As mentioned in Arcadia, Byron was educated at Harrow School from 1801 to 1805; it was there that he first began to write verse, as well as dabble in romantic affairs with women as well as male classmates. He poured his passion for his distant cousin, Mary Chaworth, into some of his early poems, including "Hills of Annesley" (1805), "The Adieu" (1807), and "Stanzas to a Lady on Leaving England" (1809). In 1805, he matriculated to Trinity College, Cambridge, which he attended off and on until 1808, receiving an M.A. degree. Like many college students, Byron was more interested in social pursuits than his studies; he enjoyed fencing, boxing, the theater, and gambling, and began racking up debts. 

Byron's departure from England in the summer of 1809, as described in Arcadia, is historically accurate. He set sail on July 2 on the Lisbon packet, accompanied by his close friend John Cam Hobhouse. His reasons for leaving were far more innocuous than Bernard Nightingale would like to believe; it was standard practice at that time for young men to take a Grand Tour of continental Europe. It's also likely that Byron was trying to escape his creditors, for the debts he racked up while at Trinity. Due to the "Napoleanic fits" that had overcome western Europe in the early 19th century, Byron spent his grand tour in the Mediterranean - Spain, Italy, Greece, Albania, Turkey. Wanting to capture his experiences and adventures, Byron began documenting the trip in what would become Childe Harold's Pilgrimage, the narrative poem whose publication would turn him into an overnight sensation upon his return to England.

Within the year after his return to England in 1811, Byron published Childe Harold's Pilgrimage, as well as took his seat in the House of Lords. He also embarked on a variety of affairs with female members of English society, including Lady Caroline Lamb and Jane Elizabeth Scott, Lady Oxford. Most scandalous were the rumors of an affair with his own half-sister, Augusta Maria Leigh, five years his senior. Circumstantial evidence in Byron's letters from this period indicates that he did carry on an incestuous affair with Augusta, and it is suspected that he fathered her daughter, Elizabeth Medora Leigh, born in 1814. 

By late 1814, Byron was looking to "settle down," and did so on January 2, 1815 when he married Anne Isabelle "Annabella" Milbanke, the niece of his friend Elizabeth Milbanke Lamb, Lady Melbourne. Marriage, however, did nothing to curb Byron's lust, spending or drinking, and before 1815 was over, Annabella, now Lady Byron, began to fear that Byron was going mad. In December 1815, the couple's only child, Augusta Ada, was born. Less than a month later, in January 1816, Annabella took their infant daughter and left London for her parents' home in Leicestershire. Byron never saw his wife or daughter again. Believing Byron did indeed have an incestuous relationship with his half-sister, as well as homosexual affairs, Annabella sought a divorce, which was granted in March 1816. 

In the wake of the titillating rumors, failed marriage and ever-present debts, Byron left England in 1816. He would never return. He spent the summer of 1816 at Lake Geneva in Switzerland with his personal physician, John William Polidori, the poet Percy Bysshe Shelley and his wife, Mary Shelley (who began composing drafts of Frankenstein that summer). The group was joined by Mary Shelley's half-sister, Claire Clairmont, with whom Byron had an affair before leaving London, and was, unbeknownst to Byron, carrying his child. Clairmont gave birth to Byron's third daughter, Allegra, in January 1817. 

After Switzerland, Byron headed to Italy, where he would spend the next six years doing what he did best - writing and having affairs, including one with a married countess, Teresa Guiccioli, that inspired his "epic satire" Don Juan. 

In the summer of 1823, Byron set off on his next adventure - supporting Greek rebels who were fighting for Greece's independence from the Ottoman Empire. He sailed from Genoa, Italy to Kefalonia, Greece, where he spent the next several months committing time, energy and money to the Greek war effort, notably paying out of his own pocket to help re-fit the Greek fleet. Despite a lack of military experience, Byron had command of rebel soldiers, and was preparing to take part in an expedition to the Turkish-held fortress of Lepanto when he fell ill  in February 1924. He only made a partial recovery, and became sick again in April 1824. Repeated bloodletting, possibly with unsterilized tools, only aggravated his illness, and he died on April 19, 1824 at the age of 36.

Upon his death, Byron was proclaimed a national hero in Greece, with memorial services held for him throughout the country. His body was returned to England, and he was buried in the family vault at Newstead Abbey in July 1824.