Born in the middle of the nineteenth century, Wilfrid Scawen Blunt was a controversial, politically-motivated writer who spent his early years travelling the world with the British Diplomatic Service, a profession that he entered at the age of eighteen. He enjoyed postings to Argentina, Greece and at a number of locations across Europe. This phase of his career ended at the age ...
Thomas Tusser was a 16th century English poet, perhaps one of the earliest known of the pastoral English poets. A farmer first, he turned to poetry and, in 1557, he produced a long piece of work called Five Hundred Points of Good Husbandry. Although set to verse he wrote it as an instructional aide to other farmers and it became his best known ...
Samuel Lover was born in Dublin at the end of the 18th century and his artistic talents made him one of Ireland’s best known and best loved songwriters. He also wrote novels and was an able poet. Added to all this he was a talented portrait painter and made a speciality of painting miniatures which were very popular at that time. ...
Born in 1869, in Swanmore, Hampshire, writer and teacher Stephen Leacock moved to Canada at an early age and became one of the best known humorists of his time. His family had made their money from running plantations in Madeira and there was a strong history associated with the British Empire. When Leacock was just 6 years old, his father decided to ...
Poet and writer Thomas Pringle was born in Roxburghshire in Scotland in 1789 and counted amongst his friends Sir Walter Scott. He is perhaps most strongly linked to South African poetry after spending some years in the country and was one of the first English writers to describe the region and the people who lived there. Pringle’s father was a farmer ...
