David Hartley Coleridge was born on 19 September 1796 at Clevedon, Somerset, into one of the most celebrated, unsettled, and intellectually charged families of the English Romantic age. He was the eldest surviving child of Samuel Taylor Coleridge, poet, philosopher, critic, and author of “The Rime of the Ancient Mariner,” and Sara Fricker Coleridge. His first name, David, honored the eighteenth-century philosopher Da…
“We have had several parties—vain attempts at merriment—but alas—it’s all body without spirit—Nitrogen without Oxygen—the tragedy of Hamlet with the character of Hamlet left out.”
Neighbourhood:
Love Poets, Romantic Poets
Emotional landscape: Wonder, Longing, Spirituality
John Clare was born on 13 July 1793 in Helpston, a village then in Northamptonshire and now associated with Cambridgeshire, and died on 20 May 1864 in Northampton General Lunatic Asylum. He came to be called the “peasant poet,” a phrase that helped sell his first books but also diminished him by making his social origins seem more important than his imagination. Clare was indeed the son of agricultural labourers, a m…
“I found the poems in the fields and only wrote them down.”
Neighbourhood:
Death & Mortality, Nature Poets, Romantic Poets, Social Justice Poets
Emotional landscape: Tenderness, Wonder, Spirituality
