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…
“In spite of all the cares and sorrows of this life, he thinks we are so constituted that a good honest hearty laugh, which conceals no malice, and is excited by nothing corrupt, however ungenteel it may be, is healthful both to body and mind.”
Neighbourhood:
American Poets, Children's Verse, Devotional Poets, Hymn Writers
Emotional landscape: Wonder, Joy, Tenderness
In the pantheon of American Romantic poetry, few figures burn as brightly—or as briefly—as Edward Coote Pinkney. Born into privilege on October 1, 1802, in London, England, and dying in poverty on April 11, 1828, in Baltimore, Maryland, Pinkney's twenty-five years encompassed a lifetime of passion, rebellion, literary brilliance, and ultimately, tragic unfulfillment. His story reads like a cautionary tale of artistic…
“I have received your singular answer to my note. Reconsider its subject, and write more to my satisfaction before the evening, or I will post you in the worst terms that contempt can devise.”
Neighbourhood:
American Poets, Death & Mortality, Love Poets, Romantic Poets
Emotional landscape: Tenderness, Longing, Wonder
