The author of such classic novels as 1984, Animal Farm and Down and Out in Paris and London, George Orwell was also a poet of some renown. Born in India in 1903, Orwell was, at heart, a social democrat who wrote extensively about the scourge of totalitarian states such as Russia as well as the plight of the poor. Born Eric Blair, ...
Modernist poet and triple Pulitzer Prize winner Archibald MacLeish was born May 7th 1892 in Glencoe, Illinois. His Glasgow-born father Andrew was a merchant and his mother Martha, who could trace her family back to the Mayflower, was a college professor. MacLeish was educated at Yale, where he began his writing career with the Yale Literary Magazine and he won a prize ...
English writer Vera Brittain is probably known best for her novel, which was called Testament of Youth, about her experiences during the WW1 which brought about her belief in pacifism and the tragic futility of war. She was born on December 29th 1893 in Newcastle-Under-Lyme, Staffordshire, the daughter of well-off parents who owned several paper mills. She had a younger brother, Edward. The family moved ...
Robert Desnos was one of a group of surrealist poets who were around in the early part of the 20th century. His contemporaries included Paul Éluard and Louis Aragon and it wasÉluard who delivered a passionate address following the death of Desnos in 1945. His speech included the following tributes: "Until death, Desnos struggled. Throughout his poems the idea of freedom runs like ...
Mina Loy was an English-born writer, artist and actor whose modernist style was much admired by contemporaries such as Gertrude Stein, William Carlos Williams and Ezra Pound. She was part of the “first modernist set” and received greater recognition for her poetry after her death than when she was alive. She led a bohemian lifestyle and her direct and ...
Kenneth Koch was a multi award winning writer who spent a good deal of his working life in New York City. He was a poet, playwright, novelist and musical composer and he dedicated much of his time to the New York School of Poetry where he exchanged ideas with fellow poets and taught up and coming writers all he knew about the ...
Born in Lancashire in 1859, Francis Thompson was a colorful character best known for his poem The Hound of Heaven. He spent a period of time as a vagrant and opium addict and even attempted to commit suicide before getting his life back together at a priory in Storrington. Even though he discovered some success with his poetry in later years, ...
Although he was born in Leicestershire in England in 1642, when the monarchy was restored after the Civil War Edward Taylor sailed to America where he became one of its foremost colonial poets. He was a puritan at heart and served as a minister in Massachusetts for nearly fifty years. He grew up during the upheaval of the Civil War in England ...
Keith Douglas, like many others of his generation, was unfortunate to be born at the time that he was. The Second World War was breaking out when he was only 19 years old so it was inevitable that he would follow his father’s former path into the Army and then, of course, take his chances with whatever dangers came his way. In ...
American Vachel Lindsay was most well-known for writing poetry that could be sung and was involved most of his in trying to revive the musical quality of verse. He was born in 1879 in Illinois and went on to become one of the most well-known poets of the early part of the 20th Century. Raised in Springfield in a well to do ...
