In the landscape of Victorian poetry, few figures embodied the tensions between tradition and modernity, between Welsh heritage and English literary ambition, quite like Sir Lewis Morris. Born on a cold January morning in 1833 in Carmarthen, Wales, and dying in the twilight of the Edwardian era in 1907, Morris lived through one of the most transformative periods in British history. His life and work provide a fascina…
“It is absurd to suppose that there can ever be any lack of subjects, so long as man has a history, so long as there are passions - love and hate, and greed and lust, and jealousy - in the world.”
Neighbourhood:
Edwardian Poets, Love Poets, Nature Poets, Romantic Poets, Victorian Poets, Welsh Poets
Emotional landscape: Longing, Sorrow, Despair
Francis Hastings Doyle, born on 21 August 1810 and dead on 8 June 1888, belonged to that characteristic Victorian class of cultivated public men for whom poetry was not an isolated vocation but one element in a life shaped by education, law, inherited social position, public duty, and moral reflection. He was a barrister, a baronet, an Oxford professor, and a poet whose best-known verses entered the popular bloodstre…
“Though this education had been carried on in a somewhat abnormal fashion, by conversation rather than by books, it was not, in my judgment, any the worse on that account.”
Neighbourhood:
Social Justice Poets, Victorian Poets
Emotional landscape: Spirituality, Wonder, Sorrow