Contemporaries of Lady Caroline

Countess Margaret Georgiana Spencer (nee Poyntz, Lady Caroline's Grandmother) holding her daughter Georgiana (Lady Caroline's Aunt). By Sir Joshua Reynolds.

Countess Margaret Georgiana Spencer (nee Poyntz, Lady Caroline's Grandmother), by Thomas Gainsborough.

Lady Spencer, Dowager (Lady Caroline's Grandmother. By Henry Howard. Chatsworth House.

Lady Henrietta Ponsonby (Lady Caroline's mother), the Countess of Bessborough, with her sons Frederick and John. By John Hoppner (1787).

Lady Bessborough (nee Spencer, then Lady Duncannon), Lady Caroline's mother. By Sir Joshua Reynolds. Cortauld Institute of Art.

Georgiana, Duchess of Devonshire (Lady Caroline's Aunt), by Thomas Gainsborough (circa 1786), Chatsworth House.

William Cavendish, 6th Duke of Devonshire, Lady Caroline's first cousin ("Nicknamed "Hart" when he was the Marquis of Hartington). By Sir Thomas Lawrence.

Lady Melbourne (nee Milbanke), Lady Caroline's Mother-in-Law. By John Hoppner. National Portrait Gallery, London.

John Cam Hobhouse, First Baron Broughton (1786-1869), Lord Byron's close friend, who intervened in the relationship between Byron and Lady Caroline.

Isaac Nathan, composer and collaborator with Lord Byron on A Selection of Hebrew Melodies (1815-1816), who became close friends with Lady Caroline, whose poems he also set to music. Nathan later emigrated and became one of Australia's first composers.

John Murray (1837 engraving after Pickersgill), Byron's publisher, and also Lady Caroline's, on whom she depended for advice, help, and communication with Byron. Murray famously loaned Byron's memoirs to her. The memoirs were later burned in Murray's office fireplace, but many suspected Lady Caroline might have copied them). No copy has been found.

Lord Granville Leveson-Gower, Lady Bessborough's lover, with whom she had an illegitimate daughter, Henrietta. Granville then married Lady Caroline's cousin Harriet (nicknamed "Hary-O") with Lady Bessborough's permission..

Anne Isabella (nee Milbanke), Lady Byron. By Charles Hayter. National Portrait Gallery.

Lady Oxford, with whom Byron carried on an affair as his affair with Lady Caroline deteriorated in late 1812. By John Hoppner.

Sydney Owenson, Lady Morgan, novelist and friend and confidante of Lady Caroline. By Berthel.

Claire Clairmont, the stepsister of the writer Mary Shelley and the mother of Lord Byron's daughter Allegra, who died at age five.

Percy Bysshe Shelley, poet and Byron's close friend., circa 1819. After Amelia Curran.

Samuel Rogers, poet and friend of Byron. Rogers observed Byron's affair with Lady Caroline and collaborated with Byron in publishing a book with a poem by each poet: Lara (Byron) and Jacqueline (Rogers), in 1814. Rogers is reputed to have been skeletally thin.

Edward Gibbon (1737-1794), Author of The Decline and Fall of the Roman Empire, and a family friend of the Ponsonbys (Lady Caroline's family).

Lady Frances Caroline Wedderburn-Webster, with whom Byron had a flirtation, arousing Lady Caroline's jealousy. Engraving made after a painting by Arthur William Devis.

George IV, previously the Prince Regent, friend of the Melbournes and Bessboroughs. He had two children with Lady Melbourne. By Mather Brown. Royal Collection.