Curated category
English male poets
- Charles DickensCharles Dickens earned six shillings a week pasting labels onto pots of boot blacking in a tumble-down warehouse overrun with rats.
- James MabbeJames Mabbe was born in 1572, and for much of history he has been a figure glimpsed only in the margins of greater names.
- William ShakespeareWilliam Shakespeare signed his last will and testament on the 25th of March 1616, describing himself in it as being in "perfect health." Within a month he…
- John Davies of HerefordJohn Davies of Hereford wore his hometown like a badge. Born around 1565 in Hereford, he appended the city's name to his own specifically to separate himself…
- John KeatsJohn Keats had been publishing poetry for less than four years when tuberculosis killed him in Rome at the age of 25. His last request was a tombstone…
- Percy Bysshe ShelleyPercy Bysshe Shelley was drowned in a storm off the Italian coast on the 8th of July 1822, age 29, before most of the world had ever read a word he wrote.
- Lord ByronLord Byron got up at two in the afternoon. By the time he sat down to dinner, the house around him resounded with the unarbitrated quarrels of ten horses…
- Thomas HardyThomas Hardy died at Max Gate on the 11th of January 1928, but not before dictating one final poem to his wife from his deathbed.
- William WordsworthWilliam Wordsworth was born on the 7th of April 1770 in what is now called Wordsworth House in Cockermouth, Cumberland, a market town sitting at the edge of…
- Jonathan SwiftJonathan Swift, dying near 78, asked to be buried under the pillar next to the monument of Primate Narcissus Marsh, a man he had openly disdained in life.
- Alexander PopeAlexander Pope was born in London on the 21st of May 1688, the very year the Glorious Revolution upended the English throne.
- Alfred, Lord TennysonAlfred Tennyson was born on the 6th of August 1809 in Somersby, a small village in Lincolnshire, and by the time he died on the 6th of October 1892, lines…
- Ben JonsonBen Jonson killed a man in a field on the 22nd of September 1598 and walked away from the gallows by reciting a Bible verse.
- John MiltonJohn Milton sold the rights to one of the greatest poems in the English language for five pounds. On the 27th of April 1667, he handed Paradise Lost to the…
- Samuel Taylor ColeridgeSamuel Taylor Coleridge coined the phrase "suspension of disbelief" - and for much of his life, he seemed to be asking the world to practice it on his behalf.
- William BlakeWilliam Blake spent one of his last shillings on a pencil so he could keep sketching. He was near death, working feverishly on illustrations for Dante's…
- William MorrisWilliam Morris arrived in the world on the 24th of March 1834, and by the time he died on the 3rd of October 1896, he had left his mark on textiles, poetry…
- A. A. MilneA. A. Milne taught himself to read at the age of two. That detail feels right for a man who would spend his life in thrall to words, though the books that…
- W. H. AudenW. H. Auden died on the 29th of September 1973 in a Vienna hotel room, a few hours after reading his poems aloud at the Palais Pálffy.
- Leonard Digges (writer)Leonard Digges entered University College, Oxford in 1603. This was the same year his mother remarried Thomas Russell of Alderminster.
- William Forrest (poet)William Forrest stood among the scholars at Christ Church, Oxford, during heated discussions in 1530. Henry VIII sought the university's judgment on his…
- Christopher MarloweChristopher Marlowe was baptised on the 26th of February 1564 at St George's Church in Canterbury, just two months before William Shakespeare was baptised in…
- Aldous HuxleyAldous Huxley died at 5:20 pm Pacific Standard Time on the 22nd of November 1963 - and almost nobody noticed. His death was overshadowed by the assassination…
- Michael DraytonMichael Drayton was born in Hartshill, near Nuneaton, Warwickshire, in early 1563, and he would spend the next seven decades producing a body of work that…
- University WitsThe University Wits were a group of late 16th-century English playwrights and pamphleteers whose university educations made them almost unemployable.
- Thomas MoreThomas More climbed the scaffold at Tower Hill on the 6th of July 1535 and, finding the structure so rickety it might collapse, told the waiting official: "I…
- Edmund SpenserEdmund Spenser died in London on the 13th of January 1599, and according to Ben Jonson, he died "for want of bread". That claim was almost certainly false.
- John Fletcher (playwright)John Fletcher was baptised on the 20th of December 1579 in Rye, Sussex, and for much of the seventeenth century his name stood alongside William…
- Walter RaleighWalter Raleigh spent the final morning of his life handling the axe that was about to kill him. "This is a sharp Medicine," he reportedly said, "but it is a…
- Joseph of ExeterJoseph of Exeter emerged from the quiet streets of Exeter, England during the twelfth century. He was a Latin poet whose name appears in historical records…
- John DrydenJohn Dryden was attacked at around 8 pm on the 18th of December 1679, beaten by hired thugs in Rose Alley behind the Lamb and Flag pub in Covent Garden.
- John GowerJohn Gower wrote nearly thirty thousand lines of verse in three different languages, and almost nobody knows his name. Born around 1330, he was a personal…
- Philip SidneyPhilip Sidney died on the 17th of October 1586, at the age of 31, from a wound to the thigh he had received at the Battle of Zutphen.
- Thomas Wyatt (poet)Sir Thomas Wyatt died on the 11th of October 1542, at around age thirty-nine, and was buried at Sherborne Abbey. He had lived fast and dangerously close to…
- Edmund CartwrightEdmund Cartwright entered the world on the 24th of April 1743 at Marnham in Nottinghamshire. He was the fourth son born to William Cartwright and his wife…
- Edward de Vere, 17th Earl of OxfordEdward de Vere, 17th Earl of Oxford was born on the 12th of April 1550 at Hedingham Castle in Essex, heir to the second-oldest earldom in England.
- Henry WottonHenry Wotton was born on the 30th of March 1568 at Bocton Hall in Kent. His father Thomas Wotton died in 1587 leaving Henry only a hundred marks a year.
- Kevin Crossley-HollandKevin John William Crossley-Holland arrived in the world on the 7th of February 1941. He grew up in Whiteleaf, a quiet village nestled within the Chilterns…
- Richard AldingtonRichard Aldington was born Edward Godfree Aldington in Portsmouth on the 8th of July 1892, into a household where books lined every wall and both parents…
- Robert SoutheyRobert Southey arrived at Balliol College, Oxford, carrying, by his own account, a head full of Rousseau and Werther and a heart full of poetry.
- Nicholas Rowe (writer)Nicholas Rowe died on the 6th of December 1718, and within a year the King of England had sent his widow a pension. Not as condolence, exactly. As payment.