On a spring day in 1823, in the small coastal village of Mattapoisett, Massachusetts, a child was born who would grow to become one of the most original and underappreciated voices in nineteenth-century American literature. Elizabeth Drew Barstow entered the world on May 6, in a town where the rhythms of the sea shaped daily existence and where salt spray and shipbuilding defined the community's character. The second…
“Nothing here to go with me into the depths of myself. The sterile landscape, the wintry wind these gray wailing waters benumb me, or rouse me to deep melancholy.”
Neighbourhood:
American Poets, Death & Mortality, Love Poets, Nature Poets, Victorian Poets, Women Poets
Emotional landscape: Sorrow, Wonder, Spirituality
In the pantheon of American Romantic poetry, few figures burn as brightly—or as briefly—as Edward Coote Pinkney. Born into privilege on October 1, 1802, in London, England, and dying in poverty on April 11, 1828, in Baltimore, Maryland, Pinkney's twenty-five years encompassed a lifetime of passion, rebellion, literary brilliance, and ultimately, tragic unfulfillment. His story reads like a cautionary tale of artistic…
“I have received your singular answer to my note. Reconsider its subject, and write more to my satisfaction before the evening, or I will post you in the worst terms that contempt can devise.”
Neighbourhood:
American Poets, Death & Mortality, Love Poets, Romantic Poets
Emotional landscape: Tenderness, Longing, Wonder
