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Alfred, Lord Tennyson
Alfred Tennyson, 1st Baron Tennyson, FRS (6 August 1809 – 6 October 1892) was
Poet Laureate of Great Britain and Ireland during much of Queen Victoria's reign and
remains one of the most popular British poets.
Tennyson excelled at penning short lyrics, such as "Break, Break, Break", "The Charge
of the Light Brigade", "Tears, Idle Tears" and "Crossing the Bar". Much of his verse was
based on classical mythological themes, such as Ulysses, although In Memoriam A.H.H.
was written to commemorate his best friend Arthur Hallam, a fellow poet and fellow
student at Trinity College, Cambridge, who was engaged to Tennyson's sister, but died
from a brain hemorrhage before they could marry. Tennyson also wrote some notable
blank verse including Idylls of the King, "Ulysses", and "Tithonus". During his career,
Tennyson attempted drama, but his plays enjoyed little success. A number of phrases
from Tennyson's work have become commonplaces of the English language, including
"Nature, red in tooth and claw", "'Tis better to have loved and lost / Than never to have
loved at all", "Theirs not to reason why, / Theirs but to do and die", "My strength is as
the strength of ten, / Because my heart is pure", "To strive, to seek, to find, and not to
yield", "Knowledge comes, but Wisdom lingers", and "The old order changeth, yielding
place to new". He is the ninth most frequently quoted writer in The Oxford Dictionary of
Quotations.
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Early life
Tennyson was born in Somersby. He was born into a middle-class line of Tennysons,
but also had a noble and royal ancestry.
His father, George Clayton Tennyson (1778–1831), was rector of Somersby (1807–
1831), also rector of Benniworth and Bag Enderby, and vicar of Grimsby (1815). Rev.
George Clayton Tennyson raised a large family and "was a man of superior abilities and
varied attainments, who tried his hand with fair success in architecture, painting, music,
and poetry. He was comfortably well off for a country clergyman and his shrewd money
management enabled the family to spend summers at Mablethorpe and Skegness, on the
eastern coast of England." Alfred Tennyson's mother, Elizabeth Fytche (1781–1865),
was the daughter of Stephen Fytche (1734–1799), vicar of St. James Church,
Louth (1764)
and
rector
of
Withcall
(1780),
a
small
village
between Horncastle and Louth. Tennyson's father "carefully attended to the education
and training of his children."
Tennyson and two of his elder brothers were writing poetry in their teens, and a
collection of poems by all three was published locally when Alfred was only 17. One of
those brothers, Charles Tennyson Turner later married Louisa Sellwood, the younger
sister of Alfred's future wife; the other was Frederick Tennyson. Another of Tennyson's
brothers, Edward Tennyson, was institutionalized at a private asylum.
Poet Laureate
After William Wordsworth's death in 1850, and Samuel Rogers' refusal, Tennyson was
appointed to the position of Poet Laureate; Elizabeth Barrett Browning and Leigh
Hunt had also been considered. He held the position until his own death in 1892, by far
the longest tenure of any laureate before or since. Tennyson fulfilled the requirements of
this position by turning out appropriate but often uninspired verse, such as a poem of
greeting to Princess Alexandra of Denmark when she arrived in Britain to marry the
future King Edward VII.
Tennyson and the Queen
Though Prince Albert was largely responsible for Tennyson's appointment as Laureate,
Queen Victoria became an ardent admirer of Tennyson's work, writing in her diary that
she was "much soothed & pleased" by reading In Memoriam A.H.H. after Albert's
death. The two met twice, first in April 1862, when Victoria wrote in her diary, "very
peculiar looking, tall, dark, with a fine head, long black flowing hair & a beard, — oddly
dressed, but there is no affectation about him." Tennyson met her a second time nearly
two decades later, and the Queen told him what a comfort In Memoriam A.H.H. had
been.
The art of Tennyson's poetry
In writing Tennyson used a wide range of subject matter, ranging from medieval legends
to classical myths and from domestic situations to observations of nature, as source
material for his poetry. The influence of John Keats and other Romantic poets published
before and during his childhood is evident from the richness of his imagery and
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descriptive writing. He also handled rhythm masterfully. The insistent beat of Break,
Break, Break emphasizes the relentless sadness of the subject matter. Tennyson's use of
the musical qualities of words to emphasize his rhythms and meanings is sensitive. The
language of "I come from haunts of coot and hern" lilts and ripples like the brook in the
poem and the last two lines of "Come down O maid from yonder mountain height"
illustrate his telling combination of onomatopoeia, alliteration, and assonance:
The moan of doves in immemorial elms
And murmuring of innumerable bees.
Tennyson was a craftsman who polished and revised his manuscripts extensively. Few
poets have used such a variety of styles with such an exact understanding of meter; like
many Victorian poets, he experimented in adapting the quantitative meters of Greek and
Latin poetry to English. He reflects the Victorian period of his maturity in his feeling for
order and his tendency towards moralizing. He also reflects a concern common
among Victorian writers in being troubled by the conflict between religious faith and
expanding scientific knowledge. Like many writers who write a great deal over a long
time, his poetry is occasionally uninspired, but his personality rings throughout all his
works – work that reflects a grand and special variability in its quality. Tennyson
possessed the strongest poetic power; he put great length into many works, most famous
of which are Maud and Idylls of the King, the latter arguably the most famous Victorian
adaptation of the legend of King Arthur and the Knights of the Round Table. A
common thread of grief, melancholy, and loss connects much of his poetry
(e.g., Mariana, The Lotos Eaters, Tears, Idle Tears, In Memoriam), likely reflecting Tennyson's
own lifelong struggle with debilitating depression. T. S. Eliot famously described
Tennyson as "the saddest of all English poets", whose technical mastery of verse and
language provided a "surface" to his poetry's "depths, to the abyss of sorrow".
