William Sharp was born on 12 September 1855 in Paisley, Renfrewshire, at a time when Scotland’s industrial towns were expanding rapidly but remained surrounded, in memory and imagination, by older rural worlds. He would become one of the most energetic and versatile literary figures of the late Victorian period: a poet, critic, biographer, editor, translator, anthologist, travel writer, and cultural interpreter. Yet…
“The gloom, the streets, the obtrusion and intrusion of people, all conspire against thought, dream, true living.”
Neighbourhood:
Mystical & Spiritual Poets, Pre-Raphaelite Poets, Scottish Poets, Symbolist Poets
Emotional landscape: Wonder, Joy, Peace
William Henry Davies, known throughout his writing life as W. H. Davies, was born on 3 July 1871 at 16 Portland Street in Newport, Monmouthshire, Wales, and died on 26 September 1940 in Nailsworth, Gloucestershire. He remains one of the most unusual figures in twentieth-century British literature: a poet of birds, rain, flowers, beggars, exhausted workers, roadside freedom, and the precarious dignity of people whom r…
“Such books are never any good to me, for, if I enjoy them, I am robbed of that joy by the thought that they are not mine.”
Neighbourhood:
Edwardian Poets, Georgian Poets, Nature Poets, Welsh Poets
Emotional landscape: Tenderness, Wonder, Longing
