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- April 19, 1825
George Gordon Byron, 6th Baron Byron FRS (22 January 1788 – 19 April 1824) was a British poet and peer.
George Gordon Byron was born on 22 January 1788, on Holles Street in London, England – his birthplace is now supposedly occupied by a branch of the department store John Lewis.
He is one of the major figures of the Romantic movement, and is regarded as being among the greatest of English poets.
Among his best-known works are the lengthy narratives Don Juan and Childe Harold’s Pilgrimage; much of his shorter lyrics in Hebrew Melodies also became popular.
Byron was living in Genoa in 1823, when, growing bored with his life there, he accepted overtures for his support from representatives of the Greek independence movement from the Ottoman Empire.
Death
Mavrokordatos and Byron planned to attack the Turkish-held fortress of Lepanto, at the mouth of the Gulf of Corinth. Byron employed a fire master to prepare artillery, and he took part of the rebel army under his own command despite his lack of military experience. Before the expedition could sail, on 15 February 1824, he fell ill, and bloodletting weakened him further.
He made a partial recovery, but in early April he caught a cold; the therapeutic bleeding insisted on by his doctors exacerbated it. He contracted a fever and died in Missolonghi on 19 April.