Thomas Hardy stands as one of the most significant literary figures of the Victorian and early modern periods, a writer whose novels explored the tragic dimensions of human experience with unflinching honesty and whose poetry achieved a stark beauty that influenced generations of twentieth-century poets. Born on June 2, 1840, in Higher Bockhampton, Dorset, England, and dying on January 11, 1928, in Max Gate, Dorchest…
“I have always been impressed by the fact that the great things of life are often done by people who are not great.”
Neighbourhood:
Death & Mortality, Dramatic Poets, Edwardian Poets, Nature Poets, Political Poets, Victorian Poets
Emotional landscape: Sorrow, Longing, Despair
Robert Browning was born on 7 May 1812 at Southampton Cottage, Camberwell, then a semi-rural district south of London, and died on 12 December 1889 in Venice. Few English poets have combined such audacity of intellect, dramatic energy, moral curiosity, and technical resourcefulness. During his lifetime he moved from the position of a puzzling, frequently mocked young writer to that of a revered elder of Victorian let…
“All you gain by travel is the discovery that you have gained nothing, and have done rightly in trusting to your innate ideas—or not rightly in distrusting them, as the case may be.”
Neighbourhood:
Dramatic Poets, Love Poets, Pre-Raphaelite Poets, Victorian Poets
Emotional landscape: Tenderness, Longing, Wonder