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Phineas Fletcher was an Renaissance poet and dramatist whose pastoral play, Sicelides: A Piscatory, was originally intended to be performed at Fletcher’s college in Cambridge in front of King James I. Unfortunately it was only ready for staging after the king had left so it lay dormant until publication in 1631, some sixteen years later. Born on the 8th April 1582 at Cranbrook in Kent, the ...
Pierre-Jean Jouve was a French poet and novelist. Born towards the end of the 19th century he lived for a good part of the 20th and established a reputation as one of his country’s best poets of that time. His most notable work was the anti-war poetry that he wrote, often in grisly and graphic detail, that left the reader in no doubt as to ...
Royall Tyler was an American poet, playwright and member of the legal profession. He was born on the 18th June 1757 in Boston, Massachusetts into very comfortable circumstances, his father being a wealthy merchant. He was sent to Boston Latin School and then on to Harvard University where he was a popular student and a friend of the future lawyer and politician Christopher ...
Rachel Bluwstein was a Russian-born poet who emigrated to Palestine at the age of 19 and became known as simply Rachel, or Rachel the Poetess. She was born Rachel Bluwstein Sela on the 20th September 1890 in Saratov, a town in Imperial Russia. She came from a large Jewish family, being her mother Sophia’s eleventh daughter. She was not an especially healthy child, ...
Philippe Desportes, his name sometimes written as Desports, was a late 16th century French poet and royal courtier who held prestigious posts such as secretary to the Bishop of Le Puy and advisor and personal poet to the Duke of Anjou. While accompanying the bishop he had the opportunity to spend time in Italy and he made use of his time by studying ...
Robert Mannyng of Brunne, sometimes referred to as Robert de Brunne, was one of those vital scribes who lived during medieval times and did history the great service of chronicling the events around them and, sometimes, from much further afield. He belonged to the Gilbertine order of monks and was a poet. Most of what is known about this man comes from ...
Robert Underwood Johnson was an American poet, naturalist and diplomat. His diplomatic activities were intense during the First World War and up to the early 1920s. He worked tirelessly on American-Italian relations and these efforts led to him being decorated by the Italian government. He also had an interest in American copyright laws, probably inspired by his friendship with an inventor called Nikola ...
Robert Wace was a 12th century French poet and holy man who eventually became the Canon of Bayeux. He is often referred to simply as Wace although there have been a number of variations on that name throughout history. Depending on where you come from it could be pronounced or written as Wasso, Gace, Vace or Vacce. Details of his life are, understandably, ...
Richard Monckton Milnes, also known as the 1st Baron Houghton, was an English poet and a Fellow of the Royal Society. He also spent time in politics and was a well-known patron of English literature, encouraging many new writers to take up the pen. He was born on the 19th June 1809 in London, the son of a Yorkshire Member of Parliament. His mother ...
Roland Robinson was a 20th century Australian writer of Irish origin who was honoured with the prestigious Order of Australia for his literary efforts. As well as enjoying a great reputation as a poet he was also an accomplished story teller, often relating Aboriginal tales and captivating his audiences in the area of Lake Macquarie which is where he lived out ...
