Joyce Kilmer was born on 6 December 1886 and was christened Alfred Joyce Kilmer but he chose to shorten it when he became a published writer. Growing up in New Brunswick, New Jersey Kilmer enjoyed a comfortable, middle class existence. His father was an analytical chemist working for the big company Johnson and Johnson and it was his invention of a new ...
“The Northamptonshire Peasant Poet” was how John Clare is remembered. Born in 1793, the son of a farm labourer, he grew up in a small village called Helpston, close to the Cambridgeshire border. It was only six miles from Peterborough at a time when the old, agricultural ways were changing forever as the wheels of industry turned all over Europe. So many ...
Walter de la Mare is one of England’s best known writers, producing great works that were often atmospheric, slightly scary and with a touch of mystery. Born in south east London in 1873 into fairly privileged circumstances he was accorded, on his death in 1956, the honour of having his ashes buried in the crypt of St Pauls Cathedral. He had, ...
Perhaps one of the most well-known writers of the late 19th century, Oscar Wilde was born in Dublin in 1854 and his appeal has endured to the present day. Known mainly for his short satirical statements and cutting wit as well as the seminal novel The Picture of Dorian Gray, he was also a prolific poet. Wilde came from an intellectual family ...
Mirza Ghalib was the pen name of Urdu poet Mirza Asadullah Baig Khan who was born in colonial India in 1797. Considered one of the most popular and influential poets of the later days of the Persian Mughal Era before British rule took full hold, he wrote several ghazals – poetic forms that incorporate rhyming couplets with a refrain, each line ...
