In the last week of December 1898, an aging schoolteacher in California completed a poem that would transform American literature and launch a national debate about labor, justice, and the human cost of industrial progress. Within weeks, Edwin Markham's "The Man with the Hoe" catapulted him from obscurity to international fame, earning him recognition as the "Dean of American Poetry" and the "Laureate of Labor." His…
“We are blind until we see that in the human plan nothing is worth the making if it does not make the man.”
Neighbourhood:
American Poets, Nature Poets, Political Poets, Social Justice Poets, Victorian Poets
Emotional landscape: Spirituality, Wonder, Peace
Andrew Barton Paterson, known to generations of readers as “Banjo” Paterson, was born on 17 February 1864 at Narrambla station, near Orange in New South Wales. He died in Sydney on 5 February 1941, twelve days short of his seventy-seventh birthday. Between those dates he became one of the most familiar literary voices in Australia: poet, journalist, solicitor, war correspondent, editor, soldier, horseman, storyteller…
“I meet all sorts of people from Field Marshals to buffalo shooters and I would like to try getting interviews with them and working in as much information as possible about their lives.”
Neighbourhood:
Folk & Ballad Poets, Nature Poets, Poet-Musicians
Emotional landscape: Wonder, Joy, Irony
