Sir Walter Scott, born in Edinburgh on 15 August 1771 and dead at Abbotsford on 21 September 1832, became one of the most influential writers in the English language: a poet who dominated the reading public before Byron, a novelist who effectively established the modern historical novel, an editor and antiquarian who preserved Scottish oral traditions, a lawyer and public official, a conservative political figure, an…
“But it must be by your own exertions, my dearest boy, that you must render yourself qualified to avail yourself of the opportunities which you may have offered to you.”
Neighbourhood:
Folk & Ballad Poets, Romantic Poets, Scottish Poets
Emotional landscape: Sorrow, Wonder, Longing
Charles-Pierre Baudelaire was born in Paris on 9 April 1821 and died there on 31 August 1867, leaving a body of work comparatively small in quantity but seismic in effect. Few writers have altered the possibilities of lyric poetry so decisively. Baudelaire inherited the grandeur and rhetoric of French Romanticism, yet he redirected poetry away from nature, historical spectacle, and heroic confession toward the nervou…
“Être un homme utile m’a toujours paru quelque chose de bien hideux.”
Neighbourhood:
Decadent Poets, French Symbolists, Symbolist Poets
Emotional landscape: Sorrow, Despair, Longing
