In the quiet market town of Woodbridge, Suffolk, where the River Deben winds its way toward the North Sea, lived one of the 19th century's most prolific yet paradoxical literary figures. Bernard Barton (1784-1849) occupied a unique position in English literature—a devout Quaker who found himself torn between the commercial demands of banking and the irrepressible call of poetry. His life story reads like a gentle reb…
“No age, sex, or condition is above or below the absolute necessity of modesty; but without it one is vastly beneath the rank of man.”
Neighbourhood:
Devotional Poets, Hymn Writers, Romantic Poets
Emotional landscape: Spirituality, Wonder, Peace
William Wordsworth was born on 7 April 1770 in Cockermouth, Cumberland, in the northwestern corner of England, and died on 23 April 1850 at Rydal Mount in the Lake District. Few poets have altered English literary culture so thoroughly. With Samuel Taylor Coleridge, Wordsworth helped establish the principles of British Romanticism: a new seriousness about ordinary life, a conviction that emotional experience could be…
“The end of Poetry is to produce excitement in co-existence with an overbalance of pleasure.”
Neighbourhood:
Devotional Poets, Mystical & Spiritual Poets, Nature Poets, Political Poets, Romantic Poets
Emotional landscape: Wonder, Spirituality, Longing
