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…
“Authorship, unless it is of the very best—the best and most competent minds expressed in the very best ways—is worse than useless.”
Neighbourhood:
Romantic Poets, Social Justice Poets, Victorian Poets
Emotional landscape: Wonder, Longing, Spirituality
William Bell Scott was born in Edinburgh on 12 September 1811, into a family in which art was both a livelihood and an atmosphere. He was the eldest surviving son of Robert Scott, an engraver of considerable skill and a man of strong intellectual interests, and Ross Bell Scott. The household was not wealthy, but it was rich in artistic ambition, professional discipline, books, conversation, and the practical awarenes…
“Sympathies even change, so that any friendships save those founded on common sense and moderate affinities of taste come at last to be numbered among the delusions and compromises of life.”
Neighbourhood:
Pre-Raphaelite Poets, Scottish Poets, Victorian Poets
Emotional landscape: Longing, Wonder, Spirituality
