Byron's Don Juan
...who later became known as Lord Byron. This is the man who wrote
his own poetical version of Don Juan. Don Juan is a man who is known for being
able to arouse the desires of women and to love every one he meets. This Don
Juan can be viewed, however, as a loosely disguised biography of Byron.
Lord Byron's father, Captain John, has ancestors that go back as far as
the Buruns in the time of William the Conqueror. Back in this time it was very
common for people to marry their own cousins. Captain John was married three
times and was considered to be very smooth with the ladies.
Byron was born on January 22, 1788 in London, and the following year he
and his mother moved to Aberdeen, Scotland. His father soon followed, but it
wouldn't be long before he would disappear to France and end up dying in 1791.
It was just as well because his parents never got along very well.
In Lord Byron's early years he experienced poverty, the ill-temper of
his mother, and the absence of his father. By 1798 he had inherited the title
of 6th Baron Byron and the estate of Newstead Abbey. Once hearing this news, he
and his mother quickly removed to England.
All of Byron's passions developed early. In 1803 he had his first
serious and abortive romance with Mary Chaworth. At the age of15 he fell
platonically but violently in love with a young distant cousin, Mary Duff
(Parker 10). He soon had another affair with a woman named Mary Gray. Soon
hereafter he was involved with many liaisons with such women as Lady Caroline
Lamb and then Lady Oxford.
Then just as Byron was beginning to live his life the way he had always
wanted to, his mother dies in 1811. The following year he became immensely
fashionable and notorious. By 1813 he had began another affair with his half-
sister Augusta. Continuing his search for the woman of his dreams, he marrys
Anabella Milbanke in 1815 and...
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