If you could pick an “establishment” character to personify all that was great about England and the British Empire during the Victorian and Edwardian eras it would probably be Sir Henry Newbolt. Although his domestic life flew in the face of “normality”, he was the archetypal English gentleman who stood up for traditional values in behaviour and standards. As a poet ...
Patrick MacGill came from County Donegal, a part of Ireland that has, through history, produced a number of poets and artists. Perhaps it is the romantic nature of the landscape that inspires people to write about it or draw what they see. MacGill rose from humble beginnings to become a revered Irish poet. He is commonly known as "The Navvy Poet" due to ...
One of the great figures in the revival of literature in Ireland, Padraic Colum was born in County Longford in 1881. His father worked in a workhouse for the first 9 years of Colum’s life but then lost his job, prompting him to race to America to take part in the much vaunted gold rush at the time. The rest of ...
Born in the Tuscany city of Arezzo in 1492, Pietro Aretino was one of the most influential people in Italy at the time. A poet and satirist and occasional blackmailer, he was a powerful presence in the royal court and earned the name ‘the scourge of princes’. He once had to run from Rome after the publication of his infamous, and ...
Born in Yorkshire in 1871, Ralph Hodgson was a poet who many saw as a traditionalist antidote for the modernist movement of the early 20th Century. He wrote most of his poems during a period in his 30s and 40s, publishing a number of collections including The Skylark and Other Poems. His most famous single work, The Bull, is one of the ...
Born in Sheffield in England in 1863, Oliver Herford was a poet and artist who was often compared to Oscar Wilde for his flamboyance, wit and style. His father was a Unitarian minister and when Herford was just 12 years old the family moved to America settling first in Boston but then moving to Chicago. Herford received a good education throughout ...
An influential poet in the 60s and 70s in Finland, Pentti Saarikoski was born in Impilahti in 1937. His parents and family came from middle-class Finnish stock, his father working at one time as a journalist but also as a civil servant. The greatest influence on his poetry, however, came from his mother who hailed from Karelia, the heartland of what ...
René Daumal was a 20th century French poet, novelist, playwright and translator whose work could, mostly, be described as spiritual in nature. Literary critics also used the term para-surrealist. He was well known for his pieces on perception and spirituality and he clearly had strong Eastern influences, being self-taught in the Sanskrit language. He was also a pataphysicist which means that he ...
Throughout history much has been written about the great King Solomon and most of what is known about his life is contained within the Old Testament of The Bible. He was considered the wisest of all Kings and people came from neighbouring countries, as well as from all over his own kingdom, to hear his wise words and judgements. He was a ...
Mary Darby Robinson packed quite a lot of London society life into her relatively short life and was ultimately a memorable “lady about town” (in other words a high class and much sought after bed mate). As a poet though her name is much less memorable. Her 18th century efforts to break into the London literary scene were pretty much a failure ...
