Lord Byron at the Villa Diodati on Lake Geneva, ca. 1820. This is where, a few years earlier, Bryon had proposed that they all write ghost stories, after which Mary Shelley wrote the tale that became Frankenstein. George Gordon Byron (1788-1824), known as Lord Byron, was an English poet, peer and politician who became a revolutionary in the Greek War of Independence, and is considered one of the leading figures of the Romantic movement. He is regarded as one of the greatest English poets and remains widely read and influential. Among his best-known works are the lengthy narrative poems Don Juan and Childe Harold's Pilgrimage.