Samuel Johnson stands as one of the most imposing and fascinating figures in the history of English literature, a man whose physical bulk was matched only by the magnitude of his intellectual achievements and the breadth of his influence on the language itself. Born on September 18, 1709, in Lichfield, Staffordshire, and dying in London on December 13, 1784, Johnson's seventy-five years encompassed a journey from pro…
“There are, indeed, few kinds of composition from which an author, however learned or ingenious, can hope a long continuance of fame.”
Neighbourhood:
Augustan Poets, Devotional Poets, Light Verse Poets
Emotional landscape: Irony, Sorrow, Despair
William Congreve, born on 24 January 1670 and dead on 19 January 1729, occupies a singular place in English literary history: he was the most polished comic dramatist of the Restoration and one of the crucial artists through whom the exuberant theatre of the late seventeenth century became the poised, urbane literature of the Augustan age. His surviving dramatic career was astonishingly brief. Between 1693 and 1700 h…
Neighbourhood:
Augustan Poets, Light Verse Poets, Restoration Poets, Satirical Poets
Emotional landscape: Sorrow, Longing, Tenderness
