1.
Robert Southey
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Robert Southey was an English poet of the Romantic school, one of the so-called Lake Poets, and Poet Laureate for 30 years from 1813 until his death in 1843. Although his fame has long been eclipsed by that of his contemporaries and friends William Wordsworth and Samuel Taylor Coleridge, Southey was also a prolific letter writer, literary scholar, essay writer, historian and biographer. His biographies include the life and works of John Bunyan, John Wesley, William Cowper, Oliver Cromwell, the last has rarely been out of print since its publication in 1813 and was adapted for the screen in the 1926 British film, Nelson. He also wrote on issues, which led to a brief, non-sitting. Robert Southey was born in Wine Street, Bristol, to Robert Southey and he was educated at Westminster School, London, and Balliol College, Oxford. Southey later said of Oxford, All I learnt was a little swimming, experimenting with a writing partnership with Samuel Taylor Coleridge, most notably in their joint composition of The Fall of Robespierre, Southey published his first collection of poems in 1794. Each young man should take to himself a mild and lovely woman for his wife, it would be her part to prepare their innocent food, and tend their hardy and beautiful race. Southey was the first to reject the idea as unworkable, suggesting that they move the location to Wales. In 1799 Southey and Coleridge were involved with experiments with nitrous oxide. Southey married Edith Fricker at St. Mary Redcliffe, Bristol and she was a sister of Sara Fricker, Coleridges wife. The Southeys made their home at Greta Hall, Keswick, in the Lake District, also living at Greta Hall and supported by him were Sara Coleridge and her three children, after Coleridge abandoned them, as well as the widow of poet Robert Lovell and her son. In 1808 Southey met Walter Savage Landor, whose work he admired and that same year he wrote Letters from England under the pseudonym Don Manuel Alvarez Espriella, an account of a tour supposedly from a foreigners viewpoint. From 1809 Southey contributed to the Quarterly Review and he had become so well known by 1813 that he was appointed Poet Laureate after Walter Scott refused the post. In 1819, through a friend, Southey met the leading civil engineer Thomas Telford. From mid-August to 1 October 1819, Southey accompanied Telford on an tour of his engineering projects in the Scottish Highlands. This was published in 1929 as Journal of a Tour in Scotland in 1819 and he was also a friend of the Dutch poet Willem Bilderdijk, whom he met twice, in 1824 and 1826, at Bilderdijks home in Leiden. In 1837 Southey received a letter from Charlotte Brontë, seeking his advice on some of her poems and he wrote back praising her talents, but also discouraging her from writing professionally. He said Literature cannot be the business of a womans life, years later, Brontë remarked to a friend that the letter was kind and admirable, a little stringent, but it did me good
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.
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
4.
Dumfries
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Dumfries is a market town and former royal burgh within the Dumfries and Galloway council area of Scotland. It is near the mouth of the River Nith into the Solway Firth, Dumfries was a civil parish and became the county town of the former county of Dumfriesshire. Dumfries is nicknamed Queen of the South, people from Dumfries are known colloquially as Doonhamers. There are at least three theories on the etymology of the name, One is that the name Dumfries originates from the Scottish Gaelic name Dún Phris which means Fort of the Thicket. Another is that it comes from a Brythonic cognate of the alleged Gaelic derivation, No positive information has been obtained of the era and circumstances in which the town of Dumfries was founded. Some writers hold that Dumfries flourished as a place of distinction during the Roman occupation of North Great Britain. This is inferred from the etymology of the name, which, Dumfries was once within the borders of the Kingdom of Northumbria. The district around Dumfries was for centuries ruled over and deemed of much importance by the invading Romans. The Romanized natives received freedom as well as civilisation from their conquerors, late in the fourth century, the Romans bade farewell to the country. According to another theory, the name is a corruption of two words mean the Friars’ Hill, those who favour this idea allege that St. In the list of British towns given by the ancient historian Nennius, the name Caer Peris occurs, twelve of King Arthurs battles were recorded by Nennius in Historia Brittonum. The Battle of Tribruit, has suggested as having possibly been near Dumfries or near the mouth of the river Avon near Boness. It has been argued, the town thus characterised must have been Dumfries, however, against this argument is that the town is situated eight to nine miles distant from the sea, although the River Nith is tidal and navigable all the way into the town itself. Although at the time 1 mile upstream and on the bank of the Nith from Dumfries. The abbey ruins are on the site of the Bailey of the very early Lincluden Castle and this religious house was used for various purposes, until its abandonment around 1700. Lincluden Abbey and its grounds are now within the Dumfries urban conurbation boundary, William the Lion granted the charter to raise Dumfries to the rank of a Royal Burgh in 1186. Dumfries was very much on the frontier during its first 50 years as a burgh and it grew rapidly as a market town and port. Alexander III visited Dumfries in 1264 to plan an expedition against the Isle of Man, previously Scots, a royal castle, which no longer exists, was built in the 13th century on the site of the present Castledykes Park
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.
