Poet, essayist, Transcendentalist and American literary giant, Ralph Waldo Emerson's poetry is still taught as assiduously in the 21st Century as it was during the 19th Century. Ralph Waldo Emerson was born in 1803 in Boston, Massachusetts. The son of a Unitarian minister who died when he was eight years of age, Ralph Waldo Emerson began writing as a child. After ...
Paul Laurence Dunbar's poetry made him the first African-American poet to reach national prominence while also assuring him a place in American literature. Born in 1872 to former slaves, Paul Laurence Dunbar overcame a childhood marked by poverty and discrimination. Dunbar's mother, Matilda, had no formal education but instilled an appreciation for education and literature, particularly poetry, into her children, resulting in Paul ...
John Donne's poetry has transcended both time and language, speaking to readers across ages and continents, as fresh and meaningful today as it was when written. John Donne's life was as interesting and controversial as his poetry. Born in London in 1572 to a well-to-do Catholic family at a time when Catholicism was unpopular in England, John Donne, along with his ...
Almost unknown as a poet in her own lifetime in the Victorian era, Emily Dickinson came to be known as one of the foremost of American poets after her work was rediscovered in the 20th century. Modern readers were able to appreciate what 19th century readers were not; Dickinson's short, often untitled poems, with their unusual rhyming schemes and non-standard ...
Idiosyncratic, utterly original poet e.e. cummings ushered in the modern era of poetry with his idiomatic, conversational verse that captured the beauty of human speech. Edward Estlin Cummings was born in 1894 in Cambridge, Massachusetts. His father was sociology and political science professor at Harvard University, but left Harvard when Edward Estlin Cummings was a small child to become an ordained minister ...
