1.
Poetry of Scotland
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Much of the earliest Welsh literature was composed in or near Scotland, but only written down in Wales much later. These include The Gododdin, considered the earliest surviving verse from Scotland, very few works of Gaelic poetry survive from this period and most of these in Irish manuscripts. The Dream of the Rood, from which lines are found on the Ruthwell Cross, is the surviving fragment of Northumbrian Old English from early Medieval Scotland. In Latin early works include a Prayer for Protection attributed to St Mugint, there were probably filidh who acted as poets, musicians and historians. After the de-gallicisation of the Scottish court from the twelfth century, what survives of their work was only recorded from the sixteenth century. This includes poems composed by women, including Aithbhreac Nighean Coirceadail, the first surviving major text in Scots literature is John Barbours Brus. In the early fifteenth century Scots historical works included Andrew of Wyntouns verse Orygynale Cronykil of Scotland and Blind Harrys The Wallace and they were probably influenced by Scots versions of popular French romances that were produced in the period. Much Middle Scots literature was produced by makars, poets with links to the court, which included James I. Makars at the court of James IV included Robert Henryson, William Dunbar, Douglass Eneados was the first complete translation of a major classical text in an Anglian language. James V supported William Stewart and John Bellenden, David Lyndsay wrote elegiac narratives, romances and satires. George Buchanan founded a tradition of poetry that would continue in to the seventeenth century. From the 1550s cultural pursuits were limited by the lack of a court, political turmoil. Poets from this period included Richard Maitland of Lethington, John Rolland), Alexander Hume, a new tradition of vernacular Gaelic poetry began to emerge, including work by women such as Mary MacLeod of Harris. The tradition of neo-Latin poetry reached its fruition with the publication of the anthology of the Deliciae Poetarum Scotorum and this period was marked by the work of female Scottish poets including Elizabeth Melvilles, whose Ane Godlie Dream was the first book published by a woman in Scotland. The ballad became a literary form by aristocratic authors including Robert Sempill, Lady Elizabeth Wardlaw. After the Union in 1707 Scottish literature developed a national identity. Allan Ramsay led a revival, the trend for pastoral poetry. The eighteenth century was also a period of innovation in Gaelic vernacular poetry, major figures included Rob Donn Mackay, Donnchadh Bàn Mac an t-Saoir, Uilleam Ross and Alasdair mac Mhaighstir Alasdair, who helped inspire a new form of nature poetry
2.
Robert Burns
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Robert Burns, also known as Rabbie Burns, the Bard of Ayrshire, Ploughman Poet and various other names and epithets, was a Scottish poet and lyricist. He is widely regarded as the poet of Scotland and is celebrated worldwide. He is the best known of the poets who have written in the Scots language, although much of his writing is also in English and he also wrote in standard English, and in these writings his political or civil commentary is often at its bluntest. Celebration of his life and work became almost a national charismatic cult during the 19th and 20th centuries, in 2009 he was chosen as the greatest Scot by the Scottish public in a vote run by Scottish television channel STV. As well as making original compositions, Burns also collected songs from across Scotland. His poem Auld Lang Syne is often sung at Hogmanay, and he was born in a house built by his father, where he lived until Easter 1766, when he was seven years old. William Burnes sold the house and took the tenancy of the 70-acre Mount Oliphant farm, here Burns grew up in poverty and hardship, and the severe manual labour of the farm left its traces in a premature stoop and a weakened constitution. By the age of 15, Burns was the principal labourer at Mount Oliphant, during the harvest of 1774, he was assisted by Nelly Kilpatrick, who inspired his first attempt at poetry, O, Once I Lovd A Bonnie Lass. In the summer of 1775, he was sent to finish his education with a tutor at Kirkoswald, despite his ability and character, William Burnes was consistently unfortunate, and migrated with his large family from farm to farm without ever being able to improve his circumstances. Subsequently, the family became integrated into the community of Tarbolton, to his fathers disapproval, Robert joined a country dancing school in 1779 and, with Gilbert, formed the Tarbolton Bachelors Club the following year. His earliest existing letters date from this time, when he began making overtures to Alison Begbie. In spite of four songs written for her and a suggestion that he was willing to marry her, Robert Burns was initiated into masonic Lodge St David, Tarbolton, on 4 July 1781, when he was 22. This venture accordingly came to an end, and Burns went home to Lochlea farm, during this time he met and befriended Captain Richard Brown who encouraged him to become a poet. He continued to write poems and songs and began a book in 1783. The case went to the Court of Session, and Burnes was upheld in January 1784, a fortnight before he died. During the summer of 1784 Burns came to know a group of girls known collectively as The Belles of Mauchline, one of whom was Jean Armour, the daughter of a stonemason from Mauchline. His first child, Elizabeth Paton Burns, was born to his mothers servant, Elizabeth Paton, while he was embarking on a relationship with Jean Armour, Burns signed a paper attesting his marriage to Jean, but her father was in the greatest distress, and fainted away. To avoid disgrace, her parents sent her to live with her uncle in Paisley, although Armours father initially forbade it, they were eventually married in 1788
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.
