George Gordon (Noel) Byron | Biography

George Gordon, Lord Byron--by his own reckoning renowned as a poet from that day in March 1812 when he awoke to find himself famous as the author of Childe Harold's Pilgrimage, Cantos I and II--likewise merits recognition as a master of prose expression. On occasion he claimed to prefer prose to poetry. In 1813 he wished he could have made a name for himself not as a writer of poetry but as a writer of prose, but the public insisted that he continue writing poems. Even in 1824, in a 23 February letter to his half sister, Augusta Leigh, he noted that his daughter Ada's "preference of prose (strange as it may now seem) was and indeed is mine--(for I hate reading verse--and always did)." Although much of Byron's poetry is autobiographical, of necessity he obscured the more personal details. "In rhyme," he wrote on 17 November 1813, "I can...
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