1. Lord Byron ‘mad, bad and dangerous to know’
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2. Lord Byron
Amongst Byron's best-known works are the brief poems She Walks in Beauty, and So, We’ll Go No More a Roving.
He is regarded as one of the greatest European poets and remains widely read and influential, both in the English-speaking world and beyond.
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3. Lord Byron
Byron was as famous in his lifetime for his personality cult as for his poetry. He created the concept of the 'Byronic hero' - a defiant, melancholy young man, brooding on some mysterious, unforgivable event in his past.
Byron's influence on European poetry, music, novel, opera, and painting has been immense, although the poet was widely condemned on moral grounds by his contemporaries.
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4. Byron the Boy
Byron spent his early childhood years in poor surroundings in Aberdeen, where he was educated until he was ten.
After he inherited the title and property of his great-uncle in 1798, he went on to Dulwich, Harrow, and Cambridge, where he piled up debts and aroused alarm with bisexual love affairs.
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5. Byron the Youth
Staying at Newstead in 1802, he probably first met his half-sister, Augusta Leigh with whom he was later suspected of having an incestuous relationship.
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6. Byron the Poet
In 1807 Byron's first collection of poetry, Hours Of Idleness, appeared. It received bad reviews.
In 1809 he took his seat in the House of Lords, and set out on his grand tour, visiting Spain, Malta, Albania, Greece, and the Aegean.
Real poetic success came in 1812 when Byron published the first two cantos of Childe Harold's Pilgrimage ( ).
Byron's The Corsair (1814), sold 10,000 copies on the first day of publication.
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7. Byron and Relationships
Byron married Anne Isabella Milbanke in 1815, and their daughter, Ada, was born in the same year. The marriage was unhappy, and they obtained legal separation the next year. Anne fled the marriage, never explaining why…
Byron had a chaotic love-affair with the married Lady Caroline Lamb (his wife’s cousin!).
Lady Caroline Lamb
Byron is “mad, bad, and dangerous to know"
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8. Lovers
Byron’s well-publicised affair with Lady Caroline Lamb shocked the British public. Byron eventually broke off the relationship, but Lamb never entirely recovered, pursuing him even after he tired of her.
She was emotionally disturbed, and lost so much weight that Byron cruelly commented to her mother-in-law, his friend Lady Melbourne, that he was "haunted by a skeleton".
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9. Lovers
She began to call on him at home, sometimes dressed in disguise as a page boy, at a time when such an act could ruin both of them socially.
One day, during such a visit, she wrote on a book at his desk, "Remember me!" As a retort, Byron wrote a poem entitled Remember Thee! Remember Thee! which concludes with the line "Thou false to him, thou fiend to me".
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10. Lovers
During his time abroad in Italy (more details to follow) he had several affairs with married women.
One was 22 year old Margarita Cogni who left her husband to move in to Byron’s house. Their fighting often caused Byron to spend the night in his gondola. When he asked her to leave she threw herself into the Venetian canal.
The first five cantos of Don Juan were written between 1818 and 1820, during which period he made the acquaintance of the young Countess Guiccioli, who found her first love in Byron, who in turn asked her to elope with him.
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11. Emigration
When the rumours started to rise of his incest and his debts were accumulating, Byron left England again in 1816, never to return. He settled in Geneva with Percy Shelley, Mary Wollstonecraft Shelley, and her step-sister Claire Clairmont, (with whom he had had an affair in London) who became his mistress. Clairmont had borne him an illegitimate daughter, Allegra, whom the Shelleys eventually convinced him to accept and provide for.
Clara Allegra Byron
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12. Byron and Italy
At the end of the summer Byron continued his travels, spending two years in Italy.
During his years in Italy he started Don Juan, his satiric masterpiece.
While in Ravenna and Pisa, Byron became deeply interested in drama, and wrote among others The Two Foscari, Cain, and the unfinished Heaven And Earth.
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13. Byron the Hero
Byron served as a regional leader of Italy’s revolutionary organization, the Carbonari, in its struggle against Austria.
He later travelled to fight against the Ottoman Empire in the Greek War of Independence for which Greeks revere him as a national hero.
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14. Byron’s Death
In April 1824 he caught a violent cold in a rainstorm which was soon aggravated by the bleeding insisted upon by the doctors. Though he briefly rallied, the cold grew worse; he eventually slipped into a coma.  Around six o'clock in the evening of 19 April 1824, he passed away.
