Charles Mackay was born in Perth, Scotland, on 27 March 1814, and died in London on 24 December 1889. During a long and unusually various career, he became known as a poet, songwriter, editor, journalist, historian of London, commentator on social life, and author of one of the nineteenth century’s most durable books of cultural psychology, Extraordinary Popular Delusions and the Madness of Crowds. He was never quite…
“We find that whole communities suddenly fix their minds upon one object, and go mad in its pursuit.”
Neighbourhood:
Folk & Ballad Poets, Social Justice Poets, Victorian Poets
Emotional landscape: Longing, Joy, Peace
Thomas Babington Macaulay was born on 25 October 1800 at Rothley Temple in Leicestershire and died on 28 December 1859 at Kensington, London. He was at once a poet, essayist, parliamentarian, colonial administrator, historian, reviewer, and one of the most commanding prose stylists in nineteenth-century English. To modern readers his name often summons the grand certainty of Victorian “Whig history,” the tendency to…
“An acre in Middlesex is better than a principality in Utopia.”
Neighbourhood:
Folk & Ballad Poets, Social Justice Poets, Victorian Poets
Emotional landscape: Despair, Sorrow, Longing
