Born in 1716 in London, Thomas Gray was a poet and professor who is perhaps most well-known for the poem Elegy Written in a Country Churchyard that was inspired by the sudden passing of his poet friend Richard West. Gray was from a large family of 12 but was the only one to survive, his father suffered from mental illness, and ...
Poet Ruben Dario was born in Nicaragua in 1867 and was perhaps one of the best exponents of the literary movement modernismo that arose in the late 19th and early 20th centuries. Brought up by an aunt and uncle in Leon, Dario went to several schools and was reading a wide range of books by an early age. He wrote his ...
Paul Éluard was a prolific writer of poetry with his first published collections appearing when he was 22 years old followed by more than seventy others. Having seen life in the trenches during the First World War he was no stranger to misery and suffering and he maintained a strong desire to change the world for the better. He was hampered by ...
Born in Belfast in 1907, Louis MacNeice was a poet, greatly influenced by W.H. Auden, who was much loved by his contemporaries and known for his relaxed and honest style. His early life was spent in County Antrim and he was deeply affected by the death of his mother when he was just six years old. His father remarried and ...
A poet with a taste for the spiritual, Max Ehrmann was born in Indiana in 1872. His parents were from Bavaria, and he was educated in the small town of Terre Haute whilst attending a German Methodist church nearby. He is probably best known for his poem Desiderata that has often been quoted and misquoted down through the years, even to ...
Paul Verlaine was a much loved poet in his native France and even when, in his final years, he had descended into a drink and drug-fuelled pit of despair, the art-loving people of Paris tried hard to lift him out of this self-inflicted trough, supporting him with both financial and welfare assistance. It was too late though and his life was cut ...
Poet, novelist and historian Arna Wendell Bontemps was born October 13th 1902 in Alexandria, Louisiana. His mother Maria Pembroke was a schoolteacher and his father Paul Bontemps was a bricklayer. His father was keen for Arna to follow him in the bricklaying trade but young Arna was determined to better himself and do well in school. Like many other black families migrating ...
American writer Edwin Arlington Robinson, born December 22nd 1869, seemed to have an unfortunate start to his life. It is said that his parents were so disappointed at not having a girl they couldn’t even think of a name for him when he was born, and instead his name was drawn out of a hat by tourists at a holiday resort. The ...
Of mixed race ancestry, Jean Toomer was born in 1894 and was seen as one of the most important proponents of modernism and a primer mover in the cultural movement the Harlem Renaissance of the time. Although his mother was white, his father’s history was steeped in the slave culture of 19th Century Georgia. In his early days, Toomer attended segregated ...
Born in 1819, American poet and critic James Russell Lowell was best known as one of the group of Fireside Poets which included such luminaries as Longfellow and Wendell Holmes. Raised in New England, Lowell went to Harvard and graduated in 1838, although he himself agreed that he was never a good student. In his last year there, he became editor ...
