John Ruskin was born in London on 8 February 1819, the only child of John James Ruskin and Margaret Cox Ruskin. He would become one of the nineteenth century’s most forceful and distinctive voices: an art critic, social thinker, lecturer, draftsman, historian of architecture, environmental observer, moral philosopher, and writer of prose whose rhythms often approached poetry. Though he is not chiefly remembered as a…
“The greatest thing a human soul ever does in this world is to see something, and tell what it saw in a plain way.”
Neighbourhood:
Nature Poets, Pre-Raphaelite Poets, Social Justice Poets, Victorian Poets
Emotional landscape: Longing, Sorrow, Tenderness
Matthew Arnold was born on 24 December 1822 at Laleham, Middlesex, a village beside the Thames, and died suddenly on 15 April 1888 at Liverpool. He became one of the defining English voices of the Victorian age: a poet of haunting melancholy, a critic who sought standards of excellence amid cultural confusion, an educational civil servant with an unusually broad public vision, and a controversial commentator on relig…
“Culture is a pursuit of our total perfection by means of getting, on all the matters which most concern us, the best which has been thought and said in the world.”
Neighbourhood:
Death & Mortality, Love Poets, Nature Poets, Victorian Poets
Emotional landscape: Longing, Sorrow, Despair
