William Brighty Rands was born on 24 December 1823, in Chelsea, then a district on the western edge of London and already a place where commerce, domestic life, artistic ambition, and metropolitan poverty met in close quarters. He died on 23 April 1882, having lived only fifty-eight years, and his name is now far less familiar than the names of several Victorian writers whose work has dated more severely. Yet Rands o…
“I was taught by my parents that, if I was struck on the right cheek, I should turn the left, and that I was to die rather than smite again. I never struck a blow and never received one, and I used to believe firmly that an angel from heaven would help me if I needed it.”
Neighbourhood:
Children's Verse, Light Verse Poets, Nature Poets, Victorian Poets
Emotional landscape: Joy, Wonder, Irony
Walter John de la Mare was born on 25 April 1873 at Charlton, then in Kent and now part of southeast London, into a family whose circumstances were modest but whose cultural inheritance was unusually varied. His father, James Edward de la Mare, worked as an official at the Bank of England; his mother, Lucy Sophia Browning, came from a family with Scottish connections. The surname preserved a French Huguenot ancestry,…
“Only the rarest kind of best is good enough for the young.”
Neighbourhood:
Children's Verse, Edwardian Poets, Georgian Poets, Nature Poets
Emotional landscape: Wonder, Peace, Tenderness
