Bryan Waller Procter, known to generations of readers by the literary name Barry Cornwall, was born in Leeds, Yorkshire, on 21 November 1787, and died in London on 5 October 1874. He belonged to that broad, fascinating company of early nineteenth-century writers who stood close to the great Romantic generation without ever wholly entering its innermost circle. He was not a poet of Byron’s volcanic self-dramatization,…
“Let no one despise any means by which the intellect of a boy may be widened or strengthened.”
Neighbourhood:
Death & Mortality, Love Poets, Romantic Poets
Emotional landscape: Longing, Wonder, Tenderness
Henry David Thoreau was born on 12 July 1817 in Concord, Massachusetts, and died there on 6 May 1862, only forty-four years later. During that comparatively brief life he became, almost paradoxically, one of the most durable presences in American letters. He was a poet, essayist, lecturer, surveyor, pencil maker, teacher, abolitionist, amateur scientist, and uncommonly attentive walker. Yet these labels, though usefu…
“How vain it is to sit down to write when you have not stood up to live.”
Neighbourhood:
American Poets, Mystical & Spiritual Poets, Nature Poets, Transcendentalists
Emotional landscape: Spirituality, Irony, Wonder
