In the long history of American literary scholarship, few figures embody the transition from nineteenth-century genteel letters to modern academic criticism as thoroughly as Henry Augustin Beers. Born on July 2, 1847, in Buffalo, New York, and dying on September 7, 1926, in New Haven, Connecticut, Beers spent nearly his entire adult life at Yale University, where his slight frame became a beloved fixture on campus fo…
“He made the English language an organ of expression unexcelled in the history of literature. Yet he is not an English poet simply, but a world-poet.”
Neighbourhood:
American Poets, Edwardian Poets, Nature Poets, Victorian Poets
Emotional landscape: Wonder, Longing, Spirituality
William Edward Burghardt Du Bois entered the world on February 23, 1868, in the small, rolling hills of Great Barrington, Massachusetts—a town where the air carried the crisp scent of New England pines and the quiet rhythms of rural life. Born into a family of mixed African, Dutch, and French Huguenot heritage, he was the son of Alfred Du Bois, a restless barber and laborer of Haitian descent who soon vanished from t…
“The problem of the twentieth century is the problem of the color-line.”
Neighbourhood:
African American Poets, American Poets, Harlem Renaissance, Political Poets, Social Justice Poets
Emotional landscape: Sorrow, Despair, Longing
