Thomas Paine, born 9 February 1737 and dead on 8 June 1809, was one of the most consequential writers of the revolutionary Atlantic world. He was not primarily a poet in the conventional sense, nor should his occasional verses be allowed to obscure the achievement for which he is remembered: he made political argument into a popular literary force. In pamphlets, newspaper essays, public letters, and philosophical tre…
“The world is my country, all mankind are my brethren, and to do good is my religion.”
Neighbourhood:
American Poets, Enlightenment Poets, Political Poets, Social Justice Poets
Emotional landscape: Wonder, Sensuality, Joy
Thomas Babington Macaulay was born on 25 October 1800 at Rothley Temple in Leicestershire and died on 28 December 1859 at Kensington, London. He was at once a poet, essayist, parliamentarian, colonial administrator, historian, reviewer, and one of the most commanding prose stylists in nineteenth-century English. To modern readers his name often summons the grand certainty of Victorian “Whig history,” the tendency to…
“At last I have attained true glory. As I walked through Fleet Street the day before yesterday, I saw a copy of Hume at a bookseller's window with the following label: Only 2l. 2s. Hume's History of England in eight volumes, highly valuable as an introduction to Macaulay.”
Neighbourhood:
Folk & Ballad Poets, Social Justice Poets, Victorian Poets
Emotional landscape: Sorrow, Despair, Longing
