Famous Poets from England
- Paul McCartney, born on June 18, 1942, in Liverpool, England, is a revered figure in the world of music, known for his significant contribution to the legendary band, The Beatles. Before his rise to fame, McCartney's early life was marked by the loss of his mother, Mary, which deeply influenced his songwriting. He attended the Liverpool Institute High School for Boys, where he met George Harrison. McCartney's musical journey began with his first guitar at the age of fourteen, and by sixteen, he had joined John Lennon's band, The Quarrymen, which later evolved into the iconic Beatles. McCartney's creative partnership with John Lennon during the Beatles era resulted in an incredible array of hits that dramatically shaped the landscape of popular music. Their collaborative genius produced timeless classics like "Hey Jude", "Let It Be", and "Yesterday". The Beatles' meteoric rise in the '60s sparked Beatlemania, a global phenomenon that made them one of the most influential bands in history. However, the Beatles disbanded in 1970, prompting McCartney to embark on a solo career. In his post-Beatles career, McCartney continued to make his mark in the music industry. He formed the band Wings with his wife Linda Eastman, which saw considerable success throughout the '70s with hits like "Band on the Run" and "Live and Let Die". McCartney's enduring legacy as a songwriter and performer has earned him numerous accolades, including multiple Grammy Awards. He was knighted by Queen Elizabeth II for his services to music in 1997, firmly cementing his status as one of the greatest musicians of the 20th century.
- Birthplace: Liverpool, Merseyside, England, UK
- A talented singer-songwriter whose personal demons eclipsed his art, Pete Doherty broke out alongside his friend Carl Barât with The Libertines. Powered by Doherty's potent songwriting, the band dazzled critics and fans with songs like "Up the Bracket," "Time for Heroes" and "Can't Stand Me Now." While stepping out on his own to collaborate on hits like "For Lovers" with Wolfman and "Prangin' Out" with The Streets, Doherty's drug use and erratic behavior derailed The Libertines and he rebounded with a new group, Babyshambles. While dating and musically collaborating with supermodel Kate Moss, Doherty achieved major label success and critical praise with his band, charting the hit "F*** Forever." After splitting with Moss and a brief engagement to model Irina Lazareanu, Doherty went solo with the masterful Grace/Wastelands. Despite his musical gifts and acclaimed output, Doherty was best known worldwide for his frequent stints in prison, failed attempts at rehab, and seemingly death's-door photos of him strung out on heroin, crack and cocaine. When fellow troubled soul and addict Amy Winehouse died in 2011, many worried he might be next. Although critics noted exceptional beauty and talent in the music, writings and art he created, Pete Doherty struggled to ensure that his ultimate legacy would reflect his body of work and not just his painful-to-watch battles with substance abuse and jail time.
- Birthplace: Hexham, Northumberland, England, UK
- Elizabeth I (7 September 1533 – 24 March 1603) was Queen of England and Ireland from 17 November 1558 until her death on 24 March 1603. Sometimes called The Virgin Queen, Gloriana or Good Queen Bess, Elizabeth was the last of the five monarchs of the House of Tudor. Elizabeth was the daughter of Henry VIII and Anne Boleyn, his second wife, who was executed two-and-a-half years after Elizabeth's birth. Anne's marriage to Henry VIII was annulled, and Elizabeth was declared illegitimate. Her half-brother, Edward VI, ruled until his death in 1553, bequeathing the crown to Lady Jane Grey and ignoring the claims of his two half-sisters, Elizabeth and the Roman Catholic Mary, in spite of statute law to the contrary. Edward's will was set aside and Mary became queen, deposing Lady Jane Grey. During Mary's reign, Elizabeth was imprisoned for nearly a year on suspicion of supporting Protestant rebels. In 1558 upon Mary's death, Elizabeth succeeded her half-sister to the throne and set out to rule by good counsel. She depended heavily on a group of trusted advisers, led by William Cecil, 1st Baron Burghley. One of her first actions as queen was the establishment of an English Protestant church, of which she became the Supreme Governor. This Elizabethan Religious Settlement was to evolve into the Church of England. It was expected that Elizabeth would marry and produce an heir; however, despite numerous courtships, she never did. She was eventually succeeded by her first cousin twice removed, James VI of Scotland. She had earlier been responsible for the imprisonment and execution of James's mother, Mary, Queen of Scots. In government, Elizabeth was more moderate than her father and half-siblings had been. One of her mottoes was "video et taceo" ("I see but say nothing"). In religion, she was relatively tolerant and avoided systematic persecution. After the pope declared her illegitimate in 1570 and released her subjects from obedience to her, several conspiracies threatened her life, all of which were defeated with the help of her ministers' secret service. Elizabeth was cautious in foreign affairs, manoeuvring between the major powers of France and Spain. She only half-heartedly supported a number of ineffective, poorly resourced military campaigns in the Netherlands, France, and Ireland. By the mid-1580s, England could no longer avoid war with Spain. England's defeat of the Spanish Armada in 1588 associated Elizabeth with one of the greatest military victories in English history. As she grew older, Elizabeth became celebrated for her virginity. A cult grew around her which was celebrated in the portraits, pageants, and literature of the day. Elizabeth's reign became known as the Elizabethan era. The period is famous for the flourishing of English drama, led by playwrights such as William Shakespeare and Christopher Marlowe, and for the seafaring prowess of English adventurers such as Francis Drake. Some historians depict Elizabeth as a short-tempered, sometimes indecisive ruler, who enjoyed more than her share of luck. Towards the end of her reign, a series of economic and military problems weakened her popularity. Elizabeth is acknowledged as a charismatic performer and a dogged survivor in an era when government was ramshackle and limited, and when monarchs in neighbouring countries faced internal problems that jeopardised their thrones. After the short reigns of her half-siblings, her 44 years on the throne provided welcome stability for the kingdom and helped forge a sense of national identity.
- Birthplace: Palace of Placentia, London, England
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- Thomas Stearns Eliot (26 September 1888 – 4 January 1965), "one of the twentieth century's major poets", was also an essayist, publisher, playwright, and literary and social critic. Born in St. Louis, Missouri to a prominent Boston Brahmin family, he moved to England in 1914 at the age of 25 and would settle, work, and marry there. He became a British subject in 1927 at the age of 39, subsequently renouncing his American passport.Eliot attracted widespread attention for his poem "The Love Song of J. Alfred Prufrock" (1915), which was seen as a masterpiece of the Modernist movement. It was followed by some of the best-known poems in the English language, including The Waste Land (1922), "The Hollow Men" (1925), "Ash Wednesday" (1930), and Four Quartets (1943). He was also known for his seven plays, particularly Murder in the Cathedral (1935) and The Cocktail Party (1949). He was awarded the Nobel Prize in Literature in 1948, "for his outstanding, pioneer contribution to present-day poetry".
- Birthplace: St. Louis, Missouri
- George Gordon Byron, 6th Baron Byron (22 January 1788 – 19 April 1824), known simply as Lord Byron, was an English poet, peer, and politician who became a revolutionary in the Greek War of Independence, and is considered one of the historical leading figures of the Romantic movement of his era. He is regarded as one of the greatest English poets and remains widely read and influential. Among his best-known works are the lengthy narrative poems Don Juan and Childe Harold's Pilgrimage; many of his shorter lyrics in Hebrew Melodies also became popular. He travelled extensively across Europe, especially in Italy, where he lived for seven years in the cities of Venice, Ravenna and Pisa. During his stay in Italy he frequently visited his friend and fellow poet Percy Bysshe Shelley. Later in life Byron joined the Greek War of Independence fighting the Ottoman Empire and died of disease leading a campaign during that war, for which Greeks revere him as a national hero. He died in 1824 at the age of 36 from a fever contracted after the First and Second Siege of Missolonghi. Often described as the most flamboyant and notorious of the major Romantics, Byron was considered a celebrity in his era both for his success as a Romantic poet and for his aristocratic excesses, which included huge debts and many sex scandals – numerous love affairs with both men and women in a time when bisexuality was considered a crime, as well as rumours of a scandalous, incestuous liaison with his half-sister. One of his lovers, Lady Caroline Lamb, summed him up in the famous phrase "mad, bad, and dangerous to know". His only legitimate child, Ada Lovelace, is regarded as a foundational figure in the field of computer programming based on her notes for Charles Babbage's Analytical Engine. Byron's illegitimate children include Allegra Byron, who died in childhood, and possibly Elizabeth Medora Leigh.
- Birthplace: London Borough of Harrow, London, England
- Joseph Rudyard Kipling ( RUD-yərd; 30 December 1865 – 18 January 1936) was an English journalist, short-story writer, poet, and novelist. He was born in India, which inspired much of his work. Kipling's works of fiction include The Jungle Book (1894), Kim (1901), and many short stories, including "The Man Who Would Be King" (1888). His poems include "Mandalay" (1890), "Gunga Din" (1890), "The Gods of the Copybook Headings" (1919), "The White Man's Burden" (1899), and "If—" (1910). He is seen as an innovator in the art of the short story. His children's books are classics; one critic noted "a versatile and luminous narrative gift".Kipling in the late 19th and early 20th centuries was among the United Kingdom's most popular writers Henry James said, "Kipling strikes me personally as the most complete man of genius, as distinct from fine intelligence, that I have ever known." In 1907, he was awarded the Nobel Prize in Literature, as the first English-language writer to receive the prize, and at 41, its youngest recipient to date. He was also sounded for the British Poet Laureateship and several times for a knighthood, but declined both.Kipling's subsequent reputation has changed with the political and social climate of the age. The contrasting views of him continued for much of the 20th century. George Orwell saw Kipling as "a jingo imperialist", who was "morally insensitive and aesthetically disgusting". Literary critic Douglas Kerr wrote: "[Kipling] is still an author who can inspire passionate disagreement and his place in literary and cultural history is far from settled. But as the age of the European empires recedes, he is recognised as an incomparable, if controversial, interpreter of how empire was experienced. That, and an increasing recognition of his extraordinary narrative gifts, make him a force to be reckoned with."
- Birthplace: Mumbai, India
- Samuel Johnson (18 September 1709 [OS 7 September] – 13 December 1784), often referred to as Dr. Johnson, was an English writer who made lasting contributions to English literature as a poet, playwright, essayist, moralist, literary critic, biographer, editor, and lexicographer. He was a devout Anglican. Politically, he was a committed Tory. The Oxford Dictionary of National Biography describes Johnson as "arguably the most distinguished man of letters in English history". He is the subject of James Boswell's The Life of Samuel Johnson, described by Walter Jackson Bate as "the most famous single work of biographical art in the whole of literature".Born in Lichfield, Staffordshire, Johnson attended Pembroke College, Oxford, for just over a year, but a lack of funds forced him to leave. After working as a teacher, he moved to London, where he began to write for The Gentleman's Magazine. His early works include the biography Life of Mr Richard Savage, the poems London and The Vanity of Human Wishes, and the play Irene. After nine years of work, Johnson's A Dictionary of the English Language was published in 1755. It had a far-reaching effect on Modern English and has been acclaimed as "one of the greatest single achievements of scholarship". This work brought Johnson popularity and success. Until the completion of the Oxford English Dictionary 150 years later, Johnson's was the pre-eminent British dictionary. His later works included essays, an influential annotated edition of The Plays of William Shakespeare, and the widely read tale The History of Rasselas, Prince of Abissinia. In 1763, he befriended James Boswell, with whom he later travelled to Scotland; Johnson described their travels in A Journey to the Western Islands of Scotland. Towards the end of his life, he produced the massive and influential Lives of the Most Eminent English Poets, a collection of biographies and evaluations of 17th- and 18th-century poets. Johnson was a tall and robust man. His odd gestures and tics were disconcerting to some on first meeting him. Boswell's Life, along with other biographies, documented Johnson's behaviour and mannerisms in such detail that they have informed the posthumous diagnosis of Tourette syndrome, a condition not defined or diagnosed in the 18th century. After a series of illnesses, he died on the evening of 13 December 1784, and was buried in Westminster Abbey. In the years following his death, Johnson began to be recognised as having had a lasting effect on literary criticism, and he was claimed by some to be the only truly great critic of English literature.
