Tobias George Smollett, baptized on 19 March 1721 and generally believed to have been born shortly before that date, was one of the most forceful, combative, and variously gifted writers of eighteenth-century Britain. He died on 17 September 1771, only about fifty years old, yet in that compressed lifetime he became a surgeon, naval observer, playwright, poet, translator, journalist, editor, political polemicist, his…
“Writing is all a lottery — I have been a loser by the works of the greatest men of the age.”
Neighbourhood:
Enlightenment Poets, Satirical Poets, Scottish Poets
Emotional landscape: Peace, Joy, Tenderness
Isaac Watts was born in Southampton, England, on 17 July 1674, into a household where religious conviction was inseparable from risk. He died on 25 November 1748, having become one of the most widely read and sung English writers of his age. To later generations he would be called the “father of English hymnody,” a title that is not merely honorary. Before Watts, English Protestant congregations, especially among the…
“Books are the legacies that a great genius leaves to mankind, which are delivered down from generation to generation.”
Neighbourhood:
Devotional Poets, Hymn Writers, Victorian Poets
Emotional landscape: Spirituality, Sorrow, Despair
