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.
Elizabeth Barrett Browning
Mary Wollstonecraft Shelley
A random pair who overlapped in time and whose poems already rhyme in the catalogue — a way into poets you may not have met.
Elizabeth Barrett Browning was born on March 6, 1806, at Coxhoe Hall in County Durham, England, the eldest of twelve children to Edward Barrett Moulton Barrett and Mary Graham Clarke. Her arrival marked the first in her family born in England in over two centuries, as the Barrett fortune stemmed from vast sugar plantations in Jamaica. The family soon moved to Hope End, a sprawling estate near Ledbury in Herefordshire…
“The essence of all beautiful art, all great art, is gratitude.”
Mary Wollstonecraft Shelley, born Mary Wollstonecraft Godwin on 30 August 1797 and dead on 1 February 1851, occupied an extraordinary position in British literary history from the beginning of her life. She was the daughter of two of the most provocative writers of the late eighteenth century: the political philosopher William Godwin and Mary Wollstonecraft, author of A Vindication of the Rights of Woman. Her name ha…
“I am here alone in Genoa; quite, quite alone! J. has left me to proceed to England, and, except my sleeping child, I am alone.”
About 365 km separate Durham, England from Somers Town, London, England. Shared ground: United Kingdom.
Distinctive words drawn from each poet’s critiqued poems — what they keep writing about, not just what their biographies mention.
Elizabeth Barrett Browning: county durham, hope end, the battle of marathon, the seraphim and other poems, the cry of the children, robert browning, sonnets from the portuguese, aurora leigh. Mary Wollstonecraft Shelley: frankenstein, villa diodati, percy bysshe shelley, william godwin, history of a six weeks' tour, romanticism, gothic fiction, lake geneva.
The closest poem-to-poem matches in critique space — the sort of kinship a listener hears before the catalogue admits it.
Notable events from the years they were both alive.
Elizabeth Barrett Browning: Spirituality, Longing, Tenderness. Mary Wollstonecraft Shelley: Longing, Tenderness, Sorrow.
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