George Crabbe was an English poet, clergyman, surgeon and entomologist who, with the help of some influential friends, established himself as a writer of substance. His work was not, at first, popular but with subsequent revisions, and the patronage of well-known literary figures such as Edmund Burke, Samuel Johnson and William Wordsworth (and many others), Crabbe made his mark as ...
Gaspara Stampa was an Italian poet of the 16th century whose life was tragically cut short through illness. Some would suggest though that she might have died of a broken heart, having been rebuffed by the Count Collaltino di Collalto. This was, after all, the man to whom she dedicated her entire output of poetry, amounting to some 311 poems. Besides being ...
Eliza Cook was a 19th century English writer who grew up in London at a time of great unrest amongst the working classes. Many were angry at the failure of the Reform Act of 1832 to grant free voting to those who did not own property and the famous Chartist Movement was a result. Many writers joined the cause, writing articles in ...
Noted for helping to create and establish the Symbolist Movement at the turn of the 20th Century, Emile Verhaeren was born in 1855 in the Belgian town of Sint-Amands. His parents were reasonably wealthy and he grew up speaking French despite their Flemish roots. When he was ready for school, his father sent the young Emile to a very strict Jesuit ...
Born in Massachusetts in 1863, Ernest Lawrence Thayer was an American poet and writer who is solely remembered for one famous comic verse and the habit he had of signing his poems ‘Phin’. Thayer was born into a fairly wealthy family and had a good education that led him to attend Harvard University in 1885 where he was responsible for editing ...
