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Poet
Hannah More
B. 1745 D. 1833
Hannah More’s poem was written in support of William Wilberforce’s campaign to abolish slavery. A passionate, poetic explanation of the anti-abolitionists’ argument, this extract is part of a 294 line poem. ‘Oroonoko’, in the fourth line of this extract, is…
Poet
Robert Southey
B. 1774 D. 1843
Robert Southey was an independently minded young man who was expelled from Westminster School for opposing flogging. He developed radical religious and political ideas and, at one stage, considered emigrating to America with his friend Samuel Taylor Coleridge to set…
Poet
Mary Robinson
B. 1757 D. 1800
Mary Robinson was a gifted musician, champion of the rights of women, novelist, poet and actress. She was born in Bristol to a wealthy family and received a good education, but her marriage to the thoroughly unreliable Thomas Robinson unravelled…
Poet
Felicia Hemans
B. 1793 D. 1835
Felicia Hemans’s ‘Casabianca’ took on such a vibrant life of its own after her death that, somehow, its author became almost irrelevant. In fact, Hemans was an accomplished and prolific poet who wrote over twenty volumes of verse before her…
Poet
Arthur Hugh Clough
B. 1819 D. 1861
Clough suffered from periods of religious doubt throughout his life. His inability to subscribe to the Thirty-nine Articles, which detailed the beliefs of the Church of England, meant that he felt compelled to leave his position as a Fellow at…
Poet
Joanna Baillie
B. 1762 D. 1851
Baillie was a Scottish playwright, critic and poet who lived most of her life in Hampstead, where she was the centre of a rich literary culture. Born into a family of physicians and the daughter of a university professor, Baillie…
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
Pascale Petit
B. 1953
Pascale Petit was born in Paris, grew up in Wales and France, and now lives in Cornwall. She is of French/Welsh/Indian heritage. She graduated from the Royal College of Art and spent the first part of her life as a…
Poet
Philip Sidney
B. 1554 D. 1586
A poet, soldier and courtier, Philip Sidney was one of the most celebrated figures of the Elizabethan age. He was a member of a distinguished and talented family; his sister, Mary, the Countess of Pembroke, was a patron of writers…
Poet
Walter Raleigh
B. 1552 D. 1618
As a successful military adventurer and explorer, author and poet, Ralegh was a significant figure in the court of Queen Elizabeth I. He took expeditions to the New World, searching for El Dorado, and was an early colonizer, while also…
Poet
Robert Southwell
B. 1561 D. 1595
Southwell wrote most of his poems and prose when working as an underground Jesuit priest in Protestant England at a time when an active Catholic priest’s chances of survival were no more than one in three. Educated in Italy, he…
Poet
Edmund Spenser
B. 1553 D. 1599
Edmund Spenser is often mentioned alongside Shakespeare, Marlowe and Donne as one of the greatest poets of the Elizabethan period. He is probably best known for his long, allegorical epic poem, The Faerie Queen, which is full of medieval knights,…
Poet
Katherine Philips
B. 1632 D. 1664
Katherine Philips started writing soon after her marriage in 1647, aged sixteen, to James Philips. He was a prominent supporter of the Parliamentary cause, whereas Katherine enthusiastically welcomed the Restoration of the English monarchy in 1660. Katherine Philips formed a…
Poet
Henry King
B. 1592 D. 1669
The son of an influential Bishop of London, Henry King followed in his father’s footsteps to pursue a career in the Church, which culminated in his appointment as Bishop of Chichester, a position he held during a very turbulent period…
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
Claire Crowther
B. 1947
Claire Crowther lives in Somerset and has worked as a consumer journalist, editor, and communications director for many years. As an undergraduate at Manchester University, she won the Shakespeare Scholarship and the George Gissing Memorial Prize in English Literature. Her…
Poet
Charlotte Smith
B. 1749 D. 1806
Charlotte Turner was born in 1749 into the landed gentry. Her father owned two prosperous estates, Stoke Place in Surrey and Bignor Park in Sussex, but gambling losses destroyed his fortune; aged fifteen Charlotte was married off to the wealthy but…
Poet
Isaac Rosenberg
B. 1890 D. 1918
Isaac Rosenberg was born in Bristol in 1890, the son of Russian immigrants; his father was a learned Jew who scraped a living as a pedlar and market trader. In 1897 the family moved to Whitechapel in London’s East End. Isaacs’s…