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…
“Now and then you look into a face which gives you the masonic sign of a natural affinity, absent in fifty faces that ought to be more dear.”
Neighbourhood:
Nature Poets, Victorian Poets, Women Poets
Emotional landscape: Sorrow, Despair, Longing
Amelia Alderson Opie entered the world on a crisp November day in 1769, born into the bustling heart of Norwich, that ancient cathedral city pulsing with intellectual and radical energy. The only child of Dr. James Alderson, a respected physician known for his generosity to the poor and his progressive views, and his wife Amelia Briggs, she arrived on November 12, destined to weave her own vibrant thread into the tap…
“I am not unhappy, on the contrary, I enjoy everything; and if my head be not turned by the large draughts which my vanity is daily quaffing, I shall return to Norwich much happier than I left it.”
Neighbourhood:
Love Poets, Political Poets, Romantic Poets, Women Poets
Emotional landscape: Longing, Tenderness, Sorrow