- Birthplace: Lichfield, United Kingdom
- William Blake (28 November 1757 – 12 August 1827) was an English poet, painter, and printmaker. Largely unrecognised during his lifetime, Blake is now considered a seminal figure in the history of the poetry and visual arts of the Romantic Age. What he called his prophetic works were said by 20th-century critic Northrop Frye to form "what is in proportion to its merits the least read body of poetry in the English language". His visual artistry led 21st-century critic Jonathan Jones to proclaim him "far and away the greatest artist Britain has ever produced". In 2002, Blake was placed at number 38 in the BBC's poll of the 100 Greatest Britons. While he lived in London his entire life, except for three years spent in Felpham, he produced a diverse and symbolically rich œuvre, which embraced the imagination as "the body of God" or "human existence itself".Although Blake was considered mad by contemporaries for his idiosyncratic views, he is held in high regard by later critics for his expressiveness and creativity, and for the philosophical and mystical undercurrents within his work. His paintings and poetry have been characterised as part of the Romantic movement and as "Pre-Romantic". A committed Christian who was hostile to the Church of England (indeed, to almost all forms of organised religion), Blake was influenced by the ideals and ambitions of the French and American Revolutions. Though later he rejected many of these political beliefs, he maintained an amiable relationship with the political activist Thomas Paine; he was also influenced by thinkers such as Emanuel Swedenborg. Despite these known influences, the singularity of Blake's work makes him difficult to classify. The 19th-century scholar William Michael Rossetti characterised him as a "glorious luminary", and "a man not forestalled by predecessors, nor to be classed with contemporaries, nor to be replaced by known or readily surmisable successors".
- Birthplace: Soho, London, United Kingdom
- Charlotte Brontë (, commonly ; 21 April 1816 – 31 March 1855) was an English novelist and poet, the eldest of the three Brontë sisters who survived into adulthood and whose novels became classics of English literature. She enlisted in school at Roe Head in January 1831, aged 14 years. She left the year after to teach her sisters, Emily and Anne, at home, returning in 1835 as a governess. In 1839 she undertook the role as governess for the Sidgwick family but left after a few months to return to Haworth where the sisters opened a school, but failed to attract pupils. Instead, they turned to writing and they each first published in 1846 under the pseudonyms of Currer, Ellis and Acton Bell. Her first novel The Professor was rejected by publishers, her second novel Jane Eyre was published in 1847. The sisters admitted to their Bell pseudonyms in 1848, and by the following year were celebrated in London literary circles. Brontë experienced the early deaths of all her siblings. She became pregnant shortly after her marriage in June 1854 but died on 31 March 1855, almost certainly from hyperemesis gravidarum, a complication of pregnancy which causes excessive nausea and vomiting.
- Birthplace: Thornton, West Yorkshire, United Kingdom
- John Anthony Burgess Wilson, (; 25 February 1917 – 22 November 1993), who published under the name Anthony Burgess, was an English writer and composer. Although Burgess was predominantly a comic writer, his dystopian satire A Clockwork Orange remains his best-known novel. In 1971, it was adapted into a highly controversial film by Stanley Kubrick, which Burgess said was chiefly responsible for the popularity of the book. Burgess produced numerous other novels, including the Enderby quartet, and Earthly Powers. He wrote librettos and screenplays, including the 1977 TV mini-series Jesus of Nazareth. He worked as a literary critic for several publications, including The Observer and The Guardian, and wrote studies of classic writers, notably James Joyce. A versatile linguist, Burgess lectured in phonetics, and translated Cyrano de Bergerac, Oedipus Rex, and the opera Carmen, among others. Burgess also composed over 250 musical works; he considered himself as much a composer as an author, although he enjoyed considerably more success in writing.
- Birthplace: England
- Wystan Hugh Auden (; 21 February 1907 – 29 September 1973) was an English-American poet. Auden's poetry was noted for its stylistic and technical achievement, its engagement with politics, morals, love, and religion, and its variety in tone, form and content. He is best known for love poems such as "Funeral Blues"; poems on political and social themes such as "September 1, 1939" and "The Shield of Achilles"; poems on cultural and psychological themes such as The Age of Anxiety; and poems on religious themes such as "For the Time Being" and "Horae Canonicae".He was born in York, grew up in and near Birmingham in a professional middle-class family. He attended English independent (or public) schools and studied English at Christ Church, Oxford. After a few months in Berlin in 1928–29, he spent five years (1930–35) teaching in British public schools, then travelled to Iceland and China in order to write books about his journeys. In 1939 he moved to the United States and became an American citizen in 1946. He taught from 1941 to 1945 in American universities, followed by occasional visiting professorships in the 1950s. From 1947 to 1957 he wintered in New York and summered in Ischia; from 1958 until the end of his life he wintered in New York (in Oxford in 1972–73) and summered in Kirchstetten, Lower Austria. He came to wide public attention with his first book Poems at the age of twenty-three in 1930; it was followed in 1932 by The Orators. Three plays written in collaboration with Christopher Isherwood between 1935 and 1938 built his reputation as a left-wing political writer. Auden moved to the United States partly to escape this reputation, and his work in the 1940s, including the long poems "For the Time Being" and "The Sea and the Mirror", focused on religious themes. He won the Pulitzer Prize for Poetry for his 1947 long poem The Age of Anxiety, the title of which became a popular phrase describing the modern era. From 1956 to 1961 he was Professor of Poetry at Oxford; his lectures were popular with students and faculty, and served as the basis for his 1962 prose collection The Dyer's Hand. Auden and Isherwood maintained a lasting but intermittent sexual friendship from around 1927 to 1939, while both had briefer but more intense relations with other men. In 1939, Auden fell in love with Chester Kallman and regarded their relationship as a marriage, but this ended in 1941 when Kallman refused to accept the faithful relations that Auden demanded. However, the two maintained their friendship, and from 1947 until Auden's death they lived in the same house or apartment in a non-sexual relationship, often collaborating on opera libretti such as that of The Rake's Progress, to music by Igor Stravinsky. Auden was a prolific writer of prose essays and reviews on literary, political, psychological, and religious subjects, and he worked at various times on documentary films, poetic plays, and other forms of performance. Throughout his career he was both controversial and influential, and critical views on his work ranged from sharply dismissive—treating him as a lesser figure than W. B. Yeats and T. S. Eliot—to strongly affirmative, as in Joseph Brodsky's claim that he had "the greatest mind of the twentieth century". After his death, his poems became known to a much wider public than during his lifetime through films, broadcasts, and popular media.
- Birthplace: York, United Kingdom
- Harold Pinter, born in the heart of London in 1930, is a name that resonates profoundly in the realm of drama and literature. He emerged from humble beginnings, the son of a Jewish dressmaker, to become one of the most influential playwrights in the late 20th century. His early exposure to the arts, including a passion for acting fostered during his time at the Royal Academy of Dramatic Arts, spurred him on a path that would redefine theatrical norms. Pinter's works, often labeled as "comedies of menace", are celebrated for their unique Pinteresque style characterized by economical dialogue, unpredictable plot turns, and an ominous atmosphere of threat. His first play, The Room, premiered in 1957, far from the last in a prolific career spanning over five decades. Some of his most acclaimed works include The Birthday Party, The Homecoming, and Betrayal, each carving its distinctive niche in theatrical literature. Pinter's contributions to theater extend beyond writing as he was also a renowned director and actor, bringing his distinct vision to life on stage. Throughout his illustrious career, Pinter garnered numerous accolades, including the Nobel Prize in Literature in 2005, recognizing his exceptional ability to "uncover the precipice under everyday prattle and force entry into oppression's closed rooms". His legacy continues to reverberate in modern drama, shaping the way stories are told on stage. Harold Pinter passed away in 2008, yet his work remains eternally influential, a testament to a lifetime devoted to undressing society's facades through the power of words and silence.
- Birthplace: Hackney, London, England, UK
- John Keats (; 31 October 1795 – 23 February 1821) was an English Romantic poet. He was one of the main figures of the second generation of Romantic poets, along with Lord Byron and Percy Bysshe Shelley, despite his works having been in publication for only four years before his death from tuberculosis at the age of 25.Although his poems were not generally well received by critics during his lifetime, his reputation grew after his death, and by the end of the 19th century, he had become one of the most beloved of all English poets. He had a significant influence on a diverse range of poets and writers. Jorge Luis Borges stated that his first encounter with Keats' work was the most significant literary experience of his life.The poetry of Keats is characterised by sensual imagery, most notably in the series of odes. This is typical of romantic poets, as they aimed to accentuate extreme emotion through an emphasis on natural imagery. Today his poems and letters are some of the most popular and most analysed in English literature. Some of the most acclaimed works of Keats are "Ode to a Nightingale", "Sleep and Poetry", and the famous sonnet "On First Looking into Chapman's Homer".
- Birthplace: Moorgate, London, England
- Wilfred Edward Salter Owen, MC (18 March 1893 – 4 November 1918) was an English poet and soldier. He was one of the leading poets of the First World War. His war poetry on the horrors of trenches and gas warfare was heavily influenced by his mentor Siegfried Sassoon, and stood in stark contrast both to the public perception of war at the time and to the confidently patriotic verse written by earlier war poets such as Rupert Brooke. Among his best-known works – most of which were published posthumously – are "Dulce et Decorum est", "Insensibility", "Anthem for Doomed Youth", "Futility", "Spring Offensive" and "Strange Meeting".
- Birthplace: Oswestry, England
- Siegfried Loraine Sassoon, (8 September 1886 – 1 September 1967) was an English poet, writer, and soldier. Decorated for bravery on the Western Front, he became one of the leading poets of the First World War. His poetry both described the horrors of the trenches and satirised the patriotic pretensions of those who, in Sassoon's view, were responsible for a jingoism-fuelled war. Sassoon became a focal point for dissent within the armed forces when he made a lone protest against the continuation of the war in his "Soldier's Declaration" of 1917, culminating in his admission to a military psychiatric hospital; this resulted in his forming a friendship with Wilfred Owen, who was greatly influenced by him. Sassoon later won acclaim for his prose work, notably his three-volume fictionalised autobiography, collectively known as the "Sherston trilogy".
- Birthplace: Matfield, United Kingdom
- Emily Jane Brontë (, commonly ; 30 July 1818 – 19 December 1848) was an English novelist and poet who is best known for her only novel, Wuthering Heights, now considered a classic of English literature. Emily was the third-eldest of the four surviving Brontë siblings, between the youngest Anne and her brother Branwell. She published under the pen name Ellis Bell.
- Birthplace: Thornton, Yorkshire, England, UK
- Sir Stephen Harold Spender (28 February 1909 – 16 July 1995) was an English poet, novelist, and essayist who concentrated on themes of social injustice and the class struggle in his work. He was appointed Poet Laureate Consultant in Poetry to the United States Library of Congress in 1965.
- Birthplace: Kensington, London, United Kingdom
- Sir Walter Raleigh (; c. 1552 (or 1554) – 29 October 1618), also spelled Ralegh, was an English landed gentleman, writer, poet, soldier, politician, courtier, spy and explorer. He was cousin to Sir Richard Grenville and younger half-brother of Sir Humphrey Gilbert. He is also well known for popularising tobacco in England. Raleigh was one of the most notable figures of the Elizabethan era. Raleigh was born to a Protestant family in Devon, the son of Walter Raleigh and Catherine Champernowne. Little is known of his early life, though in his late teens he spent some time in France taking part in the religious civil wars. In his 20s he took part in the suppression of rebellion in Ireland participating in the Siege of Smerwick. Later, he became a landlord of property confiscated from the native Irish. He rose rapidly in the favour of Queen Elizabeth I and was knighted in 1585. Raleigh was instrumental in the English colonisation of North America and was granted a royal patent to explore Virginia, paving the way for future English settlements. In 1591, he secretly married Elizabeth Throckmorton, one of the Queen's ladies-in-waiting, without the Queen's permission, for which he and his wife were sent to the Tower of London. After his release, they retired to his estate at Sherborne, Dorset. In 1594, Raleigh heard of a "City of Gold" in South America and sailed to find it, publishing an exaggerated account of his experiences in a book that contributed to the legend of "El Dorado". After Queen Elizabeth died in 1603, Raleigh was again imprisoned in the Tower, this time for being involved in the Main Plot against King James I, who was not favourably disposed towards him. In 1616, he was released to lead a second expedition in search of El Dorado. During the expedition, men led by his top commander ransacked a Spanish outpost, in violation of both the terms of his pardon and the 1604 peace treaty with Spain. Raleigh returned to England and, to appease the Spanish, he was arrested and executed in 1618.
