On this day...

It is said that Lord Byron's body arrived in London in 1842. Although a member of the English aristocracy, Byron spent most of his years abroad, and indeed it was whilst in Greece that he died. A philhellene, alongside several other rich Europeans, Byron was dedicated to the fight for independence from the Ottoman Empire, and even spent £4,000 of his own money to refit the Greek fleet.

Such was the mourning when he died, that his heart, (or lungs depending on the sources), remained at Messolonghi, and so began a journey which could not have been further from Byron's final wish; 'Let not my body be hacked, or be sent to England.... Lay me in the first corner without pomp or nonsense'. For Byron's body, having been disassembled and then placed back together, was shipped to England  for a public burial, only for it to be refused from both Westminster Abbey and St. Paul's Cathedral on grounds of 'questionable morality'. Therefore, Byron is buried at the Church of St. Mary Magdalene in Nottingham, next to Ada Lovelace, his child whom he never met.

On this day...

A gathering of literary significance took place at Lake Geneva in 1816. Lord Byron, together with his pregnant mistress Claire Clairmont and physician John William Polidori, met with 'another family of very suspicious appearance' - the Shelleys, Percy, wife-to-be Mary, and their young son William. The group congregated at the Villa Diodati, once inhabited by John Milton, which was described by Percy as 'a menagerie, with eight enormous dogs, three monkeys, five cats, an eagle, a crow, and a falcon; and all these, except the horses, walk about the house, which every now and then resounds with their unarbitrated quarrels, as if they were masters of it'.

Aside from being merely a voyeuristic exercise into some of the most remarkable literary minds of the day, interest in this meeting stems from the work it produced, with Mary Shelley's 'Frankenstein' conceived during a round of late night ghost stories. The work, to be published the next year, is now widely considered a forerunner to modern science-fiction, and remains popular with the readership and Hollywood audiences alike. Several years later, Shelley remembered the summer stay as the time 'when I first stepped out from childhood into life'.

On this day...

In imitation of the mythical Leander's visits to his beloved Hero, Lord Byron swam across the Hellespont in 1810. At the age of 22, Byron was 10 months into his tour of the Mediterranean - a visit that had already given rise to his first draft of 'Childe Harold's Pilgrimage'.

The one mile of cold waters, took one hour and ten minutes to complete after a failed first attempt, and Byron later wrote of it in his journal; 'I plume myself on this achievement more than I could possibly do on any kind of glory, political, poetical, or rhetorical'. As with so many of his adventures, the philhellene Byron committed it to words, writing the imaginatively named poem, 'Written After Swimming from Sestos to Abydos'.

On this day...

Greece revolts against the Ottoman Empire, leading to the start of the Greek War of Independence in 1821. Although, obviously an event of national, even global significance, it also has a noteworthy literary link. Romantic poet Lord Byron, was part of a group known as the Philhellenes.

A western intellectual movement, the Philhellenes were wealthly European and Americans aristocrats, who, having grown up with Greece's classical heritage, financed the revolution and took up arms. Byron, now often regarded as a Greek national hero, both publicised and funded the cause, spending £4,000 of his own money to refit the Greek fleet and writing poetry such as 'The Isles of Greece'. True to the cause until the end, Byron died in Greece of a fever, six years before the war's conclusion.

On this day...

Romantic poet Lord Byron made his maiden speech at the House of Lords in 1812. Receiving his peerage at the age of 10, upon the death of his great uncle, Byron did not actually take his seat in the House until the age of 23. In the few years previous, Byron had been abroad on a 'Grand Tour' including Albania, Greece and Portugal, a journey customary for such noblemen.Yet in was in 1812 that Byron first spoke in Parliament, and on an issue, supposedly close to his heart, or a least, close to his birthplace.

The Luddite 'frame-breakers' in Nottinghamshire had taken to destroying the texile machines, products of the industrial revolution, that were putting them out of work. Under a new Tory bill, such workers would face the death penalty, and it was against this 'most unparalleled distress' and 'squalid wretchedness' that Byron spoke. Opponents thought the speech not 'at all suited to our common notions of Parliementary [sic] eloquence', and even Byron himself thought he came across as 'a bit theatrical'. As it happened, the publication of 'Childe Harold's Pilgrimage' less than two weeks later, ensured Byron's success was in the poetic, rather than political, field.

You and me could write a Bad Romance...

On a similar theme, the Guardian and Observer this week are launching a series about the Romantic poets. From tomorrow, each day the paper will include a booklet about an influential poet of the era, including Keats, Shelley, Byron, Coleridge and Wordsworth. The booklets will contain some of their finest works, excerpts of personal correspondance and a foreward from a well known admirer; names such as Margaret Drabble, Andrew Motion, and even Germain Greer appearing. In honour of the series, Andrew Motion has recorded a podcast which can be found here

On this day...

British poet George Gordon Byron, more commonly known just as Lord Byron, was born in 1788. A highly controversial character, Byron, it seems was born in to a family of similar ilk. Son of 'Mad Jack', and great-nephew of 'the Wicked Lord', Byron inherited his peerage at the age of ten, and even before then rumours about the nature of his character were surfacing. Accused by many of being bisexual, Byron had many relationships with men and women alike; yet the strigent sodomy laws in Britain at the time neccessitated his travelling abroad for many years to find the freedom he wanted. Due to the Napoleonic Wars, Byron avoided Europe and so travelled to the East and spent time in both Albania and Athens. Following several scandalous affairs, notably with Lady Caroline Lamb, and a marriage marred by rumours of incest, he left for Italy, where he famously met Percy Bysshe Shelley and his wife Mary. The subsequent years of his life were of great cultural interest, first contributing to the Armenian language by means of a dictionary, and then to the Greek independence by refitting the Greek fleet with his own money and fighting. A leading Romantic, Byron wrote prolifically, his most famous works including, 'Childe Harold's Pilgrimage' and 'Don Juan'. The man labelled 'mad, bad and dangerous to know', died in 1824, at the age of 36.

Note to Self: Books sell...

Yesterday at Christie's, saw one of the most impressive literary auctions in some time. Film producer William E. Self sold his entire library of rare editions; 144 lots producing a sale total of $4,896,625. The highlights were two collections of poetry by Edgar Allan Poe; the first, a handwritten manuscript which sold for $830,500, the second, a first edition of 'Tamerlane and Other Poems', which went for $662,500. The list of other authors' work is extensive, and includes names from both sides of the Atlantic, such as; Jane Austen, the Bronte sisters, Lord Byron, Charles Dickens, Robert Louis Stevenson and Walt Whitman. The full list of lots, including pictures and details, can be found here

On this day...

Arguably one of the most famous English poets in history, John Keats, was born in 1795. Although his work was not well received in his lifetime, Keats, together with Percy Bysshe Shelley and Lord Byron, is now cited as the one of the cornerstones of the romantic movement in poetry; his works going on to influence and inspire such poets as Alfred Lord Tennyson and Wilfred Owen. Yet his life was tragically short. Soon after his brother Tom died from tuberculosis, Keats himself began to show symptoms of the disease. In 1820, with the signs becoming more pronounced, Keats left for Italy with his friend Joseph Severn. He died in 1821, in a house on the Spainish Steps in Rome, now the Keats-Shelley Memorial House, where works, correspondence and original furniture remain. Known for his florid description and rich imagery, Keats most famous works are 'Ode to a Nightingale' and 'Endymion'. His death inspired another great work, 'Adonis', by Shelley.