Hobhouse returns to England.

1811

Byron sails to England, arriving by summer. Deaths of his mother and Edleston. Writes ‘Thyrza’ poems. Meets Thomas Moore. Prince of Wales becomes Regent after George III is deemed incompetent. Luddite Riots against the weaving frames.

1812

Association with Lord Holland and brief career in the House of Lords; Byron’s maiden speech opposes the Frame-Breaking Bill which prescribed the death penalty.

Childe Harold’s Pilgrimage I and II, published by John Murray in March; Byron woke to find himself famous. The Edinburgh Review (Jeffrey) buries the hatchet and gives a favourable review. Friendships with Samuel Rogers and Thomas Moore; affairs with Caroline Lamb and Lady Oxford; through Lady Melbourne meets Annabella

Milbanke, proposes marriage to her in October and is refused

Anna Barbauld’s anti-imperialist Eighteen Hundred and Eleven and Volume 3 of Baillie’s Plays published.

Napoleon invades Russia in June and retreats from Moscow in December, with catastrophic losses.

1813

Byron in the whirl of London Regency society; frequent visits to Princess Charlotte (the Regent’s daughter); affair with Augusta; last speech in Lords; visits Leigh Hunt in jail. Flirtatious friendship with Lady Frances Webster; meets Mme de Staël. Publishes The Waltz anonymously in a private printing, The Giaour in June (first edition) and The Bride of Abydos in November. The Edinburgh Review (Jeffrey) gives The Giaour a favourable review.

Southey publishes Life of Nelson and becomes poet laureate; Leigh Hunt imprisoned for libel. Shelley’s Queen Mab and Austen’s Pride and Prejudice published.

Austria joins the Alliance against France.

1814

Publication of The Corsair with ‘Lines to a Lady Weeping’ (the Princess’s distress at her father’s betrayal of his Whig allies) in February (10,000 copies sell immediately), ‘Ode to Napoleon Buonaparte’ in April, Lara (with Rogers’s Jacqueline) in August. Byron attacked in Tory press for ‘Lines to a Lady Weeping’. The Edinburgh Review (Jeffrey) gives The Corsair and The Bride of Abydos a favourable review, commenting on the character type of the hero.

Medora Leigh (now thought to be Byron’s daughter by Augusta), born in April. Annabella Milbanke accepts his second proposal in September.

The Allies invade France; Napoleon abdicates and is exiled; the Bourbons are restored. Shelley elopes to the Continent with Mary Godwin.

Publication of Wordsworth’s Excursion, Scott’s Waverley, Austen’s Mansfield Park and Cary’s translation of The Divine Comedy.

1815

Murray publishes a four-volume edition of Byron’s poems; Hebrew Melodies published. Byron marries Annabella Milbanke in January; birth of daughter Ada in December. Life in London; through Murray meets Walter Scott;

becomes member of the Drury Lane Theatre Management Committee. Financial difficulties and arrival of bailiffs; frequent visits from Augusta and beginning of alienation from Annabella.

Napoleon escapes from Elba, is defeated at Waterloo and exiled to St Helena; restoration of Louis XVIII.

Wordsworth’s collected Poems and Charles Lloyd’s translation of The Tragedies of Alfieri published.

1816

Publication of The Siege of Corinth and Parisina (February), Poems and fifth edition of English Bards. The Prisoner of Chillon and Other Poems and Childe Harold’s Pilgrimage III published in November; at a booksellers’ dinner, Murray sells 7,000 copies of each volume. Byron works on Manfred, ‘Prometheus’ and ‘Darkness’.

In January, Lady Byron leaves with Ada to live with her parents; Byron writes ‘Fare thee well!’ in March, and, amidst dark rumours about his character, a deed of separation is drawn up in March and signed in April; he meets and begins an affair with Claire Clairmont, Mary Shelley’s stepsister. Cut by London society over the separation scandal, with financial difficulties worsening, Byron auctions off his library and leaves England in April, for ever. Travels in Belgium, Waterloo, the Rhine and Switzerland. Rents Villa Diodati, on Lake Geneva, meets the Shelleys, near neighbours, and begins Childe Harold’s Pilgrimage III. Ghost stories at Villa Diodati (the origin of Frankenstein), friendship with the Shelleys; the affair with Claire Clairmont cools during her pregnancy with his child. Tours the Alps and Lake Geneva with Percy Bysshe Shelley, visits Chateau de Chillon. After the Shelleys and Claire leave for England, he sets off for Italy with Hobhouse and moves to Venice later in the year; affair with Marianna Segati, his landlord’s wife; studies Armenian at a monastery.

Hemans’s The Restoration of the Works of Art to Italy, Leigh Hunt’s Story of Rimini (with a Dedication to Byron), Shelley’s Alastor, Wordsworth’s Thanksgiving Ode, Austen’s Emma, Caroline Lamb’s Glenarvon (with a hero meant to be read as Byron, and publishing one of his letters

to her) and Coleridge’s Christabel and Kubla Khan ublished.

Elgin Marbles displayed; prosecution of William Hone for blasphemous libel (tried in 1817); Spa Field Riots (December).

1817

Manfred published in June; writing Childe Harold’s Pilgrimage IV. Allegra, his and Claire Clairmont’s daughter, born in England (January). Venice Carnival and dissipations. Travels to Rome with Hobhouse, returns to settle in Venice.