Lady Mary Wortley Montagu, born Mary Pierrepont in May 1689 and dead on 21 August 1762, was one of the most formidable and variously gifted figures of the eighteenth century: poet, letter writer, satirist, aristocrat, traveller, political observer, mother, friend, adversary, and advocate for a medical practice that helped alter the history of public health. She lived in an age that praised female modesty while avidly…
“I have no notion of loving people by halves; it is not my nature. My attachments are always excessively strong.”
Neighbourhood:
Augustan Poets, LGBTQ+ Poets, Love Poets, Women Poets
Emotional landscape: Longing, Spirituality, Tenderness
James Beattie, born on 25 October 1735 and dead on 18 August 1803, occupied an unusual and revealing place in eighteenth-century British culture. He was at once a Scottish professor, a poet of landscape and sensibility, a popular moral philosopher, a Christian apologist, a music lover, a man of sociable ambition, and a bereaved father whose final years were darkened by illness and loss. In his own lifetime he was fam…
“The aim of education should be to teach us rather how to think, than what to think—rather to improve our minds, so as to enable us to think for ourselves, than to load the memory with the thoughts of other men.”
Neighbourhood:
Enlightenment Poets, Georgian Poets, Nature Poets, Scottish Poets
Emotional landscape: Sorrow, Tenderness, Spirituality
