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…
“Some of the best things said about it and what it foretells are little better than self-conscious talk to fill up time.”
Neighbourhood:
Children's Verse, Light Verse Poets, Nature Poets, Victorian Poets
Emotional landscape: Joy, Wonder, Irony
Mary Wollstonecraft Shelley, born Mary Wollstonecraft Godwin on 30 August 1797 and dead on 1 February 1851, occupied an extraordinary position in British literary history from the beginning of her life. She was the daughter of two of the most provocative writers of the late eighteenth century: the political philosopher William Godwin and Mary Wollstonecraft, author of A Vindication of the Rights of Woman. Her name ha…
“The imagination does not deceive us when it reveals possibilities that ordinary experience has concealed.”
Neighbourhood:
Mystical & Spiritual Poets, Romantic Poets, Women Poets
Emotional landscape: Longing, Tenderness, Sorrow