Robert Browning was born on 7 May 1812 at Southampton Cottage, Camberwell, then a semi-rural district south of London, and died on 12 December 1889 in Venice. Few English poets have combined such audacity of intellect, dramatic energy, moral curiosity, and technical resourcefulness. During his lifetime he moved from the position of a puzzling, frequently mocked young writer to that of a revered elder of Victorian let…
“Come what will my life has borne flower and fruit—it is a glorious, successful, felicitous life, I thank God and you.”
Neighbourhood:
Dramatic Poets, Love Poets, Pre-Raphaelite Poets, Victorian Poets
Emotional landscape: Tenderness, Longing, Wonder
Constantine Peter Cavafy, universally known as C. P. Cavafy, was born Konstantinos Petrou Kavafis in Alexandria, Egypt, on 29 April 1863, and died there on 29 April 1933, his seventieth birthday. The coincidence has naturally encouraged a Cavafian reading of his life: a date returning with a measured inevitability, an ending that seems to complete a private design. Yet Cavafy’s achievement was anything but neat or pr…
“I am a poet of old age.”
Neighbourhood:
Greek Poets, Modernist Poets, Symbolist Poets
Emotional landscape: Despair, Sorrow, Longing
