On a summer day in June 1892, in the bustling heart of London, Edward Richard Buxton Shanks entered a world on the cusp of profound transformation. Born on June 11th into a comfortable middle-class family, the infant who would become one of the first recipients of Britain's most prestigious literary honor could hardly have imagined the tumultuous century that awaited him. His life would span two world wars, witness t…
Compare Poets
Pick two poets who seem to have nothing to do with each other — a Gothic American and a pastoral Englishman, say — and see where the catalogue actually joins them: overlapping years, shared ground, distinctive themes, and the poems that secretly rhyme.
Poet A
Edward Shanks
Poet B
John Drinkwater
Compare two related contemporaries
A random pair who overlapped in time and whose poems already rhyme in the catalogue — a way into poets you may not have met.
Kindred spirits
Their work already rhymes in the catalogue. The rest of this page is the story around that rhyme.
Biography 73%
Poems 87%
Blended 79%
Swap sides
Another related pair
John Drinkwater, born on 1 June 1882 and dead on 25 March 1937, was one of the most visible English men of letters of the years between the First World War and the rise of high modernism. Poet, playwright, actor, theatre manager, critic, lecturer, anthologist, and autobiographer, he possessed a public versatility that can make him seem difficult to place in retrospect. He was never a modernist in the manner of T. S.…
“The question, “What is poetry?” has been answered innumerable times, often by the subtlest and clearest minds, and as many times has it been answered differently.”
In time
Edward Shanks
John Drinkwater
1882
1953
They overlapped for 46 years (1892–1937).
When Edward Shanks was born, John Drinkwater was about 10.
Edward Shanks was about 45 when John Drinkwater died.
On the map
About 11 km separate London, England from Dorset Villa, Leytonstone, Essex. Both have ground in London.
Edward Shanks
Themes they return to
Distinctive words drawn from each poet’s critiqued poems — what they keep writing about, not just what their biographies mention.
Shared
Edward Shanks only
From the biographies
poems
Edward Shanks: london, trinity college, georgian poetry movement, edward marsh, the queen of china, hawthornden prize, the old indispensables, the people of the ruins. John Drinkwater: leytonstone, birmingham, georgian poetry, abraham lincoln, moonlit apples, tides of 1917, barry jackson, the death of leander.
Poems that secretly rhyme
The closest poem-to-poem matches in critique space — the sort of kinship a listener hears before the catalogue admits it.
The world around them
While their lives overlapped
Notable events from the years they were both alive.
Edward Shanks
1912
Editor of Granta
John Drinkwater
1908
First Published Work
Emotional landscapes
Edward Shanks: Longing, Sorrow, Wonder. John Drinkwater: Sorrow, Longing, Despair.