Curated category
Sonneteers
- MichelangeloMichelangelo carved one of his most famous works, the Pietà, before he turned 30, then sculpted David before the same milestone.
- 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 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.
- Dante AlighieriDante Alighieri began his most famous poem with a line of plain confusion: "Nel mezzo del cammin di nostra vita," or "Midway upon the journey of our life."…
- 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…
- Jorge Luis BorgesJorge Luis Borges once described his blindness as a gift wrapped in cruel irony. In a poem he wrote that God, with splendid irony, granted him books and…
- Charles BaudelaireCharles Baudelaire was born in Paris on the 9th of April 1821, into a city that would both inspire and consume him. His father was a senior civil servant and…
- 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…
- Rainer Maria RilkeRainer Maria Rilke was born René Karl Wilhelm Johann Josef Maria Rilke in Prague on the 4th of December 1875, and he died on the 29th of December 1926 in a…
- Frederick II, Holy Roman EmperorFrederick II was born in Jesi, near Ancona, on the 26th of December 1194, and the circumstances surrounding that birth were so extraordinary that rumors…
- 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…
- 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.
- PetrarchPetrarch was born in Arezzo on the 20th of July 1304, and by the time he died seventy years later, he had reshaped what it meant to be a thinking, feeling…
- Joachim du BellayJoachim du Bellay was born around 1522 in a castle called La Turmelière, near the town of Liré, not far from Angers. He died on the 1st of January 1560, at…
- 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…
- Luís de CamõesLuís de Camões set sail from Lisbon on Palm Sunday, the 24th of March 1553, carrying nothing but his soldier's pay and the beginnings of a poem.
- Pierre de RonsardPierre de Ronsard was born on the 11th of September 1524 at the Manoir de la Possonnière, a country estate in the village of Couture-sur-Loir, in the…