List of works
From Poems, Chiefly Lyrical (1830):
The Dying Swan
The Kraken
Mariana
Lady Clara Vere de Vere (1832)
From Poems (1833):
The Lotos-Eaters
The Lady of Shalott (1832, 1842) – three versions painted by J. W. Waterhouse (1888,
1894, and 1916). Also put to music by Loreena McKennitt on her album The Visit
(1991).
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St. Simeon Stylites (1833)
From Poems (1842):
Locksley Hall
Tithonus
Vision of Sin [26]
The Two Voices (1834)
"Ulysses" (1833)
From The Princess; A Medley (1847)
"The Princess"
'Godiva'
Now Sleeps the Crimson Petal – it later appeared as a song in the film Vanity Fair, with
musical arrangement by Mychael Danna
"Tears, Idle Tears"
In Memoriam A.H.H. (1849)
Ring Out, Wild Bells (1850)
The Eagle (1851)
The Sister's Shame
From Maud; A Monodrama (1855/1856)
Maud
The Charge of the Light Brigade (1854) – an early recording exists of Tennyson reading this.
From Enoch Arden and Other Poems (1862/1864)
Enoch Arden
The Brook – contains the line "For men may come and men may go, But I go on for
ever" which inspired the naming of a men's club in New York City.
Flower in the crannied wall (1869)
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The Window – Song cycle with Arthur Sullivan. (1871)
Harold (1876) – began a revival of interest in King Harold
Idylls of the King (composed 1833–1874)
"Becket" (1884)
Locksley Hall Sixty Years After (1886)
Crossing the Bar (1889)
The Foresters – a play with incidental music by Arthur Sullivan (1891)
Kapiolani (published after his death by Hallam Tennyson)
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Matthew Arnold
Matthew Arnold (24 December 1822 – 15 April 1888) was a British poet and cultural
critic who worked as an inspector of schools. Matthew Arnold frequently wrote on
contemporary social issues, using his poetry to influence opinion. He was also interested
in issues of faith and religion, such as found in his most famous poem – Dover Beach.
Biography Matthew Arnold
MATTHEW, ARNOLD (1822-1888). Matthew Arnold was the son of Thomas Arnold,
who was a noted and innovative headmaster of Rugby school. Matthew Arnold studied
at Rugby and Balliol College, Oxford. After graduating he returned to Rugby for a short
time to teaching classics in 1851 he married and after this he began work as a schools
inspector. This was a demanding job but enabled him to travel widely throughout the
UK and Europe.
His early poetic works included Empedocles on Etna (1852) and Poems (1853) these
established his reputation as a poet. In 1857 he was appointed to be professor of poetry
at Oxford University a post he held for ten years. He was the first professor to lecture in
English rather than Latin. During his time as professor of poetry at Oxford Matthew
produced many essays of literary criticism such as ‘On Translating Homer’ (1861 and
1862), ‘On the Study of Celtic Literature’ (1867), and ‘Essays in Celtic Literature’
Matthew Arnold’s writings, to some extent characterized many of the Victorian beliefs
with regard to religious faith and morality. However one significant development in his
poetry was that he shared with great clarity his own inner feelings. This poetic
transparency has had an influence on many other poets such as W.B.Yeats and
even Sylvia Plath.
One important theme which runs through the poetry of Matthew Arnold is the issue of
faith and the sense of isolation that man can feel without faith. This theme is evident in
poems such as ‘Dover Beach‘.
“The sea of faith
Was once, too, at the full, and round earth’s shore
Lay like the folds of a bright girdle furl’d.
But now I only hear
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Its melancholy, long, withdrawing roar,
Retreating, to the breath
Of the night-wind, down the vast edges drear
And naked shingles of the world.”
Whilst Matthew Arnold’s poetry did not have the poetic fire of
say Blake or Wordsworth his writings are ‘characterized by the finest culture, high
purpose, sincerity and a style of great distinction and much of his poetry had ‘an
exquisite and subtle beauty’
Matthew Arnold Poems
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A Wish
Consolation
Dover Beach
East London
Growing Old
Hayeswater
Lines Written In Kensington Gardens
Philomela
Shakespeare
The Future
The Last Word
The Pagan World
The Scholar Gypsy
The Voice
To Marguerite
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Oscar Wilde
Oscar Wilde is one of the most iconic figures from late
Victorian society. Enjoying a meteoric rise to the top of society, his wit, humor and
intelligence shine through his plays and writings. For his sexuality he suffered the
indignity and shame of imprisonment. For a long time his name was synonymous with
scandal and intrigue. However with changing social attitudes he is remembered with
great affection for his biting social criticism, wit and linguistic skills.
‘To get back my youth I would do anything in the world, except take exercise, get up
early or be respectable.’
