Icon: enlarge
Adventurer: At the age of 21 Lord Byron set out from England to experience the wide world - first he went to Lisbon by ship (painting by George Sanders, 1807/09)
Photo: De Agostini Picture Library / akg images
Albemarle Street is in the London borough of Mayfair - a posh area for centuries.
Buckingham Palace and Green Park are a few minutes' walk away.
And for 191 years the publishing house John Murray resided at number 50 in a neo-classical town house.
Murray had his first success in 1806 with a manual for the home kitchen.
A few years later, the publishing house helped an eccentric young aristocrat to prominence and literary world fame: the then 24-year-old George Gordon Byron, a dandy, bohemian and freedom-loving globetrotter, a sharp-tongued and sensitive poet and manic-depressive lover of women and men.
Byron's impact reached far beyond the borders of Great Britain and its epoch.
In Greece streets were later named after him.
Johann Wolfgang von Goethe immortalized Byron in his late human drama "Faust II" as Euphorion, a brilliant but failing child prodigy.
Byron inspired painters of the 19th century like Eugène Delacroix and grandees of music like Giuseppe Verdi or Robert Schumann.
As early as 1817 his poem "The Siege of Corinth" was translated into German;
by 1839 four editions of the work appeared in German, the last in 13 volumes.
Read more with Spiegel Plus
More perspectives, more understanding.
Your advantages with SPIEGEL +
Icon: Check
SPIEGEL as a magazine
as an app, e-paper and on the e-reader
Icon: Check
All articles on SPIEGEL.de
Exclusive texts for SPIEGEL + readers
Icon: Check
Try one month for free
Cancel anytime online
A price
only € 19.99 per month
One month for € 0.00
Try now for 0.00 € Buy nowArrow to the right
Already have a digital subscription? Register here
Restore iTunes subscription
SPIEGEL + is processed via your iTunes account and paid for with a purchase confirmation.
24 hours before it expires, the subscription is automatically renewed by one month at the current price of € 19.99.
You can cancel the subscription at any time in the settings of your iTunes account.
In order to use SPIEGEL + outside of this app, you must link the subscription to a SPIEGEL ID account immediately after purchase.
With the purchase you accept our general terms and conditions and privacy policy.