John Trumbull
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John Trumbull was an American artist during the period of the American Revolutionary War and was notable for his historical paintings. His Declaration of Independence was used on the reverse of the two-dollar bill, Trumbull was born in Lebanon, Connecticut, in 1756, to Jonathan Trumbull and his wife Faith Trumbull. His father served as Governor of Connecticut from 1769 to 1784, both sides of his family were descended from early Puritan settlers in the state. The young Trumbull entered the 1771 junior class at Harvard College at age fifteen, due to a childhood accident, Trumbull lost use of one eye, which may have influenced his detailed painting style. As a soldier in the American Revolutionary War, Trumbull rendered a service at Boston by sketching plans of the British works. He witnessed the Battle of Bunker Hill and he was appointed second personal aide to General George Washington, and in June 1776, deputy adjutant-general to General Horatio Gates. He resigned from the army in 1777 after a dispute over the dating of his officer commission, in 1780 he traveled to London, where he studied under Benjamin West. At Wests suggestion, Trumbull painted small pictures of the War of Independence and he painted about 250 in his lifetime. On September 23,1780, British agent Major John André was captured by Continental troops in North America, after news reached Great Britain, outrage flared and Trumbull was arrested, as having been an officer in the Continental Army of similar rank to André. He was imprisoned for seven months in Londons Tothill Fields Bridewell, after being released, Trumbull returned to the United States. In 1784, following the British recognition of the United States independence, while working in his studio, Trumbull painted Battle of Bunker Hill and Death of General Montgomery in the Attack on Quebec. Both works are now in the Yale University Art Gallery, in 1785 Trumbull went to Paris, where he made portrait sketches of French officers for the Surrender of Lord Cornwallis. With the assistance of Thomas Jefferson, serving there as the US minister, while in Paris, Trumbull is credited with having introduced Jefferson to the Italian painter Maria Cosway, they became lifelong intimate friends. Trumbulls painting became widely known due to an engraving of it by Asher Brown Durand. All now hang in rotunda of the United States Capitol, congress reportedly authorized only funds sufficient to purchase these four paintings. Trumbulls The Sortie Made by the Garrison of Gibraltar,1789, in 1831 Trumbull sold a series of 28 paintings and 60 miniature portraits to Yale University for an annuity of $1,000. This is by far the largest single collection of his works, the collection was originally housed in a neoclassical art gallery designed by Trumbull on Yales Old Campus, along with portraits by other artists. His portraits include full lengths of General Washington and George Clinton, New York also bought his full-length paintings of Alexander Hamilton and John Jay
5.
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
6.