- Birthplace: Devon, England
- Alan James Hollinghurst FRSL (born 26 May 1954) is an English novelist, poet, short story writer and translator. He is the recipient of numerous awards, including the 1989 Somerset Maugham Award, the 1994 James Tait Black Memorial Prize and the 2004 Booker Prize.
- Birthplace: Stroud, United Kingdom
- Vivian Stanshall (born Victor Anthony Stanshall; 21 March 1943 – 5 March 1995) was an English singer-songwriter, musician, author, poet and wit, best known for his work with the Bonzo Dog Doo-Dah Band, for his exploration of the British upper classes in Sir Henry at Rawlinson End (as a radio series for John Peel, as an audio recording, as a book and as a film), and for acting as Master of Ceremonies on Mike Oldfield's album Tubular Bells.
- Birthplace: England, Oxford
- Robert Browning (7 May 1812 – 12 December 1889) was an English poet and playwright whose mastery of the dramatic monologue made him one of the foremost Victorian poets. His poems are known for their irony, characterization, dark humour, social commentary, historical settings, and challenging vocabulary and syntax. Browning's early career began promisingly, but collapsed. The long poems Pauline and Paracelsus received some acclaim, but in 1840 the difficult Sordello, which was seen as wilfully obscure, brought his poetry into disrepute. His reputation took more than a decade to recover, during which time he moved away from the Shelleyan forms of his early period and developed a more personal style. In 1846, Browning married the older poet Elizabeth Barrett, and went to live in Italy. By the time of her death in 1861, he had published the crucial collection Men and Women. The collection Dramatis Personae and the book-length epic poem The Ring and the Book followed, and made him a leading British poet. He continued to write prolifically, but his reputation today rests largely on the poetry he wrote in this middle period. When Browning died in 1889, he was regarded as a sage and philosopher-poet who through his writing had made contributions to Victorian social and political discourse. Unusually for a poet, societies for the study of his work were founded while he was still alive. Such Browning Societies remained common in Britain and the United States until the early 20th century.
- Birthplace: Camberwell, London, United Kingdom
- John Dryden (; 19 August [O.S. 9 August] 1631 – 12 May [O.S. 1 May] 1700) was an English poet, literary critic, translator, and playwright who was made England's first Poet Laureate in 1668.He is seen as dominating the literary life of Restoration England to such a point that the period came to be known in literary circles as the Age of Dryden. Walter Scott called him "Glorious John".
- Birthplace: Aldwincle, United Kingdom
- Benjamin Obadiah Iqbal Zephaniah (April 15, 1958 – December 7, 2023) was a British writer, dub poet and actor. He was included in The Times list of Britain's top 50 post-war writers in 2008. Between 2013 and 2022, Zephaniah played the role of preacher Jeremiah "Jimmy" Jesus in BBC drama Peaky Blinders, appearing in 14 episodes across the 6 series
- Birthplace: Handsworth, Birmingham, England, UK
- Rupert Chawner Brooke (3 August 1887 – 23 April 1915) was an English poet known for his idealistic war sonnets written during the First World War, especially "The Soldier". He was also known for his boyish good looks, which were said to have prompted the Irish poet W. B. Yeats to describe him as "the handsomest young man in England".
- Birthplace: Rugby, United Kingdom
- Samuel Taylor Coleridge (; 21 October 1772 – 25 July 1834) was an English poet, literary critic, philosopher and theologian who, with his friend William Wordsworth, was a founder of the Romantic Movement in England and a member of the Lake Poets. He also shared volumes and collaborated with Charles Lamb, Robert Southey, and Charles Lloyd. He wrote the poems The Rime of the Ancient Mariner and Kubla Khan, as well as the major prose work Biographia Literaria. His critical work, especially on William Shakespeare, was highly influential, and he helped introduce German idealist philosophy to English-speaking culture. Coleridge coined many familiar words and phrases, including suspension of disbelief. He had a major influence on Ralph Waldo Emerson and on American transcendentalism. Throughout his adult life Coleridge had crippling bouts of anxiety and depression; it has been speculated that he had bipolar disorder, which had not been defined during his lifetime. He was physically unhealthy, which may have stemmed from a bout of rheumatic fever and other childhood illnesses. He was treated for these conditions with laudanum, which fostered a lifelong opium addiction.
- Birthplace: Ottery St Mary, United Kingdom
- Edward Carpenter (29 August 1844 – 28 June 1929) was an English socialist poet, philosopher, anthologist, and early activist for gay rights.A poet and writer, he was a close friend of Rabindranath Tagore, and a friend of Walt Whitman. He corresponded with many famous figures, such as Annie Besant, Isadora Duncan, Havelock Ellis, Roger Fry, Mahatma Gandhi, Keir Hardie, J. K. Kinney, Jack London, George Merrill, E. D. Morel, William Morris, Edward R. Pease, John Ruskin, and Olive Schreiner.As a philosopher he was particularly known for his publication of Civilisation, Its Cause and Cure, in which he proposes that civilisation is a form of disease that human societies pass through.An early advocate of sexual freedoms, he had an influence on both D. H. Lawrence and Sri Aurobindo, and inspired E. M. Forster's novel Maurice.
- Birthplace: Hove, United Kingdom
- Benjamin Jonson (c. 11 June 1572 – c. 16 August 1637) was an English playwright and poet, whose artistry exerted a lasting impact upon English poetry and stage comedy. He popularised the comedy of humours. He is best known for the satirical plays Every Man in His Humour (1598), Volpone, or The Fox (c. 1606), The Alchemist (1610) and Bartholomew Fair (1614) and for his lyric and epigrammatic poetry. "He is generally regarded as the second most important English dramatist, after William Shakespeare, during the reign of James I."Jonson was a classically educated, well-read and cultured man of the English Renaissance with an appetite for controversy (personal and political, artistic and intellectual) whose cultural influence was of unparalleled breadth upon the playwrights and the poets of the Jacobean era (1603–1625) and of the Caroline era (1625–1642).
- Birthplace: Westminster, London, United Kingdom
- Lord Alfred Bruce Douglas (22 October 1870 – 20 March 1945) was a British poet and journalist best known as the lover of Oscar Wilde. While studying at Oxford, he edited an undergraduate journal, The Spirit Lamp, which carried a homoerotic subtext, and met Wilde, with whom he started a close but stormy relationship. Douglas’s father, the Marquess of Queensberry, disapproved strongly of the affair, and set out to humiliate Wilde, publicly accusing him of homosexuality. Wilde sued him for criminal libel, but some of his intimate notes were discovered, and he was duly jailed. On his release, he briefly lived with Douglas in Naples, but they were separated by the time Wilde died in 1900. Douglas married Olive Custance in 1902, and they produced a son Raymond. Converting to Roman Catholicism in 1911, he openly repudiated Wilde’s homosexuality, and in a High-Catholic magazine Plain English, he expressed views that were openly anti-semitic, though he rejected the extreme policies of Nazi Germany. He was also jailed for libelling Winston Churchill over claims of wartime misconduct. Douglas wrote several books of verse, some of it classified in the homoerotic Uranian genre. The phrase "The love that dare not speak its name" came from one of Douglas’s poems, though it is widely misattributed to Wilde.
- Birthplace: Worcestershire, United Kingdom
- James Martin Fenton FRSL FRSA (born 25 April 1949, Lincoln) is an English poet, journalist and literary critic. He is a former Oxford Professor of Poetry.
- Birthplace: Lincoln, United Kingdom
- Charlotte Lennox, née Ramsay (c. 1730 – 4 January 1804), was a Scottish author and poet, mostly remembered today as the author of The Female Quixote, and for her association with Samuel Johnson, Joshua Reynolds and Samuel Richardson. However, she had a long career in her own right, writing poetry, prose and drama.
- Birthplace: Gibraltar, United Kingdom, with Dependencies and Territories
- Fondly known as "the Modfather" to his UK fans, singer/guitarist/songwriter Paul Weller was a figure of integrity and style throughout an ever-changing career. His first band, The Jam, was his most celebrated one. More idealistic and better-dressed than their punk contemporaries, The Jam had a punkish sound but harked back to a more optimistic era of British rock. Weller, bassist Bruce Foxton and drummer Rick Buckler formed the band in Surrey, England during the mid-'70s (a pair of formative members dropped out early), and broke through with the 1977 single "In the City." They were at first pegged as an update of the Who and the Small Faces, but by the third album All Mod Cons Weller was being recognized as a chronicler of his own times (though ironically, its first single was a cover of the Kinks' "David Watts"). The Jam got more ambitious as they grew, pulling off a concept album about modern-day England on 1979's Setting Sons. The followup, Sound Affects included a signature song, the reflective acoustic "That's Entertainment." They gravitated more toward soul/R&B on their last album The Gift, whose Motown-styled single "Town Called Malice" became one of their best-known. Due to internal friction and the desire to move on, Weller announced the band would split at the height of its popularity, in October 1982. The bad blood remained and The Jam never reunited, though the other two later formed a tribute band and Weller and Foxton had a single onstage reunion in 2010. Weller then formed the Style Council with keyboardist Mick Talbot, the only other full-time member. The new band initially carried on the soul leanings of later Jam; its early singles "Speak Like a Child" and "My Ever Changing Moods" were Jam leftovers. In time the band became more explicitly political, performing the anti-Thatcher "Walls Come Tumbling Down!" at Live Aid in 1985. The sound also grew smoother, with Weller playing less guitar than he had in the Jam. Their later records were more experimental and not as well-received; their final album-the house-influenced Modernism: A New Decade-- was rejected by their label and only released as part of a posthumous boxed set. After that rejection, Weller disbanded the Style Council and launched his solo career with a self-titled album in 1992. Embraced by fans as a return to form, the album returned to soul-influenced and guitar-driven rock, though more polished and less frenetic than the Jam. This has largely remained his territory, though there were variations: 2008's 22 Dreams was a loose-knit concept album with a prog influence; he then flirted with electronica on 2010's Wake Up the Nation. During 2001 he did an acoustic tour (captured on the album Days of Speed) which included Jam and Style Council songs for he first time in his solo career. 2017 brought his first album-length film soundtrack, Jawbone and a new studio album, A Kind Revolution, which added touches of jazz and English folk to the mix.
- Birthplace: Woking, Surrey, England, UK
- Robert von Ranke Graves (24 July 1895 – 7 December 1985) was a British poet, historical novelist, critic, and classicist. His father was Alfred Perceval Graves, a celebrated Irish poet and figure in the Gaelic revival; they were both Celticists and students of Irish mythology. Graves produced more than 140 works. Graves's poems—together with his translations and innovative analysis and interpretations of the Greek myths; his memoir of his early life, including his role in World War I, Good-Bye to All That; and his speculative study of poetic inspiration, The White Goddess—have never been out of print.He earned his living from writing, particularly popular historical novels such as I, Claudius; King Jesus; The Golden Fleece; and Count Belisarius. He also was a prominent translator of Classical Latin and Ancient Greek texts; his versions of The Twelve Caesars and The Golden Ass remain popular for their clarity and entertaining style. Graves was awarded the 1934 James Tait Black Memorial Prize for both I, Claudius and Claudius the God.
- Birthplace: London, England
- Aphra Behn (; bapt. 14 December 1640 – 16 April 1689) was an English playwright, poet, translator and fiction writer from the Restoration era. As one of the first English women to earn her living by her writing, she broke cultural barriers and served as a literary role model for later generations of women authors. Rising from obscurity, she came to the notice of Charles II, who employed her as a spy in Antwerp. Upon her return to London and a probable brief stay in debtors' prison, she began writing for the stage. She belonged to a coterie of poets and famous libertines such as John Wilmot, Lord Rochester. She wrote under the pastoral pseudonym Astrea. During the turbulent political times of the Exclusion Crisis, she wrote an epilogue and prologue that brought her into legal trouble; she thereafter devoted most of her writing to prose genres and translations. A staunch supporter of the Stuart line, she declined an invitation from Bishop Burnet to write a welcoming poem to the new king William III. She died shortly after.She is remembered in Virginia Woolf's A Room of One's Own: "All women together ought to let flowers fall upon the tomb of Aphra Behn which is, most scandalously but rather appropriately, in Westminster Abbey, for it was she who earned them the right to speak their minds." Her grave is not included in the Poets' Corner but lies in the East Cloister near the steps to the church.
