John Wilmot, second Earl of Rochester, was born on 1 April 1647 at Ditchley Park in Oxfordshire and died on 26 July 1680 at Woodstock Park, aged only thirty-three. Few English poets have acquired a reputation so vivid, so unstable, and so inseparable from scandal. Rochester has been remembered as a court rake, libertine, seducer, duelist, drunkard, satirist, skeptic, naval volunteer, theatrical patron, and, in the fi…
“Before I got married I had six theories about bringing up children; now I have six children and no theories.”
Neighbourhood:
Cavalier Poets, Decadent Poets, Restoration Poets, Women Poets
Emotional landscape: Longing, Sorrow, Despair
Isaac Watts was born in Southampton, England, on 17 July 1674, into a household where religious conviction was inseparable from risk. He died on 25 November 1748, having become one of the most widely read and sung English writers of his age. To later generations he would be called the “father of English hymnody,” a title that is not merely honorary. Before Watts, English Protestant congregations, especially among the…
“The passions are the winds of life; the sails of the vessel are spread by them, and without them the vessel would scarcely move.”
Neighbourhood:
Devotional Poets, Hymn Writers, Victorian Poets
Emotional landscape: Spirituality, Sorrow, Despair
