1.
Christopher Smart
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Christopher Smart, also known as Kit Smart, Kitty Smart, and Jack Smart, was an English poet. He was a contributor to two popular magazines and a friend to influential cultural icons like Samuel Johnson and Henry Fielding. Smart, a high church Anglican, was known throughout London. Smarts two most widely known works are A Song to David and Jubilate Agno, both at least partly written during his confinement in asylum, however, Jubilate Agno was not published until 1939 and A Song to David received mixed reviews until the 19th century. To his contemporaries, Smart was known mainly for his contributions in the journals The Midwife and The Student, along with his famous Seaton Prize poems. Although he is recognised as a religious poet, his poetry includes various other themes, such as his theories on nature. Christopher Smart was born in Shipbourne in Kent, England on the Fairlawn estate of William, Viscount Vane and he was, according to his nephew, of a delicate constitution having been born earlier than the natural period. He was baptised in Wrotham parish on 11 May 1722, Smarts father was Peter Smart, steward or bailiff of Fairlawne. His mother was Winifred Smart of the Griffiths family of Radnorshire, John Hawkesworth visited him in October 1764, and found him silently hostile towards his mother, Winifred Smart, and his sister, Margaret Hunter, at Margate. Winifreds parentage Of the Griffiths family of Radnorshire has not been established before. Fathers address described as in Parish of Dissearth Wales and she was also of the Inner Temple at her marriage, where she presumably had lodged with her brother before he was called to the Bar. First Marriage,19 May 1715 Jeremiah Griffith of the Inner Temple, London, Bach. and Sarah Twells of St Andrew, Holborn, Midx. Jeremy died c1759 Copy of the will of Jeremiah Griffiths of Downton, before giving birth to Christopher, Winifred had two daughters, Margaret and Mary Anne. During Smarts younger years, Fairlawne was the residence of Christopher Vane, 1st Baron Barnard and Lady Barnard, who bequeathed £200 to Smart. He is supposed to have received so much due to his fathers closeness to the Vane family, his being named after Christopher Vane. However, there is controversy over the exact nature of this inheritance, while some cynically disagree with the reasons for his inheritance. From the age of four until eleven, he spent much time around the farms, however, not all scholars agree that he was a sickly youth. The only written record of events during his childhood comes from his writing of a poem, at the age of four
2.
English poetry
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This article focuses on poetry written in English from the United Kingdom, England, Scotland, Wales, and Northern Ireland. The article does not include poetry from other countries where the English language is spoken, the earliest surviving English poetry, written in Anglo-Saxon, the direct predecessor of modern English, may have been composed as early as the 7th century. This is generally taken as marking the beginning of Anglo-Saxon poetry and it is possible to identify certain key moments, however. The Dream of the Rood was written before circa AD700, by and large, however, Anglo-Saxon poetry is categorised by the manuscripts in which it survives, rather than its date of composition. While the poetry that has survived is limited in volume, it is wide in breadth, beowulf is the only heroic epic to have survived in its entirety, but fragments of others such as Waldere and the Finnesburg Fragment show that it was not unique in its time. Other genres include much religious verse, from works to biblical paraphrase, elegies such as The Wanderer, The Seafarer, and The Ruin, and numerous proverbs, riddles. With one notable exception, Anglo-Saxon poetry depends on alliterative verse for its structure, with the Norman conquest of England, beginning in 1111 the Anglo-Saxon language rapidly diminished as a written literary language. The new aristocracy spoke predominantly Norman, and this became the language of courts, parliament. While Anglo-Norman or Latin was preferred for high culture, English literature by no means died out, other transitional works were preserved as popular entertainment, including a variety of romances and lyrics. With time, the English language regained prestige, and in 1362 it replaced French and Latin in Parliament, the reputation of Chaucers successors in the 15th century has suffered in comparison with him, though Lydgate and Skelton are widely studied. A group of Scottish writers arose who were believed to be influenced by Chaucer. The rise of Scottish poetry began with the writing of The Kingis Quair by James I of Scotland, the main poets of this Scottish group were Robert Henryson, William Dunbar and Gavin Douglas. The Renaissance was slow in coming to England, with the generally accepted start date being around 1509 and it is also generally accepted that the English Renaissance extended until the Restoration in 1660. However, a number of factors had prepared the way for the introduction of the new learning long before this start date. A number of medieval poets had, as noted, shown an interest in the ideas of Aristotle. The introduction of printing by Caxton in 1474 provided the means for the more rapid dissemination of new or recently rediscovered writers and thinkers. Caxton also printed the works of Chaucer and Gower and these books helped establish the idea of a poetic tradition that was linked to its European counterparts. In addition, the writings of English humanists like Thomas More and Thomas Elyot helped bring the ideas, the establishment of the Church of England in 1535 accelerated the process of questioning the Catholic world-view that had previously dominated intellectual and artistic life
3.
