Charles Lamb was born on 10 February 1775 in Crown Office Row, within London’s Inner Temple, and died on 27 December 1834 in Edmonton, then a village north of the city. He became one of the most distinctive voices in English literature not through a vast epic, a celebrated novel, or the public authority of a major poet, but through shorter forms made unexpectedly capacious: familiar essays, literary criticism, letter…
“Man is a gaming animal. He must always be trying to get the better in something or other.”
Neighbourhood:
Light Verse Poets, Love Poets, Romantic Poets
Emotional landscape: Sorrow, Tenderness, Longing
Matthew Arnold was born on 24 December 1822 at Laleham, Middlesex, a village beside the Thames, and died suddenly on 15 April 1888 at Liverpool. He became one of the defining English voices of the Victorian age: a poet of haunting melancholy, a critic who sought standards of excellence amid cultural confusion, an educational civil servant with an unusually broad public vision, and a controversial commentator on relig…
“The pursuit of perfection, then, is the pursuit of sweetness and light.”
Neighbourhood:
Death & Mortality, Love Poets, Nature Poets, Victorian Poets
Emotional landscape: Longing, Sorrow, Despair
