To answer your question, YES! George Gordon Byron aka Lord
Byron (1788-1824) had MANY lovers--both male and female--during one of the most
scandalous lives of any of England's great writers. One lover, the Lady Caroline Lamb,
knowingly described him as "mad, bad and dangerous to know." He apparently took many
young male lovers while in his teens at school in Harrow, but he also had many female
loves as an adult. He apparently had an incestuous affair with his half-sister and later
married his cousin, which lasted only about a year.
His
love of travel kept him moving constantly, which in part assured that he would never
"settle down." He traveled with a handsome young personal physician while, at the same
time, carried on an affair with the poet Mary Shelley's step-sister. Lord Byron had one
child with his wife and as many as three other illegitimate children. One of the reasons
he left England in 1816 (never to return) was his fear of arrest for incest and sodomy.
(Homosexual activities were sometimes a hanging offense in early 19th century
England.)
Byron became a revered hero in Greece for his
activities in their civil war against the Ottoman Empire, and he died there at the age
of 36.
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