Edmund William Gosse occupies a peculiar and fascinating position in the landscape of English literature. Neither wholly a major poet nor a minor footnote, he exists instead as a crucial connector, a literary ambassador who bridged the austere certainties of Victorian England with the modernist experiments of the twentieth century. Born on September 21, 1849, in London, and dying on May 16, 1928, in the same city, Go…
“The finest literature is that which most completely expresses the personality of its author.”
Neighbourhood:
Decadent Poets, Edwardian Poets, LGBTQ+ Poets, Love Poets, Victorian Poets
Emotional landscape: Tenderness, Peace, Longing
George Gascoigne, born about 1539 and dead on 7 October 1577, was one of the most adventurous and consequential writers of early Elizabethan England. Poet, translator, dramatist, critic, court entertainer, soldier, traveler, and sometime political aspirant, he lived with the instability and appetite that his writing so often dramatizes. His career was brief, troubled by debt, family conflict, legal suspicion, militar…
“The first and most necessary point that ever I found meet to be considered in making of a delectable poem is this, to ground it upon some fine invention. For it is not enough to roll in pleasant words, nor yet to thunder in rim, ram, ruff by letter, unless the invention have in it also aliquid salis.”
Neighbourhood:
Elizabethan Poets, Love Poets, Renaissance Poets
Emotional landscape: Tenderness, Peace, Joy
