George Gordon Byron

George Gordon Byron, later Noel, 6th Baron Byron was a British poet and a leading figure in Romanticism. Amongst Byron's best-known works are the brief poems "She walks in beauty," and "So, we'll go no more a-roving," and the narrative poems Childe Harold's Pilgrimage and Don Juan. He is regarded as one of the greatest European poets and remains widely read and influential, both in the English-speaking world and beyond. Byron's fame rests not only on his writings but also on his life, which featured extravagant living, numerous love affairs, debts, separation, and marital exploits. He was famously described by Lady Caroline Lamb as "mad, bad, and dangerous to know." Byron served as a regional leader of Italy's revolutionary organization the Carbonari in its struggle against Austria. He later travelled to fight against the Ottoman Empire in the Greek War of Independence, for which Greeks revere him as a national hero. He died from a fever in Messolonghi in Greece.