- Oscar Wilde
As Stephen Fry wrote of Oscar Wilde.
‘What of Wilde the man? He stood for Art. He stood for nothing less all his life.. He is
still enormously underestimated as an artist and a thinker.. Wilde was a great writer and a
great man.’
Short biography: Oscar Wilde
Oscar Wilde was born on 16th October 1854. in Dublin, Ireland. His parents were well
known and attracted their fare share of gossip for their extravagant lifestyles. In 1964 his
father Wille Wilde was knighted for his services to medicine. However his pride in
receiving this honor was overshadowed by an allegation of rape by one of his patients.
Although never proved, it cast a shadow over William Wilde.
Oscar Wilde proved to be a student of great talent. He was awarded a scholarship to
Trinity College Dublin. Here he studied the classics, in particular developing an interest
in the Greek philosophers and the Hellenistic view of life. From Trinity College he won
a scholarship to Magdalen College Oxford University. He enjoyed his time in Oxford
and was able to develop his poetic sensibilities and love of literature. He also became
more conscious of his bisexual nature. For his increasing ‘femine’ dress he often
received stick from more ‘traditional’ Oxford students. He was a brilliant scholar but
also increasingly rebellious. In one academic year he got rusticated for turning up to
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College 3 weeks after the start of term. Thus after a while he lost interest in pursuing an
academic career in Oxford and moved to London. It was in London that he was able to
skillfully enter into high society, soon becoming well known as a playwright and noted
wit. Oscar Wilde became famous throughout London society. He was one of the early
‘celebrities’ in some respects he was famous for being famous. His dress was a target for
satire in the cartoons, but Wilde didn’t seem to mind. In fact he learnt the art of selfpublicity and seemed to revel in it, at least up until his trial in 1898.
Oscar Wilde’s trial gripped the nation, the subject matter a source of intense gossip and
speculation. For his ‘crime’ of homosexual acts Wilde was subject to 2 years hard labor
in Wandsworth and then Reading Gaol. It is no understatement to say this experience
deeply shocked and affected the previously ebullient Wilde. In some respects he never
really recovered, on his release he left for Paris where he lived in comparative anonymity.
However he retained his wit and continued to write, heavily influenced by his chastening
experiences. Of these post gaol writings, his poem ‘Ballad of Reading Gaol is perhaps
the most well known, illustrating a new dimension to Wilde’s writing.
‘I never saw a man who looked
With such a wistful eye
Upon that little tent of blue
Which prisoners call the sky.’
..
‘ I walked with other souls in pain.
Within another ring.
And was wondering if the man had done
A great or little thing.
When a voice behind me whispered low,
That fellows got to swing.’
From: Ballad of Reading Gaol
Although Wilde couldn’t return to his previous level of writing he developed new
capacities, whilst retaining his sharp intellect. As Johnathon fryer commented on Oscar
Wilde’s final part of life he was.
‘beaten but not bowed, still a clown behind a mask of tragedy.’
The Life of Wilde was turbulent and volatile. Never short of incident. It reflected his
own inner paradoxes and revolutionary views. In some ways he was both a saint and
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sinner at the same time. Rightly or wrongly Wilde is remembered as much for his life as
his writings. However he himself said.
‘I have put my talent into writing, my genius I have saved for living.’
His writings reflect in part his paradoxical view of life, suggesting things were not always
as they appeared. As his biographer Richard Ellman said of Wilde.
‘Along with Blake and Nietzche , he was proposing that good and evil are not what they
seem, and that moral tabs cannot cope with the complexity of behaviour’
Whatever one may make of Wilde’s life, his capacity for writing remains undeniable. His
greatest work and comedy is arguably ‘The importance of being Earnest’ Here the
plotline is thin to say the least but Wilde brings it alive through his scintillating repertoire
of wit and biting humour.
‘Relations are simply a tedious pack of people, who haven’t got the remotest knowledge
of how to live, nor the smallest instinct about when to die.’
- Algernon, Act I
‘Thirty-five is a very attractive age. London society is full of women of the very highest
birth who have, of their own free choice, remained thirty-five for years.”
- Lady Bracknell, Act III
Wilde was not an overtly political commentator but through his plays there is an
underlying critique of social norms that are illumined for their absurdities.
Wilde remains a fascinating character. One who lived life to the full, experiencing both
the joy and tragedy of society’s vacillating judgements. With the distance of over a
century it is easier to judge Wilde for his unique contributions to literature rather than
through the eyes of Victorian moral standards. His quotes have become immortal a
fitting tribute to a genius of the witticism
‘I am so clever that sometimes I don’t understand a single word of what I am saying.’
Poems by Oscar Wilde
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A Vision
Holy Week At Genoa
Magdalen Walks
On The Massacre of Christians in Bulgaria
Sonnet to Liberty
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Gerard Manley Hopkins
Gerard Hopkins was born July 28, 1844, to Manley and
Catherine (Smith) Hopkins, the first of their nine children. His parents were High
Church Anglicans (variously described as “earnest” and “moderate”), and his father,
amarine insurance adjuster, had just published a volume of poetry the year before.
At grammar school in Highgate (1854-63), he won the poetry prize for “The Escorial”
and a scholarship to Balliol College, Oxford (1863-67), where his tutors included Walter
Pater and Benjamin Jowett. At one time he wanted to be a painter-poet like D. G.
