50 Fun Facts About Lord Byron

Byron belonged to which literary movement?

He is counted among the greatest British poets, alongside fellow Romantics Shelley, Keats and Wordsworth.

Byron was born in 1788 in which city?

His birthplace on Holles Street is now supposedly occupied by a John Lewis department store; he spent part of his childhood in Aberdeen.

What did the press nickname Byron's grandfather, a vice admiral who set a circumnavigation speed record?

He had survived a shipwreck as a teenage midshipman before earning the name in a stormy voyage during the American War of Independence.

At what age did Byron inherit his title and Newstead Abbey from his great-uncle, the 'wicked' Lord Byron?

The abbey was in such disrepair that his mother leased it out rather than live there.

Newstead Abbey, Byron's ancestral home, is in which English county?

He sold it in 1817 while living in Venice, and is buried nearby at Hucknall.

Byron was born with a deformity of which part of his body?

His mother once called him 'a lame brat'; he compensated with violent bouts of exercise and became a superb swimmer.

Which school did Byron attend from 1801 to 1805, representing it in the first Eton match at Lord's?

He was, by his own account, an undistinguished student and an unskilled cricketer.

At which Cambridge college did Byron study?

There he met John Edleston, for whom he later wrote the elegies Thyrza, and lifelong friend John Cam Hobhouse.

Because college rules forbade dogs, what animal did Byron famously keep as a student?

The statutes said nothing about bears, and he suggested applying for a college fellowship on its behalf.

Byron's beloved Newfoundland dog, for whom he built a tomb larger than his own, was named what?

When the dog caught rabies Byron nursed him regardless of the risk; the 'Epitaph to a Dog' is one of his best-known poems.

What was Byron's first major satire, prompted by a savage review of Hours of Idleness?

The reviewer is now known to have been Henry Brougham; some targets challenged Byron to duels, but later it became a badge of honour to be attacked in it.

Byron's House of Lords speech opposed the death penalty for which Midlands machine-breakers?

He also spoke for Catholic emancipation, and later wrote 'Song for the Luddites'.

On 3 May 1810 Byron swam across which strait, a feat he later commemorated in Don Juan?

The swim from Europe to Asia is often called the birth of open-water swimming and is recreated every year.

Byron's Grand Tour of 1809-11 included a visit to which ruler of Ioannina, then almost unknown in Britain?

The Napoleonic Wars kept him out of most of Europe, so he toured Portugal, Spain, Malta, Albania and Greece instead.

Which poem's first two cantos in 1812 made Byron say 'I awoke one morning and found myself famous'?

Byron himself thought little of it and handed it to his agent Robert Dallas almost as an afterthought.

Which of these was NOT one of Byron's four 'Oriental Tales' that followed Childe Harold?

The Bride of Abydos completes the quartet; Mazeppa came later, published with his vampire 'Fragment' as a postscript.

In which 1814-15 collection with composer Isaac Nathan did Byron's 'She Walks in Beauty' appear?

Nathan set the lyrics to what he presented as ancient synagogue melodies.

Who described Byron as 'mad, bad, and dangerous to know'?

She said it after their first meeting in 1812, then pursued him relentlessly, sometimes disguised as a pageboy.

A jealous former lover portrayed Byron as the seedy title character of which 1816 novel?

It appeared the same year the rumours of violence, adultery and incest, fanned by a jealous Caroline, drove him out of England.

Byron's half-sister, with whom he was rumoured to have had an incestuous relationship, was named what?

Her daughter Medora, born in 1814, was suspected by some to be Byron's child; the biographer André Maurois considered the incest proven.

Whom did Byron marry at Seaham Hall, County Durham, on 2 January 1815?

'Annabella' was highly moral and mathematically gifted, and she left him a year later taking their infant daughter.

Byron's legitimate daughter became famous for collaborating with Charles Babbage on what?

Ada Lovelace is often called the first computer programmer; she was buried beside the father she never knew.

In what year did Byron leave England, never to return?

The separation scandal, the rumours about Augusta and mounting debts, which forced the sale of his library, drove him out.

In the summer of 1816 Byron settled at the Villa Diodati on the shore of which body of water?

The Shelleys, Claire Clairmont and his doctor John Polidori joined him for the famously wet, ghost-story summer.

Which novel did Mary Shelley begin during the ghost-story contest at the Villa Diodati?

The party had been reading the German ghost anthology Fantasmagoriana to pass the rainy days.

