William Wordsworth was born on 7 April 1770 in Cockermouth, Cumberland, in the northwestern corner of England, and died on 23 April 1850 at Rydal Mount in the Lake District. Few poets have altered English literary culture so thoroughly. With Samuel Taylor Coleridge, Wordsworth helped establish the principles of British Romanticism: a new seriousness about ordinary life, a conviction that emotional experience could be…
“Of genius the only proof is, the act of doing well what is worthy to be done, and what was never done before.”
Neighbourhood:
Devotional Poets, Mystical & Spiritual Poets, Nature Poets, Political Poets, Romantic Poets
Emotional landscape: Wonder, Spirituality, Longing
The Victorian era produced many remarkable figures who straddled the worlds of literature and public service, but few navigated this dual existence with quite the complexity of Edward Robert Bulwer-Lytton, 1st Earl of Lytton (1831-1891), better known to the literary world by his pen name Owen Meredith. Born into literary aristocracy and destined for diplomatic greatness, Lytton embodied the tensions and contradiction…
“The true spirit of conversation consists more in bringing out the cleverness of others than in showing a great deal of it yourself.”
Neighbourhood:
Decadent Poets, Symbolist Poets, Victorian Poets
Emotional landscape: Wonder, Spirituality, Longing