Rossetti (two of his brothers became professional painters), and he was strongly
influenced by the aesthetic theories of Pater and John Ruskin and by the poetry of the
devout Anglicans George Herbert and Christina Rossetti. Even more insistent, however,
was his search for a religion which could speak with true authority; at Oxford, he came
under the influence of John Henry Newman. (See Tractarianism.) Newman, who had
converted from Anglicanism to Roman Catholicism in 1845, provided him with the
example he was seeking, and in 1866 he was received by Newman into the Catholic
Church. In 1867 he won First-Class degrees in Classics and “Greats” (a rare “doublefirst”) and was considered by Jowett to be the star of Balliol.
The following year he entered the Society of Jesus; and feeling that the practice of poetry
was too individualistic and self-indulgent for a Jesuit priest committed to the deliberate
sacrifice of personal ambition, he burned his early poems. Not until he studied the
writings of Duns Scotus in 1872 did he decide that his poetry might not necessarily
conflict with Jesuit principles. Scotus (1265-1308), a medieval Catholic thinker, argued
(contrary to the teachings of the official Jesuit theologian, St. Thomas Aquinas) that
individual and particular objects in this world were the only things that man could know
directly, and only through the haecceitas (“thisness”) of each object. With his
independently-arrived at idea of “inscape” thus bolstered, Hopkins could begin writing
again.
In 1874, studying theology in North Wales, he learned Welsh, and was later to adapt the
rhythms of Welsh poetry to his own verse, inventing what he called ” sprung rhythm.”
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The event that startled him into speech was the sinking of the Deutschland, whose
passengers included five Catholic nuns exiled from Germany. The Wreck of the
Deutschland is a tour de force containing most of the devices he had been working out
in theory for the past few years, but was too radical in style to be printed.
From his ordination as a priest in 1877 until 1879, Hopkins served not too successfully
as preacher or assistant to the parish priest in Sheffield, Oxford, and London; during the
next three years he found stimulating but exhausting work as parish priest in the slums
of three manufacturing cities, Manchester, Liverpool, and Glasgow. Late in 1881 he
began ten months of spiritual study in London, and then for three years taught Latin and
Greek at Stonyhurst College, Lancashire. His appointment in 1884 as Professor of
Greek and Latin at University College, Dublin, which might be expected to be his
happiest work, instead found him in prolonged depression. This resulted partly from the
examination papers he had to read as Fellow in Classics for the Royal University of
Ireland. The exams occurred five or six times a year, might produce 500 papers, each
one several pages of mostly uninspired student translations (in 1885 there were 631
failures to 1213 passes). More important, however, was his sense that his prayers no
longer reached God; and this doubt produced the “terrible” sonnets. He refused to give
way to his depression, however, and his last words as he lay dying of typhoid fever on
June 8, 1889, were, “I am happy, so happy.”
Apart from a few uncharacteristic poems scattered in periodicals, Hopkins was not
published during his own lifetime. His good friend Robert Bridges (1844-1930), whom
he met at Oxford and who became Poet Laureate in 1913, served as his literary
caretaker: Hopkins sent him copies of his poems, and Bridges arranged for their
publication in 1918.
Even after he started writing again in 1875, Hopkins put his responsibilities as a priest
before his poetry, and consequently his output is rather slim and somewhat limited in
range, especially in comparison to such major figures as Tennyson or Browning. Over
the past few decades critics have awarded the third place in the Victorian Triumvirate
first to Arnold and then to Hopkins; now his stock seems to be falling and D.G.
Rossetti’s rising. Putting Hopkins up with the other two great Victorian poets implies
that his concern with the ” inscape” of natural objects is centrally important to the
period; and since that way of looking at the world is essentially Romantic, it further
implies that the similarities between Romantic and Victorian poetry are much more
significant than their differences. Whatever we decide Hopkins’ poetic rank to be, his
poetry will always be among the greatest poems of faith and doubt in the English
language.
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Gerard Manley Hopkins Poems
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Binsey Poplars
Easter Communion
God’s Grandeur
Heaven Haven
Peace
The Windhover
The Wreck Of The Deutschland
The Wreck Of The Deutschland Part 2
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Rudyard Kipling
Rudyard Kipling (1865 -1936) was an English short-story writer, poet, and novelist.
Many of his stories were based on his life in India. To some Kipling was a prophet of
British Imperialism, but whatever his political views, his literary talents are widely
admired.
English short-story writer, novelist and poet, remembered for his celebration of British
imperialism and heroism in India and Burma. Kipling was the first Englishman to
receive the Nobel Prize for Literature (1907). His most popular works include THE
JUNGLE BOOK (1894) and the JUST SO STORIES (1902), a collection of tales about
how
animals
came
to
be
the
way
they
are
today.
Rudyard Kipling was born in Bombay, India, where his father was an arts and
crafts teacher at the Jeejeebhoy School of Art. His mother was a sister-in-law of the
painter Edward Burne-Jones. India was at that time ruled by the British.
Kipling’s writings at the age of thirteen were influenced by the pre-Raphaelites. At the
age of six he was taken to England by his parents and left for five years at a foster home
at Southsea. His unhappiness at the unkind treatment he received was later expressed in
the short story ‘Baa Baa, Black Sheep’, in the novel THE LIGHT THAT FAILED
(1890), and in his autobiography (1937).
