Lord Byron

May 17, 1824
On this day, the diaries of the English Romantic poet, satirist, and politician, Lord Byron, are burned by six of his friends.

The act intended to protect his privacy has also been described as “the greatest crime in literary history.”

The loss likely impacted botanical literature as Lord Byron also wrote about gardens and nature.
Lord Byron famously wrote:

There is a pleasure in the pathless woods,
There is a rapture on the lonely shore,
There is society, where none intrudes,
By the deep sea, and music in its roar:
I love not man the less, but Nature more.