Lord Byron, or George Gordon Byron, died of what is speculated to be a malaria relapse in Messolonghi, Greece during the Greek War of Independence against the Ottoman Empire. From being known as one of the members of the “Satanic School” of poets to his commitment to anarchy through revolution, as well as his idea of the anti-hero paving the way for the Byronic Hero, it is clear that he is one of the leading figures of the Romantic Movement. Lord Byron was “notorious” and “scandalous celebrity” (Tuite), and much of his fame came from the Byronic persona he portrayed and carried in public. Because of Lord Byron’s persona as a celebrity as well as his position in politics and within the literary world, his death left a poignant impression on those who surrounded him. 

Several poets who lived at the same time and even alongside Byron responded to his death through poetry. David Hopkins discusses several of these poems written in response to Lord Byron’s death in The Routledge Anthology of Poets on Poets. James Hogg’s poem touches on Byron’s passion for “Greek Independence from the Turks” (Hopkins 235), while Percy Shelley and John Keats both were lamenting at his passing. Samuel Rogers even glorifies the power of his death by writing “Dying in Greece, and in a cause so glorious! They in thy train—ah, little did they think, As round we went, that they so soon should sit Mourning beside thee, while a nation mourned. . .” (234). Even Rogers at the time comments on how his death caused a nation to mourn. 

However, Byron’s influence was not limited to the writers in the Romantic Era. Aside from the Byronic Hero continuing to be a popular trope in current pop culture, Maria Schoina draws connections between Byron’s inspirational legacy and several prominent writers of the Victorian Era. She specifically mentions Childe Harold’s Pilgrimage Canto 3, where Byron discusses “female posterity,” (Schoina 265) being a means by which “[u]pcoming female writers responded with hero-worship” (Schoina). She names Elizabeth Gaskell, Elizabeth Barrett Browning, Harriet Beecher Stowe, and even the Brontë sisters as being influenced by Byron’s work in their younger days of writing. Anne Brontë’s The Tenant of Wildfell Hall was directly inspired by “the mystery of the Byron marriage” between Lady Byron and Lord Byron himself. 

Schoina also discusses how because of Byron’s early death, his “star had declined by the mid-century, and his libertinism made him a difficult role model for aspiring women writers” at the time (268), but it did fuel the fire for a future conversation about feminism in relation to Byron after his death. Topics of “[b]yronism” are touched on a few decades later in the 1850s and 60s, taking Byron’s work or even ideology and asserting new ideas along with them. For example, Gaskell’s Wives and Daughters “depicts Byron’s verse misjudged by philistines and prudes,” (269) while Stowe writes a character in her anti-slavery novel who has more radical and rather negative ideas while interpreting Byron’s Don Juan. But whether the reviews for Byron are negative or positive, it is clear he is still being talked about and is relevant to the social and political discussions writers are taking part in 20 years after his death. 

Sources: 

David Hopkins. The Routledge Anthology of Poets on Poets : Poetic Responses to English Poetry From Chaucer to Yeats. Routledge, 1994. EBSCOhost, https://search-ebscohost-com.ezproxy.uvu.edu/login.aspx?direct=true&db=e....

Schoina, Maria, and Nic Panagopoulos. The Place of Lord Byron in World History : Studies in His Life, Writings, and Influence: Selected Papers From the 35th International Byron Conference. Edwin Mellen Press, 2012. EBSCOhost, https://search-ebscohost-com.ezproxy.uvu.edu/login.aspx?direct=true&db=e....

Tuite, Clara. Lord Byron and Scandalous Celebrity. Cambridge University Press, 2015. EBSCOhost, https://search-ebscohost-com.ezproxy.uvu.edu/login.aspx?direct=true&db=e....