Born at the turn of the 20th Century in 1896, Edmund Blunden is best known for his poetry and other writing that was greatly influenced by World War I. Raised in London, he went on to study at Oxford, until, at the age of 19, he was commissioned into the army and saw battle in both Ypres and the Somme, earning ...
Born in the busy naval town of Portsmouth in 1828, George Meredith was a writer of fantasy novels and a prolific poet, producing such well known works as The Lark Ascending which was the influence for Vaughan Williams’ seminal musical arrangement of the same name. His mother died when he was barely five years old and in his teenage years George ...
Judith Viorst has enjoyed a full career of writing for newspapers and magazines while publishing a number of children’s books (both prose and poetry) and also some for adults. She became interested in the study of Freudian psychology in the late 1970s and, as a result, published a number of books on this subject. She displayed the more light hearted side of ...
Samuel Daniel is generally known as an English poet and historian who was, indeed, fortunate to be born at a glorious time in English history. The Elizabethan era was into its fourth year when Daniel was born and he grew up enjoying the benefits of this time of great learning and international adventures. This was a good time to be a ...
Here is a Serbian poet who grew up at a time of deep unrest across the whole of Europe. He fought as a partisan during WWII and was captured and interned in a Nazi concentration camp. Having survived that he lived through the oppressive times that saw communism dominate the whole of central and eastern Europe for decades. Despite the state’s efforts ...
Linda Pastan is an American poet and essay writer who is known chiefly for writing short poems about family life and motherhood. A populist poet, she brings a unique feminine perspective to issues such as ageing, loss, death and the fragility of family relationships. One of her most recent poems is Travelling Light, from 2011, and illustrates her style: I am only leaving you, ...
Born in Ireland in 1844, John Boyle O’Reilly was one of the most popular poets of the era, a prolific writer and often an outspoken critic of the situation of the Irish. At a young age he joined the Fenian movement and was imprisoned and deported for it, ending up in Australia before escaping penal servitude and forging a life ...
Born into the Elizabethan era, in 1554, Philip Sidney was known as a poet and soldier and was a prominent feature of the court at the time. He came from an influential family and was educated at Shrewsbury School and then Oxford, before being elected to Parliament at the age of just 18. Traveling widely through Europe in his youth, ...
Jessie Pope was an English poet, writer and journalist who divided opinion quite dramatically with her motivational style of poetry during the first world war. Almost every line she wrote seemed to be a call to arms, up and at ‘em and to hell with the Kaiser. While she was lauded by many as just the kind writer that was needed to ...
Born in 1913 in the heart of Utah, May Swenson grew up in a Mormon family, the oldest out of 10 children. She realized that she was a lesbian from an early age and was shunned in later life by her family who held strong religious beliefs. As a girl she was greatly influenced by the work of Edgar Allen Poe ...
