Allegra Byron 1819 poem "Julian and Maddalo: A Conversation": In the next stanza he imagines her grown to a woman: "A wonder of this earth ... Like one of Shakespeare's women." Allegra Byron Clara Allegra Byron (12 January 1817 – 20 April 1822) was the illegitimate daughter of the poet George Gordon, Lord Byron and Claire Clairmont. Born in Bath, England, she was initially named Alba, meaning "dawn", or "white", by her mother. At first she lived with her mother, her mother's stepsister, Mary Shelley, and Mary's husband Percy Bysshe Shelley. When she was fifteen months old, she was turned over to
Lord Byron or heterosexual: he seems rather to have been both, and either." Crompton states: "What was not understood in Byron's own century (except by a tiny circle of his associates) was that Byron was bisexual". Another biographer, Fiona MacCarthy, has posited that Byron's true sexual yearnings were for adolescent males. Byron notably used a code by which he communicated his homosexual Greek adventures to John Hobhouse in England: Bernhard Jackson recalls that "Byron's early code for sex with a boy" was "Plen(um). and optabil(em). -Coit(um)" Bullough summarizes: In 1812, Byron embarked on a well-publicised affair with the married Lady Caroline Lamb