Henry Carey, poet, songwriter, composer, dramatist, performer, and irrepressible satirist, was born about 26 August 1687 and died on 5 October 1743. He belonged to that unusually fertile and unruly generation of English writers who worked in the crowded space between coffeehouse wit, commercial theater, political controversy, popular song, and the new culture of print. His name is not as immediately familiar as those…
“For as innocence and virtue were ever the boundaries of his Muse, so in this little poem he had no other view than to set forth the beauty of a chaste and disinterested passion, even in the lowest class of human life.”
Neighbourhood:
Folk & Ballad Poets, Georgian Poets, Light Verse Poets, Satirical Poets
Emotional landscape: Joy, Sensuality, Tenderness
Thomas d’Urfey, born about 1653 and dead on 26 February 1723, was one of the most tireless entertainers in English literary history: a playwright, lyricist, ballad-writer, compiler, performer, political satirist, and convivial public personality whose career stretched from the high Restoration of Charles II to the early Hanoverian age. He has seldom occupied the first rank in conventional histories of English literat…
“My good or ill stars ordained me to be a knight errant in the fairy fields of poetry.”
Neighbourhood:
Children's Verse, Light Verse Poets, Poet-Musicians, Restoration Poets
Emotional landscape: Joy, Tenderness, Wonder