Samuel Taylor Coleridge
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Samuel Taylor Coleridge was an English poet, literary critic and philosopher who, with his friend William Wordsworth, was a founder of the Romantic Movement in England and a member of the Lake Poets. He wrote the poems The Rime of the Ancient Mariner and Kubla Khan and his critical work, especially on William Shakespeare, was highly influential, and he helped introduce German idealist philosophy to English-speaking culture. Coleridge coined many words and phrases, including suspension of disbelief. He was an influence on Ralph Waldo Emerson and American transcendentalism. Throughout his adult life Coleridge had crippling bouts of anxiety and depression, it has been speculated that he had bipolar disorder and 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, Coleridge was born on 21 October 1772 in the town of Ottery St Mary in Devon, England. He had previously been Master of Hugh Squiers School in South Molton, Devon, John Coleridge had three children by his first wife. Samuel was the youngest of ten by the Reverend Mr. Coleridges second wife, Anne Bowden, probably the daughter of John Bowden, Mayor of South Molton, Devon, Coleridge suggests that he took no pleasure in boyish sports but instead read incessantly and played by himself. At that school Coleridge became friends with Charles Lamb, a schoolmate, in fancy I can almost hear him now, exclaiming Harp. Pen and ink, boy, you mean, oh aye. the cloister-pump, I suppose. Be this as it may, there was one custom of our masters and he would often permit our theme exercises. To accumulate, till each lad had four or five to be looked over, throughout his life, Coleridge idealised his father as pious and innocent, while his relationship with his mother was more problematic. His childhood was characterised by attention seeking, which has linked to his dependent personality as an adult. He was rarely allowed to return home during the term. He later wrote of his loneliness at school in the poem Frost at Midnight, With unclosed lids, from 1791 until 1794, Coleridge attended Jesus College, Cambridge. In 1792, he won the Browne Gold Medal for an ode that he wrote on the slave trade, afterwards, he was rumoured to have had a bout of severe depression. His brothers arranged for his discharge a few months later under the reason of insanity and he was readmitted to Jesus College, at Jesus College, Coleridge was introduced to political and theological ideas then considered radical, including those of the poet Robert Southey. Coleridge joined Southey in a plan, soon abandoned, to found a utopian society, called Pantisocracy
7.
Walter Scott
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Sir Walter Scott, 1st Baronet, FRSE was a Scottish historical novelist, playwright and poet. Many of his works remain classics of both English-language literature and of Scottish literature, famous titles include Ivanhoe, Rob Roy, Old Mortality, The Lady of the Lake, Waverley, The Heart of Midlothian and The Bride of Lammermoor. A prominent member of the Tory establishment in Edinburgh, Scott was an member of the Highland Society. He survived a bout of polio in 1773 that left him lame. To cure his lameness he was sent in 1773 to live in the rural Scottish Borders at his grandparents farm at Sandyknowe, adjacent to the ruin of Smailholm Tower. Here he was taught to read by his aunt Jenny, and learned from her the speech patterns and many of the tales and legends that characterised much of his work. In January 1775 he returned to Edinburgh, and that went with his aunt Jenny to take spa treatment at Bath in England. In the winter of 1776 he went back to Sandyknowe, with another attempt at a cure at Prestonpans during the following summer. In 1778, Scott returned to Edinburgh for private education to him for school. In October 1779 he began at the Royal High School of Edinburgh and he was now well able to walk and explore the city and the surrounding countryside. His reading included chivalric romances, poems, history and travel books and he was given private tuition by James Mitchell in arithmetic and writing, and learned from him the history of the Church of Scotland with emphasis on the Covenanters. Scott began studying classics at the University of Edinburgh in November 1783, at the age of 12, in March 1786 he began an apprenticeship in his fathers office to become a Writer to the Signet. While at the university Scott had become a friend of Adam Ferguson, Scott met the blind poet Thomas Blacklock, who lent him books and introduced him to James Macphersons Ossian cycle of poems. During the winter of 1786–87 the 15-year-old Scott saw Robert Burns at one of these salons, for what was to be their only meeting. When Burns noticed a print illustrating the poem The Justice of the Peace and asked who had written the poem, only Scott knew that it was by John Langhorne, and was thanked by Burns. When it was decided that he would become a lawyer, he returned to the university to study law, first taking classes in Moral Philosophy, after completing his studies in law, he became a lawyer in Edinburgh. As a lawyers clerk he made his first visit to the Scottish Highlands directing an eviction and he was admitted to the Faculty of Advocates in 1792. He had an unsuccessful love suit with Williamina Belsches of Fettercairn, as a boy, youth and young man, Scott was fascinated by the oral traditions of the Scottish Borders
8.
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
9.
1794 in poetry
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Nationality words link to articles with information on the nations poetry or literature. June – English poets Samuel Taylor Coleridge and Robert Southey first meet, beginning in August they collaborate on the historic drama The Fall of Robespierre, published in October and Southeys first published poetry, he also writes the radical play Wat Tyler this summer. July 25 – French poet André Chénier is executed at age 31 in Paris two days before the fall of Robespierre and he had been arrested and held in the Prison Saint-Lazare before his execution. Robert Treat Paine founds the Federal Orrery, a semiweekly Federalist journal in Boston and it features contributions from Joseph Dennie and Sarah Wentworth Morton, and includes poetry, satire and criticism
10.
1798 in literature
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This article presents lists of the literary events and publications in 1798. February – Samuel Taylor Coleridge writes the conversation poem Frost at Midnight, april – Coleridge writes the conversation poems Fears in Solitude and The Nightingale. April 16 – Coleridges The Recantation, An Ode is published in The Morning Post, april 30 – Richard Cumberlands comedy The Eccentric Lover is first performed at the Covent Garden Theatre in London. First London publication is on October 4, October 11 – Elizabeth Inchbalds Lovers Vows is first performed at the Theatre Royal, Drury Lane, London. October 12 – The rebuilt Weimarer Hoftheater is inaugurated with the first performance of the first part of Friedrich Schillers dramatic trilogy Wallenstein, Das Lager, publication of Ivan Kotliarevskys mock-heroic poem Eneyida, the first printed work in the modern Ukrainian language. The National Library of the Netherlands originates when the Batavian Republic opens the former library of the stadtholder to the public, the Académie française publishes the 5th edition of its Dictionnaire. Thomas Nelson originates in Edinburgh as a second-hand religious bookshop
