Teresa, Contessa Guiccioli

Common card · No. 482824

Teresa, Contessa Guiccioli (1800–1873) was an Italian noblewoman and the married lover of Lord Byron while he was living in Ravenna and writing the first five cantos of Don Juan. She wrote the biographical account Lord Byron's Life in Italy. On 19 January 1818, Teresa married an elderly diplomat, Count Alessandro Guiccioli, who was 39 years her senior. It was three days later, on 22 January, that she met Lord Byron at the home of Countess Albrizzi. Count Guiccioli was a nobleman who had ingratiated himself with Napoleon during his campaign in Italy in 1796, and during the French rule of Italy during the Napoleonic era, Count Guiccioli held a series of high offices, making him one of the most powerful men in Italy. There is no evidence that Teresa, his third wife, ever felt any affection for him. Byron's relationship with Teresa was a dangerous one as Count Guiccioli was still a powerful man who was widely believed to have been behind the murder in 1816 of another nobleman who was suing...

Read on Wikipedia · Image Henry William Pickersgill, Public domain