Curated category
Epic poets
- Edgar Allan PoeOn the 27th of May 1827, a young man named Edgar A. Perry enlisted in the United States Army under an assumed name. He was actually eighteen years old and…
- Herman MelvilleHerman Melville was born on the 1st of August 1819, in New York City. He entered the world as the third child of Allan Melvill and Maria Gansevoort.
- T. S. EliotThomas Stearns Eliot was born on the 26th of September 1888 in St. Louis, Missouri. He lived at a house on Locust Street for his first sixteen years before…
- 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…
- OvidPublius Ovidius Naso was born on the 20th of March in 43 BC within the Paelignian town of Sulmo. This Apennine valley settlement lies east of Rome and served…
- 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…
- Johann Wolfgang von GoetheJohann Wolfgang von Goethe was born on the 28th of August 1749 in a large house on Großer Hirschgraben in Frankfurt. His father, Johann Caspar Goethe, had…
- Dante AlighieriIn the year 1300, a man named Dante Alighieri claimed to have walked through Hell. He wrote that he was midway upon the journey of his life when this vision…
- VirgilPublius Vergilius Maro entered the world on the 15th of October in 70 BC during the consulship of Pompey and Crassus. Ancient biographers place his…
- Victor HugoVictor-Marie Hugo was born on the 26th of February 1802 in Besançon, a city in eastern France. His father Joseph Léopold Sigisbert Hugo served as a general…
- Ezra PoundEzra Weston Loomis Pound was born on the 30th of October 1885 in a two-story clapboard house in Hailey, Idaho Territory.
- John MiltonJohn Milton was born on the 9th of December 1608 in Bread Street, London. His father, also named John Milton, had moved to London around 1583 after being…
- William BlakeWilliam Blake was born on the 28th of November 1757 at 28 Broad Street in Soho, London. He was the third of seven children, and two died in infancy.
- 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…
- Henry Wadsworth LongfellowHenry Wadsworth Longfellow was born on the 27th of February 1807 in Portland, Maine. He grew up in a house that now stands as a historic site called the…
- Benoît de Sainte-MaureBenoît de Sainte-Maure died in 1173. He likely came from the town of Sainte-Maure-de-Touraine near Tours, France. The Plantagenet administrative center sat…
- StatiusPublius Papinius Statius grew up in the Bay of Naples during the early years of the first century. His father, a native of Velia, moved to Rome and taught…
- Edmund SpenserEdmund Spenser was born in East Smithfield, London, around the year 1552. His parentage remains obscure to modern historians, though evidence suggests he was…
- LucanMarcus Annaeus Lucanus arrived in the Roman colony of Corduba on the 3rd of November AD 39. He entered a wealthy family with central Italic origins that…
- LucretiusThe 15th of October in the year 55 BC marks the death of Titus Lucretius Carus, yet his birth remains a shadow. A note by Jerome places his life under the…
- Luís de CamõesLuís Vaz de Camões, born around 1524 in Lisbon, emerged from a noble family with deep roots in the Kingdom of Galicia. His father, Simão Vaz de Camões…