Elizabeth Thomas, who wrote under the name “Corinna,” was born in 1675 and died in 1731. She belongs to that large and fascinating company of early eighteenth-century women writers whose lives survive only in fragments: poems, letters, dedications, hostile anecdotes, printers’ advertisements, and the recollections of men whose literary fame later eclipsed theirs. Yet Thomas was far more than a minor satellite of Alex…
Compare Poets
Pick two poets who seem to have nothing to do with each other — a Gothic American and a pastoral Englishman, say — and see where the catalogue actually joins them: overlapping years, shared ground, distinctive themes, and the poems that secretly rhyme.
Poet A
Elizabeth Thomas
Poet B
Oliver Goldsmith
Compare two related contemporaries
A random pair who overlapped in time and whose poems already rhyme in the catalogue — a way into poets you may not have met.
Strongly related
Their work already rhymes in the catalogue. The rest of this page is the story around that rhyme.
Biography 63%
Blended 63%
Swap sides
Another related pair
Oliver Goldsmith, born probably on 10 November 1728 and dead on 4 April 1774, lived only forty-five years, yet he became one of the most various, humane, and enduring voices in eighteenth-century English literature. He was an Irishman who made his reputation in London, a clergyman’s son who never settled into a profession, a medical student who rarely practised medicine, a chronically indebted writer who produced som…
“Every absurdity has a champion to defend it; for error is always talkative.”
In time
Elizabeth Thomas
Oliver Goldsmith
1675
1774
They overlapped for 4 years (1728–1731).
When Oliver Goldsmith was born, Elizabeth Thomas was about 53.
Oliver Goldsmith was about 3 when Elizabeth Thomas died.
On the map
About 380 km separate Skenfrith, Monmouthshire, Wales from Pallas, County Longford, Ireland. Shared ground: United Kingdom.
Elizabeth Thomas
Oliver Goldsmith
Themes they return to
Distinctive words drawn from each poet’s critiqued poems — what they keep writing about, not just what their biographies mention.
Shared
Elizabeth Thomas only
From the biographies
social
Elizabeth Thomas: skenfrith, monmouthshire, corinna, richard gwinnett, pylades, alexander pope, miscellany poems on several subjects, eighteenth-century women writers. Oliver Goldsmith: pallas, ballymahon, county longford, trinity college dublin, samuel johnson, the citizen of the world, the traveller, edmund burke.
Poems that secretly rhyme
The closest poem-to-poem matches in critique space — the sort of kinship a listener hears before the catalogue admits it.
The world around them
While their lives overlapped
Notable events from the years they were both alive.
Elizabeth Thomas
Oliver Goldsmith
Emotional landscapes
Elizabeth Thomas: Despair, Sorrow, Anger. Oliver Goldsmith: Longing, Sorrow, Despair.