In 1878 Kipling entered United Services College, a boarding school in North Devon. It
was an expensive institution that specialized in training for entry into military academies.
His poor eyesight and mediocre results as a student ended hopes about military career.
However, these years Kipling recalled in lighter tone in one of his most popular books,
STALKY & CO (1899).
Kipling returned to India in 1882, where he worked as a journalist in Lahore for Civil
and Military Gazette (1882-87) and an assistant editor and overseas correspondent in
Allahabad for Pioneer (1887-89). Kilping’s short stories and verses gained success in the
late 1880s in England, to which he returned in 1889, and was hailed as a literary heir to
Charles Dickens.
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In 1892 Kipling married Caroline Starr Balestier, the sister of an American published and
writer, with whom he collaborated a novel, THE NAULAHKA (1892). The young
couple moved to the United States. Kipling was dissatisfied with the life in Vermont,
and after the death of his daughter, Kipling took his family back to England and settled
in Burwash, Sussex. Kipling’s marriage was not in all respects happy. The author was
dominated by his wife who disliked the vulgar aspects of her husband’s character.
Kipling invented a persona acceptable to public and developed in his works his ideal
man of action. During these restless years Kilping produced MANY INVENTIONS
(1893), JUNGLE BOOK (1894), a collection of animal stories for children, THE
SECOND JUNGLE BOOK (1895), and THE SEVEN SEAS (1896).
Widely regarded as unofficial poet laureate, Kipling refused this and many honors,
among them the Order of Merit. During the Boer War in 1899 Kilping spent several
months in South Africa. In 1902 he moved to Sussex, also spending time in South
Africa, where he was given a house by Cecil Rhodes, the influential British colonial
statesman. In 1901 appeared KIM, widely considered Kipling’s best novel. The story set
in India, depicted adventures of an orphaned son of a sergeant in an Irish regiment.
Soon after Kipling had received the Nobel Prize, his output of fiction and poems began
to decline. His son was killed in the World War I, and in 1923 Kipling published THE
IRISH GUARDS IN THE GREAT WAR, a history of his son’s regiment. Between the
years 1922 and 1925 he was a rector at the University of St. Andrews. Kipling died on
January 18, 1936 in London, and was buried in Poet’s Corner at Westminster Abbey.
Kipling’s autobiography, SOMETHING OF MYSELF, appeared posthumously in 1937.
Kipling’s glorification of the British empire and racial prejudices, stated in his poem ‘The
White Man’s Burden’ (1899), has repelled many readers, and made uneasy also such
admirers as W.B. Yeats and T.S. Eliot. However, readers loved Kipling’s romantic tales
about the adventures of Englishmen in strange and distant parts of the world. His most
uncontroversial books are considered his tales for children. His own children appeared
in the stories as Dan and Una – the death of ‘Dan’ in the WW I darkened author’s later
life. Characteristic for Kilping’s work is realism, added with acute observation of men
and landscapes, exploration of myth and fantasy, and sharp, racy style.
Selected Poems
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A Pilgrim’s Way
Cells
Cities and Thrones And Powers
Danny Deever
Dedication
Edgehill Fight
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England’s Answer
Fuzzy-wuzzy
Gunga Din
If
Loot
Mother o’ Mine
The Answer
The Ballad Of East And West
The Buddha at Kamakura
The Disciple
The Explanation
The Glory of the Garden
The Gods Of The Copybook Headings
The Lost Legion
The miracles
The Power Of The Dog
The Sack of the Gods
The Song Of The Dead
Tommy
When Earth’s Last Picture Is Painted
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Elizabeth Barrett Browning
Elizabeth Browning – Biography
BROWNING, ELIZABETH BARRETT (1806-1861).– Poetess, and wife of Robert
Browning. While still a child she showed her poetic gift, and her father published 50
copies of a juvenile epic, on the Battle of Marathon. At the age of 15 she fell off a horse,
injuring her spine. This accident confined her to a recumbent position for several years,
and she never fully recovered from the effects of this. Elizabeth would pass a lot of time
writing poetry in a darkened room.
Her early volumes of poetry such as ‘The Seraphim and Other Poems’ (1838) (including
“Cowper’s Grave.”) and ‘The Cry of Children’ received wide critical acclaim and she
became one of the most respected female poets, she was even mentioned as a successor
to Wordsworth as Poet Laureate. In 1845 she met for the first time her future
husband, Robert Browning. Their courtship and marriage were carried out under
somewhat peculiar and romantic circumstances. Her father Mr Barrett ruled his family
with extraordinary control, forbidding any of his 12 children to marry. Therefore the
couple had to marry in private and make a secret departure from her home to go and
live in Italy. Her romance and marriage with Robert Browning helped Elizabeth
tremendously, contributing to an improvement in her health.
In Italy the couple ran a guest house, where many writers and poets came at various
stages. In 1851 she wrote one of her finest books ‘Casa Guidi Windows’, this was
inspired by her support for Italian independence from Austria. In 1856 she wrote her
longest and most popular collection of poems ‘Aurora Leigh’
She is generally considered one of England’s greatest poetesses. Her works are
thoughtful and delicate, but also offer profound ideas, especially on spiritual topics. Her
own sufferings, combined with her moral and intellectual strength, made her the
champion of the suffering and oppressed wherever she found them. (Elizabeth was an
enthusiastic supporter of the anti slavery movement)
Elizabeth had a profound religious faith which infused her work, this religious
orthodoxy and her seriousness may make her poetry unfashionable now. However she
does have an engaging lyrical style Also her message of hope from a former invalid is a
worthy inspiration.
