On the fifth of January 1885, in the bustling commercial heart of Milan, a child was born who would become one of Britain's most popular poets of the 1920s, yet whose name today is remembered primarily for a single, sardonic epigram. Humbert Wolfe was born as Umberto Wolff in Milan, Italy, to Martin Wolff, a German Jewish merchant, and Consuela Terraccini, an Italian Jew. This dual heritage, straddling Germanic and M…
“You can always tell a real friend: when you've made a fool of yourself he doesn't feel you've done a permanent job.”
Neighbourhood:
Edwardian Poets, Georgian Poets, Modernist Poets
Emotional landscape: Longing, Spirituality, Sorrow
Wilfrid Scawen Blunt, born on 17 August 1840 at Petworth in Sussex and dead on 10 September 1922 at Newbuildings Place, his Sussex home, lived a life unusually crowded with contradiction. He was an English gentleman who became one of Victorian Britain’s most persistent critics of empire; a formal, often old-fashioned poet who sought to make verse answer political injustice; a diplomat who abandoned official service i…
“War will be unpopular enough in England soon if it goes on as at present, and there will be a chance then for the weak nations to remain unmolested.”
Neighbourhood:
Irish Poets, Mystical & Spiritual Poets, Political Poets, Social Justice Poets, Victorian Poets
Emotional landscape: Sorrow, Despair, Longing