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
Leslie Pinckney Hill entered the world on May 14, 1880, in Lynchburg, Virginia, the son of Samuel H. Hill, a man who had known the brutal chains of enslavement, and Sarah E. Hill. In the shadow of the post-Reconstruction South, where the promises of freedom still clashed with the realities of Jim Crow oppression, young Leslie’s early years were steeped in the rhythms of a family striving for dignity and self-determin…
“The white man has no fine quality, either of heart or mind, which is not shared by his black brother.”
Neighbourhood:
African American Poets, American Poets, Harlem Renaissance, Mystical & Spiritual Poets, Social Justice Poets
Emotional landscape: Spirituality, Sorrow, Tenderness