Byron's physician John Polidori turned a Byron fragment into which tale, progenitor of the Romantic vampire genre?

Byron's own 'A Fragment' was later published as a postscript to Mazeppa.

Byron's illegitimate daughter Allegra was the child of which stepsister of Mary Shelley?

Byron kept Allegra from her mother and had the child buried at his old school, Harrow.

In Venice, Byron studied which language with the monks of San Lazzaro, co-authoring a grammar of it?

He also helped compile an English-Armenian dictionary and wrote its preface on Armenian oppression.

The young married countess for whom Byron lived in Ravenna from 1819 to 1821 was named what?

She left her husband for him; her brother Pietro Gamba followed Byron to Greece and drove him mad with expensive mistakes.

According to Shelley, Byron's Ravenna household included a crow, a falcon and what other bird?

A postscript added five peacocks, two guinea hens and an Egyptian crane he had found on the staircase.

Byron's satirical epic Don Juan is written in which verse form?

He portrays Juan not as a womaniser but as a man easily seduced by women; the first two cantos were denounced as immoral in 1819.

How many cantos of Don Juan had Byron completed at his death?

The seventeenth was left unfinished; he had begun the poem in Italy in 1818.

The short-lived newspaper Byron founded in Pisa in 1822 with Leigh Hunt and Shelley was called what?

Its first number carried Byron's The Vision of Judgment.

Byron attended the beachside cremation of which fellow poet, drowned in a boating accident in July 1822?

The ceremony was orchestrated by Edward Trelawny; Byron's own yacht was called the Bolivar.

Byron's mother-in-law's will required him to adopt which surname, giving him Napoleon's initials?

'N.B.' was the payoff, so some speculated; his wife eventually became Lady Wentworth.

Byron sailed for Greece in 1823 aboard a chartered brig named after which mythological hero?

By coincidence the ship had been launched a few miles from Seaham Hall, where he had married eight years before.

Byron spent £4,000 of his own money in Greece on what?

He also paid the unruly Souliote soldiers £6,000 before giving up on them, and funded a 'Byron brigade' of 30 officers and 231 men.

Byron died of fever on 19 April 1824 in which Greek town?

He was 36; the therapeutic bleeding his doctors insisted on almost certainly hastened the end.

According to some sources, which of Byron's organs remained in Greece when the rest of him was sent home?

The Greeks wanted part of their hero to stay; a suburb of Athens, Vyronas, is named after him.

Which institution refused to bury Byron for reasons of 'questionable morality'?

He was buried at St Mary Magdalene, Hucknall; the abbey did not grant him a memorial until 1969.

Which friend and biographer joined John Murray and Hobhouse in burning Byron's memoirs a month after his death?

Byron had entrusted his 'life and adventures' to Moore in Ravenna; the loss is one of literature's great what-ifs.

Where did the Thorvaldsen statue of Byron finally find a home after Westminster Abbey and others refused it?

The Danish sculptor had re-carved his earlier bust in Greek marble on hearing of Byron's heroics.

In 2008 the Hellenic Parliament designated 19 April, the day Byron died, as the Day of what?

Greeks still honour him with the Homeric-style epithet 'megalos kai kalos', a great and good man.

Which composer's 'Harold in Italy' shows Byron's influence on Romantic music?

Liszt likewise drew on Childe Harold for his Années de pèlerinage and spoke of his own 'byronisme'.

Byron's mother Catherine Gordon was heiress of which Aberdeenshire estate?

His father took the extra surname Gordon to claim it, styling himself John Byron Gordon of Gight.

Where did Byron receive his early schooling from January 1795 until moving to England aged ten?

His mother had moved back to Aberdeenshire in 1790.

Byron's series of elegies 'Thyrza' mourned which close friend from his Cambridge days?

Byron wrote that Edleston's voice first attracted his attention and 'his manners attached me to him for ever'.

Byron's early collection Fugitive Pieces, with poems written at 17, was printed by Ridge in which town?

It preceded Hours of Idleness, whose savage review prompted English Bards and Scotch Reviewers.

How many philhellene officers were in the so-called 'Byron brigade' formed by March 1824 at Byron's expense?

The brigade also numbered exactly 231 men and was paid for entirely by Byron.

In which year, 145 years after his death, was a memorial to Byron finally placed in Westminster Abbey?

The New York Times had been lobbying for one since 1907; Byron himself is buried at Hucknall, Nottinghamshire.