American poetry
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Unsurprisingly, most of the early colonists work relied on contemporary British models of poetic form, diction, and theme. However, in the 19th century, a distinctive American idiom began to emerge, the history of American poetry is not easy to know. The received narrative of Modernism proposes that Ezra Pound and T. S. Eliot were perhaps the most influential modernist English-language poets in the period during World War I. But this narrative leaves out African American and women poets who were published, by the 1960s, the young poets of the British Poetry Revival looked to their American contemporaries and predecessors as models for the kind of poetry they wanted to write. There are 14 such writers whom we might on that basis call American poets, early examples include a 1616 testimonial poem on the sterling warlike character of Captain John Smith and Rev. One of the first recorded poets of the British colonies was Anne Bradstreet, the poems she published during her lifetime address religious and political themes. She also wrote tender evocations of home, family life and of her love for her husband, edward Taylor wrote poems expounding Puritan virtues in a highly wrought metaphysical style that can be seen as typical of the early colonial period. This narrow focus on the Puritan ethic was, understandably, the dominant note of most of the written in the colonies during the 17th. Of course, being a Puritan minister as well as a poet, a distinctly American lyric voice of the colonial period was Phillis Wheatley, a slave whose book Poems on Various Subjects, Religious and Moral, was published in 1773. She was one of the poets of her day, at least in the colonies. The 18th century saw an emphasis on America itself as fit subject matter for its poets. The work of Rebecca Hammond Lard, although old, still apply to life in todays world. She writes about nature, not only the nature of environment, on the whole, the development of poetry in the American colonies mirrors the development of the colonies themselves. The early poetry is dominated by the need to preserve the integrity of the Puritan ideals that created the settlement in the first place, as the colonists grew in confidence, the poetry they wrote increasingly reflected their drive towards independence. This shift in subject matter was not reflected in the mode of writing which tended to be conservative and this can be seen as a product of the physical remove at which American poets operated from the center of English-language poetic developments in London. The first significant poet of the independent United States was William Cullen Bryant, whose contribution was to write rhapsodic poems on the grandeur of prairies. Formed the Fireside Poets were a group of 19th-century American poets from New England, the poets primary subjects were the domestic life, mythology, and politics of the United States, in which several of the poets were directly involved. Other notable poets to emerge in the early and middle 19th century include Ralph Waldo Emerson, Edgar Allan Poe, Henry David Thoreau, Sidney Lanier, and James Whitcomb Riley
4.
Northwest Passage
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For centuries explorers sought a navigable passage as a possible trade route. Until 2009, the Arctic pack ice prevented regular marine shipping throughout most of the year, Arctic sea ice decline has rendered the waterways more navigable. If, as has been claimed, parts of the end of the Passage are barely 15 metres deep. Fully loaded, Nordic Orion was too large to sail through the Panama Canal, between the end of the 15th century and the 20th century, colonial powers from Europe dispatched explorers in an attempt to discover a commercial sea route north and west around North America. The Northwest Passage represented a new route to the trading nations of Asia. England called the northern route the Northwest Passage. The desire to establish such a route motivated much of the European exploration of both coasts of North America, when it became apparent that there was no route through the heart of the continent, attention turned to the possibility of a passage through northern waters. There was a lack of knowledge about conditions, for instance. Explorers thought that a water route close to the North Pole must exist. The belief that a route lay to the far north persisted for several centuries, many ended in disaster, including that by Sir John Franklin in 1845. While searching for him the McClure Arctic Expedition discovered the Northwest Passage in 1850, in 1906, the Norwegian explorer Roald Amundsen first successfully completed a passage from Greenland to Alaska in the sloop Gjøa. Since that date, several fortified ships have made the journey, from east to west, the direction of most early exploration attempts, expeditions entered the passage from the Atlantic Ocean via the Davis Strait and through Baffin Bay. Five to seven routes have taken through the Canadian Arctic Archipelago, via the McClure Strait, Dease Strait, and the Prince of Wales Strait. From there ships passed through waterways through the Beaufort Sea, Chukchi Sea, on August 21,2007, the Northwest Passage became open to ships without the need of an icebreaker. According to Nalan Koc of the Norwegian Polar Institute, this was the first time the Passage has been clear since they began keeping records in 1972, the Northwest Passage opened again on August 25,2008. Thawing ocean or melting ice simultaneously opened up the Northwest Passage, awaited by shipping companies, this historic event will cut thousands of miles off their routes. We are going to see more and more as the years go by. Due to Arctic shrinkage, the Beluga group of Bremen, Germany, however, Canadas Prime Minister Stephen Harper announced that ships entering the North-West passage should first report to his government
5.
