John Drinkwater, born on 1 June 1882 and dead on 25 March 1937, was one of the most visible English men of letters of the years between the First World War and the rise of high modernism. Poet, playwright, actor, theatre manager, critic, lecturer, anthologist, and autobiographer, he possessed a public versatility that can make him seem difficult to place in retrospect. He was never a modernist in the manner of T. S.…
“It does not tell us singly what poetry is, but it speculates upon the cause and effect of poetry.”
Neighbourhood:
Edwardian Poets, Georgian Poets, Modernist Poets, Nature Poets
Emotional landscape: Sorrow, Longing, Despair
Alfred Tennyson, later Alfred, Lord Tennyson, was born on 6 August 1809 at Somersby rectory in Lincolnshire, England, and died on 6 October 1892 at Lurgashall in Sussex. During his long life he became the defining poetic voice of the Victorian age: at once a public laureate who wrote for national occasions and a private, searching poet whose work returned obsessively to bereavement, desire, religious uncertainty, mem…
“It is hard to believe in God; but it is harder not to believe. I believe in God, not from what I see in Nature, but from what I find in man.”
Neighbourhood:
Devotional Poets, Dramatic Poets, Nature Poets, Victorian Poets
Emotional landscape: Wonder, Longing, Sorrow