Owen Seaman, born on 18 September 1861 in Shrewsbury, Shropshire, and dead on 2 February 1936, occupied an unusually influential place in British literary culture for a man whose name is now less familiar than the names of many writers he parodied, edited, or helped to popularize. Poet, humorist, classicist, journalist, critic, lecturer, and long-serving editor of Punch, he was one of the most conspicuous representat…
“I should indeed be ungrateful if after an entertainment so smoothly and dexterously administered I were to be captious about origins or other matters of pedantry.”
Neighbourhood:
Edwardian Poets, Georgian Poets, Light Verse Poets
Emotional landscape: Irony, Sorrow, Anger
William Ernest Henley was born on 23 August 1849 in Gloucester, England, and died on 11 July 1903 at Woking, Surrey. He occupies an unusual place in English literary history: widely remembered by the public for a single short poem, “Invictus,” yet far more consequential in his own age as a poet, editor, critic, journalist, dramatist, and formidable presence in literary society. Henley’s life was shaped by physical pa…
“His sense of verbal colour and verbal music is beyond criticism; his rhythmical capacity is something prodigious.”
Neighbourhood:
Confessional Poets, Death & Mortality, Victorian Poets
Emotional landscape: Sorrow, Despair, Longing