Philip James Bailey was born in Nottingham on 22 April 1816 and died there on 6 September 1902, after a long life in which one early work made him, for a time, one of the most discussed poets in the English-speaking world. His name is now chiefly attached to Festus, the immense dramatic poem first published in 1839, but Bailey’s career was more than the history of a single Victorian bestseller. It was the history of…
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
Philip James Bailey
Poet B
Lionel Johnson
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 73%
Blended 73%
Swap sides
Another related pair
Lionel Pigot Johnson was born on 15 March 1867 at Broadstairs, Kent, and died in London on 4 October 1902. His life lasted only thirty-five years, yet it occupied a peculiarly important position in the literary history of the 1890s. He was a poet of the English Decadence, a Catholic convert, an Irish cultural nationalist of a nuanced and literary kind, a gifted critic, and a man whose private suffering became insepar…
In time
Philip James Bailey
Lionel Johnson
1816
1902
They overlapped for 36 years (1867–1902).
When Lionel Johnson was born, Philip James Bailey was about 51.
On the map
About 250 km separate Nottingham, England from Broadstairs, Kent, England. Both have ground in England and London.
Philip James Bailey
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
religious
history
Philip James Bailey: nottingham, thomas bailey, anne reed, universalist theology, romantic poetry, benjamin carpenter, the angel world, the mystic. Lionel Johnson: broadstairs, london, irish cultural nationalist, english decadence, poems, by the statue of king charles at charing cross, the dark angel, arthur symons.
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.
Philip James Bailey
1840
Called to the Bar
Lionel Johnson
Emotional landscapes
Philip James Bailey: Peace, Joy, Wonder. Lionel Johnson: Spirituality, Sorrow, Peace.