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 a special character of greatness about humility for it implies that a man can, in an unusual degree, estimate the greatness of what is above us.”
Neighbourhood:
Devotional Poets, Mystical & Spiritual Poets, Nature Poets, Political Poets, Romantic Poets
Emotional landscape: Wonder, Spirituality, Longing
William Thom was born in Aberdeen, probably in December 1798, though sources have variously placed his birth in 1798, 1799, or 1800. The uncertainty is not trivial: it reflects the precarious position from which he emerged, a position in which the lives of poor urban families were not always recorded with the precision later granted to writers of standing. He came into the world in Sinclair’s Close, near the Justice…
“I always thought I could speak till now, but language fails me, and I can only say that I thank you from the bottom of my heart.”
Neighbourhood:
Romantic Poets, Scottish Poets, Social Justice Poets, Victorian Poets
Emotional landscape: Tenderness, Longing, Wonder
