Charles Wesley was born on 18 December 1707 at Epworth, Lincolnshire, into a household that was at once crowded, precarious, intellectually ambitious, and intensely religious. He was the eighteenth child of Samuel Wesley, rector of Epworth, and Susanna Wesley, whose formidable discipline and devotional intelligence made her one of the great formative presences in the history of English Methodism. Nineteen children we…
Compare Poets
Pick two poets who seem to have nothing to do with each other — a Gothic American and a pastoral Englishman, say — and see where the catalogue actually joins them: overlapping years, shared ground, distinctive themes, and the poems that secretly rhyme.
Poet A
Charles Wesley
Poet B
Charlotte Richardson
Compare two related contemporaries
A random pair who overlapped in time and whose poems already rhyme in the catalogue — a way into poets you may not have met.
Strongly related
Their work already rhymes in the catalogue. The rest of this page is the story around that rhyme.
Biography 58%
Blended 58%
Swap sides
Another related pair
Charlotte Richardson, born on 5 March 1775 and dead on 26 September 1825, belongs to that large, increasingly important company of British women poets whose names survived in catalogues more securely than they survived in literary histories. Her career unfolded during a period when poetry was widely read, widely written, and yet unevenly preserved. The great names of Romanticism came to dominate later accounts of the…
In time
Charles Wesley
Charlotte Richardson
1707
1825
They overlapped for 14 years (1775–1788).
When Charlotte Richardson was born, Charles Wesley was about 68.
Charlotte Richardson was about 13 when Charles Wesley died.
On the map
About 75 km separate Epworth, Lincolnshire, England from Hickling, Nottinghamshire, England. Both have ground in England.
Charlotte Richardson
Themes they return to
Distinctive words drawn from each poet’s critiqued poems — what they keep writing about, not just what their biographies mention.
Shared
Charles Wesley only
From the biographies
religious
Charles Wesley: epworth, lincolnshire, john wesley, george whitefield, methodism, hymns and sacred poems, o for a thousand tongues to sing, fort frederica. Charlotte Richardson: late georgian england, charlotte smith, poems on various subjects, devotional poetry, domestic sphere, moral reflection, religious feeling, elegy.
Poems that secretly rhyme
The closest poem-to-poem matches in critique space — the sort of kinship a listener hears before the catalogue admits it.
The world around them
While their lives overlapped
Notable events from the years they were both alive.
Charles Wesley
Charlotte Richardson
1805
Relocation to London
Emotional landscapes
Charles Wesley: Spirituality, Peace, Joy. Charlotte Richardson: Tenderness, Wonder, Spirituality.