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
Robert Cunninghame-Graham
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 67%
Blended 67%
Swap sides
Another related pair
Robert Cunninghame-Graham, later more commonly styled Robert Bontine Cunninghame Graham of Gartmore and Finlaystone, was born in 1735 and died at Gartmore on 11 December 1797. He is remembered, if at all, by most readers for a single durable lyric, “If Doughty Deeds My Lady Please,” a poem whose compact music and courtly ardour secured it a place in Victorian anthologies and in the repertory of composers. Yet the poe…
“The greatest luxury in life is to be able to do what you like, when you like, and how you like.”
In time
Mark Akenside
Robert Cunninghame-Graham
1721
1797
They overlapped for 36 years (1735–1770).
When Robert Cunninghame-Graham was born, Mark Akenside was about 14.
Robert Cunninghame-Graham was about 35 when Mark Akenside died.
On the map
About 209 km separate Newcastle upon Tyne, England from Gartmore, Perthshire, Scotland. Shared ground: United Kingdom.
Robert Cunninghame-Graham
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
whig
eighteenth
Mark Akenside: newcastle upon tyne, the pleasures of imagination, robert dodsley, joseph addison, philip doddridge, blank verse, enlightenment, whig. Robert Cunninghame-Graham: scottish laird, jamaica, if doughty deeds my lady please, university of glasgow, receiver-general of taxes, anne taylor, simon taylor, whig.
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
Robert Cunninghame-Graham
1769
Return to Scotland
Emotional landscapes
Mark Akenside: Longing, Tenderness, Joy. Robert Cunninghame-Graham: Longing, Tenderness, Joy.