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…
“Every year I live shows me more conclusively that speech is not a natural language.”
Neighbourhood:
Romantic Poets, Social Justice Poets, Victorian Poets
Emotional landscape: Wonder, Longing, Spirituality
Gerald Massey, born on 29 May 1828 in Tring, Hertfordshire, and dead on 29 October 1907 in South Norwood, London, lived one of the most striking self-made literary lives of the Victorian age. He was a poet, lecturer, editor, radical reformer, Shakespearean commentator, spiritual seeker, and amateur investigator of comparative religion. In each of these roles he carried the imprint of his beginnings: he had known chil…
“There are conditions in which many of the poor exist, where humanity must be either rebel or slave. For the slave, degradation and moral death are certain; but for the rebel there is always a chance of becoming conqueror.”
Neighbourhood:
Mystical & Spiritual Poets, Political Poets, Social Justice Poets, Victorian Poets
Emotional landscape: Longing, Anger, Despair
