William Blake was born on 28 November 1757 at 28 Broad Street, Soho, London, into a city that was becoming the commercial, imperial, and intellectual center of Britain. He died seventy years later, on 12 August 1827, in a modest room south of the Thames, leaving behind work that had attracted only a small and sometimes bewildered audience during his lifetime. Yet Blake would eventually be recognized as one of the mos…
“What is Grand is necessarily obscure to Weak men. That which can be made Explicit to the Idiot is not worth my care.”
Neighbourhood:
Devotional Poets, Hymn Writers, Mystical & Spiritual Poets, Political Poets, Romantic Poets
Emotional landscape: Tenderness, Wonder, Spirituality
Thomas Chatterton was born in Bristol on 20 November 1752 and died in London on 24 August 1770, not yet eighteen years old. Few English poets have left behind a life so brief, so fiercely productive, and so persistently mythologized. His name has become almost inseparable from the image of the neglected young genius: a boy of provincial poverty who invented a medieval poetic world, attempted to conquer the London lit…
“I give my Abstinence to the Company at the Sheriffs Annual Feast in general, more particularly the Aldermen.”
Neighbourhood:
Death & Mortality, Folk & Ballad Poets, Romantic Poets
Emotional landscape: Spirituality, Sorrow, Wonder
