Robert Burns was born on 25 January 1759 in the parish of Alloway, near Ayr, in southwestern Scotland, and died in Dumfries on 21 July 1796. In the relatively brief span of thirty-seven years, he became Scotland’s best-loved poet, a major maker and remaker of song, an incisive satirist, and an emblem of democratic fellow feeling. His reputation has sometimes obscured the complicated human being beneath it. Burns was…
“Whatever mitigates the woes or increases the happiness of others, this is the criterion of the goodness of a man.”
Neighbourhood:
Folk & Ballad Poets, Poet-Musicians, Political Poets, Scottish Poets
Emotional landscape: Tenderness, Longing, Joy
On a warm August morning in 1841, in the quiet Staffordshire village of Caverswall, Robert Williams Buchanan was born on August 18. He entered a world already marked by ideological fervor and social upheaval, for his father, Robert Buchanan senior, was no ordinary parent but a passionate advocate of Robert Owen's socialist schemes, traveling the country as an itinerant lecturer preaching cooperation and radical socia…
“Set me down as a fool if you like, but never doubt the friendship which makes me subscribe myself, yours always.”
Neighbourhood:
Love Poets, Pre-Raphaelite Poets, Victorian Poets
Emotional landscape: Sorrow, Despair, Longing