- Birthplace: Canterbury, United Kingdom
Jane West, who published as Prudentia Homespun and Mrs. West, was an English novelist, poet, playwright, and writer of conduct literature and educational tracts.- Birthplace: London, United Kingdom
- Thomas Hardy (2 June 1840 – 11 January 1928) was an English novelist and poet. A Victorian realist in the tradition of George Eliot, he was influenced both in his novels and in his poetry by Romanticism, especially William Wordsworth. He was highly critical of much in Victorian society, especially on the declining status of rural people in Britain, such as those from his native South West England. While Hardy wrote poetry throughout his life and regarded himself primarily as a poet, his first collection was not published until 1898. Initially, therefore, he gained fame as the author of such novels as Far from the Madding Crowd (1874), The Mayor of Casterbridge (1886), Tess of the d'Urbervilles (1891), and Jude the Obscure (1895). During his lifetime, Hardy's poetry was acclaimed by younger poets (particularly the Georgians) who viewed him as a mentor. After his death his poems were lauded by Ezra Pound, W. H. Auden and Philip Larkin.Many of his novels concern tragic characters struggling against their passions and social circumstances, and they are often set in the semi-fictional region of Wessex; initially based on the medieval Anglo-Saxon kingdom, Hardy's Wessex eventually came to include the counties of Dorset, Wiltshire, Somerset, Devon, Hampshire and much of Berkshire, in southwest and south central England. Two of his novels, Tess of the d'Urbervilles and Far from the Madding Crowd, were listed in the top 50 on the BBC's survey The Big Read.
- Birthplace: Stinsford, United Kingdom
- Claudius Afolabi "Labi" Siffre (born 25 June 1945) is a British singer, songwriter, musician, and poet. Siffre released six albums between 1970 and 1975, and four between 1988 and 1998. He has published essays, the stage and TV play Deathwrite, and three volumes of poetry: Nigger, Blood on the Page, and Monument.
- Birthplace: Hammersmith, London, United Kingdom
- Sebastian Lewis Shaw (29 May 1905 – 23 December 1994) was an English actor, director, novelist, playwright and poet. During his 65-year career, he appeared in dozens of stage performances and more than 40 film and television productions. Shaw was born and brought up in Holt, Norfolk, and made his acting debut at age eight at a London theatre. He studied acting at Gresham's School and the Royal Academy of Dramatic Art. Although he worked primarily on the London stage, he made his Broadway debut in 1929, when he played one of the two murderers in Rope's End. He appeared in his first film, Caste, in 1930 and quickly began to create a name for himself in films. He described himself as a "rotten actor" as a youth and said his success was primarily due to his good looks. He claimed to mature as a performer only after returning from service in the Royal Air Force during World War II. Shaw was particularly known for his performances in productions of Shakespeare plays which were considered daring and ahead of their time. In 1966, he joined the Royal Shakespeare Company, where he remained for a decade and delivered some of his most acclaimed performances. He also wrote several poems and a novel, The Christening, in 1975. He is also known for his brief but important performance in Return of the Jedi, the original third installment in the Star Wars franchise, in which he portrayed an unmasked and redeemed Anakin Skywalker (formerly Darth Vader), and his ghost in the original version of the film.
- Birthplace: Holt, England
- John Ruskin (8 February 1819 – 20 January 1900) was the leading English art critic of the Victorian era, as well as an art patron, draughtsman, watercolourist, a prominent social thinker and philanthropist. He wrote on subjects as varied as geology, architecture, myth, ornithology, literature, education, botany and political economy. His writing styles and literary forms were equally varied. He penned essays and treatises, poetry and lectures, travel guides and manuals, letters and even a fairy tale. He also made detailed sketches and paintings of rocks, plants, birds, landscapes, and architectural structures and ornamentation. The elaborate style that characterised his earliest writing on art gave way in time to plainer language designed to communicate his ideas more effectively. In all of his writing, he emphasised the connections between nature, art and society. He was hugely influential in the latter half of the 19th century and up to the First World War. After a period of relative decline, his reputation has steadily improved since the 1960s with the publication of numerous academic studies of his work. Today, his ideas and concerns are widely recognised as having anticipated interest in environmentalism, sustainability and craft. Ruskin first came to widespread attention with the first volume of Modern Painters (1843), an extended essay in defence of the work of J. M. W. Turner in which he argued that the principal role of the artist is "truth to nature." From the 1850s, he championed the Pre-Raphaelites, who were influenced by his ideas. His work increasingly focused on social and political issues. Unto This Last (1860, 1862) marked the shift in emphasis. In 1869, Ruskin became the first Slade Professor of Fine Art at the University of Oxford, where he established the Ruskin School of Drawing. In 1871, he began his monthly "letters to the workmen and labourers of Great Britain", published under the title Fors Clavigera (1871–1884). In the course of this complex and deeply personal work, he developed the principles underlying his ideal society. As a result, he founded the Guild of St George, an organisation that endures today.
- Birthplace: London, United Kingdom
- Percy Bysshe Shelley ( (listen) BISH; 4 August 1792 – 8 July 1822) was one of the major English Romantic poets, who is regarded by some as among the finest lyric and philosophical poets in the English language, and one of the most influential. A radical in his poetry as well as in his political and social views, Shelley did not see fame during his lifetime, but recognition of his achievements in poetry grew steadily following his death. Shelley was a key member of a close circle of visionary poets and writers that included Lord Byron, John Keats, Leigh Hunt, Thomas Love Peacock and his own second wife, Mary Shelley, the author of Frankenstein. Shelley is perhaps best known for classic poems such as "Ozymandias", "Ode to the West Wind", "To a Skylark", "Music, When Soft Voices Die", "The Cloud" and The Masque of Anarchy. His other major works include a groundbreaking verse drama, The Cenci (1819), and long, visionary, philosophical poems such as Queen Mab (later reworked as The Daemon of the World), Alastor, The Revolt of Islam, Adonais, Prometheus Unbound (1820) – widely considered to be his masterpiece –, Hellas: A Lyrical Drama (1821) and his final, unfinished work, The Triumph of Life (1822). Shelley's close circle of friends included some of the most important progressive thinkers of the day, including his father-in-law, the philosopher William Godwin, and Leigh Hunt. Though Shelley's poetry and prose output remained steady throughout his life, most publishers and journals declined to publish his work for fear of being arrested for either blasphemy or sedition. Shelley's poetry sometimes had only an underground readership during his day, but his poetic achievements are widely recognized today, and his political and social thought had an impact on the Chartist and other movements in England, and reach down to the present day. Shelley's theories of economics and morality, for example, had a profound influence on Karl Marx; his early – perhaps first – writings on nonviolent resistance influenced Leo Tolstoy, whose writings on the subject in turn influenced Mahatma Gandhi, and through him Martin Luther King Jr. and others practicing nonviolence during the American civil rights movement. Shelley became a lodestar to the subsequent three or four generations of poets, including important Victorian and Pre-Raphaelite poets such as Robert Browning and Dante Gabriel Rossetti. He was admired by Oscar Wilde, Thomas Hardy, George Bernard Shaw, Leo Tolstoy, Bertrand Russell, W. B. Yeats, Upton Sinclair and Isadora Duncan. Henry David Thoreau's Civil Disobedience was apparently influenced by Shelley's writings and theories on nonviolence in protest and political action. Shelley's popularity and influence has continued to grow in contemporary poetry circles.
- Birthplace: Horsham, United Kingdom
- Dorothy Leigh Sayers (; 13 June 1893 – 17 December 1957) was an English crime writer and poet. She was also a student of classical and modern languages. She is best known for her mysteries, a series of novels and short stories set between the First and Second World Wars that feature English aristocrat and amateur sleuth Lord Peter Wimsey, which remain popular to this day. However, Sayers herself considered her translation of Dante's Divine Comedy to be her best work. She is also known for her plays, literary criticism, and essays.
- Birthplace: Oxford, United Kingdom
- Joseph Addison (1 May 1672 – 17 June 1719) was an English essayist, poet, playwright, and politician. He was the eldest son of The Reverend Lancelot Addison. His name is usually remembered alongside that of his long-standing friend Richard Steele, with whom he founded The Spectator magazine.
- Birthplace: England
- George Herbert (3 April 1593 – 1 March 1633) was a Welsh-born poet, orator, and priest of the Church of England. His poetry is associated with the writings of the metaphysical poets, and he is recognised as "one of the foremost British devotional lyricists." He was born into an artistic and wealthy family and largely raised in England. He received a good education that led to his admission to Trinity College, Cambridge in 1609. He went there with the intention of becoming a priest, but he became the University's Public Orator and attracted the attention of King James I. He served in the Parliament of England in 1624 and briefly in 1625.After the death of King James, Herbert renewed his interest in ordination. He gave up his secular ambitions in his mid-thirties and took holy orders in the Church of England, spending the rest of his life as the rector of the little parish of St Andrew's Church, Lower Bemerton, Salisbury. He was noted for unfailing care for his parishioners, bringing the sacraments to them when they were ill and providing food and clothing for those in need. Henry Vaughan called him "a most glorious saint and seer". He was never a healthy man and died of consumption at age 39.
- Birthplace: Montgomery, United Kingdom
Anne Askew
Dec. at 25 (1521-1546)Anne Askew (née Ayscough , Ascue; married name Anne Kyme; 1521 – 16 July 1546) was an English writer, poet, and Protestant martyr who was condemned as a heretic in England in the reign of Henry VIII of England. Apart from Margaret Cheyne, wife of Sir John Bulmer, who was similarly tortured and executed after the Pilgrimage of Grace in 1537, she is the only other woman on record known to have been both tortured in the Tower of London and burnt at the stake. She is also one of the earliest-known female poets to compose in the English language and the first Englishwoman to demand a divorce (especially as an innocent party on scriptural grounds).- Birthplace: Stallingborough, United Kingdom
Roy Fisher
Age: 95Roy Fisher is a British poet and jazz pianist. He was one of the first British writers to absorb the poetics of William Carlos Williams and the Black Mountain poets into the British poetic tradition. Fisher was a key precursor of the British Poetry Revival.- Birthplace: Handsworth, West Midlands, United Kingdom
- Edmund Spenser (; 1552/1553 – 13 January 1599) was an English poet best known for The Faerie Queene, an epic poem and fantastical allegory celebrating the Tudor dynasty and Elizabeth I. He is recognized as one of the premier craftsmen of nascent Modern English verse, and is often considered one of the greatest poets in the English language.
- Birthplace: London, United Kingdom
- John Donne ( DUN; 22 January 1572 – 31 March 1631) was an English poet and cleric in the Church of England. He is considered the pre-eminent representative of the metaphysical poets. His works are noted for their strong, sensual style and include sonnets, love poems, religious poems, Latin translations, epigrams, elegies, songs, satires and sermons. His poetry is noted for its vibrancy of language and inventiveness of metaphor, especially compared to that of his contemporaries. Donne's style is characterised by abrupt openings and various paradoxes, ironies and dislocations. These features, along with his frequent dramatic or everyday speech rhythms, his tense syntax and his tough eloquence, were both a reaction against the smoothness of conventional Elizabethan poetry and an adaptation into English of European baroque and mannerist techniques. His early career was marked by poetry that bore immense knowledge of English society and he met that knowledge with sharp criticism. Another important theme in Donne's poetry is the idea of true religion, something that he spent much time considering and about which he often theorized. He wrote secular poems as well as erotic and love poems. He is particularly famous for his mastery of metaphysical conceits. Despite his great education and poetic talents, Donne lived in poverty for several years, relying heavily on wealthy friends. He spent much of the money he inherited during and after his education on womanising, literature, pastimes, and travel. In 1601, Donne secretly married Anne More, with whom he had twelve children. In 1615 he was ordained deacon and then Anglican priest, although he did not want to take Holy Orders and only did so because the king ordered it. In 1621, he was appointed the Dean of St Paul's Cathedral in London. He also served as a member of Parliament in 1601 and in 1614.
- Birthplace: London, United Kingdom
- Anne Stevenson is an American-British poet and writer.
