Stephen Phillips, born on 28 July 1864 and dead at the distressingly early age of fifty-one on 9 December 1915, was one of the most celebrated English poets and verse dramatists of the years around 1900. For a brief but dazzling period, he seemed to many readers and theatre-goers to be the writer most likely to renew English poetic drama after Tennyson and Browning. His plays filled theatres, his poetry was widely re…
Compare Poets
Pick two poets who seem to have nothing to do with each other — a Gothic American and a pastoral Englishman, say — and see where the catalogue actually joins them: overlapping years, shared ground, distinctive themes, and the poems that secretly rhyme.
Poet A
Stephen Phillips
Poet B
Robert W. Service
Compare two related contemporaries
A random pair who overlapped in time and whose poems already rhyme in the catalogue — a way into poets you may not have met.
Strongly related
Their work already rhymes in the catalogue. The rest of this page is the story around that rhyme.
Biography 63%
Blended 63%
Swap sides
Another related pair
Robert William Service was born on 16 January 1874 in Preston, Lancashire, England, and died on 11 September 1958 at Lancieux, in Brittany, France. Few poets have occupied quite the cultural territory that Service came to possess. He was not, by his own candid admission, a poet of intricate philosophical argument or formal innovation. He called much of what he wrote “verse” rather than “poetry,” a distinction that re…
“Shirk responsibility—that's my philosophy. I do feel a sense of responsibility to the poor, but I don't want to go beyond writing a check.”
In time
Stephen Phillips
Robert W. Service
1864
1958
They overlapped for 42 years (1874–1915).
When Robert W. Service was born, Stephen Phillips was about 10.
Robert W. Service was about 41 when Stephen Phillips died.
On the map
About 241 km separate Summertown, Oxford, England from Preston, Lancashire, England. Both have ground in England.
Stephen Phillips
Robert W. Service
Themes they return to
Distinctive words drawn from each poet’s critiqued poems — what they keep writing about, not just what their biographies mention.
Shared
Stephen Phillips only
Robert W. Service only
From the biographies
gave
Stephen Phillips: summertown, oxford, cicely chilcott, paolo and francesca, christ in hades, marpessa, trinity college cambridge, verse drama revival. Robert W. Service: preston, bard of the yukon, the shooting of dan mcgrew, the cremation of sam mcgee, songs of a sourdough, the spell of the yukon, dawson city, klondike gold rush.
Poems that secretly rhyme
The closest poem-to-poem matches in critique space — the sort of kinship a listener hears before the catalogue admits it.
The world around them
While their lives overlapped
Notable events from the years they were both alive.
Stephen Phillips
Robert W. Service
Emotional landscapes
Stephen Phillips: Longing, Sorrow, Wonder. Robert W. Service: Fear, Despair, Sorrow.