Sydney Thompson Dobell was born on 5 April 1824 at Cranbrook in Kent, into a family whose circumstances placed him close to the commercial and dissenting middle-class culture of provincial England rather than to the aristocratic literary world. His father, Thomas Dobell, was a wine merchant, and the business of buying, selling, accounting, travelling, and maintaining credit would remain an important fact of Sydney’s…
“And a man of great moral courage can not only use his noblest qualities manfully when the positive voice of duty commands, but give them at all times their free and natural exercise.”
Neighbourhood:
Romantic Poets, Social Justice Poets, Victorian Poets
Emotional landscape: Wonder, Longing, Spirituality
Charles Lamb was born on 10 February 1775 in Crown Office Row, within London’s Inner Temple, and died on 27 December 1834 in Edmonton, then a village north of the city. He became one of the most distinctive voices in English literature not through a vast epic, a celebrated novel, or the public authority of a major poet, but through shorter forms made unexpectedly capacious: familiar essays, literary criticism, letter…
“Books are the best of things, well used; abused, among the worst.”
Neighbourhood:
Light Verse Poets, Love Poets, Romantic Poets
Emotional landscape: Sorrow, Tenderness, Longing
