Richard Barnefield, baptized on 29 June 1574 and buried in 1627, occupies a small but remarkably provocative place in the history of English Renaissance poetry. He was not among the most prolific writers of the Elizabethan age, nor did he sustain a public literary career over decades as Edmund Spenser, Ben Jonson, or William Shakespeare did. Yet the poems he published during a brief period in the 1590s have continued…
“Small is the gift, but great is my good-will; the which, by how much the lesse I am able to expresse it, by so much the more it is infinite.”
Neighbourhood:
Cavalier Poets, Elizabethan Poets, LGBTQ+ Poets
Emotional landscape: Sensuality, Longing, Wonder
Charles Webbe, whose life is usually dated approximately from 1650 to about 1680, occupies a small but intriguing place in the history of English Restoration poetry. He is remembered less through a substantial published body of work than through a handful of lyrics and, above all, through the persistent afterlife of one forceful poem of love and emotional extremity. The uncertainty surrounding even the spelling of hi…
Neighbourhood:
Light Verse Poets, Restoration Poets, Victorian Poets
Emotional landscape: Longing, Despair, Sorrow
