William Cartwright was born on 1 September 1611 at Northway, near Tewkesbury in Gloucestershire, and died at Oxford on 29 November 1643. His life was brief even by the precarious standards of the seventeenth century, but it was remarkably crowded: he was a poet, playwright, scholar, university teacher, Anglican clergyman, royalist, and celebrated preacher. To his contemporaries he seemed a figure of unusual promise,…
“it was his happiness that he neither heard nor read any thing vulgar, weak or raw, till his mind was fixed to notions exact as reason and as high as fancy”
Neighbourhood:
Cavalier Poets, Death & Mortality, Devotional Poets, Dramatic Poets, Love Poets, Metaphysical Poets, Renaissance Poets
Emotional landscape: Longing, Sorrow, Despair
In the pantheon of English literature, few figures loom as large or cast as long a shadow as John Dryden. Born on August 9, 1631, in the village of Aldwincle All Saints in Northamptonshire, England, and dying on May 12, 1700, in London, Dryden lived through one of the most turbulent periods in British history. His lifetime spanned the English Civil War, the execution of Charles I, the Interregnum under Oliver Cromwel…
“The end of poetry is to instruct, and the end of instruction is to please.”
Neighbourhood:
Augustan Poets, Dramatic Poets, Love Poets, Political Poets, Restoration Poets
Emotional landscape: Longing, Tenderness, Sensuality
