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,…
“I believe that she and every beautiful object in external nature, claims some sympathy in the breast of the poorest man who breaks his scanty loaf of daily bread.”
Neighbourhood:
Light Verse Poets, Social Justice Poets, Victorian Poets
Emotional landscape: Despair, Sorrow, Spirituality
Charles Whitehead was born in London on 4 October 1804, at a time when English literary culture was being reshaped by the afterglow of Romanticism, the rise of popular periodicals, and the expanding commercial possibilities of print. He was the eldest son of a prosperous wine merchant, and his childhood appears to have been materially secure. This fact makes the contrast with his final years especially stark: he died…
Neighbourhood:
Social Justice Poets, Victorian Poets, Women Poets
Emotional landscape: Despair, Sorrow, Longing
