Thomas Love Peacock was born on 18 October 1785 at Weymouth, Dorset, a coastal town whose mixture of fashionable society, maritime activity, and open sea offered an early imaginative setting for a writer who would remain drawn throughout his life to rivers, voyages, landscapes, and the contrast between civilized conversation and the unruly forces of nature. He was the only child of Samuel Peacock, a London glass merc…
“The poetry of your Adonais is very beautiful; but when you write you never think of your audience. The number who understand you, and sympathise with you, is very small.”
Neighbourhood:
Nature Poets, Romantic Poets, Victorian Poets
Emotional landscape: Spirituality, Peace, Longing
James Henry Leigh Hunt, known throughout his literary life as Leigh Hunt, was born on 19 October 1784 at Southgate, then a village north of London, and died at Putney on 28 August 1859. He was a poet, essayist, journalist, editor, critic, translator, dramatist, and indefatigable friend to writers whose fame would eventually eclipse his own. To describe him merely as a minor Romantic poet is to miss the range of his a…
“The cultivation of pleasant associations is, next to health, the great secret of enjoyment.”
Neighbourhood:
Love Poets, Nature Poets, Political Poets, Romantic Poets
Emotional landscape: Tenderness, Joy, Wonder