George Gordon, Lord Byron was an English poet writing in the
early nineteenth century. He's one of the central figures in the
literary movement called Romanticism, which began around the
turn of the nineteenth century (critics still love to argue
about when, exactly, to date the beginning of the movement –
start dates range from the 1760s to 1800). The Romantic-era
writers and poets thought that literature needed to be less
about rationality and scientific precision, and more about human
feelings and real, everyday human experience. For some poets
(like William Wordsworth), this meant focusing on nature and
common people. You'll notice this obsession with nature and
human emotions to some extent in pretty much any Romantic-era
poem. Byron was part of the younger generation of poets to take
part in this movement, and he was the rock star of the Romantic-
period poets. He was wildly popular, although some of his poetry
(like his long narrative poem Don Juan) was considered too
scandalous for respectable people t