Pick two poets who seem to have nothing to do with each other — a Gothic American and a pastoral Englishman, say — and see where the catalogue actually joins them: overlapping years, shared ground, distinctive themes, and the poems that secretly rhyme.
William Schwenck Gilbert
Lewis Carroll
A random pair who overlapped in time and whose poems already rhyme in the catalogue — a way into poets you may not have met.
In the pantheon of Victorian literature, few figures present such a delightful paradox as William Schwenck Gilbert (1836-1911). Here was a man who could craft lyrics of sublime wit and devastating social commentary, yet whose temperament was notoriously prickly and contentious. A writer who created some of the most beloved comic operas in the English language while maintaining a reputation as one of London's most dif…
“When everyone is somebody, then no one's anybody.”
Charles Lutwidge Dodgson, who became immortal under the name Lewis Carroll, was born on 27 January 1832 at Daresbury, Cheshire, England, and died on 14 January 1898 at Guildford, Surrey. He was a Victorian clergyman, Oxford mathematician, logician, lecturer, photographer, inventor, letter writer, satirist, and author of some of the most celebrated imaginative literature in the English language. Yet the word “author”…
“It's a poor sort of memory that only works backwards.”
About 267 km separate 17 Southampton Street, The Strand, London from Daresbury, Cheshire, England. Both have ground in England.
Distinctive words drawn from each poet’s critiqued poems — what they keep writing about, not just what their biographies mention.
William Schwenck Gilbert: southampton, lucy agnes turner, trial by jury, the sorcerer, h.m.s. pinafore, the mikado, the bab ballads, richard d'oyly carte. Lewis Carroll: daresbury, cheshire, guildford, victorian clergyman, oxford mathematician, alice's adventures in wonderland, through the looking-glass, jabberwocky.
The closest poem-to-poem matches in critique space — the sort of kinship a listener hears before the catalogue admits it.
Notable events from the years they were both alive.
William Schwenck Gilbert: Irony, Despair, Fear. Lewis Carroll: Irony, Joy, Wonder.
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