Born in 1782 in London, Ann Taylor was a much loved poet and critic who came from one of the most literary gifted families of the time. Ann’s poetic career started early when she began to write verses for children which gained her a long term popularity but she is most widely known for her collaborations with older sister Jane. Her father ...
Co-founder of the Poetry Society of America, Arthur Guiterman was born in Vienna in 1871 to American parents who lived in Austria before returning to New York when their son was three years old. In his teens, Guiterman attended public school before graduating and heading for New York City College. He was more interested in athletic and dramatic pursuits than academic ...
Mostly well-known for being a novelist, particularly for his work Vanity Fair, William Makepeace Thackeray was also a poet of some repute and published a number of verses during his lifetime. He was born in Calcutta, India, in 1811 but his father died just a few years later and his mother promptly sent the young Thackeray back to England where ...
Born in 1825, William McGonagall was a Scottish poet and actor who is largely accused of writing some of the worst doggerel poetry of all time, including his most famous work The Tay Bridge Disaster. Though he often failed to appreciate the fundamental building blocks of poetry, much of his later popularity came from the humor that his poor writing seemed ...
Born in 1590, William Bradford was a puritan and poet who formed part of the Pilgrim Fathers that landed at Plymouth in the Americas of 1620. Whilst he is widely known for his journal of the crossing on the Mayflower and the colony’s struggle to survive, Bradford was also a prolific poet in his later years. He was born in Yorkshire to ...
Not many medieval poets will have the distinction of being considered, even today, “modern”, but William Dunbar fits neatly into that category. Born in the 15th century, in Scotland, his words are, at first, a challenge but once you have got used to the dialect of that time, his messages are surprisingly contemporary in places. In many poems he adopts a curious, ...
Saigyo was a 12th century Japanese poet who elected to become a Buddhist monk at the young age of 22 having lived a privileged life up to then. He originated from a noble family and, as an elite warrior of the Imperial guard, he had close connections with the Emperor both during his term of office and after retirement. He lived at ...
Taliesin, according to Welsh legend, was a 6th century poet and minstrel who reputedly was a bard at the court of King Arthur, and possibly two other Celtic kings besides. The problem is though that most of what has been written down about him is very much based on legend. In this case it is difficult to separate actual events from probably ...
Better known as Simonides of Ceos, depicting the place where he was born, this was a 6th century BC Greek poet who became famous as much for his elegies as his romantic, lyrical poetry. He wrote a great deal about the fallen in great battles fought between the Greeks and the “Barbarians”, this term fitting almost any enemy who was not of ...
The story of Thomas Paine is, indeed, a curious one. He was one of the original Founding Fathers of the United States of America in the late 18th century. He was a great visionary, author of many books and pamphlets and a revolutionary thinker both in Europe and the new American States. He was feted everywhere he went as a man of ...
