In the rich tapestry of nineteenth-century American literature and reform, few figures shine as brightly—or with as enduring a flame—as Frances Ellen Watkins Harper. Born into freedom yet forged in the fires of racial injustice, she emerged as a poet of profound moral vision, a tireless abolitionist lecturer, a pioneering novelist, and a champion of women’s rights, temperance, and Black uplift. Her life spanned the a…
“But two things are wanting in American civilization: a keener and deeper, broader and tenderer sense of justice; a sense of humanity.”
Neighbourhood:
African American Poets, American Poets, Political Poets, Social Justice Poets, Women Poets
Emotional landscape: Sorrow, Despair, Spirituality
Alphonse de Lamartine was born on 21 October 1790 in Mâcon, in the Burgundy region of eastern France, and died in Paris on 1 March 1869. Poet, novelist, historian, diplomat, parliamentarian, and revolutionary statesman, he lived at the point where literary Romanticism and modern French political life came into being. Few writers have more completely embodied the nineteenth-century belief that eloquence might be a pub…
“On n'a pas deux cœurs, un pour les animaux et un pour les hommes. On a un cœur ou on n'en a pas.”
Neighbourhood:
Nature Poets, Romantic Poets, Symbolist Poets
Emotional landscape: Longing, Sorrow, Despair
