John Gillespie Magee Jr., born in Shanghai, China, on 9 June 1922 and killed over Lincolnshire, England, on 11 December 1941, occupies an unusual and enduring place in twentieth-century literature. He is remembered above all for “High Flight,” the fourteen-line poem that begins, “Oh! I have slipped the surly bonds of Earth,” and ends with one of the most quoted conclusions in English poetry: “Put out my hand, and tou…
“It is called High Flight and was inspired by a flight I made a few days ago.”
Neighbourhood:
American Poets, Death & Mortality, Devotional Poets, Georgian Poets, Hymn Writers
Emotional landscape: Joy, Wonder, Spirituality
Ford Madox Hueffer, who later became Ford Madox Ford, was born on 17 December 1873 in Merton, Surrey, then a semi-rural district on the edge of London, and died on 26 June 1939 in Deauville, France. He was one of the most energetic and consequential literary figures of the transition from late Victorian culture to modernism: a novelist, poet, memoirist, critic, editor, propagandist, literary theorist, and tireless ad…
“He has, that is to say, to render and not to tell.”
Neighbourhood:
Edwardian Poets, Imagist Poets, Modernist Poets
Emotional landscape: Longing, Wonder, Tenderness
