Richard Henry Dana, born on 15 November 1787 in Cambridge, Massachusetts, and dead there on 2 February 1879, belonged to the first generation of American writers who attempted to make literature in the young republic something more than a colonial echo of English models. He was a poet, critic, editor, lawyer, lecturer, and influential member of Boston’s literary world. Yet he has long occupied an unstable place in li…
“It is a poor ambition to be anxious after the distinction of a day in that which, if it be fit to live at all, is to live for ages.”
Neighbourhood:
American Poets, Love Poets, Nature Poets, Romantic Poets, Victorian Poets
Emotional landscape: Sorrow, Despair, Longing
William Henry Davies, known throughout his writing life as W. H. Davies, was born on 3 July 1871 at 16 Portland Street in Newport, Monmouthshire, Wales, and died on 26 September 1940 in Nailsworth, Gloucestershire. He remains one of the most unusual figures in twentieth-century British literature: a poet of birds, rain, flowers, beggars, exhausted workers, roadside freedom, and the precarious dignity of people whom r…
“True, a man's first book of poetry may run into a second edition, but people should not write and congratulate him on his success before they know what that means.”
Neighbourhood:
Edwardian Poets, Georgian Poets, Nature Poets, Welsh Poets
Emotional landscape: Tenderness, Wonder, Longing