The man himself: Lord Byron (Imagno/Getty Images)

History plus literature is pretty much my favorite combination (except for maybe foie gras plus fruit…or anything plus cheese), so Katha Pollitt’s review of a new book on Lord Byron made my Monday morning.

Byron was a prolific poet, but he was also a dark, brooding, fascinating, powerfully attractive man. You don’t have to take my word for it – his many affairs speak for themselves. One of the most famous quotes about him was made by one of his lovers, Lady Caroline Lamb, who summed him up as “mad—bad—and dangerous to know.”

His most scandalous liaison was an incestuous one, with his married half-sister. During this affair, he also, puzzlingly, married Lady Caroline’s cousin. To say their union didn’t go well would be an understatement. She left him and claimed he was guilty of shocking sexual misdeeds, and society threw their Lord Byron out.

One of Lady Byron’s allegations was that her husband forcibly sodomized her after she gave birth. Sodomy was punishable by death (explaining his exile), but it also brings us to another facet of Byron’s life: his homosexuality. Because of the laws of the time, he may not have been able to pursue relationships to the extent he would have liked to, but his interest in men was certainly there.

After his exile, he had an illegitimate daughter with Claire Clairmont (the stepsister of Mary Shelley, author of “Frankenstein”). He grew to loathe Clairmont, and instead of giving her money to raise their daughter Allegra insisted that he get custody. Not that he really wanted her –  he stuck her in a convent school.

His promiscuity continued, although he finally ended up with a married Italian countess, Teresa Guiccioli, who would write an account of their life together after Byron’s death at 36.

There is much more to learn about Byron that I can fit in the space allotted here, so this post will have to serve as a teaser — and I hope an inducement to go pick up a book on Byron (or at least an in-depth article). World travel! Political intrigue! Dissipation!

Trivia question: Did Byron’s “She Walks in Beauty” appear in an Anne of Green Gables novel, or have I officially lost my mind?

Trivia fact: Lord Byron kept a bear as a pet at Cambridge. Green editor Sarah Dowdey tells me it’s because the college didn’t allow pet dogs. Tricky, that Lord Byron.

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