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
On a warm August morning in 1841, in the quiet Staffordshire village of Caverswall, Robert Williams Buchanan was born on August 18. He entered a world already marked by ideological fervor and social upheaval, for his father, Robert Buchanan senior, was no ordinary parent but a passionate advocate of Robert Owen's socialist schemes, traveling the country as an itinerant lecturer preaching cooperation and radical socia…
“Morality in literature is, I think, far more intimately connected with the principle of sincerity of sight than any writer has yet had the courage to point out.”
Neighbourhood:
Love Poets, Pre-Raphaelite Poets, Victorian Poets
Emotional landscape: Sorrow, Despair, Longing
