Robert Southey was born in Bristol on 12 August 1774 and died at Greta Hall, near Keswick in the Lake District, on 21 March 1843. During his lifetime he was among the most visible men of letters in Britain: a poet, historian, biographer, reviewer, editor, translator, political commentator, children’s writer, and, from 1813 until his death, Poet Laureate. Yet posterity has treated him unevenly. He is often remembered…
“Take away love, and not physical nature only, but the heart of the moral world, would be palsied.”
Neighbourhood:
Hymn Writers, Nature Poets, Political Poets, Romantic Poets
Emotional landscape: Sorrow, Irony, Wonder
Ebenezer Elliott was born on 17 March 1781 at Masbrough, near Rotherham, in the West Riding of Yorkshire, and died on 1 December 1849 at Great Houghton, near Barnsley. He became known in his own lifetime as the “Corn Law Rhymer,” a title at once admiring, limiting, and revealing. It identified him with the campaign against the laws that kept imported grain expensive and bread beyond the reach of many poor families, b…
“The truth is, I am not a poet. The thoughts of genuine poets flow without effort, as from a fountain; I have to pump from mine, and the well is not my own.”
Neighbourhood:
Nature Poets, Political Poets, Social Justice Poets, Victorian Poets
Emotional landscape: Anger, Sorrow, Fear
