Philip Bourke Marston was born in London on 13 August 1850 and died there on 13 February 1887, only thirty-six years later. His short life was shaped by an unusually concentrated mixture of literary privilege, physical disability, bereavement, emotional intensity, and artistic determination. During his lifetime he was admired by prominent writers, including Algernon Charles Swinburne, and was known in literary circle…
“I want to tell them of what the flowers talk about when the garden is very still.”
Neighbourhood:
Death & Mortality, Love Poets, Pre-Raphaelite Poets, Victorian Poets
Emotional landscape: Longing, Sorrow, Tenderness
In the fading light of Victorian England, when the certainties of empire began to crack and a fin-de-siècle weariness settled over the literary world, Ernest Christopher Dowson emerged as one of the most hauntingly beautiful voices of his generation. His brief, tragic life—spanning a mere thirty-two years from 1867 to 1900—produced poetry of such delicate melancholy and exquisite craftsmanship that it continues to ca…
“It's an attempt at mere sound verse, with scarcely the shadow of a sense in it: or hardly that so much as a vague Verlainesque emotion. It's an inferior production.”
Neighbourhood:
Death & Mortality, Decadent Poets, Symbolist Poets
Emotional landscape: Longing, Sorrow, Despair
