Recent posts

Irwin Peter Russell Poems

 

Peter Russell was a British poet, magazine editor and one-time book shop proprietor.  He also carried out works of translation as well as being a literary critic.  Domestic circumstances led to his living a mostly difficult life, financially, but he managed to travel extensively, covering Canada, Europe and the Middle East.  He was in Iran at the time of the 1979 Revolution but, ...

Isabella Valancy Crawford Poems

 

Isabella Valancy Crawford was a 19th century Canadian poet and novelist who emigrated with her family from Ireland in 1856.  She was one of the first freelance writers in Canada and is considered, by most, to be her adopted country’s first major poet.  Unfortunately her fame came mostly after her untimely death. She was born on the 25th December 1846 in Dublin, the daughter ...

Ivan Turgenev Poems

 

Ivan Turgenev was a 19th century Russian writer and civil servant whose literary output included poetry, plays, short stories and novels.  Literary critics have held the general view that his Fathers and Sons ranks amongst the greatest novels of that time whilst an 1852 collection of short stories called A Sportsman's Sketches was “a milestone of Russian Realism”. He was born Ivan Sergeyevich Turgenev in October 1818 into ...

Jacob Steendam Poems

 

Jacob Steendam was a 17th century Dutch-born poet who was amongst the early American settlers around the year 1650.  The place that is now known as New York was, at that time, named New Netherland but all this changed when the English arrived.  It is generally believed that he was the first-known poet from that town. Besides poetry Steendam also wrote pamphlets for the benefit of ...

Horatio Alger Jr Poems

 

Horatio Alger Jr. was a 19th-century American poet and novelist who wrote during the so-called “Gilded Age” in the United States where many of the people were struggling to make any kind of life for themselves whilst the country’s economy was going through boom times.  Alger wrote about young men who rose from the doldrums of poverty to get themselves into a position ...

James Beattie Poems

 

James Beattie was a distinguished 18th century Scottish poet, academic and moral philosopher whose work earned him the post-nominals FRSE – Fellowship of the Royal Society of Edinburgh, an organisation that he was a co-founder of.   His name carried such weight in literary history that he was one of the sixteen Scottish writers included on the Scott Monument that was completed in ...

Hovhannes Tumanyan Poems

 

Hovhannes Tumanyan was a poet whose work has had such an impact on the literary life of his country that he is thought by many to be the national poet of Armenia. In addition to his own original work he translated many other writers’ work into Armenian, examples being the German Johann Wolfgang von Goethe and English romantic poet, the Lord Byron.  Much ...

H.P. Lovecraft Poems

 

H.P. Lovecraft was an American poet and story writer who made a name for himself, albeit posthumously, as a writer of horror stories and it was this genre of literature for which he will best be remembered. He claimed that fellow American Edgar Allan Poe was THE major influence on his writing and it is easy to see why when you ...

Hugh McCrae Poems

 

Hugh McCrae was an Australian writer of poetry, plays, prose and material for a light operetta.  He also produced a number of memoirs, most notably one that featured the exploits of his poet father George Gordon McCrae, and those of his father’s friends.  Additionally he compiled extracts from the journals and diaries of his grandmother and had them published.  He also had ...

Hugh Henry Brackenridge Poems

 

Hugh Henry Brackenridge was a Scottish-born American who was most famous for his stellar career in the legal profession as well as his political achievements, but he did find time to pursue his literary interests as well.  He was a poet and novelist and wrote what some called the first fictional view of the old west in his satirical novel Modern Chivalry.  Additionally ...