One of the great influences on the literary resurgence in San Francisco at the turn of the 19th Century, Gelett Burgess was born in 1866 in Boston. He was most widely known for his humorous verses and produced a wide body of work as well as creating the small magazine The Lark which led to a number of spinoffs over the ...
Born around 84 BC in Verona, Gaius Valerius Catullus was a Roman poet and is generally perceived as a strong literary influence on the more well-known writers such as Ovid and Virgil who were to follow. Over time his works fell into obscurity before being rediscovered in the Middle Ages where they resumed their rightful place in the ...
Born in Essex in 1592, Francis Quarles was a popular poet of the time and often mentioned in the same breath as the illustrious John Milton who was one of his contemporaries. Quarles was born into a well-to-do family though his parents died early on and he was left an orphan. This did not hamper his development though and he ...
Born in Georgia in 1892, poet Galaktion Tabidze grew up during a time of great upheaval in what was then the Russian Empire. He survived the Great Purge and political repression of the 1930s and battled his own depression and alcoholism to become of one of Georgia’s most prominent and influential literary figures of the first half of the twentieth century. Tabidze’s ...
Very little has been written about the 19th century American poet David Bates whose writing output was relatively modest. What he did write, however, was translated into other languages and sold worldwide. He started his adult life as a lowly clerk but, through hard work and determination, made his way in the business and eventually became a full member and chief ...
Much of what is known about the 7th century poet known as Cædmon is thanks to the Venerable Bede’s great work The Ecclesiastical History of the English People (written in Latin as Historia Ecclesiastica Gentis Anglorum). Bede was a monk living in the north of England whose carefully documented accounts of life at that time earned him the title “The Father of ...
Colley Cibber, as can probably be deduced from his portrait shown here, was a flamboyant, often eccentric character whose lifetime ambition was to be a great actor/manager in the London theatres as well as being a well-regarded poet and playwright. He certainly made for himself a theatrical career though it could not always be said that it was a successful one. His ...
Charles Hamilton Sorley was a Scottish poet born at a tragic time in European history. He barely had time to complete his education before being sent to his doom on the battlefields of World War One. In his short life though he produced some powerful poems which were regarded by many literary critics as some of the most important written by the ...
Eugene O'Neill was essentially an American playwright and sometime poet who received the honour Nobel Laureate in Literature in 1936. Much of his work could be said to have a tragic quality about it but there were light-hearted pieces as well. One strange coincidence in his life that he was born in a hotel room and died in one too, although not ...
Born in Ontario, Canada, in 1862, Duncan Campbell Scott served most of his life working for the government as a civil servant but was also one of the country’s most respected and well-known poets. The son of a minister, he was interested in the arts very early on and quickly learned to play the piano, studied hard at school and ...