James Beattie (poet)
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James Beattie FRSE was a Scottish poet, moralist and philosopher. James Beattie was born the son of a shopkeeper and small farmer at Laurencekirk in the Mearns, in 1760, he was appointed Professor of moral philosophy there as a result of the interest of his intimate friend, Robert Arbuthnot of Haddo. In the following year he published a volume of poems, The Judgment of Paris, the two works, however, which brought him most fame were An Essay on the Nature and Immutability of Truth, and his poem of The Minstrel. The Essay, intended as an answer to David Hume, had immediate success, and led to an introduction to the King, a pension of £200. The first book of The Minstrel was published in 1771 and the second in 1774 and it contains much beautiful descriptive writing. Beattie was prominent in arguing against the institution of slavery, notably in his Essay on the Nature and Immutability of Truth, Beattie was an amateur cellist and member of the Aberdeen Musical Society. He considered questions of philosophy in his essay On Poetry and Music. His poem The Hermit was set to music by Tommaso Giordani, Beattie was co-founder of the Royal Society of Edinburgh in 1783. Beattie underwent much domestic sorrow in the death of his wife, Mary Dunn, whom he had married in 1767 and he died in Aberdeen in 1803 and is buried there in St Nicholas Churchyard. His niece, Margaret Valentine, married Rev Prof George Glennie FRSE, a biographical sketch, An Account of the Life of James Beattie, LL. D. was published in 1804 by Alexander Bower. Beattie is one of the sixteen Scottish poets and writers depicted on the Scott Monument on Princes Street in Edinburgh and he appears on the left side of the east face. On poetry and music as they affect the mind, of the origin and general nature of speech. A Short Biographical Dictionary of English Literature, london, J. M. Dent & Sons. Beattie, James, Elements of Moral Science,1790, facsimile ed.1975, Scholars Facsimiles & Reprints, ISBN 978-0-8201-1167-4. Chambers, Robert & Thomson, Thomas Napier, a biographical dictionary of eminent Scotsmen. An Essay on the Nature and Immutability of Truth, in Opposition to Sophistry and Scepticism
7.
Thomas Gray
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Thomas Gray 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, Thomas Gray was born in Cornhill, London. His father, Philip Gray, was a scrivener and his mother, Dorothy Antrobus, was a milliner He was the fifth of 12 children, and he lived with his mother after she left his abusive and mentally unwell father. Grays mother paid for him to go to Eton College where two of his uncles worked, Robert and William Antrobus, Robert became Grays first teacher and helped inspire in Gray a love for botany and observational science. Grays other uncle, William, became his tutor and he recalled his schooldays as a time of great happiness, as is evident in his Ode on a Distant Prospect of Eton College. Gray was a delicate and scholarly boy who spent his time reading and avoiding athletics and he lived in his uncle’s household rather than at college. He made three friends at Eton, Horace Walpole, son of the Prime Minister Robert Walpole, Thomas Ashton. The four prided themselves on their sense of style, sense of humour and they were called the quadruple alliance. In 1734 Gray went up to Peterhouse, Cambridge and he wrote letters to friends listing all the things he disliked, the masters and the Fellows. Intended by his family for the law, he spent most of his time as an undergraduate reading classical and modern literature, in 1738 he accompanied his old school-friend Walpole on his Grand Tour of Europe, possibly at Walpoles expense. The two fell out and parted in Tuscany, because Walpole wanted to attend parties and Gray wanted to visit all the antiquities. They were reconciled a few years later and it was Walpole who later helped publish Grays poetry. When Gray sent his most famous poem, Elegy, to Walpole, Walpole sent off the poem as a manuscript, Gray then published the poem himself and received the credit he was due Gray began seriously writing poems in 1742, mainly after his close friend Richard West died. He moved to Cambridge and began a programme of literary study, becoming one of the most learned men of his time. Gray was a brilliant bookworm, a quiet, abstracted, dreaming scholar and he became a Fellow first of Peterhouse, and later of Pembroke College, Cambridge. Gray moved to Pembroke after the students at Peterhouse played a prank on him, Gray spent most of his life as a scholar in Cambridge, and only later in his life did he begin traveling again. Although he was one of the least productive poets, he is regarded as the foremost English-language poet of the mid-18th century, in 1757, he was offered the post of Poet Laureate, which he refused. Gray was so self-critical and fearful of failure that he published only thirteen poems during his lifetime and he once wrote that he feared his collected works would be mistaken for the works of a flea
8.
