Francis Thompson was born on 18 December 1859 in Preston, Lancashire, and died in London on 13 November 1907. His life has often been told as a dramatic Victorian parable: the devout doctor’s son who failed at the professions chosen for him, fell into homelessness and opium dependence in London, and was rescued into literary recognition by sympathetic Catholic publishers. There is truth in that narrative, but it can…
“The Church, which was once the mother of poets no less than of saints, during the last two centuries has relinquished to aliens the chief glories of poetry, if the chief glories of holiness she has preserved for her own.”
Neighbourhood:
Devotional Poets, Mystical & Spiritual Poets, Symbolist Poets
Emotional landscape: Fear, Tenderness, Longing
Edward Thomas was born Philip Edward Thomas on 3 March 1878 at Lambeth in south London, and died on 9 April 1917 near Arras in France, aged thirty-nine. His name now evokes a particular kind of English poetry: quiet but unsettled, exact in its descriptions of paths, trains, weather, birds, woods, and country speech, yet charged with questions of loss, belonging, choice, and mortality. His poetic career lasted scarcel…
“I am not a poet, and I never wanted to be a poet.”
Neighbourhood:
Death & Mortality, Edwardian Poets, Georgian Poets, Nature Poets, War Poets, Welsh Poets
Emotional landscape: Longing, Sorrow, Wonder
