William Ernest Henley was born on 23 August 1849 in Gloucester, England, and died on 11 July 1903 at Woking, Surrey. He occupies an unusual place in English literary history: widely remembered by the public for a single short poem, “Invictus,” yet far more consequential in his own age as a poet, editor, critic, journalist, dramatist, and formidable presence in literary society. Henley’s life was shaped by physical pa…
“In the world of man's creation his people are citizens to match the noblest; they are of the aristocracy of the imagination, the peers in their own right of the society of romance.”
Neighbourhood:
Confessional Poets, Death & Mortality, Victorian Poets
Emotional landscape: Sorrow, Despair, Longing
William Whiting was born on 1 November 1825 in Kensington, then a rapidly changing western district of London, and died in Winchester on 3 May 1878. He is remembered above all as the author of “Eternal Father, Strong to Save,” the hymn later known throughout much of the English-speaking world as the Navy Hymn. That single work has achieved a cultural reach far beyond the scale of its author’s surviving literary reput…
Neighbourhood:
Devotional Poets, Hymn Writers, Victorian Poets
Emotional landscape: Spirituality, Peace, Tenderness
