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…
“I would rather write another merry song than waste my time and temper on critics.”
Neighbourhood:
Edwardian Poets, Georgian Poets, Nature Poets, Welsh Poets
Emotional landscape: Tenderness, Wonder, Longing
William Brighty Rands was born on 24 December 1823, in Chelsea, then a district on the western edge of London and already a place where commerce, domestic life, artistic ambition, and metropolitan poverty met in close quarters. He died on 23 April 1882, having lived only fifty-eight years, and his name is now far less familiar than the names of several Victorian writers whose work has dated more severely. Yet Rands o…
“I was taught by my parents that, if I was struck on the right cheek, I should turn the left, and that I was to die rather than smite again. I never struck a blow and never received one, and I used to believe firmly that an angel from heaven would help me if I needed it.”
Neighbourhood:
Children's Verse, Light Verse Poets, Nature Poets, Victorian Poets
Emotional landscape: Joy, Wonder, Irony
