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…
“There is also a meditative, as well as a human, pathos; an enthusiastic, as well as an ordinary, sorrow.”
Neighbourhood:
Devotional Poets, Mystical & Spiritual Poets, Nature Poets, Political Poets, Romantic Poets
Emotional landscape: Wonder, Spirituality, Longing
In the gentle folds of Dorset's Blackmore Vale, where the River Stour meanders through meadows fringed with ancient oaks and the air hums with the songs of larks and the lowing of cattle, a voice arose that would forever capture the heartbeat of rural England. William Barnes, born on February 22, 1801, at Rushay Farm in the hamlet of Bagber near Sturminster Newton, emerged from humble farming stock to become one of t…
“Nature is the best school of art.”
Neighbourhood:
Folk & Ballad Poets, Nature Poets, Victorian Poets
Emotional landscape: Peace, Joy, Tenderness