Mark Akenside was born on 9 November 1721 in Newcastle upon Tyne, and died in London on 23 June 1770. He was one of the most ambitious English poets of the mid-eighteenth century: a physician of substantial professional distinction, a political partisan, a learned student of philosophy and natural science, and the author of The Pleasures of Imagination, a poem that sought nothing less than to explain how the mind rec…
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
Mark Akenside
Poet B
Thomas Paine
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 65%
Blended 65%
Swap sides
Another related pair
Thomas Paine, born 9 February 1737 and dead on 8 June 1809, was one of the most consequential writers of the revolutionary Atlantic world. He was not primarily a poet in the conventional sense, nor should his occasional verses be allowed to obscure the achievement for which he is remembered: he made political argument into a popular literary force. In pamphlets, newspaper essays, public letters, and philosophical tre…
“These are the times that try men's souls.”
In time
Mark Akenside
Thomas Paine
1721
1809
They overlapped for 34 years (1737–1770).
When Thomas Paine was born, Mark Akenside was about 16.
Thomas Paine was about 33 when Mark Akenside died.
On the map
About 324 km separate Newcastle upon Tyne, England from Thetford, Norfolk, England. Both have ground in England.
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
Mark Akenside only
From the biographies
Mark Akenside: newcastle upon tyne, the pleasures of imagination, robert dodsley, joseph addison, philip doddridge, blank verse, enlightenment, whig. Thomas Paine: thetford, norfolk, common sense, the american crisis, benjamin franklin, mary lambert, elizabeth ollive, deism.
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.
Mark Akenside
Thomas Paine
1802
Return to America
Emotional landscapes
Mark Akenside: Longing, Tenderness, Joy. Thomas Paine: Wonder, Sensuality, Joy.