Victoria Sackville-West, better known as ‘Vita’, was a colourful figure throughout the first half of the 20th century. A prize-winning author, she wrote a great deal of poetry along with a number of novels and books about gardening techniques. She passed on many of her gardening tips through a weekly column in The Observer newspaper. When her husband, Harold Nicolson, was knighted ...
Valery Bryusov was a Russian poet and prose writer who was born at the time of the great Russian Symbolist movement in art and literature which lasted into the early years of the 20th century. Bryusov was one of the prominent members of this movement and, in addition, he was also a literary critic, historian, playwright and translator. He was born Valery Yakovlevich ...
Valentine Ackland was the pseudonym used by a 20th century female English poet who eventually earned a place in literary history as being part of the philosophical movement known as Modernism that was prevalent in western society at that time. She was born Mary Kathleen Macrory Ackland on the 20th May 1906. She was known as “Molly” by her parents and had a disturbed ...
Omar Khayyám was the pseudonym used by this great Persian poet, philosopher and scientist. His scientific studies in the fields of astronomy, mechanics, mineralogy and mathematics place him amongst the most influential of that time, making him worthy of the title true polymath. As well as producing poetry he wrote a number of treatises on his scientific discoveries. He was born Ghiyath ad-Din Abu"l-Fatḥ ʿUmar ...
Willa Sibert Cather was an American poet and novelist, and sometime teacher, who grew up on the plains of the developing American West and wrote about her experiences of frontier life with a trilogy of books starting in 1913 with O Pioneers! The story continued with The Song of the Lark in 1915 and ended with My Ántonia, published in 1918. She was a Pulitzer Prize ...
Will McKendree Carleton was an American poet and journalist. He wrote mostly about the rural America in which he grew up and some critics have stated that he did for the people of Michigan what the likes of Robert Burns did for the Scottish crofters, and the Reverend William Barnes did for the English farming fraternity. He was born on the 21st ...
Many cities of the world have seen some remarkable poetic events, including the rise and demise of some incredibly wonderful poets. What if we could tell you exactly which cities have been the most important throughout history? Well, we have a lot of data. We"ve been putting together some great timelines and timemaps (you should check them out!), and that took a lot of data-entry. For every event that happened ...
William Byrd was an English poet and composer of mostly sacred musical pieces, whose main focus was on the development of the English madrigal, a style that had originated in Italy in the 14th century. He was also an expert keyboard player. He was a Catholic but much of his work was produced for Anglican services which was, perhaps, a sensible course ...
Wilfrid Wilson Gibson was an English poet and playwright whose work was produced during the early years of the reign of King George V, thus placing him in the group known as the Georgian poets. Other writers belonging to this group included Siegfried Sassoon, D. H. Lawrence and Rupert Brooke. Both Sassoon and Brooke are well known as First World War ...
The American poet, teacher and politician Charles Wilbert Snow is more often known as Bill Snow, or sometimes Wilbert Snow, while some formal references to him quote the name C. Wilbert Snow. Born in the late 19th century this man certainly lived a full life, into his early nineties, and he held the post of 75th Governor of Connecticut, albeit for barely two ...
