Dangerous to Know

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Welcome to Celebrate Poe, Episode 243 ˜- Dangerous to Know.  This My name is George Bartley, and this is the first of three episodes about Lord George Byron.  

A few episodes ago, I talked about the love of Lord Byron and his dog - and hoped I got across the point that Lord Byron was a fascinating person.  Then it struck me - it might be a good idea to talk a bit more about Lord Byron because he had such a strong influence on the young Poe.  John Allan certainly did not like Byron and thought he was immoral - and Byron did seem to cultivate a bad boy image, but you can’t really understand Poe without having at least a basic knowledge of Byron. - perhaps the most influential of the English Romantics.

The young Poe often almost slavishly imitated Lord Byron in many of his early writings. For example, Mr. Poe’s first major poem was greatly influenced by Lord Byron.  Poe’s story, Tamerlane, is about a leader who achieves power and forgets about his true love - for some reason - probably because of Poe’s admiration of Lord Byron - Poe calls Tamerlane’s love - Ada - the same name as Lord Byron’s daughter, Ada Lovelace.  Poe seemed to treat Lord Byron almost like an idol at first - then later in his career, Poe found his own voice as a writer.