Sarah Doudney was born on 15 January 1841 in Portsea, Hampshire, at a time when the crowded naval and commercial communities around Portsmouth were expanding alongside Victorian Britain’s confidence in trade, empire, religion, and print. She was the daughter of a soap and candle manufacturer, and the practical details of that background matter. Although later summaries have sometimes simplified it into a “working-cla…
“There are women to whom nature has granted the gift of silent emotion. They have mobile faces, changeful eyes, soft lips, which express joy or desolation naturally, and with the charm of perfect simplicity and truth.”
Neighbourhood:
Devotional Poets, Hymn Writers, Victorian Poets, Women Poets
Emotional landscape: Sorrow, Despair, Longing
Dorothy Wordsworth was born on 25 December 1771 in Cockermouth, Cumberland, in the English Lake District, and died on 25 January 1855 at Rydal Mount, Westmorland. For much of the nineteenth century, she was remembered chiefly as the devoted sister and household companion of William Wordsworth, the poet whose name became central to English Romanticism. Modern readers, however, increasingly encounter her as a writer of…
“The waters were tumultuous and angry, and the wind seized the trees and tossed them about.”
Neighbourhood:
Nature Poets, Romantic Poets, Women Poets
Emotional landscape: Tenderness, Longing, Sorrow
