Charles Cotton was born on 28 April 1630 at Beresford Hall, near Alstonefield, on the Staffordshire side of the Peak District, and died in London on 16 February 1687. He belonged to that striking generation of English writers whose lives were shaped by civil war, regicide, Restoration, religious division, and the gradual reorganization of literary culture around print, patronage, and metropolitan fashion. Yet Cotton’…
“Though fools spurn Hymen's gentle powers, we, who improve his golden hours, by sweet experience know that marriage, rightly understood, gives to the tender and the good a paradise below.”
Neighbourhood:
Cavalier Poets, Light Verse Poets, Love Poets, Nature Poets, Restoration Poets
Emotional landscape: Longing, Sorrow, Despair
Anne Bradstreet was born Anne Dudley in 1612 in Northampton, England, into a family unusually well positioned to cultivate both religious seriousness and intellectual ambition. Her precise birth date is uncertain, though she was baptized on March 20, 1612. She entered the world during the reign of James I, in an England defined by political conflict, religious controversy, expanding trade, and the vigorous literary a…
“Sweet words are like honey, a little may refresh, but too much gluts the stomach.”
Neighbourhood:
American Poets, Colonial American Poets, Devotional Poets, Restoration Poets, Women Poets
Emotional landscape: Longing, Spirituality, Sorrow