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
Lady Grizel Baillie, born Grizel Hume on 25 December 1665 and dead on 6 December 1746, occupies an unusual and compelling place in Scottish cultural memory. She is remembered at once as a courageous child of the Covenanter crisis, an exile, a devoted wife and mother, an exacting manager of a great household, the keeper of extraordinary domestic accounts, and the probable author of songs that became part of Scotland’s…
Neighbourhood:
Devotional Poets, Scottish Poets, Women Poets
Emotional landscape: Longing, Sorrow, Tenderness
