Joseph Addison, born on 1 May 1672 at Milston in Wiltshire and dead on 17 June 1719 at Holland House in Kensington, was one of the central makers of modern English prose. Poet, critic, dramatist, journalist, civil servant, parliamentarian, and Whig public intellectual, he achieved an influence out of proportion to the comparatively small bulk of his writing. His greatest achievement was not a single poem or play, tho…
“Of all the diversions of life, there is none so proper to fill up its empty spaces as the reading of useful and entertaining authors.”
Neighbourhood:
Augustan Poets, Hymn Writers, Light Verse Poets, Political Poets, Women Poets
Emotional landscape: Spirituality, Peace, Wonder
Mark Akenside was born on 9 November 1721 in Newcastle upon Tyne, and died in London on 23 June 1770. He was one of the most ambitious English poets of the mid-eighteenth century: a physician of substantial professional distinction, a political partisan, a learned student of philosophy and natural science, and the author of The Pleasures of Imagination, a poem that sought nothing less than to explain how the mind rec…
Neighbourhood:
Augustan Poets, Georgian Poets, Metaphysical Poets
Emotional landscape: Longing, Tenderness, Joy