Ivan Andreyevich Krylov, born on 13 February 1769 and dead on 21 November 1844, occupies a singular place in Russian literature: he is at once a classic author taught to children, a master satirist quoted by politicians and journalists, and a poet whose compact animal tales preserve an unusually sharp view of human weakness. To call him merely “the Russian Aesop,” as generations of readers have done, is useful but in…
“I've read it. I have neither the time nor the inclination to correct or revise it.”
Neighbourhood:
Children's Verse, Folk & Ballad Poets, Light Verse Poets, Social Justice Poets
Emotional landscape: Sorrow, Irony, Longing
Tobias George Smollett, baptized on 19 March 1721 and generally believed to have been born shortly before that date, was one of the most forceful, combative, and variously gifted writers of eighteenth-century Britain. He died on 17 September 1771, only about fifty years old, yet in that compressed lifetime he became a surgeon, naval observer, playwright, poet, translator, journalist, editor, political polemicist, his…
“Facts are stubborn things.”
Neighbourhood:
Enlightenment Poets, Satirical Poets, Scottish Poets
Emotional landscape: Peace, Joy, Tenderness
