Arthur Symons was born on 28 February 1865 at Milford Haven, Pembrokeshire, Wales, into a household shaped by religious discipline, frequent movement, and intellectual aspiration. He was the son of the Reverend Arthur Symons, a Wesleyan Methodist minister, and Mary Ann Symons. His father’s ministry required the family to move from place to place, and the boy’s childhood was therefore less rooted in one local communit…
“Symbolism, as seen in the writers of our day, would have no value if it were not seen also, under one disguise or another, in every great imaginative writer.”
Neighbourhood:
Decadent Poets, Edwardian Poets, Symbolist Poets, Victorian Poets
Emotional landscape: Longing, Sorrow, Wonder
Edward Thomas was born Philip Edward Thomas on 3 March 1878 at Lambeth in south London, and died on 9 April 1917 near Arras in France, aged thirty-nine. His name now evokes a particular kind of English poetry: quiet but unsettled, exact in its descriptions of paths, trains, weather, birds, woods, and country speech, yet charged with questions of loss, belonging, choice, and mortality. His poetic career lasted scarcel…
“The road is an old friend to me.”
Neighbourhood:
Death & Mortality, Edwardian Poets, Georgian Poets, Nature Poets, War Poets, Welsh Poets
Emotional landscape: Longing, Sorrow, Wonder
