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 scarcely one of my poems which does not aim to direct the attention to some moral sentiment, or to some general principle, or law of thought.”
Neighbourhood:
Devotional Poets, Mystical & Spiritual Poets, Nature Poets, Political Poets, Romantic Poets
Emotional landscape: Wonder, Spirituality, Longing
John Ruskin was born in London on 8 February 1819, the only child of John James Ruskin and Margaret Cox Ruskin. He would become one of the nineteenth century’s most forceful and distinctive voices: an art critic, social thinker, lecturer, draftsman, historian of architecture, environmental observer, moral philosopher, and writer of prose whose rhythms often approached poetry. Though he is not chiefly remembered as a…
“There is no wealth but life.”
Neighbourhood:
Nature Poets, Pre-Raphaelite Poets, Social Justice Poets, Victorian Poets
Emotional landscape: Longing, Sorrow, Tenderness