George Gascoigne, born about 1539 and dead on 7 October 1577, was one of the most adventurous and consequential writers of early Elizabethan England. Poet, translator, dramatist, critic, court entertainer, soldier, traveler, and sometime political aspirant, he lived with the instability and appetite that his writing so often dramatizes. His career was brief, troubled by debt, family conflict, legal suspicion, militar…
“I have not written this discourse to teach any man, but rather to learn myself.”
Neighbourhood:
Elizabethan Poets, Love Poets, Renaissance Poets
Emotional landscape: Tenderness, Peace, Joy
Oliver Goldsmith, born probably on 10 November 1728 and dead on 4 April 1774, lived only forty-five years, yet he became one of the most various, humane, and enduring voices in eighteenth-century English literature. He was an Irishman who made his reputation in London, a clergyman’s son who never settled into a profession, a medical student who rarely practised medicine, a chronically indebted writer who produced som…
“Every absurdity has a champion to defend it; for error is always talkative.”
Neighbourhood:
Augustan Poets, Irish Poets, Light Verse Poets, Nature Poets, Social Justice Poets
Emotional landscape: Longing, Sorrow, Despair
