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…
“About five hundred people were in an artificial garden beside an artificial lake, looking at artificial fireworks, and yet as thoroughly enjoying it as if they were children.”
Neighbourhood:
American Poets, Folk & Ballad Poets, Light Verse Poets, Victorian Poets
Emotional landscape: Sorrow, Longing, Irony
Marsden Hartley stands as one of the most fascinating yet often overlooked figures in American modernism—a man who moved between painting and poetry with equal fervor, whose work captured the raw, untamed spirit of early twentieth-century artistic experimentation. Though primarily remembered as a visual artist, Hartley's literary output reveals a sensibility equally attuned to the power of words as to the force of co…
“The loneliest place in the world is the human heart.”
Neighbourhood:
American Poets, Decadent Poets, LGBTQ+ Poets, Modernist Poets
Emotional landscape: Wonder, Spirituality, Tenderness
