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
Charles Wesley
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 72%
Blended 72%
Swap sides
Another related pair
Charles Wesley was born on 18 December 1707 at Epworth, Lincolnshire, into a household that was at once crowded, precarious, intellectually ambitious, and intensely religious. He was the eighteenth child of Samuel Wesley, rector of Epworth, and Susanna Wesley, whose formidable discipline and devotional intelligence made her one of the great formative presences in the history of English Methodism. Nineteen children we…
In time
Edward Taylor
Charles Wesley
1642
1788
They overlapped for 23 years (1707–1729).
When Charles Wesley was born, Edward Taylor was about 65.
Charles Wesley was about 22 when Edward Taylor died.
On the map
About 117 km separate Sketchley, Leicestershire, England from Epworth, Lincolnshire, England. Both have ground in England.
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.
No overlapping top terms in the poem critiques — any kinship may sit in mood rather than vocabulary.
From the biographies
religious
divine
Edward Taylor: sketchley, leicestershire, westfield, harvard college, elizabeth fitch, james fitch, the lay-man’s lamentation, upon wedlock, and death of children. Charles Wesley: epworth, lincolnshire, john wesley, george whitefield, methodism, hymns and sacred poems, o for a thousand tongues to sing, fort frederica.
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.
Edward Taylor
1668
Migration to America
Charles Wesley
Emotional landscapes
Edward Taylor: Spirituality, Sorrow, Despair. Charles Wesley: Spirituality, Peace, Joy.