William Bell Scott was born in Edinburgh on 12 September 1811, into a family in which art was both a livelihood and an atmosphere. He was the eldest surviving son of Robert Scott, an engraver of considerable skill and a man of strong intellectual interests, and Ross Bell Scott. The household was not wealthy, but it was rich in artistic ambition, professional discipline, books, conversation, and the practical awarenes…
“What degree of truth there may be found on the canvas must be the measure of its value.”
Neighbourhood:
Pre-Raphaelite Poets, Scottish Poets, Victorian Poets
Emotional landscape: Longing, Wonder, Spirituality
Achsa White Sprague was born on 17 November 1827 in Plymouth Notch, Vermont, a small mountain community whose austere beauty and close social fabric helped form her imagination. She died there on 6 July 1862, only thirty-four years old by the modern method of counting age, though many nineteenth-century notices described her as being in her thirty-fifth year. In the short interval between those dates, Sprague became…
“I am not afraid to die, for death to me is but the threshold of a higher, purer, and more glorious life.”
Neighbourhood:
American Poets, Death & Mortality, Devotional Poets, Mystical & Spiritual Poets, Women Poets
Emotional landscape: Sorrow, Despair, Longing