Christoph Martin Wieland
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Christoph Martin Wieland was a German poet and writer. He is best-remembered for having written the first Bildungsroman, as well as the epic Oberon and he was born in Oberholzheim, which then belonged to the Free Imperial City of Biberach an der Riss in the south-east of the modern-day state of Baden-Württemberg. His father, who was pastor in Oberholzheim and subsequently in Biberach, from the town school of Biberach he passed on at the age of twelve to the Kloster Berge gymnasium, near Magdeburg. During the summer of 1750, he fell in love with a cousin, Sophie Gutermann, and this affair inspired him to plan his first ambitious work, Die Natur der Dinge. In 1750 he went to the University of Tübingen as a student of law, the poems he wrote at the university — Hermann, an epic, Zwölf moralische Briefe in Versen, Anti-Ovid — are pietistic in tone and dominated by the influence of Klopstock. They attracted the attention of the Swiss literary reformer, J. J. Bodmer, here he became intimate with Jean-Jacques Rousseaus friend Julie de Bondeli. In Cyrus, he had been inspired by the deeds of Frederick the Great to write a poem exhibiting the ideal of a hero, araspes und Panthea is based on an episode from the Cyropaedia of Xenophon. Wielands conversion was completed at Biberach, having returned in 1760 as director of the chancery. The monotony of his life here was relieved by the friendship of a Count Stadion, whose library in the castle of Warthausen, not far from Biberach, was stocked with French. Wieland met again his early love Sophie Gutermann, who had become the wife of Hofrat La Roche, then manager of Count Stadions estates. In Don Sylvia von Rosalva, a romance in imitation of Don Quixote, he held up to ridicule his earlier faith, more important is the novel Geschichte des Agathon, in which, under the guise of a Greek fiction, Wieland described his own spiritual and intellectual growth. This work, which Lessing recommended as a novel of classic taste, musarion advocates a rational unity of the sensual and spiritual, Amadis celebrates the triumph of intellectual over physical beauty. Wieland married Anna Dorothea von Hillenbrand on October 21,1765, Wielands daughter Sophia Catharina Susanna Wieland married philosopher Karl Leonhard Reinhold on May 18,1785. Between 1769 and 1772, Wieland was a professor of philosophy at the University of Erfurt, in his Verklagter Amor he defended amatory poetry, and in the Dialogen des Diogenes von Sinope he gave a general vindication of his philosophical views. With the exception of years spent at Ossmannstedt, where in later life he bought an estate. Turning his attention to poetry, he wrote the Wahl des Hercules. In 1773, he founded Der teutsche Merkur, which under his editorship became the most influential literary review in Germany. His views, as exhibited therein, however, showed so much of the narrow conventional spirit of French criticism and this Wieland answered with great good nature, recommending it to all who were fond of wit and sarcasm
6.
