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…
“Puff me, Coleridge! if you love me, puff me! Puff a couple of hundreds into my pocket!”
Neighbourhood:
Hymn Writers, Nature Poets, Political Poets, Romantic Poets
Emotional landscape: Sorrow, Irony, Wonder
Sir Aubrey de Vere, born Aubrey Hunt on 28 August 1788 and dead on 5 July 1846, was an Irish poet, dramatist, landowner, magistrate, and baronet whose life joined literary aspiration to the duties and assumptions of the Anglo-Irish governing class. He is now frequently encountered as the father of the better-known poet Aubrey Thomas de Vere, and that relationship has sometimes obscured the elder man’s own achievement…
“If I fail in that attempt I shall not fret about it; others will do it later—what I have aimed at doing—and will probably do it better.”
Neighbourhood:
Irish Poets, Nature Poets, Victorian Poets
Emotional landscape: Sorrow, Despair, Longing
