Adam Mickiewicz (1798 - 1855). Poland's most beloved and famous poet was born in Zaosie to an impoverished noble family in the for-mer Grand Duchy of Lithuania. Between 1815 and 1819 he stud-ied at the University of Vilno and from 1819 to 1823 he was a teacher in Kaunas. His early interest in the French enlighten-ment philosopher Voltaire soon changed to admiration for the Romantic writers Schiller and Byron. Mickiewicz eventually set-tled in Paris and served as the Professor of Literature at the University of Lausanne. He died at Constantinople in 1885 and in 1890 his remains were returned to Poland and interred with the Polish kings at the shrine in Crakow. Lord Byron (1788 - 1824). Lord Byron was as famous for his personality cult as much as for his poetry. He created the notion of the Byronic hero - a defiant, melancholy young man, brooding over some dark event in his past. Byron's influence on poetry, music, novel, opera and painting has been immense although he was widely condemned on moral grounds by his contemporaries. In 1816, with debts mounting, he left England for good. He settled in Geneva where he shared a villa by the lake with Percy Bysshe Shelley, Mary Shelley and Claire Clairmont who became his mistress.