- Birthplace: Cambridge, United Kingdom
- Alexander Pope (21 May 1688 – 30 May 1744) is regarded as one of the greatest English poets and the foremost poet the early eighteenth century. He is best known for his satirical and discursive poetry—to include The Rape of the Lock, The Dunciad, and An Essay on Criticism—as well as for his translation of Homer. After Shakespeare, Pope is the second most quoted writer in the English language, as per The Oxford Dictionary of Quotations, with some of his verses having even become popular idioms in common parlance (e.g., Damning with faint praise). He is considered a master of the heroic couplet. Pope's poetic career testifies to his indomitable spirit in the face of disadvantages, of health and of circumstance. As the poet and his family were Catholics, they fell subject to prohibitive measures which effectively reversed the prosperity of their ilk after the abdication of James II; one of which banned them from living within ten miles of London and another from attending public school or university. For this reason, except for a few spurious Catholic schools, Pope was largely self-educated. He was taught to read by his aunt and became a lover of books. He learned French, Italian, Latin, and Greek by himself and discovered Homer at six. As a child, Pope survived being once trampled by a cow, but at the age of twelve began struggling with tuberculosis of the spine, or Potts' Disease, along with fits of crippling headaches which troubled him throughout his life. In the year 1709, Pope showcased his precocious metrical skill with the publication of Pastorals, his first major poems. They earned him instant fame. By the time Pope was twenty-three, he had written An Essay on Criticism, released in 1711. A kind of poetic manifesto in the vein of Horace's Ars Poetica, the essay was met with enthusiastic attention and won Pope a wider circle of prominent friends, most notably Joseph Addison and Richard Steele, who had recently started collaborating on the influential The Spectator. The critic John Dennis, having located an ironic and veiled portrait of himself, was outraged by what he considered the impudence of the younger author. Dennis hated Pope for the rest of his life, and, save for a temporary reconciliation, dedicated his efforts to insulting him in print, to which Pope retaliated in kind, making him the butt of much satire. The Rape of the Lock, perhaps the poet's most famous poem, appeared first in 1712, followed by a revised and enlarged version in 1714. When Lord Petre forcibly snipped off a lock from Miss Arabella Fermor's head (the "Belinda" of the poem), the incident gave rise to a high-society quarrel between the families. With the idea of allaying this, Pope treated the subject in a playful and witty mock-heroic epic. The narrative poem brings into focus the onset of acquisitive individualism and conspicuous consumption, where purchased goods assume dominance over moral agency. In 1717 appeared a folio comprising a collection of his poems, together with two new ones written about the passion of love. They were Verses to the Memory of an Unfortunate Lady and the famous proto-romantic poem Eloisa to Abelard. Though Pope never married, about this time, he became strongly attached to Lady M. Montagu, whom he indirectly referenced in the popular poem Eloisa to Abelard, and to Martha Blount, with whom his friendship continued throughout his life. In his career as a satirist, Pope made his share of enemies as the critics, politicians, and certain other prominent figures felt the sting of his sharpwitted satires. Some were so virulent, that Pope even carried pistols at one point while walking his dog. After 1738, Pope composed relatively little. He toyed with the idea of writing a patriotic epic called Brutus but ultimately decided against it, and only the opening lines survive. He mainly revised and expanded his masterpiece The Dunciad. Book Four appeared in 1742, and a complete revision of the whole poem in the following year. In this version, he replaced Lewis Theobald, with the poet laureate Colley Cibber, as "king of dunces". But his real target is the writer and Whig politician Horace Walpole. By now Pope's health was failing, and when told by his physician, on the morning of his death, that he was better, Pope replied: "Here am I, dying of a hundred good symptoms".
- Birthplace: London, United Kingdom
- Genesis Breyer P-Orridge (born Neil Andrew Megson; 22 February 1950 – 14 March 2020) was an English singer-songwriter, musician, poet, performance artist, and occultist who rose to notability as the founder of the COUM Transmissions artistic collective and lead vocalist of seminal industrial band Throbbing Gristle. P-Orridge was also a founding member of Thee Temple ov Psychick Youth occult group, and fronted the experimental band Psychic TV.
- Birthplace: United Kingdom
- John Milton (9 December 1608 – 8 November 1674) was an English poet, polemicist, man of letters, and civil servant for the Commonwealth of England under its Council of State and later under Oliver Cromwell. He wrote at a time of religious flux and political upheaval, and is best known for his epic poem Paradise Lost (1667), written in blank verse. Writing in English, Latin, Greek, and Italian, he achieved international renown within his lifetime, and his celebrated Areopagitica (1644), written in condemnation of pre-publication censorship, is among history's most influential and impassioned defences of freedom of speech and freedom of the press. His desire for freedom extended into his style: he introduced new words (coined from Latin) to the English language, and was the first modern writer to employ non-rhymed verse outside of the theatre or translations. William Hayley's 1796 biography called him the "greatest English author", and he remains generally regarded "as one of the preeminent writers in the English language", though critical reception has oscillated in the centuries since his death (often on account of his republicanism). Samuel Johnson praised Paradise Lost as "a poem which...with respect to design may claim the first place, and with respect to performance, the second, among the productions of the human mind", though he (a Tory and recipient of royal patronage) described Milton's politics as those of an "acrimonious and surly republican". Poets such as William Blake, William Wordsworth and Thomas Hardy revered him.
- Birthplace: Cheapside, United Kingdom
The Best John Milton QuotesSee all
1He who reins within himself and rules passions, desires, and fears is more than a king15 Votes- 2The mind is its own place, and in itself can make heaven of hell, a hell of heaven.9 Votes
- 3The end of learning is to know God, and out of that knowledge to love Him and imitate Him.27 Votes
- Algernon Charles Swinburne (5 April 1837 – 10 April 1909) was an English poet, playwright, novelist, and critic. He wrote several novels and collections of poetry such as Poems and Ballads, and contributed to the famous Eleventh Edition of the Encyclopædia Britannica. Swinburne wrote about many taboo topics, such as lesbianism, cannibalism, sado-masochism, and anti-theism. His poems have many common motifs, such as the ocean, time, and death. Several historical people are featured in his poems, such as Sappho ("Sapphics"), Anactoria ("Anactoria"), Jesus ("Hymn to Proserpine": Galilaee, La. "Galilean") and Catullus ("To Catullus").
- Birthplace: London, United Kingdom
- Craig Joseph Charles (born 11 July 1964) is a British actor, television presenter and DJ. He played Dave Lister in the science fiction sitcom Red Dwarf and Lloyd Mullaney in the soap opera Coronation Street, as a funk and soul DJ on BBC Radio 6 Music and BBC Radio 2, and as the presenter of the gladiator-style game show Robot Wars from 1998 to 2004. Charles first appeared on television as a performance poet, which led to minor presenting roles. After finding fame in Red Dwarf, he regularly featured on national television with celebrity appearances on many popular shows while he continued to host a wide variety of programmes. Charles also narrated the comedy endurance show Takeshi's Castle. From 2017, he has hosted The Gadget Show for Channel 5. His acting credits include playing inmate Eugene Buffy in the ITV drama The Governor, and leading roles in the British films Fated and Clubbing to Death. He has toured the UK extensively as a stand-up comedian. Charles has hosted The Craig Charles Funk and Soul Show on BBC radio since 2002, and performs DJ sets at numerous clubs and festivals, nationally and internationally. In September 2015, he left Coronation Street after ten years, to film new episodes of Red Dwarf.
- Birthplace: Liverpool, England
- Sir Thomas Overbury (baptized 1581 – 14 September 1613) was an English poet and essayist, also known for being the victim of a murder which led to a scandalous trial. His poem A Wife (also referred to as The Wife), which depicted the virtues that a young man should demand of a woman, played a large role in the events that precipitated his murder.
- Birthplace: Compton Scorpion
- Billy Childish (born Steven John Hamper, 1 December 1959) is an English painter, author, poet, photographer, film maker, singer and guitarist. Since the late 1970s, Childish has been prolific in creating music, writing and visual art. He has led and played in bands including the Pop Rivets, Thee Milkshakes, Thee Headcoats, and the Musicians of the British Empire, primarily working in the genres of garage rock, punk and surf and releasing more than 100 albums. He is a consistent advocate for amateurism and free emotional expression. Childish co-founded the Stuckism art movement with Charles Thomson in 1999, which he left in 2001. Since then a new evaluation of Childish's standing in the art world has been under way, culminating with the publication of a critical study of Childish's working practice by the artist and writer Neal Brown, with an introduction by Peter Doig, which describes Childish as "one of the most outstanding, and often misunderstood, figures on the British art scene". He is a visiting lecturer at Rochester Independent College. In July 2014 Childish was awarded an honorary Doctor of Arts Degree from the University of Kent.He is known for his explicit and prolific work – he has detailed his love life and childhood sexual abuse, notably in his early poetry and the novels My Fault (1996), Notebooks of a Naked Youth (1997), Sex Crimes of the Futcher (2004) – The Idiocy of Idears (2007), and in several of his songs, notably in the instrumental "Paedophile" (1992) (featuring a photograph of the man who sexually abused him on the front cover) and "Every Bit of Me" (1993). From 1981 until 1985 Childish had a relationship with artist Tracey Emin. Thirty years after Childish's first musical releases with Thee Milkshakes and Thee Mighty Caesars, a crop of lo-fi, surf rock and punk groups with psychedelic subtexts has surfaced referencing the aesthetic established by Childish in both their band names and in various aspects of their sonic aesthetic: Thee Oh Sees, Thee Open Sex, Thee Tsunamis, Thee Dang Dangs and many others.
- Birthplace: Chatham
- Sir Geoffrey William Hill, FRSL (18 June 1932 – 30 June 2016) was an English poet, professor emeritus of English literature and religion, and former co-director of the Editorial Institute, at Boston University. Hill has been considered to be among the most distinguished poets of his generation and was called the "greatest living poet in the English language." From 2010 to 2015 he held the position of Professor of Poetry in the University of Oxford. Following his receiving the Truman Capote Award for Literary Criticism in 2009 for his Collected Critical Writings, and the publication of Broken Hierarchies (Poems 1952–2012), Hill is recognised as one of the principal contributors to poetry and criticism in the twentieth and twenty-first centuries.
- Birthplace: Bromsgrove, United Kingdom
- Clifford Bax (13 July 1886 – 18 November 1962) was a versatile English writer, known particularly as a playwright, a journalist, critic and editor, and a poet, lyricist and hymn writer. He also was a translator (for example, of Goldoni). The composer Arnold Bax was his brother, and set some of his words to music.
- Birthplace: Tooting Bec, London, United Kingdom
- William Congreve (24 January 1670 – 19 January 1729) was an English playwright and poet of the Restoration period. He is known for his clever, satirical dialogue and influence on the comedy of manners style of that period. He was also a minor political figure in the British Whig Party.
- Birthplace: Bardsey, United Kingdom
- Edward James Hughes (17 August 1930 – 28 October 1998) was an English poet, translator, and children's writer. Critics frequently rank him as one of the best poets of his generation, and one of the twentieth century's greatest writers. He served as Poet Laureate from 1984 until his death. In 2008 The Times ranked Hughes fourth on their list of "The 50 greatest British writers since 1945".Hughes was married to American poet Sylvia Plath from 1956 until her suicide in 1963 at the age of 30. Some admirers of Plath and radical feminist critics blamed him for her death after the revelation of letters written by Plath between 18 February 1960 and 4 February 1963, which claim that Hughes beat Plath two days before she had a miscarriage in 1961, and that he also told Plath he wished that she was dead. His last poetic work, Birthday Letters (1998), explored their complex relationship. These poems make reference to Plath's suicide, but none addresses directly the circumstances of her death. A poem discovered in October 2010, "Last Letter", describes what happened during the three days before her death.
- Birthplace: Mytholmroyd, United Kingdom
- Edward George Earle Lytton Bulwer-Lytton, 1st Baron Lytton, PC (25 May 1803 – 18 January 1873) was an English writer and politician. He served as a Whig MP from 1831 to 1841 and a Conservative MP from 1851 to 1866. He was Secretary of State for the Colonies from June 1858 to June 1859, choosing Richard Clement Moody as founder of British Columbia. He declined the Crown of Greece in 1862 after King Otto abdicated. He was created Baron Lytton of Knebworth in 1866. Bulwer-Lytton's works were popular and paid him well. He coined the phrases "the great unwashed", "pursuit of the almighty dollar", "the pen is mightier than the sword", and "dweller on the threshold". Then came a sharp fall in his reputation, so that he is little read today. The sardonic 1982 Bulwer-Lytton Fiction Contest claimed to seek the "opening sentence of the worst of all possible novels".
