In the grand tapestry of 19th-century American literature, certain figures shine with the steady brilliance of established stars, while others flicker with a more complex, mercurial light. Nathaniel Parker Willis (1806-1867) belongs decidedly to the latter category—a writer whose life and work embodied the tensions, aspirations, and contradictions of a young nation struggling to define its cultural identity. Neither…
“I never sent you one of those homespun letters, in fact, without quite a persuasion that it will be the last. But life always seems to keep new, somehow; and a present hour always seems to me worthy any two of the past or the future.”
Neighbourhood:
American Poets, Romantic Poets, Transcendentalists, Victorian Poets
Emotional landscape: Despair, Sorrow, Irony
Agnes Mary Frances Robinson, who published most often as A. Mary F. Robinson and became successively known in France as Madame Darmesteter and Madame Duclaux, was born on 27 February 1857 in Leamington Spa, Warwickshire, and died in Aurillac, France, on 9 February 1944. Her unusually long life carried her from the high Victorian age into the Second World War; her writing career connected English Romantic and aestheti…
“Each of us also has some private niche, some inconsiderable intimate shrine, for the poet no one praises, who is all the more our own.”
Neighbourhood:
Decadent Poets, LGBTQ+ Poets, Love Poets, Pre-Raphaelite Poets, Victorian Poets, Women Poets
Emotional landscape: Sorrow, Longing, Despair
