Thomas Hood was born in London on 23 May 1799 and died there on 3 May 1845, only twenty days short of his forty-sixth birthday. He occupies a distinctive, sometimes deceptively difficult place in English literary history. To generations of readers he has been the author of jokes, puns, comic ballads, and apparently effortless verbal absurdities; to others he is the compassionate author of “The Song of the Shirt” and…
“I have never had a day's health in my life, but I have had several days of illness.”
Neighbourhood:
Death & Mortality, Light Verse Poets, Romantic Poets
Emotional landscape: Longing, Sorrow, Despair
William Johnson Cory, born William Johnson on 9 January 1823 and dead on 11 June 1892, occupies an unusual but durable place in English literary history. He was never a major public poet in the Victorian manner of Tennyson or Browning; he published relatively little, lived much of his life within the secluded world of elite education, and became known to many readers through a small collection rather than a grand car…
“At school you are engaged not so much in acquiring knowledge as in making mental efforts under criticism.”
Neighbourhood:
Death & Mortality, Love Poets, Victorian Poets
Emotional landscape: Sorrow, Longing, Tenderness
