Joseph Blanco White was born José María Blanco y Crespo on the 11th of July, 1775, in a house on a street corner in the old Jewish quarter of Seville, not far from the city's great cathedral. He would die sixty-five years later, in May 1841, in Liverpool, a city about as different from sun-bleached Andalusia as nineteenth-century Europe could offer, and the distance between those two places, geographic and spiritual,…
“God is my Saviour: in Him I fully trust. I beg you, therefore, to bear me witness that I die a Christian, because I am convinced that God has granted me the SPIRIT of Christianity: that I die a Unitarian, because I consider the spirit of our Body nearer to the spirit of Christianity, than that of any other Denomination.”
Neighbourhood:
Devotional Poets, Mystical & Spiritual Poets, Romantic Poets, Victorian Poets
Emotional landscape: Wonder, Sorrow, Spirituality
Robert Southey was born in Bristol on 12 August 1774 and died at Greta Hall, near Keswick in the Lake District, on 21 March 1843. During his lifetime he was among the most visible men of letters in Britain: a poet, historian, biographer, reviewer, editor, translator, political commentator, children’s writer, and, from 1813 until his death, Poet Laureate. Yet posterity has treated him unevenly. He is often remembered…
“I would tread in the beaten road rather than get among thorns by turning out of it; but the beaten road will not take me where I want to go.”
Neighbourhood:
Hymn Writers, Nature Poets, Political Poets, Romantic Poets
Emotional landscape: Sorrow, Irony, Wonder