German literature
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German literature comprises those literary texts written in the German language. This includes literature written in Germany, Austria, the German parts of Belgium and Switzerland, Liechtenstein, South Tyrol in Italy and to a lesser extent works of the German diaspora. German literature of the period is mostly in Standard German. The Old High German period is reckoned to run until about the mid-11th century, the most famous works are the Hildebrandslied, Middle High German starts in the 12th century, the key works include The Ring and the poems of Oswald von Wolkenstein and Johannes von Tepl. The Baroque period was one of the most fertile times in German literature, modern literature in German begins with the authors of the Enlightenment. The Sensibility movement of the 1750s-1770s ended with Goethes best-selling Die Leiden des jungen Werther, the Sturm und Drang and Weimar Classicism movements were led by Johann Wolfgang von Goethe and Johann Christoph Friedrich von Schiller. German Romanticism was the dominant movement of the late 18th and early 19th centuries. Biedermeier refers to the literature, music, the visual arts, under the Nazi regime, some authors went into exile and others submitted to censorship. Periodization is not a science but the following list contains movements or time periods typically used in discussing German literature. The closer one nears the present, the more debated the periodizations become, the Old High German period is reckoned to run until about the mid-11th century, though the boundary to Early Middle High German is not clear-cut. The most famous work in OHG is the Hildebrandslied, a piece of Germanic alliterative heroic verse which besides the Muspilli is the sole survivor of what must have been a vast oral tradition. Another important work, in the dialect of Old Saxon, is a life of Christ in the style of a heroic epic known as the Heliand. This was the period of the blossoming of MHG lyric poetry, one of the most important of these poets was Walther von der Vogelweide. The same sixty years saw the composition of the most important courtly romances and these are written in rhyming couplets, and again draw on French models such as Chrétien de Troyes, many of them relating Arthurian material, for example, Parzival by Wolfram von Eschenbach. These high medieval heroic epics are written in rhymed strophes, not the verse of Germanic prehistory. Therefore, the literature of the late 14th and the early 15th century falls, as it were, the Volksbuch tradition which would flourish in the 16th century also finds its origin in the second half of the 15th century. Sebastian Brant Thomas Murner Philipp Melanchthon Sebastian Franck The Baroque period was one of the most fertile times in German literature, many writers reflected the horrible experiences of the Thirty Years War, in poetry and prose. Grimmelshausens adventures of the young and naïve Simplicissimus, in the eponymous book Simplicius Simplicissimus, martin Opitz established rules for the purity of language, style, verse and rhyme
7.
Bristol
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Bristol is a city and county in South West England with a population of 449,300 in 2016. The district has the 10th largest population in England, while the Bristol metropolitan area is the 12th largest in the United Kingdom, the city borders North Somerset and South Gloucestershire, with the cities of Bath and Gloucester to the south-east and north-east, respectively. Iron Age hill forts and Roman villas were built near the confluence of the rivers Frome and Avon, Bristol received a royal charter in 1155 and was historically divided between Gloucestershire and Somerset until 1373, when it became a county of itself. From the 13th to the 18th century, Bristol was among the top three English cities after London in tax receipts, Bristol was surpassed by the rapid rise of Manchester, Liverpool and Birmingham in the Industrial Revolution. Bristol was a place for early voyages of exploration to the New World. On a ship out of Bristol in 1497 John Cabot, a Venetian, in 1499 William Weston, a Bristol merchant, was the first Englishman to lead an exploration to North America. At the height of the Bristol slave trade, from 1700 to 1807, the Port of Bristol has since moved from Bristol Harbour in the city centre to the Severn Estuary at Avonmouth and Royal Portbury Dock. Bristols modern economy is built on the media, electronics and aerospace industries. The city has the largest circulating community currency in the U. K. - the Bristol pound, which is pegged to the Pound sterling. It is connected to London and other major UK cities by road, rail, sea and air by the M5 and M4, Bristol Temple Meads and Bristol Parkway mainline rail stations, and Bristol Airport. The Sunday Times named it as the best city in Britain in which to live in 2014 and 2017, the most ancient recorded name for Bristol is the archaic Welsh Caer Odor, which is consistent with modern understanding that early Bristol developed between the River Frome and Avon Gorge. It is most commonly stated that the Saxon name Bricstow was a calque of the existing Celtic name, with Bric a literal translation of Odor. Alternative etymologies are supported with the numerous variations in Medieval documents with Samuel Seyer enumerating 47 alternative forms. The Old English form Brycgstow is commonly used to derive the meaning place at the bridge, utilizing another form, Brastuile, Rev. Dr. Shaw derived the name from the Celtic words bras, or braos and tuile. The poet Thomas Chatterton popularised a derivation from Brictricstow linking the town to Brictric and it appears that the form Bricstow prevailed until 1204, and the Bristolian L is what eventually changed the name to Bristol. Iron Age hill forts near the city are at Leigh Woods and Clifton Down, on the side of the Avon Gorge, a Roman settlement, Abona, existed at what is now Sea Mills, another was at the present-day Inns Court. Isolated Roman villas and small forts and settlements were scattered throughout the area. Bristol was founded by 1000, by about 1020, it was a centre with a mint producing silver pennies bearing its name
8.
