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…
“let the poet first consult his own heart, as I have done, and leave the rest to posterity,—to, I hope, an improving posterity.”
Neighbourhood:
Devotional Poets, Mystical & Spiritual Poets, Nature Poets, Political Poets, Romantic Poets
Emotional landscape: Wonder, Spirituality, Longing
Isobel Pagan, known in her own district as Tibbie Pagan, was born about 1740, probably near Nithhead in the parish of New Cumnock, Ayrshire, and died at Muirkirk on 3 November 1821. Her dates alone suggest a life that crossed extraordinary changes in Scottish society: she was born before the great age of Robert Burns, lived through the American and French Revolutions, witnessed the expansion of mining and ironworking…
“Was not that great nonsense?”
Neighbourhood:
Folk & Ballad Poets, Romantic Poets, Scottish Poets, Women Poets
Emotional landscape: Longing, Tenderness, Sorrow
