Clement Clarke Moore was born in New York City on 15 July 1779, into a family whose standing joined religious authority, learning, landholding, and old New York connections. He died on 10 July 1863, five days before his eighty-fourth birthday, having become a respected scholar, educator, churchman, landowner, and local civic figure. Yet history has remembered him overwhelmingly for a poem of fifty-six lines: “A Visit…
“It was written at the request of my children, and for their amusement, on Christmas Eve, 1822.”
Neighbourhood:
American Poets, Children's Verse, Devotional Poets, Hymn Writers
Emotional landscape: Wonder, Joy, Tenderness
Thomas Moore, born in Dublin on 28 May 1779 and dead at Sloperton Cottage, Wiltshire, on 25 February 1852, occupied an unusual and influential place in the literary culture of the nineteenth century. He was at once a poet, lyricist, singer, editor, biographer, satirist, traveller, social performer, and public Irishman in an age when Irish identity could be politically dangerous, commercially useful, emotionally charg…
“The Tory, of course, is shocked by my Whiggism; the Whigs are rather displeased at my candour in conceding that they have sometimes been wrong, and the Tories right.”
Neighbourhood:
Folk & Ballad Poets, Hymn Writers, Irish Poets, Love Poets, Poet-Musicians, Political Poets
Emotional landscape: Longing, Tenderness, Sorrow