William Oldys, born on 14 July 1696 and dead on 15 April 1761, belongs to that remarkable class of literary figures whose influence exceeds their modern fame. He was a poet only intermittently, an editor often anonymously, a biographer by patient accumulation, a bibliographer before bibliography had fully become a profession, and an antiquary whose chief subject was the survival of the written past. To encounter Oldy…
“We hardly ever find the worth of books till we lose them; and it is then too late to value them.”
Neighbourhood:
Georgian Poets, Light Verse Poets
Emotional landscape: Sorrow, Wonder, Peace
William Philpot was born on 16 April 1823 and died on 16 April 1889, completing a life of exactly sixty-six years. His career belongs to the enormous, uneven, and still incompletely recovered field of nineteenth-century poetry: the work of writers who published in small editions, contributed to local or denominational periodicals, read before societies, circulated manuscripts among friends, or gained recognition with…
“Business is a kind of material body without which the spiritual life is a kind of ghost. In the perfect life they are essential to each other.”
Neighbourhood:
Devotional Poets, Victorian Poets, Women Poets
Emotional landscape: Longing, Sorrow, Despair