From Switzerland Byron moved to Venice. In 1817 Claire Clairmont gave birth to his daughter, Allegra. After a bout of gonorrhea early in 1818, Byron began the first cantos of Don Juan. The poem appeared anonymously in 1819, though its author was known, and it caused a scandal. Most reviewers were extremely hostile, and it was described as a "filthy impious poem" and a "high crime against society." The poem, Byron's masterpiece, satirises English literature, society, and religion, and was open about sex to a degree that shocked his female readership, largely because he showed women taking the sexual initiative as the hero is pursued by a succession of voracious women. Don Juan covers all aspects of human experience, from politics and war to hangovers, from heroism to farce, in a style that seems extraordinarily modern, using plain English which is both clear and colloquial. It is full of jokes and outrageous rhymes like 'Plato' and 'potato', and casual subversion:

Christians have burnt each other, quite persuaded
That all the Apostles would have done as they did.
What men call gallantry, and gods adultery,
Is much more common where the climate's sultry.

Don Juan is very long, yet remained unfinished, Byron having "not quite fixed whether to make him end in Hell, or in an unhappy marriage, not knowing which would be the severest ".

Sales of Don Juan dropped off until cheap editions found a new readership, the radical working class, who saw Byron as the poet of freedom, both political and sexual. It is likely that through this huge readership that he had a considerable indirect influence on the radical politics of the nineteenth century.Byron moved from Venice to Ravenna to live with his new mistress, the Countess Teresa Guiccioli, and her husband. He became increasingly interested in politics. In 1812 he had made two speeches in the House of Lords on contentious topics, one sympathetic to the machine-breakers protesting against the effects of the Industrial Revolution, and one on Catholic emancipation, but otherwise remained silent on political issues. He may have been a radical, even - in some ways - a revolutionary, but he was no democrat. "It is still more difficult to say which form of Government is the worst - all are so bad. As for democracy, it is the worst of the whole; for what is (in fact) democracy? An Aristocracy of Blackguards . . ." He was aristocrat by conviction as well as birth, his friend Shelley regretting that he had "the canker of aristocracy." If anything, he was temperamentally an anarchist: "I have simplified my politics into an utter detestation of all existing governments; ...the first moment of an universal republic would convert me into an advocate for single and uncontradicted despotism."

The London Greek Committee had elected him their deputy, and in 1823 he sailed to Greece with munitions, hoping to help bring about Greek independence, but died of a fever at Missolonghi on 19 April 1824. He became, and remains, a national hero of Greece.

His character, wit, and charm were impressed upon virtually everyone who met him. His generosity, even when deeply in debt - which he nearly always was - was outstanding. To read the letters and journals which chronicle every aspect of his life in his own words, and which have all the liveliness of his best poetry, is to feel one has met him.

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