Nelly Kilpatrick
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Nelly or Nellie Kilpatrick, later Nelly Bone. Nelly was possibly Robert Burnss first love and muse, Nelly is a nickname for Helen. Some authors give her year as 1760. Nelly may have been the daughter of John Kilpatrick, the miller and she was baptised on 1 March 1759. He stated that she had a voice and was wont to sing songs as she worked in the fields. Nelly married William Bone, coachman to the Laird of Newark, Robert Burns was a close friend of James McCandlish, or Candlish, the blacksmiths son. A parish record at St. Quivox in Ayrshire states that a William Kilpatrick Bone was born to William Bone, Nelly had a brother, William, who erected her parents tombstone in the old Low Coylton Kirkyard. William Kilpatrick was the miller at Millmannoch, his wife was Hellen Craford, William and Helen had a son, Allan Kilpatrick, born at Millmannoch on 4 October 1725, his wife was Margaret Good who died on 12 August 1770, aged 37. This Allan is sometimes said to have been Nellys father, Allan moved to Perclewan with his father and like him, worked at two jobs, miller and blacksmith, resulting in some confusion in reports over the profession of Nellys father, he died aged 57. The headstone was erected by their son William Kilpatrick of Barnhill, his spouse was Agnes Logan, hill has it that Alan may have been the blacksmith at Mount Oliphant, however the smithy for the farm was the nearby Millmannoch. Mount Oliphant is only one and a half miles away. Burns himself did not identify her by her surname, some significant doubts exist about the true identity of Burnss first romantic love. Isobel stated that Nelly Kilpatrick was the daughter of the blacksmith of Perclewan, Nelly Kilpatrick would only have been only a few weeks younger than Robert Burns, however he stated that his Nell was a year younger than himself. When Robert Burns was 15 he met Handsome Nell, his first young love, Nelly Bone, is better known as Nelly Kilpatrick. He wrote a poem to Nell, unpublished during his life, I remember I composed it in a wild enthusiasm of passion, and to this hour I never recollect it but my heart melts, and my blood sallies at the remembrance. Nelly has been said to figure in Burnss poem, Halloween and the verse, Notes Sources
9.
Oliver Goldsmith
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He is thought to have written the classic childrens tale The History of Little Goody Two-Shoes. Goldsmiths birth date and year are not known with certainty, according to the Library of Congress authority file, he told a biographer that he was born on 10 November 1728. The location of his birthplace is also uncertain, when Goldsmith was two years old, his father was appointed the rector of the parish of Kilkenny West in County Westmeath. The family moved to the parsonage at Lissoy, between Athlone and Ballymahon, and continued to live there until his fathers death in 1747, in 1744 Goldsmith went up to Trinity College, Dublin. Neglecting his studies in theology and law, he fell to the bottom of his class, in 1747, along with four other undergraduates, he was expelled for a riot in which they attempted to storm the Marshalsea Prison. He settled in London in 1756, where he held various jobs, including an apothecarys assistant. There, through fellow Club member Edmund Burke, he made the acquaintance of Sir George Savile, the combination of his literary work and his dissolute lifestyle led Horace Walpole to give him the epithet inspired idiot. During this period he used the pseudonym James Willington to publish his 1758 translation of the autobiography of the Huguenot Jean Marteilhe. Goldsmith was described by contemporaries as prone to envy, a congenial but impetuous and disorganised personality who once planned to emigrate to America, mitchell sorely missed good company, which Goldsmith naturally provided in spades. Thomas De Quincey wrote of him All the motion of Goldsmiths nature moved in the direction of the true, the natural, the sweet and his premature death in 1774 may have been partly due to his own misdiagnosis of his kidney infection. Goldsmith was buried in Temple Church in London, the inscription reads, HERE LIES/OLIVER GOLDSMITH. There is a monument to him in the centre of Ballymahon, see The Vicar of Wakefield, The Good-Naturd Man, The Traveller, and She Stoops to Conquer. In 1760 Goldsmith began to publish a series of letters in the Public Ledger under the title The Citizen of the World and it was inspired by the earlier essay series Persian Letters by Charles de Secondat, Baron de Montesquieu. Goldsmith wrote this romantic ballad of precisely 160 lines in 1765, the hero and heroine are Edwin, a youth without wealth or power, and Angelina, the daughter of a lord beside the Tyne. Angelina spurns many wooers, but refuses to make plain her love for young Edwin, quite dejected with my scorn, Edwin disappears and becomes a hermit. One day, Angelina turns up at his cell in boys clothes and, not recognising him, Edwin then reveals his true identity, and the lovers never part again. The poem is notable for its portrayal of a hermit. In keeping with tradition, however, Edwin the Hermit claims to spurn the sex
