Ada Cambridge, who would become one of colonial Australia's most prolific and quietly subversive literary voices, was born on 21 November 1844 at St Germans, Norfolk, England. She was the second child of Thomasine and Henry Cambridge, a gentleman farmer of comfortable means. The Norfolk countryside, with its flat, expansive skies and ancient, weathered churches, would seep into her imagination and later resurface in…
“But, looking back, and trying to be strictly fair all round, I am not sure that the women of the fifties were so much less sensible (according to their lesser lights) than their descendants of to-day.”
Neighbourhood:
Nature Poets, Victorian Poets, Women Poets
Emotional landscape: Sorrow, Despair, Longing
James Henry Leigh Hunt, known throughout his literary life as Leigh Hunt, was born on 19 October 1784 at Southgate, then a village north of London, and died at Putney on 28 August 1859. He was a poet, essayist, journalist, editor, critic, translator, dramatist, and indefatigable friend to writers whose fame would eventually eclipse his own. To describe him merely as a minor Romantic poet is to miss the range of his a…
“Every day is a little life: and our whole life is but a day repeated.”
Neighbourhood:
Love Poets, Nature Poets, Political Poets, Romantic Poets
Emotional landscape: Joy, Tenderness, Wonder
