Byron/Luddites

In 1812 Lord Byron spoke for the first time in the House of Lords, choosing for his topic the recent Luddite rioting. Byron was twenty-four, recently returned from the obligatory Grand Tour of Europe, and ready for a career; had his speech been the success he hoped for, there is every chance that the career might have been in politics, rather than in poetry and persecution. Byron had chosen the sensational Luddite riots as his topic mainly because it was the issue most likely to cause a stir, but his ancestral home was in Nottinghamshire, where the rioting had broken out the year before. Byron thought the speech a triumph too, based on the congratulations he received; privately his fellows were unimpressed. 
He was mentally shelved by the leader of the Whig opposition for his "fastidious and artificial taste and his over-irritable temper."

No matter. A week and a half later Childe Harold was published, turning Byron overnight into a poetic hero, and bringing such a line-up of coaches delivering social cards that there were traffic jams outside his apartment. Soon   the Nottingham estate would be sold in order to pay for his extravagances. His poetry, condemnation and self-exile dominated the next decade until his death in Greece in 1824. (from King)