In the grand tapestry of Elizabethan and Jacobean literature, few figures embody the complex intersection of political ambition and poetic genius quite like Fulke Greville, 1st Baron Brooke. Born into privilege in 1554 and dying by violence in 1628, Greville's seventy-four years spanned some of the most transformative decades in English history and literature. He was a man who moved with equal facility through the tr…
“With humble sails, after I had once ventured upon this spreading ocean of images, my apprehensive youth, for lack of a well touched compass, did easily wander beyond proportion.”
Neighbourhood:
Dramatic Poets, Elizabethan Poets, Metaphysical Poets, Political Poets, Renaissance Poets
Emotional landscape: Spirituality, Sorrow, Despair
Edmund Waller was born on 3 March 1606 at Coleshill, near Amersham in Buckinghamshire, and died on 21 October 1687 at Beaconsfield. His long life carried him through the reigns of James I and Charles I, the Civil Wars, the Commonwealth and Protectorate, the Restoration of Charles II, and the opening years of James II’s rule. Few English poets lived so visibly amid such violent political reversals, and fewer still man…
“Poets, sir, succeed better in fiction than in truth.”
Neighbourhood:
Cavalier Poets, Love Poets, Metaphysical Poets, Restoration Poets
Emotional landscape: Longing, Tenderness, Peace