Skip to content
Curated category

19th-century English poets

  • Charles DickensOn the 12th of May 1824, twelve-year-old Charles Dickens boarded a small boat to visit his father inside the Marshalsea debtors' prison in Southwark.
  • John KeatsJohn Keats was born in Moorgate, London, on the 31st of October 1795, into a world that would eventually crown him a master of English verse, yet his origins…
  • Percy Bysshe ShelleyOn a summer day in 1804, Percy Bysshe Shelley stood before the wooden paling fence at Eton College. He held a bag of gunpowder he had stolen from the school…
  • Mary ShelleyMary Wollstonecraft Godwin was born in Somers Town, London on the 30th of August 1797. Her mother died just eleven days after giving birth to her from…
  • Rudyard KiplingRudyard Kipling was born on the 30th of December 1865 in Bombay, British India. His parents were Alice Kipling and John Lockwood Kipling.
  • Lord ByronGeorge Gordon Byron entered the world on the 22nd of January 1788 on Holles Street in London. His birthplace now sits beneath a branch of the department…
  • Lewis CarrollCharles Lutwidge Dodgson entered the world on the 27th of January 1832 at All Saints' Vicarage in Daresbury, Cheshire. He was the oldest boy and third of…
  • Thomas HardyThomas Hardy was born on the 2nd of June 1840 in Higher Bockhampton, a small hamlet east of Dorchester. His father worked as a stonemason and local builder…
  • William WordsworthWilliam Wordsworth entered the world on the 7th of April 1770 in Cockermouth, Cumberland. He was the second of five children born to John Wordsworth and Ann…
  • Alfred, Lord TennysonAlfred Tennyson was born on the 6th of August 1809 in Somersby, Lincolnshire. His father George Clayton Tennyson served as rector there from 1807 until his…
  • Samuel Taylor ColeridgeSamuel Taylor Coleridge was born on the 21st of October 1772 in Ottery St Mary, a small town in Devon. His father served as the vicar of the local church and…
  • William MorrisWilliam Morris was born at Elm House in Walthamstow, Essex, on the 24th of March 1834. He entered a world of wealth and evangelical Protestantism as the…
  • Benjamin DisraeliBenjamin D'Israeli was born on the 21st of December 1804 at 6 King's Road, Bedford Row, Bloomsbury. His family carried a Sephardic Jewish mercantile…
  • Robert BridgesRobert Bridges stood at the bedside of a patient in 1876. He wore the white coat of a full physician at the Great Northern Central Hospital.