We keep you updated on the world of poetry with our news roundups.
Henry Clarence Kendall was a 19th century Australian bush poet, one of a number of men of that time who wrote in lyrical terms about the natural splendour of the Outback, as well as the hardships endured by the people eking out a living in an often dangerous and inhospitable land. He was born Thomas Henry Kendall on the 18th April 1839 in ...
Henry Clay Work was a 19th century American writer of poetry who is best remembered for the composition of many stirring, often religiously themed songs and music. He had a remarkable talent for composing music in his head, without the aid of a piano, a skill that came from his time working in a print shop in Chicago. He used the rhythm ...
Henri Coulette was a 20th century prize-winning American poet, his first collection in 1965 winning the Lamont Poetry Prize. Remarkably, he only published one more collection during his lifetime, although he was working on a third at the time of his death. He was also a renowned teacher, being Professor of English and faculty member at California State University for virtually all of ...
Ihara Saikaku was a 17th century Japanese haikai poet who has also been credited with the creation of the so-called “floating world” genre of prose which was, effectively, the earliest known Japanese fiction. He was born Hirayama Togo in Osaka sometime during the year 1642, the son of a wealthy merchant of that city. With ambitions to become a writer he was initially a ...
Isaac Taylor was an English writer, specialising in poetry and philosophical history. This supremely talented man was also an inventor of a variety of mechanical objects including a beer tap and a copper engraving device which was used in textile printing. He was also an artist, producing a wide variety of work including illustrations for various books, anatomical drawings for surgeons and portrait ...
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 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 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 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. 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 ...
