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.
Lady Anne Lindsay, later Lady Anne Barnard, was born on 8 December 1750 at Balcarres in Fife, Scotland, and died on 6 May 1825 in London. She is remembered above all as the author of “Auld Robin Gray,” one of the most affecting and durable songs in the Scottish literary tradition. Yet the ballad’s extraordinary afterlife has sometimes reduced its maker to a name attached to a single lyric. Her life was considerably l…
“The song of Auld Robin Gray was written by me in 1771, when I was very young.”
Neighbourhood:
Folk & Ballad Poets, Scottish Poets, Women Poets
The story of James Hogg is one of the most remarkable and unlikely ascents in the history of British literature. Born into the humblest of circumstances in the wilds of the Scottish Borders, he rose from a life of manual labour to stand, albeit often awkwardly, alongside the literary giants of his age. He was a man of profound contradictions: a self-taught genius who could be as coarse as he was inspired, a humble sh…
“Without the shepherd's dog, the whole of the open mountainous land in Scotland would not be worth a sixpence.”
Neighbourhood:
Georgian Poets, Nature Poets, Romantic Poets, Scottish Poets
They overlapped for 56 years (1770–1825).
When James Hogg was born, Lady Anne Lindsay was about 20.
James Hogg was about 55 when Lady Anne Lindsay died.
Lady Anne Lindsay:
balcarres, cape colony, auld robin gray, james lindsay, andrew barnard, scottish ballad tradition, edinburgh, colonial official.
James Hogg:
scottish borders, ettrick shepherd, the private memoirs and confessions of a justified sinner, sir walter scott, the queen's wake, kilmeny, the witch of fife, the mountain bard.
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.