- Birthplace: London, England
- Elizabeth Barrett Browning (née Moulton-Barrett, ; 6 March 1806 – 29 June 1861) was an English poet of the Victorian era, popular in Britain and the United States during her lifetime. Born in County Durham, the eldest of 12 children, Elizabeth Barrett wrote poetry from the age of eleven. Her mother's collection of her poems forms one of the largest extant collections of juvenilia by any English writer. At 15 she became ill, suffering intense head and spinal pain for the rest of her life. Later in life she also developed lung problems, possibly tuberculosis. She took laudanum for the pain from an early age, which is likely to have contributed to her frail health. In the 1840s Elizabeth was introduced to literary society through her cousin, John Kenyon. Her first adult collection of poems was published in 1838 and she wrote prolifically between 1841 and 1844, producing poetry, translation and prose. She campaigned for the abolition of slavery and her work helped influence reform in the child labour legislation. Her prolific output made her a rival to Tennyson as a candidate for poet laureate on the death of Wordsworth. Elizabeth's volume Poems (1844) brought her great success, attracting the admiration of the writer Robert Browning. Their correspondence, courtship and marriage were carried out in secret, for fear of her father's disapproval. Following the wedding she was indeed disinherited by her father. The couple moved to Italy in 1846, where she would live for the rest of her life. They had one son, Robert Wiedeman Barrett Browning, whom they called Pen. She died in Florence in 1861. A collection of her last poems was published by her husband shortly after her death. Elizabeth's work had a major influence on prominent writers of the day, including the American poets Edgar Allan Poe and Emily Dickinson. She is remembered for such poems as "How Do I Love Thee?" (Sonnet 43, 1845) and Aurora Leigh (1856).
- Birthplace: Kelloe, United Kingdom
- Lady Mary Wortley Montagu (née Pierrepont; baptised 26 May 1689 – 21 August 1762) was an English aristocrat, letter writer, and poet. Lady Mary is today chiefly remembered for her letters, particularly her letters from travels to the Ottoman Empire, as wife to the British ambassador to Turkey, which have been described by Billie Melman as "the very first example of a secular work by a woman about the Muslim Orient". Aside from her writing, Lady Mary is also known for introducing and advocating for smallpox inoculation to Britain after her return from Turkey. Her writings address and challenge the hindering contemporary social attitudes towards women and their intellectual and social growth.
- Birthplace: London, United Kingdom
- Robert Seymour Bridges (23 October 1844 – 21 April 1930) was Britain's poet laureate from 1913 to 1930. A doctor by training, he achieved literary fame only late in life. His poems reflect a deep Christian faith, and he is the author of many well-known hymns. It was through Bridges’ efforts that Gerard Manley Hopkins achieved posthumous fame.
- Birthplace: Walmer, United Kingdom
- Jeremy John Ratter (born 8 June 1943), better known as Penny "Lapsang" Rimbaud, is a writer, poet, philosopher, painter, musician and activist. He was a member of the performance art groups EXIT and Ceres Confusion, and in 1972 was co-founder of the Stonehenge Free Festival, together with Phil Russell aka Wally Hope. In 1977, alongside Steve Ignorant, he co-founded and played drums in the seminal anarchist punk band Crass, who disbanded in 1984. Up until 2000 he devoted himself almost entirely to writing, returning to the public platform in 2001 as a performance poet working alongside Australian saxophonist Louise Elliott and a wide variety of jazz musicians under the umbrella of Penny Rimbaud's Last Amendment.
- Birthplace: Northwood, London, England, London
- Edward Lear (12 May 1812, Holloway – 29 January 1888, Sanremo) was an English artist, illustrator, musician, author and poet, now known mostly for his literary nonsense in poetry and prose and especially his limericks, a form he popularised. His principal areas of work as an artist were threefold: as a draughtsman employed to illustrate birds and animals; making coloured drawings during his journeys, which he reworked later, sometimes as plates for his travel books; as a (minor) illustrator of Alfred, Lord Tennyson's poems. As an author, he is known principally for his popular nonsense collections of poems, songs, short stories, botanical drawings, recipes, and alphabets. He also composed and published twelve musical settings of Tennyson's poetry.
- Birthplace: Holloway, London, United Kingdom
- Gerard Manley Hopkins (28 July 1844 – 8 June 1889) was an English poet and Jesuit priest, whose posthumous fame established him among the leading Victorian poets. His manipulation of prosody – particularly his concept of sprung rhythm and use of imagery – established him as an innovative writer of verse. Two of his major themes were nature and religion. Only after his death did Robert Bridges begin to publish a few of Hopkins's mature poems in anthologies, hoping to prepare the way for wider acceptance of his style. By 1930 his work was recognized as being among the most original literary accomplishments of his century. It had a marked influence on such leading 20th-century poets as T. S. Eliot, Dylan Thomas, W. H. Auden, Stephen Spender and C. Day Lewis.
- Birthplace: Stratford, London, London, United Kingdom
- Graeme Charles Edge (born 30 March 1941, in Rocester, Staffordshire) is an English musician, songwriter and poet best known as the drummer, one of the songwriters and the last remaining original member of the English band the Moody Blues. In addition to his work with the Moody Blues, Edge has worked as the bandleader of his own outfit, the Graeme Edge Band. He has contributed his talents to a variety of other projects throughout his career. In 2018, Edge was inducted into the Rock and Roll Hall of Fame as a member of the Moody Blues.
- Birthplace: Rocester, England
- Adrian Mitchell FRSL (24 October 1932 – 20 December 2008) was an English poet, novelist and playwright. A former journalist, he became a noted figure on the British Left. For almost half a century he was the foremost poet of the country's anti-Bomb movement. The critic Kenneth Tynan called him "the British Mayakovsky".Mitchell sought in his work to counteract the implications of his own assertion that, "Most people ignore most poetry because most poetry ignores most people."In a National Poetry Day poll in 2005 his poem "Human Beings" was voted the one most people would like to see launched into space. In 2002 he was nominated, semi-seriously, Britain's "Shadow Poet Laureate". Mitchell was for some years poetry editor of the New Statesman, and was the first to publish an interview with the Beatles. His work for the Royal Shakespeare Company included Peter Brook's US and the English version of Peter Weiss's Marat/Sade.Ever inspired by the example of his own favourite poet and precursor William Blake, about whom he wrote the acclaimed Tyger for the National Theatre, his often angry output swirled from anarchistic anti-war satire, through love poetry to, increasingly, stories and poems for children. He also wrote librettos. The Poetry Archive identified his creative yield as hugely prolific.The Times said that Mitchell's had been a "forthright voice often laced with tenderness." His poems on such topics as nuclear war, Vietnam, prisons and racism had become "part of the folklore of the Left. His work was often read and sung at demonstrations and rallies."
- Birthplace: Hampstead Heath, England, London
- Roy Harper may refer to: Roy Harper (comics), DC Comics character Roy Harper (singer) (born 1941), English musician Roy Harper (footballer) (born 1929), Australian footballer Roy Harper (referee) (died 1969), English football referee Roy Winfield Harper (1905–1994), American judge
- Birthplace: United Kingdom
- Alfred Tennyson, 1st Baron Tennyson (6 August 1809 – 6 October 1892) was a British poet. He was the Poet Laureate of Great Britain and Ireland during much of Queen Victoria's reign and remains one of the most popular British poets. In 1829, Tennyson was awarded the Chancellor's Gold Medal at Cambridge for one of his first pieces, "Timbuktu". He published his first solo collection of poems, Poems Chiefly Lyrical in 1830. "Claribel" and "Mariana", which remain some of Tennyson's most celebrated poems, were included in this volume. Although decried by some critics as overly sentimental, his verse soon proved popular and brought Tennyson to the attention of well-known writers of the day, including Samuel Taylor Coleridge. Tennyson's early poetry, with its medievalism and powerful visual imagery, was a major influence on the Pre-Raphaelite Brotherhood. Tennyson also 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 friend Arthur Hallam, a fellow poet and student at Trinity College, Cambridge, after he died of a stroke at the age of 22. 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" (In Memoriam A.H.H.), "'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.
- Birthplace: Somersby, Lincolnshire, United Kingdom
- Dame Antonia Susan Duffy HonFBA (née Drabble; born 24 August 1936), known professionally as A. S. Byatt ( BY-ət), is an English novelist, poet and Booker Prize winner. In 2008, The Times newspaper named her on its list of the 50 greatest British writers since 1945.
- Birthplace: Sheffield, United Kingdom
- Donald Alfred Davie (17 July 1922 – 18 September 1995) was an English Movement poet, and literary critic. His poems in general are philosophical and abstract, but often evoke various landscapes.
- Birthplace: Barnsley, United Kingdom
- Edward FitzGerald (31 March 1809 – 14 June 1883) was an English poet and writer, best known as the poet of the first and most famous English translation of The Rubaiyat of Omar Khayyam. The writing of his name as both FitzGerald and Fitzgerald is seen. The use here of FitzGerald conforms to that of his own publications, anthologies such as Quiller-Couch's Oxford Book of English Verse, and most reference books up until about the 1960s.
- Birthplace: Bredfield House
- Christopher Marlowe, also known as Kit Marlowe (; baptised 26 February 1564 – 30 May 1593), was an English playwright, poet and translator of the Elizabethan era. Marlowe was the foremost Elizabethan tragedian of his day. He greatly influenced William Shakespeare, who was born in the same year as Marlowe and who rose to become the pre-eminent Elizabethan playwright after Marlowe's mysterious early death. Marlowe's plays are known for the use of blank verse and their overreaching protagonists. Some scholars believe that a warrant was issued for Marlowe's arrest on 18 May 1593. No reason was given for it, though it was thought to be connected to allegations of blasphemy—a manuscript believed to have been written by Marlowe was said to contain "vile heretical conceipts". On 20 May, he was brought to the court to attend upon the Privy Council for questioning. There is no record of their having met that day and he was commanded to attend upon them each day thereafter until "licensed to the contrary". Ten days later, he was stabbed to death by Ingram Frizer. Whether or not the stabbing was connected to his arrest remains unknown.
- Birthplace: Canterbury, United Kingdom
- William Wordsworth (7 April 1770 – 23 April 1850) was an English Romantic poet who, with Samuel Taylor Coleridge, helped to launch the Romantic Age in English literature with their joint publication Lyrical Ballads (1798). Wordsworth's magnum opus is generally considered to be The Prelude, a semi-autobiographical poem of his early years that he revised and expanded a number of times. It was posthumously titled and published by his wife in the year of his death, before which it was generally known as "the poem to Coleridge". Wordsworth was Britain's poet laureate from 1843 until his death from pleurisy on 23 April 1850.
- Birthplace: Wordsworth House, United Kingdom
- Elizabeth "Eliza" Acton (17 April 1799 – 13 February 1859) was an English food writer and poet, who produced one of Britain's first cookery books aimed at the domestic reader, Modern Cookery for Private Families. The book introduced the now-universal practice of listing ingredients and giving suggested cooking times for each recipe. It included the first recipes in English for Brussels sprouts and for spaghetti. It also contains the first recipe for what Acton called "Christmas pudding"; the dish was normally called plum pudding, recipes for which had appeared previously, although Acton was the first to put the name and recipe together. Acton was born in 1799 in Sussex. She was raised in Suffolk where she ran a girls' boarding school before spending time in France. On her return to England in 1826 she published a collection of poetry and released her cookery book in 1845, aimed at middle class families. Written in an engaging prose, the book was well received by reviewers. It was reprinted within the year and several editions followed until 1918, when Longman, the book's publisher, took the decision not to reprint. In 1857 Acton published The English Bread-Book for Domestic Use, a more academic and studious work than Modern Cookery. The work consisted of a history of bread-making in England, a study of European methods of baking and numerous recipes. In the later years of its publication, Modern Cookery was eclipsed by the success of Isabella Beeton's bestselling Mrs Beeton's Book of Household Management (1861), which included several recipes plagiarised from Acton's work. Although Modern Cookery was not reprinted in full until 1994, the book has been admired by English cooks in the second part of the 20th century, and influenced many of them, including Elizabeth David, Jane Grigson, Delia Smith and Rick Stein.
