In the pantheon of American letters, Thomas Bailey Aldrich occupies a curious position—neither forgotten nor fully celebrated, he stands as a bridge figure between the rough-hewn democracy of antebellum American literature and the refined aestheticism that would characterize the Gilded Age. Born into a nation still finding its literary voice and dying in an America confidently asserting its cultural sophistication, A…
“A writer's style, if it have distinction, is the outcome of a hundred styles.”
Neighbourhood:
American Poets, Edwardian Poets, Love Poets, Nature Poets, Victorian Poets
Emotional landscape: Longing, Wonder, Peace
John Clare was born on 13 July 1793 in Helpston, a village then in Northamptonshire and now associated with Cambridgeshire, and died on 20 May 1864 in Northampton General Lunatic Asylum. He came to be called the “peasant poet,” a phrase that helped sell his first books but also diminished him by making his social origins seem more important than his imagination. Clare was indeed the son of agricultural labourers, a m…
“I long to be what I was when I was a boy.”
Neighbourhood:
Death & Mortality, Nature Poets, Romantic Poets, Social Justice Poets
Emotional landscape: Tenderness, Wonder, Spirituality
