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…
“It is declaring against the most charming power of imagination, the most exalting force of thought, the most affecting touch of sentiment.”
Neighbourhood:
Augustan Poets, Nature Poets, Scottish Poets
Emotional landscape: Longing, Tenderness, Spirituality
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…
“The feeling therein developed gives importance to the action and situation, and not the action and situation to the feeling.”
Neighbourhood:
Devotional Poets, Mystical & Spiritual Poets, Nature Poets, Political Poets, Romantic Poets
Emotional landscape: Wonder, Spirituality, Longing