- Birthplace: Battle, United Kingdom
Kenneth John Smith
Dec. at 64 (1938-2003)Ken Smith was a British poet.- Birthplace: Rudston, United Kingdom
- Matthew Arnold (24 December 1822 – 15 April 1888) was an English poet and cultural critic who worked as an inspector of schools. He was the son of Thomas Arnold, the famed headmaster of Rugby School, and brother to both Tom Arnold, literary professor, and William Delafield Arnold, novelist and colonial administrator. Matthew Arnold has been characterised as a sage writer, a type of writer who chastises and instructs the reader on contemporary social issues.
- Birthplace: Laleham, United Kingdom
- Hannah More (2 February 1745 – 7 September 1833) was an English religious writer and philanthropist, remembered as a poet and playwright in the circle of Johnson, Reynolds and Garrick, as a writer on moral and religious subjects, and as a practical philanthropist. Born in Bristol, she taught at a school established there by her father and began writing plays. She became involved with the London literary elite as a leading Bluestocking member. Her plays and poetry became more evangelical and she joined a group campaigning against the slave trade. In the 1790s she wrote several Cheap Repository Tracts on moral, religious and political topics, for distribution to the literate poor. Meanwhile, she did increasing philanthropic work in the Mendip area, encouraged by William Wilberforce.
- Birthplace: Fishponds
- Philip Arthur Larkin CH CBE FRSL (9 August 1922 – 2 December 1985) was an English poet, novelist, and librarian. His first book of poetry, The North Ship, was published in 1945, followed by two novels, Jill (1946) and A Girl in Winter (1947), and he came to prominence in 1955 with the publication of his second collection of poems, The Less Deceived, followed by The Whitsun Weddings (1964) and High Windows (1974). He contributed to The Daily Telegraph as its jazz critic from 1961 to 1971, articles gathered in All What Jazz: A Record Diary 1961–71 (1985), and he edited The Oxford Book of Twentieth Century English Verse (1973). His many honours include the Queen's Gold Medal for Poetry.[2] He was offered, but declined, the position of Poet Laureate in 1984, following the death of Sir John Betjeman.
- Birthplace: Coventry, United Kingdom
- Frances Burney (13 June 1752 – 6 January 1840), also known as Fanny Burney and after her marriage as Madame d'Arblay, was an English satirical novelist, diarist and playwright. She was born in Lynn Regis, now King's Lynn, England, on 13 June 1752, to the musician and music historian Dr Charles Burney (1726–1814) and his first wife, Esther Sleepe Burney (1725–1762). The third of her mother's six children, she was self-educated and began writing what she called her "scribblings" at the age of ten. In 1786–1790 she was an unusual appointment as a courtier, becoming "Keeper of the Robes" to Charlotte of Mecklenburg-Strelitz, George III's queen. In 1793, aged 41, she married a French exile, General Alexandre D'Arblay. Their only son, Alexander, was born in 1794. After a lengthy writing career, and travels, during which she was stranded in France by warfare for more than ten years, she settled in Bath, England, where she died on 6 January 1840. Burney wrote four novels, of which the first, Evelina (1778), was the most successful, and remains the most highly regarded. She also wrote several plays, most never given public performances in her lifetime, a memoir of her father (1832), and left large quantities of letters and journals, which have been gradually published since 1889.
- Birthplace: King's Lynn, United Kingdom
Mary Astell
Dec. at 64 (1666-1731)Mary Astell (Newcastle upon Tyne, 12 November 1666 – London, 11 May 1731) was an English feminist writer and rhetorician. Her advocacy of equal educational opportunities for women has earned her the title "the first English feminist."- Birthplace: Newcastle upon Tyne, United Kingdom
- Anne Brontë (, commonly ; 17 January 1820 – 28 May 1849) was an English novelist and poet, the youngest member of the Brontë literary family. The daughter of Patrick Brontë, a poor Irish clergyman in the Church of England, Anne Brontë lived most of her life with her family at the parish of Haworth on the Yorkshire moors. She also attended a boarding school in Mirfield between 1836 and 1837. At 19 she left Haworth and worked as a governess between 1839 and 1845. After leaving her teaching position, she fulfilled her literary ambitions. She published a volume of poetry with her sisters (Poems by Currer, Ellis, and Acton Bell, 1846) and two novels. Agnes Grey, based upon her experiences as a governess, was published in 1847. Her second and last novel, The Tenant of Wildfell Hall, which is considered to be one of the first sustained feminist novels, appeared in 1848. Like her poems, both her novels were first published under the masculine pen name of Acton Bell. Anne's life was cut short when she died of what is now suspected to be pulmonary tuberculosis at the age of 29. Partly because the re-publication of The Tenant of Wildfell Hall was prevented by Charlotte Brontë after Anne's death, she is not as well known as her sisters. However, her novels, like those of her sisters, have become classics of English literature.
- Birthplace: Thornton, West Yorkshire, United Kingdom
Ian McMillan
Age: 69Ian McMillan (born 21 January 1956) is an English poet, journalist, playwright, and broadcaster. He is known for his strong and distinctive Barnsley-area accent and his incisive, friendly interview style on programmes such as BBC Radio 3's The Verb. He lives in Darfield, the village of his birth.- Birthplace: Darfield, United Kingdom
- Priscilla Denise Levertov (24 October 1923 – 20 December 1997) was an American poet. She was a recipient of the Lannan Literary Award for Poetry. Levertov's 'What Were They Like?' is currently included in the Pearson Edexcel GCSE (9–1) English Literature poetry anthology, and the Conflict cluster of the OCR GCSE (9-1) English Literature poetry anthology, 'Towards a World Unknown.'
- Birthplace: Ilford, London, United Kingdom
- Michael Wayne Rosen (born 7 May 1946) is an English children's novelist, poet, and the author of 140 books. He served as Children's Laureate from June 2007 to June 2009. He has been a TV presenter and a political columnist.
- Birthplace: Harrow, London, London, United Kingdom
- Catharine Trotter Cockburn (16 August 1679 – 11 May 1749) was ab English novelist, dramatist, and philosopher. She wrote on moral philosophy, theological tracts, and had a voluminous correspondence. Trotter's work addresses a range of issues including necessity, the infinitude of space, and the substance, but she focuses on moral issues. She thought that moral principles are not innate, but discoverable by each individual through the use of the faculty of reason endowed by God. In 1702, she published her first major philosophical work, A Defence of Mr. Lock's [sic.] An Essay Concerning Human Understanding. John Locke was so pleased with this defence that he made gifts of money and books to his young apologist acting through Elizabeth Burnet who had first made Locke aware of Trotter's "Defence".Her work attracted the attention of William Warburton, who prefaced her last philosophical work. She also had a request from the biographer Thomas Birch to aid him in compiling a collection of her works. She agreed to the project but died before the work could be printed. Birch posthumously published a two-volume collection entitled The Works of Mrs. Catharine Cockburn, Theological, Moral, Dramatic, and Poetical in 1751. It is largely through this text that readers and history have come to know her.
- Birthplace: London, United Kingdom
- George Meredith (12 February 1828 – 18 May 1909) was an English novelist and poet of the Victorian era. He was nominated for the Nobel Prize in Literature seven times.
- Birthplace: Portsmouth, United Kingdom
- Tony Harrison (born 30 April 1937) is an English poet, translator and playwright. He was born in Leeds and he received his education in Classics from Leeds Grammar School and Leeds University. He is one of Britain's foremost verse writers and many of his works have been performed at the Royal National Theatre. He is noted for controversial works such as the poem "V", as well as his versions of dramatic works: from ancient Greek such as the tragedies Oresteia and Lysistrata, from French Molière's The Misanthrope, from Middle English The Mysteries. He is also noted for his outspoken views, particularly those on the Iraq War. In 2015, he was honoured with the David Cohen Prize in recognition for his body of work.
- Birthplace: Leeds, United Kingdom
- Sir John Betjeman (; 28 August 1906 – 19 May 1984) was an English poet, writer, and broadcaster who described himself in Who's Who as a "poet and hack". He was Poet Laureate of the United Kingdom from 1972 until his death. He was a founding member of the Victorian Society and a passionate defender of Victorian architecture. He began his career as a journalist and ended it as one of the most popular British Poets Laureate and a much-loved figure on British television.
- Birthplace: Highgate, London, United Kingdom
- Birthplace: Helsby, Cheshire, England, UK
- Robert Herrick (baptised 24 August 1591 – buried 15 October 1674) was a 17th-century English lyric poet and cleric. He is best known for Hesperides, a book of poems. This includes the carpe diem poem "To the Virgins, to Make Much of Time", with the first line "Gather ye rosebuds while ye may".
- Birthplace: Cheapside, United Kingdom
- John Francis Alexander Heath-Stubbs OBE (9 July 1918 – 26 December 2006) was an English poet and translator, known for verse influenced by classical myths, and for the long Arthurian poem Artorius (1972).
- Birthplace: London, United Kingdom
- Gabriel Charles Dante Rossetti (12 May 1828 – 9 April 1882), generally known as Dante Gabriel Rossetti (), was a British poet, illustrator, painter and translator, and a member of the Rossetti family. He founded the Pre-Raphaelite Brotherhood in 1848 with William Holman Hunt and John Everett Millais. Rossetti 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 characterised by its sensuality and its medieval revivalism. His early poetry was influenced by John Keats. His later poetry was characterised 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.
- Birthplace: London, United Kingdom
- Sir Philip Sidney (30 November 1554 – 17 October 1586) was an English poet, courtier, scholar, and soldier, who is remembered as one of the most prominent figures of the Elizabethan age. His works include Astrophel and Stella, The Defence of Poesy (also known as The Defence of Poetry or An Apology for Poetry), and The Countess of Pembroke's Arcadia.
- Birthplace: Penshurst Place, United Kingdom
- Bernard John Taupin (born 22 May 1950) is an English-American lyricist, poet, and singer. He is best known for his long-term collaboration with Elton John, having written the lyrics for most of John's songs. In 1967, Taupin answered an advertisement placed in the UK music paper New Musical Express by Liberty Records, a company that was seeking new songwriters. Around the same time, John responded to the same advertisement, and the duo were brought together, collaborating on many projects since.In 1971, journalist Penny Valentine wrote that "Bernie Taupin's lyrics were to become as important as Elton [John] himself, proved to have a mercurial brilliance. Not just in their atmospheric qualities and descriptive powers, but in the way he handled words to form them into straightforward poems that were easy to relate to."In 1992, along with Elton John, Taupin was inducted into the Songwriters Hall of Fame.
- Birthplace: Sleaford, United Kingdom
Vita Sackville-West
Dec. at 70 (1892-1962)Victoria Mary Sackville-West, Lady Nicolson, CH (9 March 1892 – 2 June 1962), usually known as Vita Sackville-West, was an English poet, novelist, and garden designer. She was a successful novelist, poet, and journalist, as well as a prolific letter writer and diarist. She published more than a dozen collections of poetry during her lifetime and 13 novels. She was twice awarded the Hawthornden Prize for Imaginative Literature: in 1927 for her pastoral epic, The Land, and in 1933 for her Collected Poems. She was the inspiration for the androgynous protagonist of Orlando: A Biography, by her famous friend and lover, Virginia Woolf. She had a longstanding column in The Observer (1946–1961) and is remembered for the celebrated garden at Sissinghurst created with her husband, Sir Harold Nicolson.- Birthplace: Knole House, United Kingdom
- Kevin John William Crossley-Holland (born 7 February 1941) is an English translator, children's author and poet. His best known work is probably the Arthur trilogy (2000–2003), for which he won the Guardian Prize and other recognition. Crossley-Holland and his 1985 novella Storm won the annual Carnegie Medal from the Library Association, recognising the year's outstanding children's book by a British author. For the 70th anniversary of the Medal in 2007 it was named one of the top ten winning works, selected by a panel to compose the ballot for a public election of the all-time favourite.
- Birthplace: Mursley, United Kingdom
- Alfred Charles Tomlinson, CBE (8 January 1927 – 22 August 2015) was a British poet, translator, academic and illustrator. He was born in Penkhull, and grew up in Basford, Stoke-on-Trent, Staffordshire.
