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
William Brighty Rands was born on 24 December 1823, in Chelsea, then a district on the western edge of London and already a place where commerce, domestic life, artistic ambition, and metropolitan poverty met in close quarters. He died on 23 April 1882, having lived only fifty-eight years, and his name is now far less familiar than the names of several Victorian writers whose work has dated more severely. Yet Rands o…
“I was a born worshipper, with a strong tendency to mysticism of a kind that turned naturally to the One true Object of worship, and found pleasure in thinking of His presence anywhere and everywhere as a fact.”
Neighbourhood:
Children's Verse, Light Verse Poets, Nature Poets, Victorian Poets
Emotional landscape: Joy, Wonder, Irony