Howard Phelps Putnam was born in 1894 in Allston, Massachusetts, then a distinctly suburban and semi-rural part of Boston, and died on July 3, 1948, in Jamaica Plain. He belonged to the generation of American writers formed between the confident cultural inheritance of the nineteenth century and the disillusioning modernity of the First World War. His reputation never became as large as those of several Yale contempo…
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
Howard Phelps Putnam
Poet B
Mary Coleridge
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 59%
Poems 83%
Blended 70%
Swap sides
Another related pair
In the twilight of the Victorian era, when the literary world was dominated by towering figures like Tennyson, Browning, and Swinburne, a quieter voice emerged from the shadows of London's Hyde Park Square. Mary Elizabeth Coleridge, born on September 23, 1861, would prove to be one of the most intriguing and underappreciated literary figures of her generation. Her life, spanning forty-six years until her death on Aug…
“It was delightful to hear of your looking out at the stars for sympathy when you felt low, and getting better directly; they have so often comforted me.”
In time
Howard Phelps Putnam
Mary Coleridge
1861
1948
They overlapped for 14 years (1894–1907).
When Howard Phelps Putnam was born, Mary Coleridge was about 33.
Howard Phelps Putnam was about 13 when Mary Coleridge died.
On the map
About 5,261 km separate Boston, Massachusetts, USA from Hyde Park Square, London, England. Different countries, different weather — unless a poem carries one landscape into the other.
Howard Phelps Putnam
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
social
Howard Phelps Putnam: allston, massachusetts, jamaica plain, trinc, the five seasons, the earthly comedy, harvard, massachusetts, skull and bones, stephen vincent benét. Mary Coleridge: london, hyde park square, samuel taylor coleridge, anodos, fancy's following, the king with two faces, christina rossetti, richard watson dixon.
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.
1895
The X-Ray Discovery
Howard Phelps Putnam
Mary Coleridge
Emotional landscapes
Howard Phelps Putnam: Irony, Longing, Fear. Mary Coleridge: Sorrow, Longing, Despair.