- Birthplace: Penkhull, United Kingdom
- Adam Thorpe (born 5 December 1956, Paris, France) is a British poet and novelist whose works also include short stories, translations, radio dramas and documentaries. He is a frequent contributor of reviews and articles to various newspapers, journals and magazines, including the Guardian, the Poetry Review and the Times Literary Supplement.
- Birthplace: Paris, France
- Ann Yearsley, née Cromartie (1753–1806), was an English poet and writer.
- Birthplace: Bristol, United Kingdom
- Isaac Rosenberg (25 November 1890 – 1 April 1918) was an English poet and artist. His Poems from the Trenches are recognized as some of the most outstanding poetry written during the First World War.
- Birthplace: Bristol, United Kingdom
- Thomas Gray (26 December 1716 – 30 July 1771) was an English poet, letter-writer, classical scholar, and professor at Pembroke College, Cambridge. He is widely known for his Elegy Written in a Country Churchyard, published in 1751. Gray was an extremely self-critical writer who published only 13 poems in his lifetime, despite being very popular. He was even offered the position of Poet Laureate in 1757, though he declined.
- Birthplace: Cornhill, London
- Thomson William "Thom" Gunn (29 August 1929 – 25 April 2004), was an English poet who was praised for his early verses in England, where he was associated with The Movement and his later poetry in America, even after moving toward a looser, free-verse style. After relocating from England to San Francisco, Gunn wrote about gay-related topics—particularly in his most famous work, The Man With Night Sweats in 1992—as well as drug use, sex and his bohemian lifestyle. He won major literary awards and his best poems have a compact philosophical elegance.
- Birthplace: Gravesend, United Kingdom
- Christopher Logue, CBE (23 November 1926 – 2 December 2011) was an English poet associated with the British Poetry Revival, and a pacifist.
- Birthplace: New Hampshire, USA, Portsmouth
- John Clare (13 July 1793 – 20 May 1864) was an English poet. The son of a farm labourer, he became known for his celebrations of the English countryside and sorrows at its disruption. His poetry underwent major re-evaluation in the late 20th century: he is now often seen as one of the major 19th-century poets. His biographer Jonathan Bate called Clare "the greatest labouring-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."
- Birthplace: Helpston, United Kingdom
- Margaret Lucas Cavendish, Duchess of Newcastle-upon-Tyne (1623 – 15 December 1673) was an English aristocrat, philosopher, poet, scientist, fiction-writer, and playwright during the 17th century. Born Margaret Lucas, she was the youngest sister of prominent royalists Sir John Lucas and Sir Charles Lucas, who owned the manor of St. John's Abbey in Colchester. She became an attendant of Queen Henrietta Maria and travelled with her into exile in France, living for a time at the court of the young King Louis XIV. She became the second wife of William Cavendish, 1st Duke of Newcastle-upon-Tyne in 1645, when he was a marquess.Cavendish was a poet, philosopher, writer of prose romances, essayist, and playwright who published under her own name at a time when most women writers published anonymously. Her writing addressed a number of topics, including gender, power, manners, scientific method, and philosophy. Her utopian romance, The Blazing World, is one of the earliest examples of science fiction. She is singular in having published extensively in natural philosophy and early modern science. She published over a dozen original works; inclusion of her revised works brings her total number of publications to twenty-one.Cavendish has been championed and criticized as a unique and groundbreaking woman writer. She rejected the Aristotelianism and mechanical philosophy of the seventeenth century, preferring a vitalist model instead. She was the first woman to attend a meeting at the Royal Society of London, in 1667, and she criticized and engaged with members and philosophers Thomas Hobbes, René Descartes, and Robert Boyle. She has been claimed as an advocate for animals and as an early opponent of animal testing.
- Birthplace: Colchester, United Kingdom
- One of the great monologists of the British stage, Stanley Holloway is probably most recognizable to filmgoers as Alfred P. Doolittle, who went on at great length about shirking his responsibilities in 1964's "My Fair Lady." But Holloway's career at that point was already approaching its twilight, having been preceded by decades of work in theatre, radio, and film. He was in his early 30s when he decided to pursue show business full-time, and subsequently became part of the variety show troupe The Co-Optimists, whose act was adapted into a feature film in 1929. Steady film work followed, including jobs as narrator for a series of propaganda shorts aimed at lifting morale in Great Britain during World War II. Following the war, he landed some of his best-known film roles, including the supporting character Albert Godby in David Lean's 1945 drama, "Brief Encounter." During this time, he also began making noteworthy comedies with Charles Crichton at Ealing Studios, including 1951's "The Lavender Hill Mob," now widely-considered a classic. Just as his film output was starting to slow, in '56 Holloway made a triumphant return to the stage, originating Alfred P. Doolittle for the musical production "My Fair Lady," which led to his reprising the part for the film. Prior to the "My Fair Lady" movie, he starred in the American sitcom "Our Man Higgins," Holloway's first time headlining for television. He would try again for 1967's "Blandings Castle," but spent most of his last decade of productivity in films.
- Birthplace: Manor Park, London, England, UK
Stevie Smith
Dec. at 68 (1902-1971)Florence Margaret Smith, known as Stevie Smith (20 September 1902 – 7 March 1971), was an English poet and novelist. She was awarded the Cholmondeley Award for Poets and won the Queen's Gold Medal for poetry. A play Stevie by Hugh Whitemore, based on her life, was adapted into a film starring Glenda Jackson.- Birthplace: Kingston upon Hull, United Kingdom
- Sir Andrew Motion (born 26 October 1952) is an English poet, novelist, and biographer, who was Poet Laureate of the United Kingdom from 1999 to 2009. During the period of his laureateship, Motion founded the Poetry Archive, an online resource of poems and audio recordings of poets reading their own work. In 2012, he became President of the Campaign to Protect Rural England, taking over from Bill Bryson.
- Birthplace: London, United Kingdom
- Charlotte Turner Smith (4 May 1749 – 28 October 1806) was an English Romantic poet and novelist. She initiated a revival of the English sonnet, helped establish the conventions of Gothic fiction, and wrote political novels of sensibility. A successful writer, she published ten novels, three books of poetry, four children's books, and other assorted works, over the course of her career. She saw herself as a poet first and foremost, poetry at that period being considered the most exalted form of literature. Scholars now credit her with transforming the sonnet into an expression of woeful sentiment.During adulthood, Charlotte Smith eventually left husband Benjamin Smith and began writing to support their children. Smith's struggle to provide for her children and her frustrated attempts to gain legal protection as a woman provided themes for her poetry and novels; she included portraits of herself and her family in her novels as well as details about her life in her prefaces. Her early novels are exercises in aesthetic development, particularly of the Gothic and sentimentality. "The theme of her many sentimental and didactic novels was that of a badly married wife helped by a thoughtful sensible lover" (Smith's entry in British Authors Before 1800: A Biographical Dictionary Ed. Stanley Kunitz and Howard Haycraft. New York: H.W. Wilson, 1952. pg. 478.) Her later novels, including The Old Manor House, often considered her best, supported the ideals of the French Revolution. After 1798, however, Smith's popularity waned and by 1803 she was destitute and ill—she could barely hold a pen, and sold her books to pay off her debts. In 1806, Smith died. Largely forgotten by the middle of the 19th century, her works have now been republished and she is recognized as an important Romantic writer.
- Birthplace: London, United Kingdom
- Philip Edward Thomas (3 March 1878 – 9 April 1917) was a British poet, essayist, and novelist. He is commonly considered a war poet, although few of his poems deal directly with his war experiences, and his career in poetry only came after he had already been a successful writer and literary critic. In 1915, he enlisted in the British Army to fight in the First World War and was killed in action during the Battle of Arras in 1917, soon after he arrived in France. A Study Centre dedicated to Thomas is located at Petersfield Museum in Hampshire.
- Birthplace: London Borough of Lambeth, United Kingdom
- Mary Russell Mitford (16 December 1787 – 10 January 1855) was an English author and dramatist. She was born at Alresford in Hampshire. She is best known for Our Village, a series of sketches of village scenes and vividly drawn characters based upon life in Three Mile Cross, a hamlet in the parish of Shinfield, near Reading in Berkshire, where she lived.
- Birthplace: New Alresford, United Kingdom
- Clarence Malcolm Lowry (; 28 July 1909 – 26 June 1957) was an English poet and novelist who is best known for his 1947 novel Under the Volcano, which was voted No. 11 in the Modern Library 100 Best Novels list.
- Birthplace: New Brighton, United Kingdom
Laurence Binyon
Dec. at 73 (1869-1943)Robert Laurence Binyon, CH (10 August 1869 – 10 March 1943) was an English poet, dramatist and art scholar. His most famous work, "For the Fallen", is well known for being used in Remembrance Sunday services.- Birthplace: Lancaster, United Kingdom
- Lucinda Roy (born December 19, 1955) is an American-based British novelist, educator and poet.
- Birthplace: Battersea, London, United Kingdom
Michael Hastings
Dec. at 73 (1938-2011)Michael Gerald Hastings (2 September 1938 – 19 November 2011) was a British playwright, screenwriter, and occasional novelist and poet. He is best known for his 1984 stage play and 1994 screenplay Tom & Viv, about the poet T.S. Eliot and his wife Vivienne Haigh-Wood.- Birthplace: London, United Kingdom
- Richard Crashaw (c. 1613 – 21 August 1649), was an English poet, teacher, Anglican cleric and Catholic convert, who was among the major figures associated with the metaphysical poets in seventeenth-century English literature. Crashaw was the son of a famous Anglican divine with Puritan beliefs who earned a reputation as a hard-hitting pamphleteer and polemicist against Catholicism. After his father's death, Crashaw was educated at Charterhouse School and Pembroke College, Cambridge. After taking a degree, Crashaw taught as a fellow at Peterhouse, Cambridge and began to publish religious poetry that expressed a distinct mystical nature and an ardent Christian faith. Crashaw was ordained as a clergyman in the Church of England and in his theology and practice embraced the High Church ritual reforms enacted by Archbishop Laud. Rev. Crashaw's became infamous among English Puritans for his use of religious art to decorate his church, for his devotion to the Virgin Mary, for his use of Catholic vestments, and for many other reasons. During these years, however, the University of Cambridge was a hotbed for such practices and for Royalist politics. Adherents of both positions were violently persecuted by Puritan forces during and after the English Civil War (1642–1651). When Puritan General Oliver Cromwell seized control of the city in 1643, Crashaw was ejected from his post and became a refugee in France and in the Papal States. He found employment as an attendant to Cardinal Giovanni Battista Maria Pallotta at Rome. While in exile he converted from Anglicanism to Catholicism. In April 1649, Cardinal Pallotta appointed Crashaw to a minor benefice as canon of the Shrine of the Holy House at Loreto where he died suddenly four months later. Crashaw's poetry, although often categorised with those of the contemporary English metaphysical poets, exhibits similarities with the Baroque poets and influenced in part by the works of Italian and Spanish mystics. It draws parallels "between the physical beauties of nature and the spiritual significance of existence". His work is said to be marked by a focus toward "love with the smaller graces of life and the profounder truths of religion, while he seems forever preoccupied with the secret architecture of things".
- Birthplace: London, United Kingdom
- Hugh John Lofting (14 January 1886 – 26 September 1947) was an English author trained as a civil engineer, who created the classic children's character of Doctor Dolittle. Dolittle first appeared in Lofting's illustrated letters to his children, written from the British Army trenches in World War I.
- Birthplace: Maidenhead, United Kingdom
- Anne Clark or Annie Clark may refer to: Anne Clark (poet), English poet, songwriter and electronic musician Annie Clark (actress), Canadian actress known for Degrassi: The Next Generation Annie E. Clark, Women's rights campaigner Anne Evelyn Clark, Australian sportswoman Anne Rogers Clark, American dog breeder and show judge St. Vincent (musician), stage name of American musician Anne "Annie" Clark
- Birthplace: Croydon, London, United Kingdom
- Robert Southey ( or ; 12 August 1774 – 21 March 1843) was an English poet of the Romantic school, one of the Lake Poets along with William Wordsworth and Samuel Taylor Coleridge, and England's Poet Laureate for 30 years from 1813 until his death in 1843. Although his fame has been eclipsed by that of Wordsworth and Coleridge, his verse still enjoys some popularity.
- Birthplace: Bristol, United Kingdom
