William Sharp was born on 12 September 1855 in Paisley, Renfrewshire, at a time when Scotland’s industrial towns were expanding rapidly but remained surrounded, in memory and imagination, by older rural worlds. He would become one of the most energetic and versatile literary figures of the late Victorian period: a poet, critic, biographer, editor, translator, anthologist, travel writer, and cultural interpreter. Yet…
“There is something of a strange excitement in the knowledge that two people are here: so intimate and yet so far-off.”
Neighbourhood:
Mystical & Spiritual Poets, Pre-Raphaelite Poets, Scottish Poets, Symbolist Poets
Emotional landscape: Wonder, Joy, Peace
Wilfrid Scawen Blunt, born on 17 August 1840 at Petworth in Sussex and dead on 10 September 1922 at Newbuildings Place, his Sussex home, lived a life unusually crowded with contradiction. He was an English gentleman who became one of Victorian Britain’s most persistent critics of empire; a formal, often old-fashioned poet who sought to make verse answer political injustice; a diplomat who abandoned official service i…
“The country districts are still quite untouched by our Western ugliness.”
Neighbourhood:
Irish Poets, Mystical & Spiritual Poets, Political Poets, Social Justice Poets, Victorian Poets
Emotional landscape: Sorrow, Despair, Longing
