James Henry Leigh Hunt, known throughout his literary life as Leigh Hunt, was born on 19 October 1784 at Southgate, then a village north of London, and died at Putney on 28 August 1859. He was a poet, essayist, journalist, editor, critic, translator, dramatist, and indefatigable friend to writers whose fame would eventually eclipse his own. To describe him merely as a minor Romantic poet is to miss the range of his a…
“Life, upon the whole, is much more pleasurable than painful, otherwise we should not feel pain so impatiently when it comes.”
Neighbourhood:
Love Poets, Nature Poets, Political Poets, Romantic Poets
Emotional landscape: Tenderness, Joy, Wonder
On a spring morning in the Catskill Mountains, an elderly man with a flowing white beard sits beneath a gnarled apple tree, notebook in hand, watching a hermit thrush build its nest. This is John Burroughs in his element—not in a library or lecture hall, but in the cathedral of nature itself. For more than six decades, Burroughs served as America's interpreter of the natural world, transforming simple observations of…
“I still find each day too short for all the thoughts I want to think, all the walks I want to take, all the books I want to read, and all the friends I want to see.”
Neighbourhood:
American Poets, Nature Poets, Transcendentalists, Victorian Poets
Emotional landscape: Peace, Spirituality, Joy