John Donne was born in London in 1572, probably in January, though the exact day remains uncertain, and he died in London on 31 March 1631. Few English writers have seemed so divided within themselves, or have turned division into such memorable art. He was at once a Catholic child in a Protestant state, an ambitious courtier whose prospects were ruined by love, a husband burdened by debt and bereavement, a poet of e…
“No man is an island, entire of itself; every man is a piece of the continent, a part of the main.”
Neighbourhood:
Death & Mortality, Devotional Poets, Love Poets, Metaphysical Poets
Emotional landscape: Longing, Sorrow, Despair
Charles Cotton was born on 28 April 1630 at Beresford Hall, near Alstonefield, on the Staffordshire side of the Peak District, and died in London on 16 February 1687. He belonged to that striking generation of English writers whose lives were shaped by civil war, regicide, Restoration, religious division, and the gradual reorganization of literary culture around print, patronage, and metropolitan fashion. Yet Cotton’…
“Though fools spurn Hymen's gentle powers, we, who improve his golden hours, by sweet experience know that marriage, rightly understood, gives to the tender and the good a paradise below.”
Neighbourhood:
Cavalier Poets, Light Verse Poets, Love Poets, Nature Poets, Restoration Poets
Emotional landscape: Longing, Sorrow, Despair