Thomas Chatterton
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Thomas Chatterton was an English poet whose precocious talents ended in suicide at age 17. He became a tragic figure in Romantic art. Although fatherless and raised in poverty, he was a studious child. His unusual life and death attracted much interest among the romantic poets, the oil painting The Death of Chatterton by Pre-Raphaelite artist Henry Wallis has enjoyed lasting fame. Chatterton was born in Bristol where the office of sexton of St Mary Redcliffe had long held by the Chatterton family. The poets father, also named Thomas Chatterton, was a musician, a poet, a numismatist, and he had been a sub-chanter at Bristol Cathedral and master of the Pyle Street free school, near Redcliffe church. After Chattertons birth, his mother established a school and took in sewing. Chatterton was admitted to Edward Colstons Charity, a Bristol charity school, in which the curriculum was limited to reading, writing, arithmetic, Chatterton, however, was always fascinated with his uncle the sexton and the church of St Mary Redcliffe. The knights, ecclesiastics and civic dignitaries on its altar tombs became familiar to him. Then he found a fresh interest in oaken chests in the muniment room over the porch on the side of the nave. Chatterton learned his first letters from the capitals of an old musical folio. He did not like, his sister said, reading out of small books, wayward from his earliest years, and uninterested in the games of other children, he was thought to be educationally backward. His sister related that on being asked what device he would like painted on a bowl that was to be his, he replied, Paint me an angel, with wings, and a trumpet, to trumpet my name over the world. From his earliest years he was liable to fits of abstraction, sitting for hours in what seemed like a trance and his lonely circumstances helped foster his natural reserve, and to create the love of mystery which exercised such an influence on the development of his poetry. His confirmation inspired him to some religious poems published in that paper. In 1763 a cross which had adorned the churchyard of St Mary Redcliffe for upwards of three centuries was destroyed by a churchwarden, the spirit of veneration was strong in Chatterton, and he sent to the local journal on 7 January 1764 a satire on the parish vandal. Chatterton remained a boarder at Colstons Hospital for more than six years, three of Chattertons companions are named as youths whom Phillipss taste for poetry stimulated to rivalry, but Chatterton told no one about his own more daring literary adventures. At some point he came across Elizabeth Coopers anthology of verse, Chattertons Rowleian jargon appears to have been chiefly the result of the study of John Kerseys Dictionarium Anglo-Britannicum, and it seems his knowledge even of Chaucer was very slight
9.
John Byrom
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John Byrom or John Byrom of Kersal or John Byrom of Manchester FRS was an English poet, the inventor of a revolutionary system of shorthand and later a significant landowner. He is most remembered as the writer of the lyrics of Anglican hymn Christians awake, salute the happy morn, which was supposedly a Christmas gift for his daughter. Byrom was descended from an old genteel Lancashire family, ralph Byrom came to Manchester from Lowton in 1485 and became a prosperous wool merchant. His son Adam acquired property in Salford, Darcy Lever, Bolton, Edward Byrom helped to foil a Royalist plot to seize Manchester in 1642. Byrom was born at what is now The Old Wellington Inn, Manchester, the Wellington Inn, now a major tourist attraction, has a plaque in the bar area which commemorates his birth. However, some claim that he was born at Kersal Cell in Lower Kersal in the township of Broughton, near Salford. According to Bailey he was one of the tallest men in the kingdom and his privileged background enabled him to obtain an excellent education, including The Kings School, Chester, and Merchant Taylors School, London. He studied at Trinity College, Cambridge, becoming a fellow there in 1714, He subsequently travelled abroad, Byrom invented a system of shorthand and, having perfected this, returned to England in 1716. Shortly after coming into his inheritance in 1740, he patented his New Universal Shorthand. This system of shorthand, officially taught at both Oxford and Cambridge Universities, was used by the clerk of the House of Lords. On 16 June 1742, His Majesty George II secured to John Byrom, M. A. the sole right of publishing for a term of years the art. It was used by John and Charles Wesley, founders of Methodism, the ancestral home of the Byrom family is Byrom Hall at Slag Lane in Lowton. He lived here from time to time, but seems to have resided in a town house in Manchester. Byrom had several children, but his favourite was his daughter Dorothy, in December 1745, after a romp with Dolly, he promised to write her something for Christmas, it was to be written especially for her and no one else. The delighted Dolly reminded her father of his promise each day as Christmas grew nearer, on Christmas morning, when she ran down to breakfast, she found several presents awaiting her. Among them was an envelope addressed to her in her fathers handwriting and it was the first thing she opened and, to her great delight, it proved to be a Christmas carol entitled Christians awake. The original manuscript, headed with Christmas Day for Dolly, was first published in Harrops Manchester Mercury in 1746, although Byrom is probably best remembered for this Christmas carol, he was regarded by his contemporaries as a poet and a literary man. Most of his poems, the best-known of which is My spirit longeth for Thee, were religious in tone and he is also remembered for his epigrams and, above all, his coinage of the phrase Tweedledum and Tweedledee
