Allan Cunningham was born on 7 December 1784 at Blackwood, near Dalswinton in Dumfriesshire, a district of south-west Scotland whose landscape, speech, songs, and historical memories remained central to his imagination throughout his life. He died in London on 30 October 1842, having travelled an unlikely path from the stone-mason’s yard to the centre of Britain’s artistic and literary world. Poet, songwriter, noveli…
“I would not lie like a toad in a stone, or in a place strong enough for another to covet. Oh! no; let me lie where the green grass and the daisies grow, waving under the winds of the blue heaven.”
Neighbourhood:
Folk & Ballad Poets, Nature Poets, Scottish Poets
Emotional landscape: Wonder, Joy, Spirituality
Charlotte Richardson, born on 5 March 1775 and dead on 26 September 1825, belongs to that large, increasingly important company of British women poets whose names survived in catalogues more securely than they survived in literary histories. Her career unfolded during a period when poetry was widely read, widely written, and yet unevenly preserved. The great names of Romanticism came to dominate later accounts of the…
Neighbourhood:
Devotional Poets, Hymn Writers, Romantic Poets, Women Poets
Emotional landscape: Tenderness, Wonder, Spirituality