Winthrop Mackworth Praed was born in London on 28 July 1802 and died there on 15 July 1839, only thirteen days short of his thirty-seventh birthday. His short life encompassed several identities that Victorian readers often preferred to keep distinct: he was a gifted schoolboy journalist, a prize-winning Cambridge classicist, a lawyer, a Conservative politician, a public speaker of exceptional brilliance, and one of…
“I should certainly refuse to occupy any post in which I should be expected to place myself in personal collision with any man.”
Neighbourhood:
Georgian Poets, Light Verse Poets, Romantic Poets, Victorian Poets
Emotional landscape: Sorrow, Longing, Peace
Alfred Tennyson, later Alfred, Lord Tennyson, was born on 6 August 1809 at Somersby rectory in Lincolnshire, England, and died on 6 October 1892 at Lurgashall in Sussex. During his long life he became the defining poetic voice of the Victorian age: at once a public laureate who wrote for national occasions and a private, searching poet whose work returned obsessively to bereavement, desire, religious uncertainty, mem…
“An Omnipotent Creator Who could make such a painful world is to me sometimes as hard to believe in as to believe in blind matter behind everything.”
Neighbourhood:
Devotional Poets, Dramatic Poets, Nature Poets, Victorian Poets
Emotional landscape: Wonder, Longing, Sorrow