William Makepeace Thackeray was born on 18 July 1811 in Calcutta, British India, into a family whose comfort and status were closely connected to the expanding machinery of the East India Company. His father, Richmond Thackeray, was a civil servant and collector of revenue; his mother, Anne Becher Thackeray, came from a socially ambitious Anglo-Indian family. Although Thackeray would become one of the great interpret…
“There are a thousand thoughts lying within a man that he does not know till he takes up a pen to write.”
Neighbourhood:
Light Verse Poets, Satirical Poets, Social Justice Poets, Victorian Poets
Emotional landscape: Tenderness, Despair, Sorrow
William Whiting was born on 1 November 1825 in Kensington, then a rapidly changing western district of London, and died in Winchester on 3 May 1878. He is remembered above all as the author of “Eternal Father, Strong to Save,” the hymn later known throughout much of the English-speaking world as the Navy Hymn. That single work has achieved a cultural reach far beyond the scale of its author’s surviving literary reput…
Neighbourhood:
Devotional Poets, Hymn Writers, Victorian Poets
Emotional landscape: Spirituality, Peace, Tenderness
