Francis Bret Harte, born Francis Brett Hart on 25 August 1836 in Albany, New York, and dead on 5 May 1902 in Camberley, Surrey, England, was the first American writer to make the Gold Rush West seem not merely picturesque or exotic but worthy of a literature of its own. Before Harte, the Pacific frontier had often appeared in Eastern writing as a distant field of adventure, speculation, and caricature. Harte helped g…
“There was a thoughtfulness over everything, as if the whole landscape had been surprised into reflection over some subtle premonition of the coming winter.”
Neighbourhood:
American Poets, Folk & Ballad Poets, Light Verse Poets, Victorian Poets
Emotional landscape: Sorrow, Longing, Irony
Grace Fallow Norton, born on 29 October 1876 in Northfield, Minnesota, and deceased in 1926, belongs to that large and consequential company of American poets whose work was respected in its own moment yet gradually slipped from broad public view. Her surviving reputation rests chiefly on a small body of lyric poetry, especially the 1912 collection Little Gray Songs from St. Joseph’s, a book whose title alone suggest…
Neighbourhood:
American Poets, Edwardian Poets, Love Poets, Nature Poets, Women Poets
Emotional landscape: Longing, Sorrow, Tenderness
