Don Juan Paperback - 2013

Lord Byron, was born George Gordon Byron, 6th Baron Byron, on January 22, 1788, in London, England. His father's first wife died after giving birth to two daughters, only one of whom survived, then married a second time, also to claim a fortune. After his father squandered his mother's money, they separated, though he continued to "borrow" money from her, sending her into a depression. He died in 1791. Upon the death of George's great-uncle, he became the 6th Lord Byron of Rochdale and inherited Newstead Abbey, in Nottinghamshire. The ancestral home was in disrepair and they leased it out. Byron began his education in Aberdeen Grammar School, then went to Dulwich, and Harrow. He was an undistinguished student and played cricket, though not very well. It was in Harrow that he fell in love with Mary Chaworth, with whom he became obsessed. By 1804 however, he was having relationships with male students at Trinity College, Cambridge. Shortly thereafter, he began writing and by 1812, he had become famous. As he was able to afford it, Byron began to travel the world: Venice in 1816, Rome in 1817, and Greece in 1823. He began writing "Don Juan" in 1818 and continued working on it for most of the rest of his life. The Seventeenth Canto was never completed and the work itself published posthumously. Byron married Anne Isabella Milbanke in 1815. The had one daughter. By 1816, they had separated, never to reunite. He also had another child illegitimately, which he never met. On February 15, 1824, Byron became ill, and bloodletting was prescribed. This only served to weaken him further, but in April, he caught a cold and more bloodletting commenced. It is believed that unsterilised instruments may have caused an undetected infection, and he died on April 19, 1824, in Missolonghi, Greece, at the age of 36. Though his body is buried at the Church of St. Mary Magdalene in Hucknall, Nottinghamshire, his heart was removed and remained in Greece.