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15. Byron’s Death
Deeply mourned by the Greeks, he became a hero throughout their land.  His body was embalmed; the heart was removed and buried in Missolonghi. 
His remains were then sent to England and, refused burial in Westminster Abbey, placed in the vault of his ancestors near Newstead. Ironically, 145 years after his death, in 1969, a memorial to Byron was finally placed on the floor of the Abbey.
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16. Byron’s views on Love and Women
She Walks in Beauty
Read through the poem.
What attitude/s to women is/are being expressed here?
What techniques does Byron use to convey these views?
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17. She walks in beauty, like the night
She walks in beauty, like the night  
Of cloudless climes and starry skies;
And all that's best of dark and bright  
Meet in her aspect and her eyes:
Thus mellowed to that tender light   
Which heaven to gaudy day denies.  
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18. One shade the more, one ray the less,
Had half impaired the nameless grace
Which waves in every raven tress,   
Or softly lightens o'er her face;
Where thoughts serenely sweet express   
How pure, how dear their dwelling-place.
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19. And on that cheek, and o'er that brow, So soft, so calm, yet eloquent,
The smiles that win, the tints that glow,   
But tell of days in goodness spent,
A mind at peace with all below,   
A heart whose love is innocent.
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20. Meaning…
This is somewhat of a love poem, expressing how beautiful this woman is that Lord Byron is looking at. She combines opposites (or extremes) in perfect proportions in her looks and in her personality. Whether it is a true declaration of love or a statement of admiration (of her beauty) is left to the reader, since it's known that this poem was about his cousin, Mrs. Wilmot, whom he met at a party while she was dressed in a mourning dress of spangled black.
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21. Techniques…
In the fourth line, the word "meet" is emphasized. It is an important word in the poem because it is the premise of the entire poem. Opposites "meet" in this woman. Just as enjambment and a change in meter are joined as techniques in this poem, the unlikely pair of the antithetical darkness and light meet in this woman.
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22. Techniques…
Lord Byron describes a night (associated with darkness) with bright stars (light) and compares this woman to that night. She brings together these opposites in her beauty and creates a "tender light." Not a light like the daytime, since he describes that as gaudy (showy in a vulgar way), but a light that "heaven" doesn't even honour the daytime with.
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23. Techniques…
Note that Byron says that if this darkness and lightness wouldn't be in the right proportions ("One shade the more, one ray the less"), her beauty wouldn't be completely ruined as you might expect. He says that she would only be "half impaired," and thus still half magnificent.
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24. Form and structure Rhyme and meter
The rhyme scheme of the first stanza is ababab; the second stanza, cdcdcd; and the third stanza, efefef. All the end rhymes are masculine. The meter is predominantly iambic tetrameter, a pattern in which a line has four pairs of unstressed and stressed syllables—eight syllables in all. The first two lines demonstrate the pattern followed throughout the poem except for line 6, which has nine syllables: 
She WALKS | in BEAU | ty, LIKE | the NIGHT        
Of CLOUD | less CLIMES | and STAR | ry SKIES

25. Phonology and sound patterning
Alliteration occurs frequently to enhance the appeal of the poem to the ear. The most obvious examples of this figure of speech include the following:
Line 2:....cloudless climes; starry skies.  Line 6:....day denies  Line 8:....Had half Line 9:....Which waves Line 11...serenely sweet Line 14...So soft, so Line 18...Heart Whose

26. Lexis and imagery Other Figures of Speech
Examples of other figures of speech are the following:
Lines 1, 2:......Simile comparing the movement of the beautiful woman to the movement of the skies  Line 6: Metonymy, in which heaven is substituted for God or for the upper atmosphere Lines 8-10:......Metaphor comparing grace, a quality, to a perceivable phenomenon Lines 11-12:....Metaphor and personification comparing thoughts to people; metaphor and personification comparing the mind to a home (dwelling-place) Lines 13-16:....Metaphor and personification comparing the woman's cheek and brow to persons who tell of days in goodness spent
Imagery: Light and Darkness
Byron presents an ethereal portrait of the young woman in the first two stanzas by contrasting white with black and light with shadow in the same way that nature presents a portrait of the firmament—and the landscape below—on a cloudless starlit evening. He tells the reader in line 3 that she combines “the best of dark and bright” (bright here serving as an noun rather than an adjective) and notes that darkness and light temper each other when they meet in her raven hair. Byron's words thus turn opposites into compeers working together to celebrate beauty.