In the pantheon of Victorian literature, few figures present such a delightful paradox as William Schwenck Gilbert (1836-1911). Here was a man who could craft lyrics of sublime wit and devastating social commentary, yet whose temperament was notoriously prickly and contentious. A writer who created some of the most beloved comic operas in the English language while maintaining a reputation as one of London's most dif…
“I am not a dramatic author; I am a maker of plays. I construct them as a carpenter constructs a table.”
Neighbourhood:
Edwardian Poets, Light Verse Poets, Victorian Poets
Emotional landscape: Irony, Despair, Fear
Thomas Love Peacock was born on 18 October 1785 at Weymouth, Dorset, a coastal town whose mixture of fashionable society, maritime activity, and open sea offered an early imaginative setting for a writer who would remain drawn throughout his life to rivers, voyages, landscapes, and the contrast between civilized conversation and the unruly forces of nature. He was the only child of Samuel Peacock, a London glass merc…
“As to writing poetry, or doing anything else that is rational in this floating Inferno, it is almost next to a moral impossibility.”
Neighbourhood:
Nature Poets, Romantic Poets, Victorian Poets
Emotional landscape: Spirituality, Peace, Longing
