In the pantheon of Victorian poetry, few figures cast as long and dark a shadow as James Thomson, who wrote under the mysterious initials "B.V." Born on November 23, 1834, in Port Glasgow, Scotland, Thomson would become one of the most compelling and tragic voices of his generation, a poet whose work plumbed the depths of human despair while achieving moments of transcendent beauty. His life, marked by profound loss,…
“There is, and I am persuaded of it, I triumph in it, another life after this, which depends as to its happiness on our virtue, as this for the most part on our fortune.”
Neighbourhood:
Death & Mortality, Symbolist Poets, Victorian Poets
Emotional landscape: Sorrow, Despair, Irony
George Santayana, born Jorge Agustín Nicolás Ruiz de Santayana y Borrás on 16 December 1863 in Madrid and dead in Rome on 26 September 1952, was one of the most elegant and elusive figures in American intellectual life. He was a philosopher, literary critic, poet, novelist, memoirist, teacher, and aphorist; yet no single profession completely contains him. Although he spent his formative adult years at Harvard and wr…
“The earth has music for those who listen.”
Neighbourhood:
American Poets, German Romantics, LGBTQ+ Poets, Mystical & Spiritual Poets
Emotional landscape: Sorrow, Despair, Longing
