Ralph Waldo Emerson, born in Boston, Massachusetts, on 25 May 1803 and dead in Concord, Massachusetts, on 27 April 1882, became one of the defining voices of nineteenth-century American literature. He was at once a poet, essayist, lecturer, editor, religious dissenter, and public moralist, though no single title entirely contains him. His greatest influence lay in his ability to make philosophical inquiry sound urgen…
“It is natural to believe in great men. If the companions of our childhood should turn out to be heroes, and their condition regal, it would not surprise us.”
Neighbourhood:
American Poets, Mystical & Spiritual Poets, Nature Poets, Transcendentalists
Emotional landscape: Wonder, Spirituality, Peace
William Miller Herschell, born 17 November 1873 in Spencer, Indiana, and dead 2 December 1939 in Indianapolis, became one of the best-loved poetic voices of his state. He was not a poet who sought cosmopolitan authority, avant-garde difficulty, or the permanent attention of the national literary establishment. His poems grew instead from railway shops, newspaper offices, creek banks, limestone country, family memory,…
Neighbourhood:
American Poets, Edwardian Poets, Folk & Ballad Poets, Light Verse Poets
Emotional landscape: Tenderness, Joy, Sorrow
