James Maurice Thompson arrived in this world on September 9, 1844, in the modest hamlet of Fairfield, Indiana, nestled within Franklin County, where his father served as a Baptist minister. The boy who would grow into one of the most versatile literary figures of the late nineteenth century spent his earliest years in the rustic Midwestern landscape, breathing in the simple rhythms of frontier life. Yet destiny had m…
“As for me, when I turn these leaves I hear the rustle of wild foliage and wilder wings, the songs of many birds, the babbling of innumerable brooks. Can the reader hear these by these same means? If so, my writing has not been in vain.”
Neighbourhood:
American Poets, Edwardian Poets, Love Poets, Nature Poets, Victorian Poets
Emotional landscape: Spirituality, Wonder, Longing
Oliver Wendell Holmes, Sr., born 29 August 1809 in Cambridge, Massachusetts, and dead 7 October 1894 in Boston, was one of the most recognizably versatile figures in nineteenth-century American culture: physician, medical reformer, anatomist, professor, poet, novelist, essayist, conversational satirist, and public intellectual. He was often called the “Autocrat of the Breakfast-Table,” after his most celebrated prose…
“I cannot write even a careless note like this without grave consideration.”
Neighbourhood:
American Poets, Death & Mortality, Light Verse Poets, Social Justice Poets, Victorian Poets
Emotional landscape: Longing, Tenderness, Wonder
