Giacomo Leopardi was born in Recanati, in the Marches, then part of the Papal States, on 29 June 1798, and died in Naples on 14 June 1837, only weeks before his thirty-ninth birthday. His short life produced one of the most searching bodies of poetry and prose in modern European literature. He is often introduced as Italy’s supreme poet of pessimism, and there is truth in the description, but it is insufficient if it…
“I say that the world is an alliance of scoundrels against decent people, and of cowards against the generous.”
Neighbourhood:
Death & Mortality, Love Poets, Nature Poets, Romantic Poets
Emotional landscape: Longing, Sorrow, Spirituality
William Henry Davies, known throughout his writing life as W. H. Davies, was born on 3 July 1871 at 16 Portland Street in Newport, Monmouthshire, Wales, and died on 26 September 1940 in Nailsworth, Gloucestershire. He remains one of the most unusual figures in twentieth-century British literature: a poet of birds, rain, flowers, beggars, exhausted workers, roadside freedom, and the precarious dignity of people whom r…
“Running wild, taking no interest in my trade, and determined to throw off all restraint.”
Neighbourhood:
Edwardian Poets, Georgian Poets, Nature Poets, Welsh Poets
Emotional landscape: Tenderness, Wonder, Longing
