Robert Louis Stevenson was born in Edinburgh on 13 November 1850, into a family whose public achievements seemed to prescribe his future long before he could choose one for himself. His father, Thomas Stevenson, was a distinguished civil engineer and designer of lighthouses, heir to a formidable Scottish professional dynasty. His mother, Margaret Isabella Balfour Stevenson, came from another prominent family; her fat…
“Books are good enough in their own way, but they are a mighty bloodless substitute for life.”
Neighbourhood:
Children's Verse, Nature Poets, Victorian Poets
Emotional landscape: Peace, Joy, Wonder
In the heart of Georgian London, amid the tumult of a literary revolution that would reshape English poetry forever, stood a slight, melancholic figure whose contribution to modern literature far exceeded his own poetic achievements. Harold Edward Monro, born on March 14, 1879, in Brussels to Scottish parents, would become the impresario of modernism, the keeper of poetry's most famous bookshop, and a poet whose work…
“Truth put into metre sounds overwhelmingly true, and quotations can be tossed about like balls.”
Neighbourhood:
Edwardian Poets, Georgian Poets, Modernist Poets
Emotional landscape: Longing, Tenderness, Wonder
