Anna Lætitia Barbauld, born Anna Aikin on 20 June 1743 and dead on 9 March 1825, was one of the most accomplished, influential, and later most unjustly neglected writers of the British Romantic era. Poet, essayist, editor, critic, educational reformer, author for children, and public intellectual, she wrote across forms that later literary history too often separated into “major” and “minor” kinds. In her own lifetim…
“The mind is not passive in the reception of knowledge, but active in its pursuit.”
Neighbourhood:
Augustan Poets, Political Poets, Romantic Poets, Women Poets
Emotional landscape: Longing, Spirituality, Sorrow
Isaac Watts was born in Southampton, England, on 17 July 1674, into a household where religious conviction was inseparable from risk. He died on 25 November 1748, having become one of the most widely read and sung English writers of his age. To later generations he would be called the “father of English hymnody,” a title that is not merely honorary. Before Watts, English Protestant congregations, especially among the…
“It is a great deal easier to prevent an ill habit than to break it.”
Neighbourhood:
Devotional Poets, Hymn Writers, Victorian Poets
Emotional landscape: Spirituality, Sorrow, Despair
