Gerald Griffin was born in Limerick on 12 December 1803 and died in Cork on 12 June 1840, before his thirty-seventh birthday. His life was brief, restless, and divided between two vocations that seemed, in his own mind, increasingly irreconcilable: literature and religious service. In less than two decades of serious writing, he became one of the most distinctive Irish novelists of the early nineteenth century, a poe…
“Nothing is more commonplace, either in prose or poetry, than for those who live in the bustle of the world to wish for some quiet little retreat in a lonely wild, where, free from cares... at the same time that, if the truth was known, they had rather die than give up their darling turmoil.”
Neighbourhood:
Irish Poets, Romantic Poets, Social Justice Poets
Emotional landscape: Peace, Tenderness, Wonder
Gerald Massey, born on 29 May 1828 in Tring, Hertfordshire, and dead on 29 October 1907 in South Norwood, London, lived one of the most striking self-made literary lives of the Victorian age. He was a poet, lecturer, editor, radical reformer, Shakespearean commentator, spiritual seeker, and amateur investigator of comparative religion. In each of these roles he carried the imprint of his beginnings: he had known chil…
“Above all, Poverty is a cold place to write Poetry in. It is not attractive to poetical influences. The Muses do not like entertainment which is not fit for man or beast.”
Neighbourhood:
Mystical & Spiritual Poets, Political Poets, Social Justice Poets, Victorian Poets
Emotional landscape: Longing, Anger, Despair
