Richard Tottel, born around 1528 or 1530 in the bustling cathedral city of Exeter in Devon, emerged from modest provincial roots to become one of the most transformative figures in the history of English literature. Though his primary trade was the printing of law books—volumes that shaped the legal minds of Tudor England—his name endures as the visionary behind *Songes and Sonettes*, better known today as *Tottel’s…
“That to have well written in verse, yea and in small parcels, deserveth great praise, the works of divers Latines, Italians, and other, do prove sufficiently.”
Neighbourhood:
Elizabethan Poets, Renaissance Poets
Emotional landscape: Despair, Sorrow, Longing
Alfred Tennyson, later Alfred, Lord Tennyson, was born on 6 August 1809 at Somersby rectory in Lincolnshire, England, and died on 6 October 1892 at Lurgashall in Sussex. During his long life he became the defining poetic voice of the Victorian age: at once a public laureate who wrote for national occasions and a private, searching poet whose work returned obsessively to bereavement, desire, religious uncertainty, mem…
“The happiness of a man in this life does not consist in the absence, but in the mastery, of his passions.”
Neighbourhood:
Devotional Poets, Dramatic Poets, Nature Poets, Victorian Poets
Emotional landscape: Wonder, Longing, Sorrow
