James Thomson, born about 11 September 1700 at Ednam in Roxburghshire and dead on 27 August 1748 at Richmond in Surrey, was among the most consequential poets of eighteenth-century Britain. A Scottish writer who made his career in London, he achieved a rare combination of popularity, literary innovation, and long afterlife. His great poem, The Seasons, led English readers away from the tightly controlled urban wit an…
“Where can we meet with such variety, such beauty, such magnificence? All that enlarges and transports the soul?”
Neighbourhood:
Augustan Poets, Nature Poets, Scottish Poets
Emotional landscape: Longing, Tenderness, Spirituality
James Maurice Thompson arrived in this world on September 9, 1844, in the modest hamlet of Fairfield, Indiana, nestled within Franklin County, where his father served as a Baptist minister. The boy who would grow into one of the most versatile literary figures of the late nineteenth century spent his earliest years in the rustic Midwestern landscape, breathing in the simple rhythms of frontier life. Yet destiny had m…
“A novel that will bear the sunlight and the winds and the bird-songs may be put down as a thoroughly good one.”
Neighbourhood:
American Poets, Edwardian Poets, Love Poets, Nature Poets, Victorian Poets
Emotional landscape: Spirituality, Wonder, Longing
