Joaquin Miller, born Cincinnatus Hiner Miller on September 8, 1837, and dead on February 17, 1913, lived a life that seemed designed to invite legend. He was a poet, journalist, lawyer, teacher, dramatist, lecturer, rancher, and relentless self-inventor. To admirers in the nineteenth century, he was the “Poet of the Sierras,” a bard who had given the American West its own grand, romantic voice. To skeptics, he was an…
“I'm damned if I could tell the difference between a hexameter and a pentameter to save my scalp.”
Neighbourhood:
American Poets, Folk & Ballad Poets, Love Poets, Nature Poets, Victorian Poets
Emotional landscape: Sorrow, Despair, Longing
Carolina Oliphant, later Lady Nairne, was born on 16 August 1766 at Gask House in Perthshire, into a family whose private memories were inseparable from one of Scotland’s most public historical wounds. She died on 26 October 1845, also at Gask, after a life of seventy-nine years in which she became one of the most accomplished and widely loved writers of Scottish song. For much of that life, however, the public did n…
“There is so much high talent, truth, and simplicity, that when I put it all together, it left the impression of sublimity on my mind.”
Neighbourhood:
Folk & Ballad Poets, Political Poets, Scottish Poets, Women Poets
Emotional landscape: Longing, Sorrow, Tenderness