Sir Henry Taylor occupies one of the more curious niches in nineteenth-century English letters: a poet who spent his working life not in garrets or universities but behind the desk of a government office, quietly shaping the administration of Britain's colonies while writing, in his spare hours, verse dramas that made him, for a brief and dazzling season, one of the most celebrated writers in the land. He was born on…
“Wisdom is corrupted by ambition, even when the quality of the ambition is intellectual. For ambition, even of this quality, is but a form of self-love.”
Neighbourhood:
Dramatic Poets, Edwardian Poets, Victorian Poets
Emotional landscape: Tenderness, Sorrow, Spirituality
James Maurice Thompson arrived in this world on September 9, 1844, in the modest hamlet of Fairfield, Indiana, nestled within Franklin County, where his father served as a Baptist minister. The boy who would grow into one of the most versatile literary figures of the late nineteenth century spent his earliest years in the rustic Midwestern landscape, breathing in the simple rhythms of frontier life. Yet destiny had m…
“A novel that will bear the sunlight and the winds and the bird-songs may be put down as a thoroughly good one.”
Neighbourhood:
American Poets, Edwardian Poets, Love Poets, Nature Poets, Victorian Poets
Emotional landscape: Spirituality, Wonder, Longing
