Walter Savage Landor was born on 30 January 1775 at Ipsley Court, near Warwick, England, into circumstances of comfort, cultivation, and inherited expectation. His father, Walter Landor, was a physician of substantial means and social standing; his mother, Elizabeth Savage, came from a family whose name and property gave her son the middle name he would make inseparable from his literary identity. Landor’s life, whic…
“Prefixing a preface is like keeping an invited friend at the hall-door, instead of conducting him at once into the house.”
Neighbourhood:
Death & Mortality, Love Poets, Mystical & Spiritual Poets, Romantic Poets, Victorian Poets
Emotional landscape: Sorrow, Longing, Despair
Giacomo Leopardi was born in Recanati, in the Marches, then part of the Papal States, on 29 June 1798, and died in Naples on 14 June 1837, only weeks before his thirty-ninth birthday. His short life produced one of the most searching bodies of poetry and prose in modern European literature. He is often introduced as Italy’s supreme poet of pessimism, and there is truth in the description, but it is insufficient if it…
“Once a pleasure is attained, the soul does not cease desiring pleasure, just as it never ceases to think.”
Neighbourhood:
Death & Mortality, Love Poets, Nature Poets, Romantic Poets
Emotional landscape: Longing, Sorrow, Spirituality
