Paul Laurence Dunbar was born on 27 June 1872 in Dayton, Ohio, and died there on 9 February 1906, only thirty-three years later. In that brief life he became one of the most accomplished and consequential American writers of his generation: a poet of extraordinary musical discipline, a novelist and short-story writer, a public reader, a lyricist, and, in many ways, the first African American author to achieve a broad…
“It is a little dark still, but there are warnings of the day and somewhere out of the darkness a bird is singing to the Dawn.”
Neighbourhood:
African American Poets, American Poets, Harlem Renaissance, Political Poets, Social Justice Poets
Emotional landscape: Sorrow, Longing, Despair
Francis Thompson was born on 18 December 1859 in Preston, Lancashire, and died in London on 13 November 1907. His life has often been told as a dramatic Victorian parable: the devout doctor’s son who failed at the professions chosen for him, fell into homelessness and opium dependence in London, and was rescued into literary recognition by sympathetic Catholic publishers. There is truth in that narrative, but it can…
“Without health, no energy; without energies, no struggle. Seldom does the faineant become the Saint; the vigorous sinner often. He that sins strongly has the stuff of sanctity, rather than the languid sinner.”
Neighbourhood:
Devotional Poets, Mystical & Spiritual Poets, Symbolist Poets
Emotional landscape: Fear, Tenderness, Longing
