English playwright, poet and actor Ben Jonson was born in London June 11th 1572 to a family believed to be of Scottish descent. His clergyman father died before he was born and his mother remarried. He was fortunate to receive a classical education at the prestigious Westminster School, paid for by a family friend. Jonson wanted to continue his education at Cambridge ...
Born Judith Arundell Wright, 31st May 1915 in NSW Australia, she was one of Australia’s foremost poets and writer of short stories and children’s books. She spent much of her childhood in Brisbane and after the death of her mother, Ethel, was a boarder of a girls school in New England. After graduating ...
Antonio Machado came into the world in Seville, southern Spain in 1875. He was one of two brothers, only a year apart, and their father moved the family to Madrid when Antonio was 8 years old. While studying, with his older brother, at "Institución Libre de Enseñanza", Antonio found he had a talent for writing and a love of literature. Antonio was so ...
Here is a man, born in the year 1503, into one of the most turbulent times in English history, at Allington Castle in Kent. His father, Henry, was able to live in such a grand location due to his position as a Privy Councillor to King Henry VII and he continued in this role when Henry VIII succeeded to the throne. The ...
Now here is a curious thing: how can a man who was once appointed poet laureate of all England, succeeding no less than Alfred, Lord Tennyson by the way, be considered (in some quarters) to be “the worst and least read English poet”? That is what happened to Alfred Austin in 1896, a man who had spent his whole life writing and ...
