John Godfrey Saxe was a mostly satirical 19th century American poet and would-be politician. He tried twice to be elected to the position of Governor of his home state of Vermont, but failed twice. It was thought that his stance on slavery – he advocated a controversial policy of non-interference – almost certainly led to his downfall on both occasions. Most people ...
John Gay lived a relatively short life from the end of the 17th century to only the third decade of the 18th century but managed to write enough controversial verse to last a much longer lifetime. He was, on the one hand, patronised by the great and the good, thus allowing him to continue his musings. On the other hand he was ...
John Quincy Adams was an American poet who, by his own admission, would like to have been a better one, as evidenced by the following statement: "Could I have chosen my own genius and condition, I would have made myself a great poet." It is very likely though that his poetry only received the attention that it did because of who this great man ...
Born in 1870 in British Burma, Hector Hugh Munro was famous during the Edwardian era for his short stories and novels written under the pen name of Saki. Munro’s father worked for the police and the young writer may well have spent his formative years in Burma if his mother had not had an accident that saw him returned to ...
Born in 1796 near Bristol, Harley Coleridge is probably best known through association with his more famous father Samuel Taylor Coleridge, author of the Rhyme of the Ancient Mariner. Brought up in an artistic and literary family, at the age of 4, Coleridge’s family moved from the small village of Clevedon to the Lake District to a property just a ...
