Charles John Huffam Dickens was born on February 7, 1812, in a modest terraced house at 1 Mile End Terrace in Landport, Portsmouth, Hampshire, England. The second of eight children born to John and Elizabeth Dickens, his arrival came during a time of naval activity and modest aspirations in a bustling port town. His father, John, a clerk in the Navy Pay Office, was a genial, improvident man whose love for literature,…
“That we cannot hold in too strong a light of disgust and contempt, before the view of others, all meanness, falsehood, cruelty, and oppression, of every grade and kind.”
Neighbourhood:
Light Verse Poets, Social Justice Poets, Victorian Poets
Emotional landscape: Despair, Sorrow, Spirituality
Oliver Goldsmith, born probably on 10 November 1728 and dead on 4 April 1774, lived only forty-five years, yet he became one of the most various, humane, and enduring voices in eighteenth-century English literature. He was an Irishman who made his reputation in London, a clergyman’s son who never settled into a profession, a medical student who rarely practised medicine, a chronically indebted writer who produced som…
“To be instructed, one must first be willing to be instructed.”
Neighbourhood:
Augustan Poets, Irish Poets, Light Verse Poets, Nature Poets, Social Justice Poets
Emotional landscape: Longing, Sorrow, Despair
