Thomas Love Peacock was born on 18 October 1785 at Weymouth, Dorset, a coastal town whose mixture of fashionable society, maritime activity, and open sea offered an early imaginative setting for a writer who would remain drawn throughout his life to rivers, voyages, landscapes, and the contrast between civilized conversation and the unruly forces of nature. He was the only child of Samuel Peacock, a London glass merc…
“The poetry of your Adonais is very beautiful; but when you write you never think of your audience. The number who understand you, and sympathise with you, is very small.”
Neighbourhood:
Nature Poets, Romantic Poets, Victorian Poets
Emotional landscape: Spirituality, Peace, Longing
Robert Southey was born in Bristol on 12 August 1774 and died at Greta Hall, near Keswick in the Lake District, on 21 March 1843. During his lifetime he was among the most visible men of letters in Britain: a poet, historian, biographer, reviewer, editor, translator, political commentator, children’s writer, and, from 1813 until his death, Poet Laureate. Yet posterity has treated him unevenly. He is often remembered…
“The history of any private family, however humble, could it be fully related for five or six generations, would illustrate the state and progress of society better than the most elaborate dissertation.”
Neighbourhood:
Hymn Writers, Nature Poets, Political Poets, Romantic Poets
Emotional landscape: Sorrow, Irony, Wonder
