Richard Monckton Milnes, later Lord Houghton, was born on 19 June 1809 in London, into a family whose wealth, political standing, and Yorkshire connections gave him access to the governing and literary worlds of nineteenth-century Britain. He died on 11 August 1885 at Fryston Hall, near Pontefract in Yorkshire, the family seat that remained both a refuge and a symbol of his inherited position. During his long life he…
“The very absence of anything like abstruse botanical science, or any but necessary phraseology, no doubt adds to its charm.”
Neighbourhood:
Love Poets, Social Justice Poets, Victorian Poets
Emotional landscape: Sorrow, Spirituality, Wonder
Alfred Tennyson, later Alfred, Lord Tennyson, was born on 6 August 1809 at Somersby rectory in Lincolnshire, England, and died on 6 October 1892 at Lurgashall in Sussex. During his long life he became the defining poetic voice of the Victorian age: at once a public laureate who wrote for national occasions and a private, searching poet whose work returned obsessively to bereavement, desire, religious uncertainty, mem…
“I am not blasé, I see the nothingness of life, I know its emptiness, but I believe in Love, and Virtue, and Duty.”
Neighbourhood:
Devotional Poets, Dramatic Poets, Nature Poets, Victorian Poets
Emotional landscape: Wonder, Longing, Sorrow