Arthur Hugh Clough, born in Liverpool on 1 January 1819 and dead in Florence on 13 November 1861, occupies an unusual and compelling place in nineteenth-century English poetry. He was a Victorian poet, but he often sounds impatient with the assurances conventionally associated with Victorian verse: confidence in progress, confidence in religious doctrine, confidence in moral formulas, and confidence that elevated poe…
“Ignorance is a poor kind of innocence. The world is wiser than the wise, and as innocent as the innocent; and it has long been found out what is the best way of taking things.”
Neighbourhood:
Death & Mortality, Love Poets, Pre-Raphaelite Poets, Social Justice Poets, Victorian Poets
Emotional landscape: Spirituality, Wonder, Longing
Alfred Tennyson, later Alfred, Lord Tennyson, was born on 6 August 1809 at Somersby rectory in Lincolnshire, England, and died on 6 October 1892 at Lurgashall in Sussex. During his long life he became the defining poetic voice of the Victorian age: at once a public laureate who wrote for national occasions and a private, searching poet whose work returned obsessively to bereavement, desire, religious uncertainty, mem…
“A good woman is a wondrous creature, cleaving to the right and the good in all change; lovely in her youthful comeliness, lovely all her life long in comeliness of heart.”
Neighbourhood:
Devotional Poets, Dramatic Poets, Nature Poets, Victorian Poets
Emotional landscape: Wonder, Longing, Sorrow
