W. de Wycombe is one of those medieval creative figures whose name survives more clearly than the person behind it. The surviving evidence does not permit a conventional biography with secure dates, family history, offices held, or a documented place of burial. He is generally treated as an English poet and composer active in the thirteenth century, and the “W.” is often expanded as William, though even that expansio…
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
W. de Wycombe
Poet B
John Farmer
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 75%
Blended 75%
Swap sides
Another related pair
John Farmer, born around 1570 and believed to have died sometime after 1601, perhaps as late as about 1605, occupies a curious and attractive place in the history of English Renaissance music. He was neither as prolific as Thomas Morley nor as institutionally prominent as William Byrd; he did not leave behind a large body of sacred music, a long record of court employment, or a biography richly documented by letters…
In time
W. de Wycombe
John Farmer
1270
1605
Their lives did not overlap.
240 years separate the earlier death from the later birth.
On the map
About 51 km separate Wycombe, Buckinghamshire, England from London, England. Shared ground: United Kingdom.
Themes they return to
Distinctive words drawn from each poet’s critiqued poems — what they keep writing about, not just what their biographies mention.
No overlapping top terms in the poem critiques — any kinship may sit in mood rather than vocabulary.
From the biographies
W. de Wycombe: high wycombe, sumer is icumen in, thirteenth century, reading abbey, medieval english culture, polyphony, vernacular song, latin learning. John Farmer: english madrigals, christ church cathedral, edward somerset, fair phyllis, the first set of english madrigals, elizabethan society, renaissance music, madrigal genre.
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
W. de Wycombe
1325
Literary Patronage
John Farmer
1602
Relocation to London
Emotional landscapes
W. de Wycombe: Joy, Wonder, Peace. John Farmer: Tenderness, Joy, Longing.