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
Thomas Parnell
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 70%
Poems 73%
Blended 71%
Swap sides
Another related pair
Thomas Parnell, born in Dublin on 11 September 1679 and dead at Chester, England, on 24 October 1718, occupies a distinctive position in the literary culture of the early eighteenth century. He was an Anglo-Irish clergyman, poet, translator, essayist, and valued member of the brilliant circle that included Jonathan Swift, Alexander Pope, John Gay, and John Arbuthnot. His name is often introduced through those greater…
“This makes us easy in the midst of them, fond to shew them, fond to improve in them, and to be esteemed for them.”
In time
Elizabeth Thomas
Thomas Parnell
1675
1731
They overlapped for 40 years (1679–1718).
When Thomas Parnell was born, Elizabeth Thomas was about 4.
Elizabeth Thomas was about 43 when Thomas Parnell died.
On the map
About 286 km separate Skenfrith, Monmouthshire, Wales from Dublin, Ireland. Shared ground: United Kingdom.
Elizabeth Thomas
Thomas Parnell
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
Elizabeth Thomas: skenfrith, monmouthshire, corinna, richard gwinnett, pylades, alexander pope, miscellany poems on several subjects, eighteenth-century women writers. Thomas Parnell: chester, anglo-irish, trinity college dublin, the hermit, a night-piece on death, scriblerus club, anne minchin, robert harley.
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.
1694
Matsuo Bashō dies
Elizabeth Thomas
Thomas Parnell
Emotional landscapes
Elizabeth Thomas: Despair, Sorrow, Anger. Thomas Parnell: Longing, Tenderness, Sensuality.