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…
“Nothing can have a better influence towards the revival of poetry than the choosing of great and serious subjects, such as at once amuse the fancy, enlighten the head, and warm the heart.”
Neighbourhood:
Augustan Poets, Nature Poets, Scottish Poets
Emotional landscape: Longing, Tenderness, Spirituality
William Collins, born in Chichester on 25 December 1721 and dead there on 12 June 1759, occupies a small but luminous space in English literary history. He published little, lived only thirty-seven years, and spent much of his adult life under the shadow of debt, disappointment, and severe mental distress. Yet a handful of poems, especially the odes issued in 1746, have secured him a place among the most distinctive…
“I have but one book, but that is the best.”
Neighbourhood:
Augustan Poets, Death & Mortality, Romantic Poets
Emotional landscape: Sorrow, Spirituality, Tenderness
