Bryan Waller Procter, known to generations of readers by the literary name Barry Cornwall, was born in Leeds, Yorkshire, on 21 November 1787, and died in London on 5 October 1874. He belonged to that broad, fascinating company of early nineteenth-century writers who stood close to the great Romantic generation without ever wholly entering its innermost circle. He was not a poet of Byron’s volcanic self-dramatization,…
“Let no one despise any means by which the intellect of a boy may be widened or strengthened.”
Neighbourhood:
Death & Mortality, Love Poets, Romantic Poets
Emotional landscape: Longing, Wonder, Tenderness
Robert Browning was born on 7 May 1812 at Southampton Cottage, Camberwell, then a semi-rural district south of London, and died on 12 December 1889 in Venice. Few English poets have combined such audacity of intellect, dramatic energy, moral curiosity, and technical resourcefulness. During his lifetime he moved from the position of a puzzling, frequently mocked young writer to that of a revered elder of Victorian let…
“When that poem was written, two people knew what it meant, God and Robert Browning. And now God only knows what it means.”
Neighbourhood:
Dramatic Poets, Love Poets, Pre-Raphaelite Poets, Victorian Poets
Emotional landscape: Tenderness, Longing, Wonder
