Largely credited for laying at least part of the foundations for the modern democratic country of Greece, Solon was a politician and poet who was prominent in Athens between 638 and 558 BC. As with many of his contemporaries, there is a dearth of documentary and archaeological evidence concerning the life of this Athenian statesman who remains an influential figure in our ...
Born in 1544 in the Italian city of Sorrento, poet Torquato Tasso is perhaps most well-known for his work Jerusalem Delivered which presented a mythical account of the First Crusade. Often noted as one of the most popularly read poets in Europe, Tasso suffered from mental health problems throughout his life. His father was a famous lyric poet from noble birth and ...
Mostly known for his novels, writer Raymond Queneau was also an accomplished poet who was born in Le Havre in 1903. An only child, he was well educated and studied the classics and philosophy before going onto the Sorbonne in 1921 where he graduated in psychology and philosophy. He would, however, begin a lifelong love of mathematics, something he would increasingly ...
Perhaps best known for being a scientist and inventor of some repute, Piet Hein was also a poet who often wrote under the name Kumbel. Born in Copenhagen in 1905, he composed a number of short poems or grooks that were published in the local newspaper Politiken particularly during the war when a large part of Denmark was occupied by the ...
Miguel de Unamuno was a celebrated Spanish writer of the late 19th and early 20th centuries who grew up believing that he would become a Catholic priest. Falling in love with, and marrying, his childhood sweetheart put paid to that idea so Unamuno poured all his energies into writing poetry, novels and plays. His poetry though did not appear until he had ...
Kenneth Fearing was an American poet and novelist whose short life spanned the first half of the 20th century. This was a turbulent time in American history and one literary critic described Fearing as "the chief poet of the American Depression." Along with his poetry and fiction publications he was one of the founders of the long running magazine “The Partisan Review” ...
Mark Van Doren was a Pulitzer Prize-winning writer whose considerable writing output included some twenty volumes of original verse. His first collection, Spring Thunder, was not published until he was aged 30. He was also a literary critic and anthologist and one of his most celebrated pieces of work was originally called The Noble Voice, published in 1946. In it he reviewed ...
Louis Untermeyer was an American poet, anthologist and literary critic who, in 1961, was granted the honour of being the nation’s 14th Poet Laureate in recognition of his lifetime’s work. He held this post for two years despite receiving unfavourable government attention at various times during his life due to his occasional Marxist proclamations and being a contributor to such left-wing publications ...
Lawrence Durrell was a 20th century writer who considered himself to be more Tibetan than anything else, having been born in the foothills of the Himalayas. His most famous publication was The Alexandria Quartet and he also produced a considerable amount of poetry and travelogues. He spent many years working for the British Foreign Office at a variety of postings around the ...
One of the most prominent and best loved poets of Elizabethan times, Michael Drayton was born in Warwickshire in 1563. Although not much is known of his youth in the village of Hartshills, many academics have surmised that he went to Oxford at some point and that he was, for a while, in the service of one Thomas Goodere. Historically, Drayton only ...