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Elizabeth died in her husband’s arms in 1861
Poems by Elizabeth Browning
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Aurora Leigh
Cry Of the Children
Elizabeth Browning Poetry
Go From Me
God’s Universe
Grief
Living Beloveds
My Future will not Copy fair my Past
My Heavy Heart
Not Death But Love
O Princely Heart
Sonnets from the Portuguese
The Face of All The World
Thou must Sing Alone
What Can I give Thee Back
Yet Love
T. Enas Fawzy
R. Browning
Robert Browning was born in Camberwell, a suburb of London. Young Robert spent
much of his time in his father’s private library of 6000 volumes in several languages. The
chief source of his education
Browning became an admirer of Elizabeth’s Barretts poetry in 1844. He began
corresponding with her by letter. This was the start of one of the world’s most famous
romances. Their courtship lasted until 1846 when they were married. The couple moved
to Italy that same year and had a son, Pen, later in 1849.
Robert did not become recognized as a poet, until after Elizabeth’s death in 1861. After
which, he was honored for the rest of his life as a literary figure.
Robert is perhaps best-known for his dramatic monologue technique. In his
monologues, he spoke in the voice of an imaginary or historical character. Robert had a
fondness for people who lived during the Renaissance. Most of his monologues portray
persons at dramatic moments in their lives.
Robert Browning Poems
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In a Gondola
Meeting at Night
My Star
Prospice
Saul – Chapter 18
The Last Ride Together
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John Clare
John Clare (13 July 1793 – 20 May 1864) was an English poet, the son of a farm
laborer, who came to be known for his celebratory representations of the English
countryside and his lamentation of its disruption. His poetry underwent a major reevaluation in the late 20th century and he is often now considered to be among the most
important 19th-century poets. His biographer Jonathan Bate states that Clare was "the
greatest laboring-class poet that England has ever produced. No one has ever written
more powerfully of nature, of a rural childhood, and of the alienated and unstable self"
Early life
Clare was born in Helpston, six miles to the north of the city of Peterborough. In his
lifetime, the village was in the Soke of Peterborough in Northamptonshire and his
memorial calls him "The Northamptonshire Peasant Poet". Helpston now lies in the
Peterborough unitary authority of Cambridgeshire.
He became an agricultural labourer while still a child; however, he attended school
in Glinton church until he was twelve. In his early adult years, Clare became a pot boy in
the Blue Bell public house and fell in love with Mary Joyce; but her father, a prosperous
farmer, forbade her to meet him. Subsequently he was a gardener at Burghley House. He
enlisted in the militia, tried camp life with Gypsies, and worked in Pickworth as a lime
burner in 1817. In the following year he was obliged to accept parish relief. Malnutrition
stemming from childhood may be the main culprit behind his 5-foot stature and may
have contributed to his poor physical health in later life.
Early poems
Clare had bought a copy of Thomson's The Seasons and began to write poems and
sonnets. In an attempt to hold off his parents' eviction from their home, Clare offered
his poems to a local bookseller named Edward Drury. Drury sent Clare's poetry to his
cousinJohn Taylor of the publishing firm of Taylor & Hessey, who had published the
work of John Keats. Taylor published Clare's Poems Descriptive of Rural Life and Scenery in
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1820. This book was highly praised, and in the next year his Village Minstrel and other
Poemswere published.
Poetry
John Clare memorial, Helpston
In his time, Clare was commonly known as "the Northamptonshire Peasant Poet". His
formal education was brief, his other employment and class-origins were lowly. Clare
resisted the use of the increasingly standardised English grammar and orthography in his
poetry and prose, alluding to political reasoning in comparing 'grammar' (in a wider
sense of orthography) to tyrannical government and slavery, personifying it in jocular
fashion as a 'bitch'.[8] He wrote in his Northamptonshire dialect, introducing local words
to the literary canon such as 'pooty' (snail), 'lady-cow' (ladybird), 'crizzle' (to crisp) and
'throstle' (song thrush).
In his early life he struggled to find a place for his poetry in the changing literary
fashions of the day. He also felt that he did not belong with other peasants. Clare once
wrote
"I live here among the ignorant like a lost man in fact like one whom the rest seems
careless of having anything to do with—they hardly dare talk in my company for fear I
should mention them in my writings and I find more pleasure in wandering the fields
than in musing among my silent neighbors who are insensible to everything but toiling
and talking of it and that to no purpose."
It is common to see an absence of punctuation in many of Clare's original writings,
although many publishers felt the need to remedy this practice in the majority of his
work. Clare argued with his editors about how it should be presented to the public.
