa Guiccioli Allera comes to Venice with her nurse

Keats’s
Endymion
, Percy Bysshe Shelley’s
The Revolt of Islam
, Scott’s
Rob Roy
and Mary Shelley’s
Frankenstein
published; a scathing review of
Endymion
in the
Quarterly
. European Alliance; Habeas Corpus Act restored in England.