Teresa Guiccioli

Teresa Guiccioli (1800–1873) was an Italian noblewoman, born Teresa Gamba in Ravenna and married at eighteen to the elderly Count Alessandro Guiccioli. In 1819 she met Lord Byron in Venice and became his companion for the rest of his years in Italy, in Ravenna, Pisa and Genoa, until he left for Greece in 1823; her father and brother were drawn through Byron into the Carbonari. She later married the Marquis de Boissy in France. In old age she wrote Lord Byron jugé par les témoins de sa vie, published in 1868 and translated as My Recollections of Lord Byron, a defense of the poet's character against his critics.