Alexander Bestuzhev lived a relatively short life in 19th century Russia and became known, towards the end of his life, as a poet of “florid Romanticism”. Some compared his work to that of great European writers such as Victor Hugo, Sir Walter Scott and Lord Byron. He tended to exaggerate his characters and often favoured medieval jousting scenarios in both ...
One of the true literary giants of the 19th Century, Victor Hugo was born in 1802 in Besancon in France and was a leading dramatist in the Romantic Movement of the century. He was born into an age of huge turmoil with the rise of the Napoleonic era that created family divides, his father a high ranking official in the army ...
Born in 1886 in Brooklyn, New York, William Rose Benet was a poet and writer who is probably best known for founding the magazine The Saturday Review of Literature. The son of an army colonel, Benet spent most of his youth growing up in Bethlehem in Pennsylvania before being sent back to New York to study at the the Albany ...
Born in 1762 in King’s Sutton, Northamptonshire, William Lisle Bowles was a clergyman and poet who is most popularly remembered for his short collection of poems called Fourteen Sonnets. The son of a vicar and from a family that had to work hard to gather all their spare money to educate him, Bowles studied at Winchester College in his teens ...
Although he was born in Kent, in 1911, William Hart-Smith is considered one of Australia and New Zealand’s more important poets and writers. His youth was spent in England where he undertook most of his education before the family moved to New Zealand in 1924. At the age of just fifteen he began work as a radio mechanic, a job he ...
Born in 1832 Wiedenszahl, Wihelm Busch was a multifaceted writer and artist, widely known at the time for his comic stories and humorous verses which took a satirical swipe at the narrow minded lives of Germany’s city dwellers. He was brought up in a large family with stern parents who had an ethic of hard work to go alongside their strongly ...
Xavier Villaurrutia was a 20th century Mexican poet who was, perhaps, more famous for writing short plays. His most famous work was published in 1953, three years after his early death at the age of 47. He composed some theatrical dramas which were named Autos profanes. These were compiled in the work Poesía y teatro completes. While in his early thirties he was ...
There are a number of well-known English poets who wrote about the First World War, many of whom were on the battle fields of northern France when they did so. Lieutenant William Noel Hodgson, MC was one of their number. What makes him stand out though is that he wrote a poem that was published just two days before he became one ...
Born in the middle of the nineteenth century, Wilfrid Scawen Blunt was a controversial, politically-motivated writer who spent his early years travelling the world with the British Diplomatic Service, a profession that he entered at the age of eighteen. He enjoyed postings to Argentina, Greece and at a number of locations across Europe. This phase of his career ended at the age ...
Thomas Tusser was a 16th century English poet, perhaps one of the earliest known of the pastoral English poets. A farmer first, he turned to poetry and, in 1557, he produced a long piece of work called Five Hundred Points of Good Husbandry. Although set to verse he wrote it as an instructional aide to other farmers and it became his best known ...
