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Gaspara Stampa was an Italian poet of the 16th century whose life was tragically cut short through illness. Some would suggest though that she might have died of a broken heart, having been rebuffed by the Count Collaltino di Collalto. This was, after all, the man to whom she dedicated her entire output of poetry, amounting to some 311 poems. Besides being ...
Eliza Cook was a 19th century English writer who grew up in London at a time of great unrest amongst the working classes. Many were angry at the failure of the Reform Act of 1832 to grant free voting to those who did not own property and the famous Chartist Movement was a result. Many writers joined the cause, writing articles in ...
Noted for helping to create and establish the Symbolist Movement at the turn of the 20th Century, Emile Verhaeren was born in 1855 in the Belgian town of Sint-Amands. His parents were reasonably wealthy and he grew up speaking French despite their Flemish roots. When he was ready for school, his father sent the young Emile to a very strict Jesuit ...
Born in Massachusetts in 1863, Ernest Lawrence Thayer was an American poet and writer who is solely remembered for one famous comic verse and the habit he had of signing his poems ‘Phin’. Thayer was born into a fairly wealthy family and had a good education that led him to attend Harvard University in 1885 where he was responsible for editing ...
An influence on such movements as the Harlem Renaissance, Fenton Johnson was a poet and short story writer who was born in Chicago in 1888. His father was a porter for the railways and the Johnsons were considered well-off for an African American family at the time and even owned their house on State Street. Fenton Johnson had no real pretensions ...
Poet Friedrich von Schiller was born in Marbach, Württemberg, Germany, in 1759, and is most notable for his involvement in the later years of his life with the Weimarer Klassic cultural movement along with his friend Johann Wolfgang Goethe. Whilst he was brought up with his mother and four sisters, the family moved to Lorch when Schiller’s father returned from military ...
Often considered as the forefather of the heroic couplet, Edmund Waller was a politician and poet who was born in Buckinghamshire in 1606. After living for a while in Amersham, the Waller family moved to Beaconsfield where the young Edmund was educated by a series of, what he would later describe as, dull tutors. When he was 10 years old, his ...
Daniel Defoe was an influential man whose life spanned the 17th and 18th centuries. He was responsible for a huge output of written work. He wrote poetry, novels and, in his famous travelogue covering the whole of Great Britain, he wrote a masterpiece that captured the essence of the British Isles in great detail. He was also a journalist when such an ...
Boris Vian’s life in 20th century France was short and yet he managed to cram a great deal into his short life. Apart from being a writer of many plays, novels, poems, songs and opera librettos he was a qualified civil engineer and jazz musician. Music was probably his first love as, in truth, his writing did not meet with as much ...
During the 18th century the Wesley family were at the forefront of the new Methodist movement which was effectively an offshoot of the Anglican church. Charles Wesley’s own father was an Anglican clergyman. Many attribute the rise of the Methodist church to his brother, John Wesley, but it is likely that they could claim equal responsibility for it. It is interesting ...
