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.
Aphra Behn
Charlotte Smith
A random pair who overlapped in time and whose poems already rhyme in the catalogue — a way into poets you may not have met.
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…
“He knew what he was doing, and therefore could not be said to be mad.”
Charlotte Smith was born Charlotte Turner in London on 4 May 1749 and died at Tilford, near Farnham in Surrey, on 28 October 1806. During her lifetime she was known not only as a poet but as one of the most productive and commercially important writers in Britain. She published poetry, novels, children’s books, translations, and educational works while sustaining a large family and enduring a marriage, a debt crisis,…
“The indulgence with which the public has received these poems has encouraged the author to offer them again.”
About 102 km separate Wye, Kent, England from Stoke next Guildford, Surrey, England. Both have ground in England.
Distinctive words drawn from each poet’s critiqued poems — what they keep writing about, not just what their biographies mention.
Aphra Behn: restoration playwright, surinam, oroonoko, the rover, the forc'd marriage, astrea, willmore, charles ii. Charlotte Smith: london, elegiac sonnets, the old manor house, the emigrants, nicholas turner, benjamin smith, french revolution, georgian england.
The closest poem-to-poem matches in critique space — the sort of kinship a listener hears before the catalogue admits it.
Aphra Behn: Longing, Tenderness, Sensuality. Charlotte Smith: Sorrow, Despair, Longing.
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