Edward Taylor was born about 1642, probably in Sketchley, Leicestershire, England, into a world in which political upheaval and religious conviction entered ordinary life with unusual force. He died on 24 June 1729 in Westfield, Massachusetts, after nearly six decades as that frontier town’s minister, physician, teacher, community counselor, and private poet. During his lifetime he was known chiefly as a learned and…
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
Edward Taylor
Poet B
John Bunyan
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 69%
Blended 69%
Swap sides
Another related pair
John Bunyan, baptized on 30 November 1628 and dead on 31 August 1688, rose from the working life of rural Bedfordshire to become one of the most influential English religious writers of all time. Though he is best known as the author of The Pilgrim’s Progress, a book whose characters and phrases entered the language of generations of readers, Bunyan was also a preacher, controversialist, autobiographer, pastor, poet,…
“You have not lived today until you have done something for someone who can never repay you.”
In time
Edward Taylor
John Bunyan
1628
1729
They overlapped for 47 years (1642–1688).
When Edward Taylor was born, John Bunyan was about 14.
Edward Taylor was about 46 when John Bunyan died.
On the map
About 77 km separate Sketchley, Leicestershire, England from Elstow, Bedfordshire, England. Shared ground: United Kingdom.
Edward Taylor
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
From the biographies
religious
biblical
Edward Taylor: sketchley, leicestershire, westfield, harvard college, elizabeth fitch, james fitch, the lay-man’s lamentation, upon wedlock, and death of children. John Bunyan: bedfordshire, elstow, the pilgrim’s progress, grace abounding to the chief of sinners, english civil war, john gifford, tinker, baptism by immersion.
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.
1649
Trial of Charles I
1651
Battle of Worcester
Edward Taylor
1668
Migration to America
John Bunyan
1688
John Bunyan's Death
Emotional landscapes
Edward Taylor: Spirituality, Sorrow, Despair. John Bunyan: Spirituality, Peace, Joy.