50 free Lord Byron trivia questions with answers — literature quiz, new questions added Aug 2026.
Lord Byron trivia for poetry lovers, Romantics, and anyone who suspects the man was even more interesting than the verse. The quiz begins with the boy who inherited a title and a ruined abbey at ten, the club foot, the tame bear he kept at Cambridge because dogs were banned, and the morning in 1812 when he 'awoke and found himself famous' after Childe Harold's Pilgrimage. From there it follows the scandals: Lady Caroline Lamb's 'mad, bad and dangerous to know', the rumours about his half-sister Augusta, the disastrous marriage to Annabella Milbanke that produced Ada Lovelace, and the flight from England in 1816. Then the exile: the wet summer at Villa Diodati that spawned Frankenstein and The Vampyre, the menagerie in Ravenna, the Armenian monks of Venice, Don Juan's sixteen cantos, Shelley's beachside cremation, and the final chapter in Greece, where he refitted the fleet with his own money and died of fever at Missolonghi aged 36. Later questions cover the memoirs his friends burned, the abbey that refused his body, and the dog whose tomb outshone his own. Questions run from easy to expert and every answer was checked against a reference page and carries its source. See also our Romantic poets, Mary Shelley and English literature quizzes.
30 of 50 questions with answers and explanations. Play the quiz
Q 01Byron belonged to which literary movement?
Romanticism
He is counted among the greatest British poets, alongside fellow Romantics Shelley, Keats and Wordsworth.
Q 02Byron was born in 1788 in which city?
London
His birthplace on Holles Street is now supposedly occupied by a John Lewis department store; he spent part of his childhood in Aberdeen.
Q 03What did the press nickname Byron's grandfather, a vice admiral who set a circumnavigation speed record?
Foul-Weather Jack
He had survived a shipwreck as a teenage midshipman before earning the name in a stormy voyage during the American War of Independence.
Q 04At what age did Byron inherit his title and Newstead Abbey from his great-uncle, the 'wicked' Lord Byron?
Ten
The abbey was in such disrepair that his mother leased it out rather than live there.
Q 05Newstead Abbey, Byron's ancestral home, is in which English county?
Nottinghamshire
He sold it in 1817 while living in Venice, and is buried nearby at Hucknall.
Q 06Byron was born with a deformity of which part of his body?
his right foot
His mother once called him 'a lame brat'; he compensated with violent bouts of exercise and became a superb swimmer.
Q 07Which school did Byron attend from 1801 to 1805, representing it in the first Eton match at Lord's?
Harrow
He was, by his own account, an undistinguished student and an unskilled cricketer.
Q 08At which Cambridge college did Byron study?
Trinity
There he met John Edleston, for whom he later wrote the elegies Thyrza, and lifelong friend John Cam Hobhouse.
Q 09Because college rules forbade dogs, what animal did Byron famously keep as a student?
a bear
The statutes said nothing about bears, and he suggested applying for a college fellowship on its behalf.
Q 10Byron's beloved Newfoundland dog, for whom he built a tomb larger than his own, was named what?
Boatswain
When the dog caught rabies Byron nursed him regardless of the risk; the 'Epitaph to a Dog' is one of his best-known poems.
Q 11What was Byron's first major satire, prompted by a savage review of Hours of Idleness?
English Bards and Scotch Reviewers
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.
Q 12Byron's House of Lords speech opposed the death penalty for which Midlands machine-breakers?
the Luddites
He also spoke for Catholic emancipation, and later wrote 'Song for the Luddites'.
Q 13On 3 May 1810 Byron swam across which strait, a feat he later commemorated in Don Juan?
the Hellespont
Q 21Whom did Byron marry at Seaham Hall, County Durham, on 2 January 1815?
Anne Isabella Milbanke
'Annabella' was highly moral and mathematically gifted, and she left him a year later taking their infant daughter.
Q 22Byron's legitimate daughter became famous for collaborating with Charles Babbage on what?
the analytical engine
Ada Lovelace is often called the first computer programmer; she was buried beside the father she never knew.
Q 23In what year did Byron leave England, never to return?
1816
The separation scandal, the rumours about Augusta and mounting debts, which forced the sale of his library, drove him out.
The swim from Europe to Asia is often called the birth of open-water swimming and is recreated every year.
Q 14Byron's Grand Tour of 1809-11 included a visit to which ruler of Ioannina, then almost unknown in Britain?
Ali Pasha
The Napoleonic Wars kept him out of most of Europe, so he toured Portugal, Spain, Malta, Albania and Greece instead.
Q 15Which poem's first two cantos in 1812 made Byron say 'I awoke one morning and found myself famous'?
Childe Harold's Pilgrimage
Byron himself thought little of it and handed it to his agent Robert Dallas almost as an afterthought.
Q 16Which of these was NOT one of Byron's four 'Oriental Tales' that followed Childe Harold?
Mazeppa
The Bride of Abydos completes the quartet; Mazeppa came later, published with his vampire 'Fragment' as a postscript.
Q 17In which 1814-15 collection with composer Isaac Nathan did Byron's 'She Walks in Beauty' appear?
Hebrew Melodies
Nathan set the lyrics to what he presented as ancient synagogue melodies.
Q 18Who described Byron as 'mad, bad, and dangerous to know'?
Lady Caroline Lamb
She said it after their first meeting in 1812, then pursued him relentlessly, sometimes disguised as a pageboy.
Q 19A jealous former lover portrayed Byron as the seedy title character of which 1816 novel?
Glenarvon
It appeared the same year the rumours of violence, adultery and incest, fanned by a jealous Caroline, drove him out of England.
Q 20Byron's half-sister, with whom he was rumoured to have had an incestuous relationship, was named what?
Augusta Leigh
Her daughter Medora, born in 1814, was suspected by some to be Byron's child; the biographer André Maurois considered the incest proven.
Q 24In the summer of 1816 Byron settled at the Villa Diodati on the shore of which body of water?
Lake Geneva
The Shelleys, Claire Clairmont and his doctor John Polidori joined him for the famously wet, ghost-story summer.
Q 25Which novel did Mary Shelley begin during the ghost-story contest at the Villa Diodati?
Frankenstein
The party had been reading the German ghost anthology Fantasmagoriana to pass the rainy days.
Q 26Byron's physician John Polidori turned a Byron fragment into which tale, progenitor of the Romantic vampire genre?
The Vampyre
Byron's own 'A Fragment' was later published as a postscript to Mazeppa.
Q 27Byron's illegitimate daughter Allegra was the child of which stepsister of Mary Shelley?
Claire Clairmont
Byron kept Allegra from her mother and had the child buried at his old school, Harrow.
Q 28In Venice, Byron studied which language with the monks of San Lazzaro, co-authoring a grammar of it?
Armenian
He also helped compile an English-Armenian dictionary and wrote its preface on Armenian oppression.
Q 29The young married countess for whom Byron lived in Ravenna from 1819 to 1821 was named what?
Teresa Guiccioli
She left her husband for him; her brother Pietro Gamba followed Byron to Greece and drove him mad with expensive mistakes.
Q 30According to Shelley, Byron's Ravenna household included a crow, a falcon and what other bird?
an eagle
A postscript added five peacocks, two guinea hens and an Egyptian crane he had found on the staircase.