Orrick Glenday Johns occupies a curious and fascinating position in American literary history. He was neither fully absorbed into the canon of the great modernists nor forgotten entirely by literary historians. Instead, he stands at the threshold between the nineteenth-century poetic tradition and the restless experimentation of the early twentieth century. His life and work reflect a moment of transition in American…
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
Orrick Johns
Poet B
Robert Louis Stevenson
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.
Strongly related
Their work already rhymes in the catalogue. The rest of this page is the story around that rhyme.
Biography 60%
Poems 79%
Blended 69%
Swap sides
Another related pair
Robert Louis Stevenson was born in Edinburgh on 13 November 1850, into a family whose public achievements seemed to prescribe his future long before he could choose one for himself. His father, Thomas Stevenson, was a distinguished civil engineer and designer of lighthouses, heir to a formidable Scottish professional dynasty. His mother, Margaret Isabella Balfour Stevenson, came from another prominent family; her fat…
“Nothing is so exhilarating as to be shot at without result.”
In time
Orrick Johns
Robert Louis Stevenson
1850
1946
They overlapped for 8 years (1887–1894).
When Orrick Johns was born, Robert Louis Stevenson was about 37.
Orrick Johns was about 7 when Robert Louis Stevenson died.
On the map
About 5,838 km separate Sturgis, Michigan, USA from Edinburgh, Scotland. Different countries, different weather — unless a poem carries one landscape into the other.
Robert Louis Stevenson
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
From the biographies
Orrick Johns: sturgis, michigan, asphalt and other poems, university of michigan, romantic tradition, lyric sensitivity, modern urban life, philosophical reflection, nineteenth-century tradition. Robert Louis Stevenson: edinburgh, thomas stevenson, fanny van de grift osbourne, strange case of dr jekyll and mr hyde, treasure island, the sea cook, an inland voyage, travels with a donkey in the cévennes.
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.
Orrick Johns
Robert Louis Stevenson
1890
Move to Samoa
Emotional landscapes
Orrick Johns: Sorrow, Despair, Irony. Robert Louis Stevenson: Peace, Joy, Wonder.