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Poet
Jonathan Swift
B. 1667 D. 1745
Born in Ireland in 1667, Swift spent much of his adult life in England. He was actively involved in politics, and in his self-penned epitaph describes himself as a ‘champion of liberty’. He was a prolific writer of prose satire…
Poet
Christopher Smart
B. 1722 D. 1771
Christopher Smart was born in 1722 and is best remembered for his religious poems A Song to David and Jubilate Agno, both of which were written during his time at St Luke’s Hospital for Lunatics, London. He believed that God…
Poet
Samuel Johnson
B. 1709 D. 1784
Samuel Johnson is a towering figure in the history of English literature, to the extent that the second half of the eighteenth century has sometimes been described as ‘the age of Johnson’. He was a poet, journalist, lexicographer, critic, essayist,…
Poet
Mary Leapor
B. 1722 D. 1746
In spite of needing to earn a living as a kitchen maid and her death from measles at the age of twenty-four, Mary Leapor left behind a substantial body of work. Her poetry has increasingly come to be seen as…
Poet
Luke Kennard
B. 1981
Luke Kennard is the author of numerous works of poetry and short fiction. HIs first collection of poems, The Solex Brothers, was published in 2005, and won him one of that year’s Eric Gregory Awards. His second collection, The Harbour…
Poet
Peter Didsbury
B. 1946
Peter Didsbury has described himself as ‘someone who’s constitutionally fascinated by myth and the weight of the past’ and indeed his poems seem to conjure a particular, possibly bygone England peopled with men working the land, butchers, fishermen, kings and…
Poet
Vona Groarke
B. 1964
Vona Groarke is one of the leading Irish poets of her generation. Born in Mostrim, Ireland, she studied at Trinity College, Dublin and University College, Cork. She has held positions at Villanova and Wake Forest Universities in the USA, and…
Poet
John Dryden
B. 1631 D. 1700
John Dryden was one of the dominant literary figures of the English Restoration period. He began his prolific and versatile writing career in the Puritan era before Charles II became king, and wrote verses on the death of Oliver Cromwell….
Poet
John Watson
B. 1939
John Watson was born in 1939 in the Bland district in NSW. He went on to study mathematics at the University of Sydney and worked as a high-school maths teacher for thirty years until taking early retirement at fifty-five. He then…
Poet
Ben Jonson
B. 1572 D. 1637
Jonson was a skilful satirist of contemporary society, producing Volpone for the stage in 1606 and The Alchemist in 1610. It is highly likely that Shakespeare would have appeared in a production of another of Jonson’s plays, Every Man in…
Poet
John Wilmot Earl of Rochester
B. 1647 D. 1680
John Wilmot was born in 1647, the son of Henry Wilmot, a celebrated Royalist who had led the cavalry at the Battle of Edgehill. Henry helped the young Prince Charles escape to France after the disastrous Royalist defeat at the…
Poet
Alexander Pope
B. 1688 D. 1744
Pope was born into a Catholic family in 1688, the year of The Glorious Revolution, when Catholics could not live in London – the centre of literary life – or attend university. At the age of twelve he contracted a…
Poet
Charles Boyle
B. 1951
Charles Boyle was born in Leeds, and worked in for a long time in publishing, including fourteen years at Faber and Faber. He is the author of six collections of poetry: Affinities (1977), House of Cards (1983), Sleeping Rough (1987),…
Poet
Mark Ford
B. 1962
Mark Ford was born in Nairobi, Kenya in 1962; he grew up there, and in Nigeria, Sri Lanka, the U.S.A., Hong Kong, Bahrain and the UK. He holds a B.A. and a D.Phil. from the University of Oxford, and studied…
Poet
Jamie McKendrick
B. 1955
Jamie McKendrick was born in Liverpool in 1955, and lives in Oxford, where he teaches part-time and reviews poetry and the visual arts for a number of newspapers and magazines. He is the author of six collections of poetry: The…
Poet
Lady Mary Wortley Montagu
B. 1689 D. 1762
Mary Pierrepont was born in 1689, the first child of the Earl of Kingston. Her mother died in 1694 and Mary was groomed to become hostess and housekeeper for her father, then a Whig MP. Her tasks included presiding over his…
Poet
Christian Campbell
B. 1979
Christian Campbell’s debut collection, Running the Dusk, was published to international critical acclaim in 2010. It was shortlisted for the Forward Prize for Best First Collection, the Cave Canem Prize and the Guyana Prize for Literature, won a Lannan Residency…
Poet
Christopher Marlowe
B. 1564 D. 1593
Marlowe is believed to have written all his poems and translations as a young man studying at Corpus Christi College, Cambridge. He was born in 1564, the same year as Shakespeare, and was the son of a shoemaker. Ovid’s elegies…