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Alice was the elder of the famous American Cary sisters who were so close that they wrote much of their poetry together during the19th century. They published their work jointly in the first instance but once the pair had established themselves as significant writers of that time they published separate collections and both went on to achieve success as individual writers despite ...
Born in Trieste in 1883, Umberto Saba was a poet and novel writer who would grow up to be one of the major Italian literary influences of the 20th Century. His father converted to Judaism to marry his mother shortly before Saba was born but was quick to abandon the family, leaving Saba to be brought up by a Catholic wet-nurse. This ...
Born in 1905 in Prague, Vladimir Holan was a Czechoslovakian poet noted for his abstract language and dark visions of the world. He spent much of his childhood outside the capital in the small town of Podoli where he would walk three miles to school every day to be instructed at an Augustan convent. The family returned to Prague when Holan was ...
Probably best known for his work as a literary critic, Sir William Empson was also a gifted, though sporadic, poet in his own right. He was born in Yorkshire in 1906 and his father died when he was young, Empson being sent to public school shortly after. He was initially more interested in mathematics than in literary works, something that earned ...
Japanese poet Yosa Buson was born in 1716 in Settsu Province, during the Edo period where society was under the control of the Tokugawa shogunate. He is rightly considered one of the great poets and painters of the era, mentioned in the same breath as Issa and Basho, and his haiku have been translated into many languages including English and French. As ...
Most well-known for the part he played in the Russian Futurist movement, Velimir Khlebnikov was born in 1885 in Malye Derbety, Republic of Kalmykia. His father was head of the local authority in the lower Volga and his mother was from noble stock and the young Khlebnikov received a good education, developing an interest in mathematics at an early age. When he ...
Walther von der Vogelweide was a medieval poet and “minnesinger” who travelled around the various courts of Middle High Germany in the late 12th century. It is very likely that he had been knighted at some point for military service but this did not come with any land or material wealth. He wrote a lot of poetry which could be categorised as religious, ...
Walter Savage Landor was a controversial English writer of poetry and prose who often took to writing in Latin to attack or criticise his enemies. Mostly he got away with this ploy except when his barbs were aimed at those of equal academic status to himself who could, thus, read what was being written about them. He was a fiery character who ...
Samuel Butler was a 17th century English poet who favoured a satirical, sometimes humorous style of writing. He is best known for an epic piece of work that cruelly satirised sectarian religions. Hudibras was begun in 1658 and two further parts were written and published, the final section not been completed until 20 years after it had begun. The diarist Samuel Pepys, ...
Sir Francis Bacon is remembered by historians as a great philosopher, scientist and politician. His life seemed to be a constant series of peaks and troughs where he was, at one time, the Lord Chancellor of England and therefore the most powerful man in the land. But then there were times when he was mired in debt and, in fact, he had ...
