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…
“This is a terrible age of unfaith. I hate utter unfaith, I cannot endure that men should sacrifice everything at the cold altar of what with their imperfect knowledge they choose to call truth and reason.”
Neighbourhood:
Devotional Poets, Dramatic Poets, Nature Poets, Victorian Poets
Emotional landscape: Wonder, Longing, Sorrow
Giacomo Leopardi was born in Recanati, in the Marches, then part of the Papal States, on 29 June 1798, and died in Naples on 14 June 1837, only weeks before his thirty-ninth birthday. His short life produced one of the most searching bodies of poetry and prose in modern European literature. He is often introduced as Italy’s supreme poet of pessimism, and there is truth in the description, but it is insufficient if it…
“Children find everything in nothing; adults find nothing in everything.”
Neighbourhood:
Death & Mortality, Love Poets, Nature Poets, Romantic Poets
Emotional landscape: Longing, Sorrow, Spirituality
