Thomas Babington Macaulay was born on 25 October 1800 at Rothley Temple in Leicestershire and died on 28 December 1859 at Kensington, London. He was at once a poet, essayist, parliamentarian, colonial administrator, historian, reviewer, and one of the most commanding prose stylists in nineteenth-century English. To modern readers his name often summons the grand certainty of Victorian “Whig history,” the tendency to…
“At last I have attained true glory. As I walked through Fleet Street the day before yesterday, I saw a copy of Hume at a bookseller's window with the following label: Only 2l. 2s. Hume's History of England in eight volumes, highly valuable as an introduction to Macaulay.”
Neighbourhood:
Folk & Ballad Poets, Social Justice Poets, Victorian Poets
Emotional landscape: Sorrow, Despair, Longing
Bryan Waller Procter, known to generations of readers by the literary name Barry Cornwall, was born in Leeds, Yorkshire, on 21 November 1787, and died in London on 5 October 1874. He belonged to that broad, fascinating company of early nineteenth-century writers who stood close to the great Romantic generation without ever wholly entering its innermost circle. He was not a poet of Byron’s volcanic self-dramatization,…
“If life itself were not a pleasure, the utility even of its necessaries might very well be questioned.”
Neighbourhood:
Death & Mortality, Love Poets, Romantic Poets
Emotional landscape: Longing, Wonder, Tenderness
