In the pantheon of Victorian literature, Anne Brontë stands as perhaps the most underestimated literary genius of her era. Born into a family that would produce three of the nineteenth century's most celebrated novelists, Anne has long lived in the shadow of her more famous sisters, Charlotte and Emily. Yet this youngest Brontë sister, who lived only twenty-nine years (1820-1849), created works of startling moral com…
“I would not be understood as asserting that the faults and follies of mankind are the proper subjects for ridicule.”
Neighbourhood:
Death & Mortality, Devotional Poets, Victorian Poets, Women Poets
Emotional landscape: Longing, Sorrow, Despair
Emma Lazarus was born in New York City on 22 July 1849 and died there on 19 November 1887, only thirty-eight years later. Her name is now inseparable from “The New Colossus,” the sonnet whose plea for the world’s “tired,” “poor,” and “huddled masses” has become the verbal companion to the Statue of Liberty. Yet the familiarity of those lines has often obscured the larger achievement of the woman who wrote them. Lazar…
“Until we are all free, we are none of us free.”
Neighbourhood:
American Poets, Political Poets, Social Justice Poets, Victorian Poets, Women Poets
Emotional landscape: Longing, Spirituality, Wonder
