Lew Welch was an American poet who led a short and sometimes troubled life spanning the middle decades of the 20th century. He was inspired to write when at college through studying the work of Gertrude Stein, and she was the subject of his senior thesis when graduating in 1950. His time at college was spent with fellow “Beat Generation” poets ...
Mao Zedong was one of the most influential and significant individuals in the whole history of China. He was founder of the People’s Republic of China and chairman of the Chinese Communist Party from 1949 until his death 27 years later. His political ideologies were founded on Marxist and Leninist theories. His strategy of government and military rule was known as Marxism-Leninism-Maoism. ...
Julia Ward Howe lived most of her life battling constantly to change women’s lives for the better. The United States, just like other parts of the world, was a place where women were allowed little freedom of expression and had precious little control over their own lives. A glaring example of this was her own marriage when she found that her husband, ...
Lascelles Abercrombie was an accomplished English poet, literary critic and journalist who was sometimes referred to as the “Georgian Laureate”. In addition to his writing he occupied a number of significant academic positions at universities in Oxford, Leeds and Liverpool. He is most famous for being part of the so-called group of writers called the “Dymock Poets” during the period immediately before ...
Robert Binyon is well known as one of the First World War Poets who produced significant pieces of work that are remembered to this day. His most famous poem, For the Fallen, was written in the early days of the war, in September 1914. Four lines from it are quoted at every Remembrance Day service across the United Kingdom and the Commonwealth ...
Born in 1483 in Eisleben, Martin Luther is perhaps one of the most influential religious figures of the last millennium. His role in the Protestant Reformation and his excommunication by the Catholic Church was one of the first major challenges to the power of the Pope across Europe. Baptized as a Catholic, he spent most of his childhood growing up in ...
Born in Prague in 1901, Jaroslav Seifert was one of the most noted Czech poets and writers of the 20th Century and received the Nobel Prize in 1984. A critic of the communist regime at heart, he was at the forefront of the avant-garde movement and helped create, and was a regular contributor for, the artistic magazine Devětsil. Brought up in a ...
Born in 1882 in Leytonstone, John Drinkwater was a poet and dramatist who was perhaps best known for his plays about leading historical figures such as Lincoln and Oliver Cromwell. He was greatly influenced by his father who began as a school teacher but gave up his career to become an actor and try his hand at play-writing. In 1891, Drinkwater was ...
Dissenter and Christian preacher, John Bunyan was born in Elstow in 1628 and is most famous for his allegorical work Pilgrim’s Progress. He was a man who stood by his beliefs and was imprisoned several times for preaching without a license and he remains one of the more enigmatic figures of English history. Bunyan professed to being brought up in modest circumstances, ...
American poet Helen Hunt Jackson was born in 1830 and is most well-known for her tireless activism on the part of the indigenous Native American population. Brought up in Massachusetts by Unitarian parents, she was orphaned at an early age and sent to live with her aunt. She was educated initially at Ipswich Seminary and then went on to board ...
