James Beattie, born on 25 October 1735 and dead on 18 August 1803, occupied an unusual and revealing place in eighteenth-century British culture. He was at once a Scottish professor, a poet of landscape and sensibility, a popular moral philosopher, a Christian apologist, a music lover, a man of sociable ambition, and a bereaved father whose final years were darkened by illness and loss. In his own lifetime he was fam…
“I flatter myself that I shall ere long be in the way of becoming a great man. For have I not headaches like Pope? vertigo like Swift? grey hairs like Homer?”
Neighbourhood:
Enlightenment Poets, Georgian Poets, Nature Poets, Scottish Poets
Emotional landscape: Sorrow, Tenderness, Spirituality
Charles Mackay was born in Perth, Scotland, on 27 March 1814, and died in London on 24 December 1889. During a long and unusually various career, he became known as a poet, songwriter, editor, journalist, historian of London, commentator on social life, and author of one of the nineteenth century’s most durable books of cultural psychology, Extraordinary Popular Delusions and the Madness of Crowds. He was never quite…
“Men, it has been well said, think in herds; it will be seen that they go mad in herds, while they only recover their senses one by one.”
Neighbourhood:
Folk & Ballad Poets, Social Justice Poets, Victorian Poets
Emotional landscape: Longing, Joy, Peace
