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 ...
Born around 1520 in Lyon at the height of the Renaissance, Louise Labe was a female poet who wrote honestly about desire and eroticism, producing a small but enduring collection of sonnets which set her apart as a remarkable writer for the times. Brought up in a rich family – her father was a rope maker and she herself is often ...
Nicknamed ‘Bosie’, English poet and author Lord Alfred Douglas was born in 1870 in Worcestershire and is most notable for his relationship with literary giant Oscar Wilde that led to the Irish writer’s imprisonment. Brought up in a well-to-do family, Douglas attended school in Wokingham, went on to Winchester College and then entered Oxford but failed to graduate with ...
Poet and playwright James Elroy Flecker was born in 1884 in Lewisham, London, and went to school in Cheltenham where his father worked as a headmaster. His verses were greatly influenced by the French style Parnassism which grew out of the positivist movement of the early 19th century and, despite his short life, he wrote a number of collections the ...
American poet and novelist Laura Riding was born in New York at the beginning of 1901. She reached poetic maturity earlier than many of her compatriots, publishing a lengthy 500 page work of collected poems when she was still in her 30s but would renounce poetry altogether some ten years later. Riding was brought up by Jewish parents who originally came to ...
Imagine setting a simple challenge to almost anyone in the English speaking world regarding fondly remembered poems and songs from their childhood. Ask them to recite the opening lines of the first poem or song that comes to mind and there is a good chance that the majority would say: “Twinkle, twinkle, little star. How I wonder what you are”. It’s one ...
Joaquin Miller (his adopted pen name) was a “frontiersman poet” who lived at the time of great exploration across the American West, moving between mining towns and agricultural areas, spending time in California during the great Gold Rush period. He lived amongst the Modoc Indians for a year and, reputedly, took a Native American woman as his first wife, producing two children. ...
Joanna Baillie was a Scottish poet and playwright at a time when women were not generally known for writing plays and having them performed on stage. Miss Baillie was determined that her plays should be brought to the attention of live audiences rather than just being creations to be read in the same way that her poetry was. In fact she had ...
Ivan Vazov was one of Bulgaria’s famous sons whose name lives on with a theatre in the capital, Sofia, being named after him, along with the national library. He lived through a highly volatile period in his country’s history where Bulgaria struggled constantly to be released from the yoke of Ottoman tyranny. He could probably be accurately described as a revolutionary poet ...
