Born around 1558 in the West Ham area of London, Thomas Lodge was an Elizabethan writer who is often considered one of England’s earliest satirists with works such as A Fig for Momus. Lodge was raised in an educated family – his father was Lord Mayor of London – and he went to Merchant Taylor’s School before progressing to Oxford University. There ...
Thomas Nashe was an Elizabethan pamphleteer who courted controversy but, during his short life, was also one of the most prolific and influential satirists and poets of the time. He was born in Lowestoft in 1567, his father a curate who later gained a post at West Harling where the family moved when Nashe was just six years old. At the age ...
Born in 1778, in Zakynthos, Italian poet, soldier and revolutionary Ugo Foscolo was an atheist who believed in the ‘eternal void’ and was an illuminist and pre-Romantic known for various translations and his poem Dei Sepolcri. His father worked as a doctor in Croatia but died when Foscolo was just ten years old, an event that then led the family to ...
Phoebe and her sister Alice were 19th century American poets who grew up writing together, Alice being the older by four years. They initially published their poetry jointly before eventually producing separate bodies of work once both names were established amongst the American literati. It has been suggested by many critics that Phoebe was a more able poet than her sister although ...
Rabiʿah al-Basri was also known as Rabiʻa al-ʻAdawiyya al-Qaysiyya and it is believed that she lived in Basra, in Iraq, in the first century AD. Her name “al-Basri” certainly suggests that she was a native of Basra but, as with all historical records from so long ago, much of what has been written down relies on speculation and legends passed down. It ...
