Paul Hamilton Hayne was a nineteenth-century American poet who was, perhaps, even better known for editing work done by other southern states poets such as Henry Timrod and Allen Tate. He supported Timrod both financially and professionally, especially when his friend was seriously ill with tuberculosis. Hayne showed his philanthropic nature by ensuring that Timrod’s work was published. When civil war gripped America ...
It is always hard to establish hard facts from speculation when discussing the lives of medieval poets and Robert Henryson is no exception. He was a late 15th century Scottish poet, sometimes described as one of the greatest medieval poets. He is listed among the so-called “Makars” who wrote in the Middle Scots language at the time of the northern renaissance. This ...
Osbert Sitwell was one of the trio of English literary siblings usually referred to as “The Sitwells”. His sister Edith was also a poet while younger brother Sacheverell plied his trade as an art and music critic. All three escaped the aristocratic and sometimes suffocating environment created by their parents who, it is claimed, did nothing to create a loving family environment. ...
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Born in 1821 in Devon, Richard Francis Burton led a colorful and adventurous life and was a writer, poet, diplomat and explorer. His father was an army officer of Irish decent and his mother was the daughter of landed gentry. The family traveled extensively during Burton’s childhood which meant that he was educated by various tutors. He did not enter into a ...
Born in Dublin in 1652, Nahum Tate was brought up in a puritan household and grew to be one of the most popular writers of his time. Perhaps most famous for his adaptation of King Lear and other Shakespeare plays, Tate was also a talented poem and hymn writer who lived for most of his life in London. After his father informed ...
Born in Jerez in Mexico in 1888, Ramon Lopez Velarde was one of the great postmodern literary influences on poetry, despite a life cut short by pneumonia. An enigmatic and controversial figure, he is considered by many to be the country’s national poet. Velarde was brought up in an affluent family, his father having forged a career as a lawyer ...
Robert Crawford was born in the suburbs of Sydney, Australia, in 1868 and is known for a small collection of poetry that was largely self-published in the first decade of the twentieth century. Not much is known about his life though he was reasonably well educated and attended King’s School in the area of Parramatta and then went on to university in Sydney. After leaving there he tried his hand at ...
Mark Akenside was an 18th century English poet whose path in life was unclear during his early years. His parents would have him study as a dissenting minister but his ambitions lay either in the fields of medicine or politics. He eventually became a doctor/physician while producing often thought provoking poetry which ruffled a few feathers in the establishment. His best known piece ...
Richard Le Gallienne has been described by some critics as a relatively obscure English poet with an “excess of romantic sensibility in an age of irony”. Born in the late 19th century, he was one of the so-called “fin-de-siècle esthetes of the 1890s” and counted among his literary associates the likes of Oscar Wilde and William Butler Yeats and he ...
