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
Arthur William Edgar O’Shaughnessy was born in London on 14 March 1844 and died there on 30 January 1881, at the age of thirty-six. His life was brief, financially constrained, and repeatedly shadowed by bereavement, yet it produced a body of verse whose finest passages have retained an unusual power. He belongs to that fertile, sometimes neglected region of Victorian poetry situated between the late Romantics, the P…
“My meaning is that Art is good—is an incalculable gain to man.”
Neighbourhood:
Decadent Poets, Pre-Raphaelite Poets, Symbolist Poets, Victorian Poets
Emotional landscape: Longing, Sorrow, Despair
