Mark Akenside was born on 9 November 1721 in Newcastle upon Tyne, and died in London on 23 June 1770. He was one of the most ambitious English poets of the mid-eighteenth century: a physician of substantial professional distinction, a political partisan, a learned student of philosophy and natural science, and the author of The Pleasures of Imagination, a poem that sought nothing less than to explain how the mind rec…
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
Mark Akenside
Poet B
James Thomson
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.
Kindred spirits
Their work already rhymes in the catalogue. The rest of this page is the story around that rhyme.
Biography 71%
Poems 86%
Blended 78%
Swap sides
Another related pair
James Thomson, born about 11 September 1700 at Ednam in Roxburghshire and dead on 27 August 1748 at Richmond in Surrey, was among the most consequential poets of eighteenth-century Britain. A Scottish writer who made his career in London, he achieved a rare combination of popularity, literary innovation, and long afterlife. His great poem, The Seasons, led English readers away from the tightly controlled urban wit an…
“It is declaring against the most charming power of imagination, the most exalting force of thought, the most affecting touch of sentiment.”
In time
Mark Akenside
James Thomson
1700
1770
They overlapped for 28 years (1721–1748).
When Mark Akenside was born, James Thomson was about 21.
Mark Akenside was about 27 when James Thomson died.
On the map
About 87 km separate Newcastle upon Tyne, England from Ednam, Roxburghshire, Scotland. Both have ground in London.
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
Mark Akenside only
From the biographies
blank verse
eighteenth
Mark Akenside: newcastle upon tyne, the pleasures of imagination, robert dodsley, joseph addison, philip doddridge, blank verse, enlightenment, whig. James Thomson: ednam, roxburghshire, the seasons, winter, summer, spring, autumn, richmond.
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.
Mark Akenside
James Thomson
Emotional landscapes
Mark Akenside: Longing, Tenderness, Joy. James Thomson: Longing, Tenderness, Spirituality.