John Davidson was born on 11 April 1857 in Barrhead, Renfrewshire, and died on 23 March 1909, or shortly thereafter, in the waters off Penzance, Cornwall. He was a Scottish poet, playwright, novelist, critic, journalist, and tireless literary experimenter whose work stands at a crucial threshold in British writing. In temperament and technique, he belonged neither wholly to the late Victorians nor wholly to the moder…
“A poet is always a man of inordinate ambition and of inordinate vanity. In his heart he says, I want my poetry to be remembered when Homer and Dante and Shakespeare are forgotten.”
Neighbourhood:
Decadent Poets, Edwardian Poets, Love Poets, Pre-Raphaelite Poets, Scottish Poets, Symbolist Poets
Emotional landscape: Spirituality, Wonder, Anger
Lizette Woodworth Reese was born on 9 January 1856 in the Greenspring Valley area of Baltimore County, Maryland, and died in Baltimore on 17 December 1935. Her long life joined two very different literary ages. She was formed by the cadences, moral seriousness, and cultivated sentiment of nineteenth-century verse, yet some of her finest poems possess the compression, pictorial clarity, and emotional reserve that late…
“For poetry, more than any other art, except music, has a compelling hold upon the spiritual side of life.”
Neighbourhood:
American Poets, Devotional Poets, Victorian Poets, Women Poets
Emotional landscape: Longing, Sorrow, Wonder