We keep you updated on the world of poetry with our news roundups.
Aaron Southwick was an American poet and substantial landowner of the 19th century whose Quaker descendants could be traced back to the Mayflower arrivals 200 years previously. He was popularly known as the “Bard of Riley”, a settlement that grew up from the large parcel of land that he bought in East Kansas and developed over a number of years. It is ...
The Persian medieval theologian and mystic, and occasional poet, is also commonly referred to as Al-Ghazali or Algazel by historians in the western world. Such was this man’s fame and influence that many rank him second only to the Islamic prophet Muhammad in the Muslim world. Conversely, some critics saw his movement from science to faith as detrimental to Islamic scientific progress. He ...
Count Aleksey Konstantinovich Tolstoy was one of the iconic Tolstoy family of 19th century Russia, a second cousin to the more famous Leo Tolstoy. He is more commonly known by the shortened form of A K Tolstoy and, like many of his kin, he was a playwright and novelist as well as being a poet. His historical dramatic works were so significant ...
Although Aleksis Kivi is generally regarded as the national writer of Finland he lived a short and unhappy life in the late 19th century. He wrote a significant number of plays and pieces of verse but his major life project was a novel called Seven Brothers which took him ten years to complete. It was an unsympathetic, uncompromising view of rural Finland and ...
Alexander (Aleksandr) Ivanovich Vvedensky was a radical Russian poet of the first half of the 20th century who belonged to the “Russian Futurism” movement of artists and writers. Their aim was to jettison the “old ways” and the old style of literature in favour of a new direction in keeping with the ever-increasing industrialisation of the country. Vvedensky sought desperately to attach himself ...
William Caldwell Roscoe was a 19th century English journalist and poet whose life, like many at that time, was cut tragically short by typhoid fever. His two best known pieces of dramatic work were tragedies called Eliduc and Violenzia and he contributed poems, essays and literary criticism to publications such as the National Review and Prospective. Roscoe was born in Liverpool on the 20th ...
Alexander Brome, born in 1620, was an English poet, famous for his many drinking songs and satirical verses against the Rump Parliament. A lawyer by profession, he was a prime supporter of the Royal Party during the reign of Charles I and was also instrumental in aiding the Restoration Movement. In 1661, following the Restoration, Brome published a number of songs and ...
The American author Augustus Lucas Hillhouse was a writer of hymns and books on the natural world. He was the younger brother of James Hillhouse who was also known as “The Poet Hillhouse”. Augustus was born in New Haven, Connecticut on the 9th December 1792. He graduated from Yale University in 1810. Augustus’s poetry is generally found in his extensive hymn writing. A long ...
Very little biographical detail exists for this 19th century American poet and soldier. Neither date of birth nor death can be confirmed and what follows is extracted from material supplied by a great grandson, Mr Ron Holcombe. Alfred Biddleton McCreary was born, probably sometime during the 1840s, in the small town of Bradner which lies in the north western part of Ohio. At the ...
The exotically named Augustus Montague Toplady was an 18th century Anglican minister, poet and hymn writer who penned the famous hymn Rock of Ages which, of course, is still sung today all over the world. As a dedicated Calvinist he was bitterly opposed to the views of John Wesley, the co-founder of the Methodist church. Toplady was born on the 4th November ...
