Thomas Hardy was born in 1840, the son of a stonemason. He trained and practised as an architect, but, as soon as he could, earned his living by writing the novels which made him famous. Then, after Jude the Obscure…

Thomas Love Peacock is probably best known today for his hilarious Nightmare Abbey, which cheerfully satirizes the interest of contemporary literature in morbid subjects and gothic settings. Some of the targets of his broadly affectionate satire were significant literary figures…

Born in Hampshire, Warton was appointed Poet Laureate in 1785, Warton was also a literary historian and critic and is listed as having produced the first History of English Poetry. He was a highly regarded scholar. Warton died before he…

Thomas Wyatt was born in 1504. His father was a Lancastrian, imprisoned and tortured near the end of the Wars of the Roses in the reign of Richard III, then promoted to high office by Henry VII. Thomas entered the…

Tim Liardet was born in London in 1959 and educated at the University of York and characterises his early route to poetry as “…long, and circuitous, fraught with the exactions of wrong jobs, self-doubt and the occasional suggestion of a…