Clare grew up during a period of massive changes in both town and countryside as
the Industrial Revolution swept Europe. Many former agricultural workers, including
children, moved away from the countryside to over-crowded cities, following factory
work. The Agricultural Revolution saw pastures ploughed up, trees and hedges
uprooted, the fens drained and the common land enclosed. This destruction of a
centuries-old way of life distressed Clare deeply. His political and social views were
predominantly conservative ("I am as far as my politics reaches 'King and Country'—no
Innovations in Religion and Government say I."). He refused even to complain about
the subordinate position to which English society relegated him, swearing that "with the
old dish that was served to my forefathers I am content."[9]
His early work delights both in nature and the cycle of the rural year. Poems such
as Winter Evening, Haymaking and Wood Pictures in Summer celebrate the beauty of the
world and the certainties of rural life, where animals must be fed and crops harvested.
Poems such as Little Trotty Wagtail show his sharp observation of wildlife, though The
Badger shows his lack of sentiment about the place of animals in the countryside. At this
time, he often used poetic forms such as the sonnet and the rhyming couplet. His later
poetry tends to be more meditative and use forms similar to the folks songs and ballads
of his youth. An example of this is Evening.
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His knowledge of the natural world went far beyond that of the major Romantic poets.
However, poems such as I Am show ametaphysical depth on a par with his
contemporary poets and many of his pre-asylum poems deal with intricate play on the
nature of linguistics. His 'bird's nest poems', it can be argued, illustrate the selfawareness, and obsession with the creative process that captivated the romantics. Clare
was the most influential poet, aside from Wordsworth, to practice in an older style.
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Christina Rossetti
Christina Georgina Rossetti, one of the most important women poets writing in
nineteenth-century England, was born in London December 5, 1830, to Gabriele and
Frances (Polidori) Rossetti. Although her fundamentally religious temperament was
closer to her mother’s, this youngest member of a remarkable family of poets, artists,
and critics inherited many of her artistic tendencies from her father.
Judging from somewhat idealized sketches made by her brother Dante, Christina as a
teenager seems to have been quite attractive if not beautiful. In 1848 she became
engaged to James Collinson, one of the minor Pre-Raphaelite brethren, but the
engagement ended after he reverted to Roman Catholicism.
When Professor Rossetti’s failing health and eyesight forced him into retirement in 1853,
Christina and her mother attempted to support the family by starting a day school, but
had to give it up after a year or so. Thereafter she led a very retiring life, interrupted by a
recurring illness which was sometimes diagnosed as angina and sometimes tuberculosis.
From the early ’60s on she was in love with Charles Cayley, but according to her brother
William, refused to marry him because “she enquired into his creed and found he was
not a Christian.” Milk-and-water Anglicanism was not to her taste. Lona Mosk Packer
argues that her poems conceal a love for the painter William Bell Scott, but there is no
other evidence for this theory, and the most respected scholar of the Pre-Raphaelite
movement disputes the dates on which Packer thinks some of the more revealing poems
were written.
All three Rossetti women, at first devout members of the evangelical branch of
the Church of England, were drawn toward the Tractarians in the 1840s. They
nevertheless retained their evangelical seriousness: Maria eventually became an Anglican
nun, and Christina’s religious scruples remind one of Dorothea Brooke in George Eliot’s
Middlemarch : as Eliot’s heroine looked forward to giving up riding because she enjoyed
it so much, so Christina gave up chess because she found she enjoyed winning; pasted
paper strips over the antireligious parts of Swinburne’s Atalanta in Calydon (which
allowed her to enjoy the poem very much); objected to nudity in painting, especially if
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the artist was a woman; and refused even to go see Wagner’s Parsifal, because it
celebrated a pagan mythology.
After rejecting Cayley in 1866, according one biographer, Christina (like many Victorian
spinsters) lived vicariously in the lives of other people. Although pretty much a stay-athome, her circle included her brothers’ friends, like Whistler, Swinburne, F.M. Brown,
and Charles Dodgson (Lewis Carroll). She continued to write and in the 1870s to work
for the Society for Promoting Christian Knowledge. She was troubled physically by
neuralgia and emotionally by Dante’s breakdown in 1872. The last 12 years of her life,
after his death in 1882, were quiet ones. She died of cancer December 29, 1894.
Selected Poems of Christina Rossetti
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A Better Resurrection
A Dream
Dream Land
Echo
I watched a rosebud
Mirage
Remember
Song
The Convent Threshold
The Lambs of Grasmere
The World
T. Enas Fawzy
Anne Bronte
Anne Brontë (January 17, 1820 – May 28, 1849) was a British novelist and poet, the
youngest of the Brontë literary family.
She was born in the village of Thornton, Yorkshire, England, the last of six children.
Anne’s mother, Maria Branwell Brontë, died of cancer a year later in 1821, after the
family had moved to Haworth where her father, Patrick Brontë, was appointed perpetual
curate. In 1825 her two eldest siblings, Maria and Elizabeth died of tuberculosis
contracted at the Clergy Daughters’ boarding school at Cowan Bridge, Lancashire and
much has been written about the influence of these deaths on her and her siblings and
its possible influence on their later writings.
Anne was educated at Miss Wooler’s school at Roe Head, Huddersfield and between
1839 and 1845 worked as a governess while in her spare time continued to write, which
she had begun to do in early childhood with her two surviving sisters, Charlotte
Bronte and Emily Bronte. Their first publication, a volume of poetry, was released
pseudonymously in 1846 a year after she began her first novel, Agnes Grey which was
published together in three volumes with her sister Emily’s Wuthering Heights, within a
month of Charlotte’s Jane Eyre. Her second and last novel, The Tenant of Wildfell
Hall appeared in 1848 shortly before the deaths of her brother Branwell and her sister
Emily in September and December of 1848.
