Thomas d’Urfey, born about 1653 and dead on 26 February 1723, was one of the most tireless entertainers in English literary history: a playwright, lyricist, ballad-writer, compiler, performer, political satirist, and convivial public personality whose career stretched from the high Restoration of Charles II to the early Hanoverian age. He has seldom occupied the first rank in conventional histories of English literat…
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
Thomas d'Urfey
Poet B
Elizabeth Thomas
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 57%
Poems 73%
Blended 64%
Swap sides
Another related pair
Elizabeth Thomas, who wrote under the name “Corinna,” was born in 1675 and died in 1731. She belongs to that large and fascinating company of early eighteenth-century women writers whose lives survive only in fragments: poems, letters, dedications, hostile anecdotes, printers’ advertisements, and the recollections of men whose literary fame later eclipsed theirs. Yet Thomas was far more than a minor satellite of Alex…
In time
Thomas d'Urfey
Elizabeth Thomas
1653
1731
They overlapped for 49 years (1675–1723).
When Elizabeth Thomas was born, Thomas d'Urfey was about 22.
Elizabeth Thomas was about 48 when Thomas d'Urfey died.
On the map
About 142 km separate Devon, England from Skenfrith, Monmouthshire, Wales. Shared ground: United Kingdom.
Thomas d'Urfey
Themes they return to
Distinctive words drawn from each poet’s critiqued poems — what they keep writing about, not just what their biographies mention.
Shared
Thomas d'Urfey only
From the biographies
social
Thomas d'Urfey: exeter, charles ii, james butler, the siege of memphis, madam fickle, a fond husband, squire oldsapp, the comical history of don quixote. Elizabeth Thomas: skenfrith, monmouthshire, corinna, richard gwinnett, pylades, alexander pope, miscellany poems on several subjects, eighteenth-century women writers.
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
While their lives overlapped
Notable events from the years they were both alive.
1694
Matsuo Bashō dies
Thomas d'Urfey
Elizabeth Thomas
Emotional landscapes
Thomas d'Urfey: Joy, Tenderness, Wonder. Elizabeth Thomas: Despair, Sorrow, Anger.