Alexander Pope, born on 21 May 1688 and dead on 30 May 1744, was the supreme English poet of the Augustan age and one of the most technically accomplished writers in the language. His verse made the heroic couplet seem at once inevitable, conversational, polished, and inexhaustibly flexible. In his best work, a pair of rhyming pentameter lines can carry an argument, a joke, a moral judgment, a portrait, a burst of in…
“His characters are so much men, that they are perfectly natural, and their sentiments are so just, that they are perfectly intelligible.”
Neighbourhood:
Augustan Poets, Death & Mortality, Devotional Poets, Light Verse Poets
Emotional landscape: Joy, Peace, Wonder
Lady Mary Wortley Montagu, born Mary Pierrepont in May 1689 and dead on 21 August 1762, was one of the most formidable and variously gifted figures of the eighteenth century: poet, letter writer, satirist, aristocrat, traveller, political observer, mother, friend, adversary, and advocate for a medical practice that helped alter the history of public health. She lived in an age that praised female modesty while avidly…
“Life is too short for a long face.”
Neighbourhood:
Augustan Poets, LGBTQ+ Poets, Love Poets, Women Poets
Emotional landscape: Longing, Spirituality, Tenderness
