GLAMOROUS BAD BOYS

A CONCERNED father once wrote to express his anxiety that his daughter was given to study Byron at University; the letter is in the University Archives! Lord Byron was considered far less than exemplary: "mad, bad and dangerous to know", as a former mistress (Lady Melbourne, I think) once called him!

Still, the father's letter dates early 20th century, if I remember correctly, while the Bronte sisters read Byron without censorship from their father decades earlier.

Lord Byron was a true celebrity, probably one of the first celebrities in the modern sense of the world: good-looking, famous, a bad boy living the glamorous life. People loved to learn about his adventures.

Byron's exploits, and his own dark heroes, became so ingrained in popular culture, that they gave their name to a type of a literary character, the Byronic hero. This is a man who has many qualities and is attractive, but seems to be haunted by a dark past, or a dark secret. The Victorians loved to create Byronic heroes of their own, and Victorian Byronic heroes are memorable -- Mr Rochester from Jane Eyre, Heathcliff from Wuthering Heights, Sydney Carton from A Tale of Two Cities, and so on and so forth.

Darkness was so fashionable, that young men in the 19th century thought it cool to hint about dark secrets and a dark past. This was party conversation Victorian style for you!

Glamorous bad boys and Byronic heroes are still in our hearts and minds today; think Edward Cullen and Christian Grey <3

No Byronic type for girls; I am afraid that we only got the femme fatale ourselves! Maybe it's time to change this! ;-)