France declares war on Britain.

1794

Danton executed; Robespierre executed. The Terror ends.

1794

5 Byron attends Aberdeen Grammar School; becomes heir to the title, Baron Byron.

1795

Napoleon’s Italian campaign.

1796

Lewis’s The Monk ublished.

1797

Byron’s first sexual experience, with his nurse, May Gray.

1798

At the death of his great-uncle, the fifth Baron Byron, Byron becomes sixth Baron Byron and inherits the heavily mortgaged ancestral estate, Newstead Abbey, to which he moves with his mother and nurse May Gray. Battle of the Nile; Irish Rebellion; Lyrical Ballads (Wordsworth and Coleridge) and Joanna Baillie’s Plays on the Passions (Vol. 1) published.

1799

Byron endures painful but futile treatments of his club-foot. Napoleon returns to France and becomes First Consul.

1800

Second edition of Lyrical Ballads (with Preface) and Thomas Moore’s Odes of Anacreon published.

1801

Byron at Harrow until 1805. Pitt resigns on the refusal of George III to assent to Catholic emancipation. Publication of Southey’s Thalaba, Moore’s Poems by Thomas Little and Bowles’s Sorrows of Switzerland.

1802

Peace of Amiens between England and France; France reoccupies Switzerland. Volume 2 of Baillie’s Plays and Scott’s Minstrelsy of the Scottish Border published. Edinburgh Review founded.

1803

Byron in love with Mary Chaworth, his cousin and neighbour at Newstead; she ridicules his lameness. Relationship with Lord Grey. England declares war on France.

1804

Pitt becomes Prime Minister; Napoleon crowned Emperor; end of the Holy Roman Empire. Baillie’s Miscellaneous Plays published.

1805

Mary Chaworth marries. Byron enters Trinity College, Cambridge, befriends John Cam Hobhouse, and falls in love with a chorister, John Edleston (‘Thyrza’). Nelson’s victory at Trafalgar.

1806

Fugitive Pieces printed privately and immediately suppressed when Revd John Becher objects to some of the poems. High life in London. Scott’s Ballads and Lyrical Pieces and Bowles’s editions of Pope published.

1807

Poems on Various Occasions (a cleaned-up Fugitive Pieces with twelve new pieces) printed privately in January, and in a public printing in June, with twelve further new pieces, as Hours of IdlenessByron leaves Cambridge without a degree, heavily in debt by end of the year. Wordsworth’s Poems in Two Volumes, Moore’s Irish Melodies and Southey’s Letters from England by Don Espriella published. French invasion of Spain and Portugal. Peninsular

Campain begins. Abolition of slave-trade in Enland.

1808

Poems Original and Translated, second edition, with five new pieces, published. Edinburgh Review ridicules Hours of Idleness. Byron awarded MA degree by Cambridge in July. Lives in London and eventually takes up residence at Newstead Abbey. Hunt becomes editor of the Examiner; Scott’s Marmion published.

1809

Spanish uprising (May); Convention of Cintra (August). Nine poems by Byron published in Imitations and Translations from the Ancient and Modern Classics, by John Cam Hobhouse. English Bards and Scotch Reviewers published in March. Byron takes his seat in House of Lords. Grand Tour with Hobhouse: sails to Lisbon, travels in Spain, Portugal, Gibraltar, Malta, Greece, Albania (visits the Ali Pasha), Missolonghi and Athens. Writes Canto I of Childe Harold’s Pilgrimage.

William Gifford becomes editor of the Quarterly Review (published by John Murray). Campbell’s Gertrude of Wyoming, Hobhouse’s Travels through Albania and Wordsworth’s Convention of Cintra published. Coronation of Joseph Bonaparte in Madrid; Wellesley in command in Portugal Napoleon beaten by the Austrians

1810

Byron travels through Greece and Turkey, returns to Athens; swims the Hellespont; writes Canto II of Childe Harold’s Pilgrimage.