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…
“Being then young and obscure, he was very much ridicul'd by some of his Acquaintance for this Performance.”
Neighbourhood:
Folk & Ballad Poets, Georgian Poets, Light Verse Poets, Satirical Poets
Emotional landscape: Joy, Sensuality, Tenderness
Joseph Milton Hayes, known to the public as J. Milton Hayes, was born in Bristol on 13 January 1884 and died on 6 February 1940. During his lifetime he became one of the best-known writers of recitation verse in Britain, a poet whose work was heard as often as it was read. His celebrity rested especially on “The Green Eye of the Little Yellow God,” a narrative poem whose opening line, “There’s a one-eyed yellow idol…
“I wrote The Green Eye of the Little Yellow God in five hours, but I had it all planned out. It isn't poetry and it does not pretend to be, but it does what it sets out to do.”
Neighbourhood:
Folk & Ballad Poets, Light Verse Poets
Emotional landscape: Sorrow, Despair, Longing
