Pick two poets who seem to have nothing to do with each other — a Gothic American and a pastoral Englishman, say — and see where the catalogue actually joins them: overlapping years, shared ground, distinctive themes, and the poems that secretly rhyme.
A. Mary F. Robinson
Lady Anne Lindsay
A random pair who overlapped in time and whose poems already rhyme in the catalogue — a way into poets you may not have met.
Agnes Mary Frances Robinson, who published most often as A. Mary F. Robinson and became successively known in France as Madame Darmesteter and Madame Duclaux, was born on 27 February 1857 in Leamington Spa, Warwickshire, and died in Aurillac, France, on 9 February 1944. Her unusually long life carried her from the high Victorian age into the Second World War; her writing career connected English Romantic and aestheti…
“I send forth this little book with scant expectance of immediate success.”
Lady Anne Lindsay, later Lady Anne Barnard, was born on 8 December 1750 at Balcarres in Fife, Scotland, and died on 6 May 1825 in London. She is remembered above all as the author of “Auld Robin Gray,” one of the most affecting and durable songs in the Scottish literary tradition. Yet the ballad’s extraordinary afterlife has sometimes reduced its maker to a name attached to a single lyric. Her life was considerably l…
“The song of Auld Robin Gray was written by me in 1771, when I was very young.”
About 443 km separate Leamington Spa, Warwickshire, England from Balcarres, Fife, Scotland. Shared ground: United Kingdom.
Distinctive words drawn from each poet’s critiqued poems — what they keep writing about, not just what their biographies mention.
A. Mary F. Robinson: leamington spa, aurillac, madame darmesteter, madame duclaux, a handful of honeysuckle, the new arcadia, emily brontë, james darmesteter. Lady Anne Lindsay: balcarres, cape colony, auld robin gray, james lindsay, andrew barnard, scottish ballad tradition, edinburgh, colonial official.
The closest poem-to-poem matches in critique space — the sort of kinship a listener hears before the catalogue admits it.
A. Mary F. Robinson: Sorrow, Longing, Despair. Lady Anne Lindsay: Despair, Sorrow, Longing.
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