John Clare was born on 13 July 1793 in Helpston, a village then in Northamptonshire and now associated with Cambridgeshire, and died on 20 May 1864 in Northampton General Lunatic Asylum. He came to be called the “peasant poet,” a phrase that helped sell his first books but also diminished him by making his social origins seem more important than his imagination. Clare was indeed the son of agricultural labourers, a m…
“I have been always fond of nature and solitude, and they have been my chief delight.”
Neighbourhood:
Death & Mortality, Nature Poets, Romantic Poets, Social Justice Poets
Emotional landscape: Tenderness, Wonder, Spirituality
Samuel Taylor Coleridge was born on 21 October 1772 in Ottery St Mary, Devon, and died on 25 July 1834 at Highgate, near London. He occupies an unusual and commanding place in English literary history: he was at once one of the makers of Romantic poetry, a revolutionary critic of Shakespeare and poetic language, a philosophical mediator between German idealism and English thought, a political journalist, a religious…
“In philosophy equally as in poetry, it is the highest and most useful prerogative of genius to produce the strongest impressions of novelty, while it rescues admitted truths from the neglect caused by the very circumstance of their universal admission.”
Neighbourhood:
Dramatic Poets, Mystical & Spiritual Poets, Nature Poets, Political Poets, Romantic Poets
Emotional landscape: Wonder, Spirituality, Longing
