Joanna Baillie was born on 11 September 1762 at the manse of Bothwell, near Hamilton in Lanarkshire, Scotland, and died on 23 February 1851 at Hampstead, then a village on the northern edge of London. During her exceptionally long life, she became one of the most admired British writers of the Romantic period: a poet of acute observation, an ambitious theorist of the emotions, a dramatist who sought to renew tragedy…
“There is, perhaps, no employment which the human mind will with so much avidity pursue, as the discovery of concealed passion, as the tracing the varieties and progress of a perturbed soul.”
Neighbourhood:
Dramatic Poets, Love Poets, Nature Poets, Romantic Poets, Scottish Poets, Women Poets
Emotional landscape: Tenderness, Joy, Longing
Samuel Langhorne Clemens, who became Mark Twain, was born on 30 November 1835 in the tiny village of Florida, Missouri, and died on 21 April 1910 in Redding, Connecticut. Few American writers have occupied so many roles in the national imagination: printer, river pilot, prospector, newspaper correspondent, lecturer, novelist, travel writer, social critic, entrepreneur, public celebrity, and, in a less frequently emph…
“The difference between the almost right word and the right word is really a large matter—it’s the difference between the lightning-bug and the lightning.”
Neighbourhood:
American Poets, Children's Verse, Light Verse Poets, Social Justice Poets, Victorian Poets
Emotional landscape: Tenderness, Peace, Longing
