Aphra Behn, born around 1640 and dead on 16 April 1689, occupies a singular position in English literary history: she was a successful Restoration playwright, a daring poet, an innovator in prose fiction, a political writer, and, most importantly for later generations, a woman who openly made writing her profession. Her precise origins remain uncertain, a fact that has invited both scholarly caution and romantic spec…
“I do not pretend, in giving you the history of this royal slave, to entertain my reader with the adventures of a feigned hero.”
Neighbourhood:
LGBTQ+ Poets, Love Poets, Political Poets, Restoration Poets, Women Poets
Emotional landscape: Longing, Tenderness, Sensuality
Elizabeth Craven, later Elizabeth, Margravine of Anspach, was born Elizabeth Berkeley on 17 December 1750, probably at Berkeley Castle in Gloucestershire, and died in Naples on 13 January 1828. She lived with unusual visibility across the later eighteenth century and the opening decades of the nineteenth: aristocrat, wife and mother, theatrical author, poet, travel writer, correspondent, salon hostess, political obse…
“The greatest part of the public has my permission to doze over the following sheets, as I expose them to the malice of my enemies, without reserve, merely to oblige many of my friends.”
Neighbourhood:
Devotional Poets, Romantic Poets, Women Poets
Emotional landscape: Spirituality, Joy, Peace