Anne herself died at the seaside resort of Scarborough, England, where she had gone to
convalesce after a prolonged illness. She was buried there at Saint Mary’s Churchyard.
Poems by Anne Bronte
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Farewell
A Hymn
Appeal
My God! O Let Me Call Thee Mine!
Weep Not Too Much
T. Enas Fawzy
Emily Bronte
Emily Bronte, one of three Bronte sister from Haworth, Yorkshire. Emily Bronte is
most famous as the author of the classic novel, Wuthering Heights. She is also held in
high regard as a poet.
About Emily Bronte
Emily Bronte was born in Thornton, Bradford in 1820. Shortly after her sister’s birth the
family moved to Haworth, Yorkshire where she spent most of her life. Emily lived a
short and somewhat constrained life but although she didn’t write very much her novels
and poems have become classics of English literature because of their emotional
intensity and rare power.
Emily is best known for her Romantic novel Wuthering Heights, which is one of
the English language’s greatest romantic novels and some say; has yet to be passed.
Her poetry is striking because it seems to speak clearly to the reader and is uncluttered
with obscure forms and languages.
Paul Leider writes:
“In her poetry, Emily Bronte achieves a remarkable effect by the energy and sincerity,
and often by the music, with which she portrays her stoicism, independence, and
compassion in stanzas which in many instances are the commonplace vehicles used by
mere rimers. It is as though she were brought up to feel that certain forms of verse were
the patterns, and had, with dogged acceptance, poured into them her emotions with an
honesty that made the outward form seem negligible”
Emily Bronte published under the pen name Ellis Bell. She died from tuberculosis, on
19 December 1848, aged only 30. It was believed her death was hastened by the
unsanitary conditions of her home and water supply.
T. Enas Fawzy
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Selected Poems of Emily Bronte
A Little While
At Castlewood
Day Dream
God of Visions
My Lady’s Grave
No Coward Soul is Mine
Remembrance
Self Interrogation
Stanza
The Old Stoic
The Prisoner
Well Hast Thou spoke
When I shall sleep
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Charlotte Bronte
Charlotte Bronte (1816 – 1855) Novelist and Poet.
Charlotte was the daughter of the Rev. Patrick Bronte,with her sisters Emily and Anne,
Charlotte was brought up in a small parsonage in the Yorkshire village of Haworth.
Whilst still in her childhood the Bronte sisters lost their mother and as the eldest
Charlotte took up the a role of looking out for her sisters Emily and Anne. Charlotte
was described as: “the motherly friend and guardian of her younger sisters,”
The sisters had an unusual upbringing in that their house overlooked the village
graveyard. To escape from these surroundings and the loss of their mother they would
often spend time creating stories of fantasy lands. These fantasy stories were often based
on the soldiers of their strict, religious aunt, Elisabeth Branwell. Later in a poem
Charlotte wrote:
“We wove a web in childhood, / A web of sunny air.”
After various efforts as schoolmistresses and governesses, the sisters took to literature
and published a volume of poems under the names of Currer, Ellis, and Acton Bell
Unfortunately these early publications were a commercial failure. However this did not
deter Charlotte and she continued with her novels such as ‘The Professor’ and ‘Jane
Eyre’. Jane Eyre proved to be tremendously popular with the public when it appeared in
1854. The novel has gained status as one of the classics of English literature for its
originality and strength of writing.
Charlotte was married to her father’s curate, the Rev. A. Nicholls, but after a short
though happy married life she died in childbirth in 1855.
“Conventionality is not morality. Self-righteousness is not religion. To attack the first is
not to assail the last. To pluck the mask from the face of the Pharisee is not to lift an
impious hand to the Crown of Thorns.
T. Enas Fawzy
Poems by Charlotte Bronte
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Apostasy
Evening Solace
On The Death of Anne Bronte
Pleasure
Life
Parting
Regret
The Letter
The Wood
Wife’s Will The
T. Enas Fawzy
Dante Gabriel Rossetti
Dante Gabriel Rossetti 12 May 1828 – 9 April 1882) was an English poet, illustrator,
painter and translator. He founded the Pre-Raphaelite Brotherhoodin 1848 with William
Holman Hunt and John Everett Millais, and was later to be the main inspiration for a
second generation of artists and writers influenced by the movement, most
notably William Morris and Edward Burne-Jones. His work also influenced the
European Symbolists and was a major precursor of the Aesthetic movement.
Rossetti's art was characterized by its sensuality and its medieval revivalism. His early
poetry was influenced by John Keats. His later poetry was characterized by the complex
interlinking of thought and feeling, especially in his sonnet sequence The House of Life.
Poetry and image are closely entwined in Rossetti's work; he frequently wrote sonnets to
accompany his pictures, spanning from The Girlhood of Mary Virgin (1849) and Astarte
Syriaca (1877), while also creating art to illustrate poems such as Goblin Market by the
celebrated poet Christina Rossetti, his sister.
Rossetti's personal life was closely linked to his work, especially his relationships with his
models and muses Elizabeth Siddal, Fanny Cornforth, and Jane Morris.