Summary:
Provides a brief history and description of several English poets, including Thomas Gray, William Blake, Robert Burns, William Wordsworth, Percy Shelly, Lord Byron and William Bryant.
Thomas Gray
Thomas was born in London in 1716. After he attended Cambridge and Eton college Thomas spent most of his time traveling in France and Italy until 1741. His first poem, Ode on a Distant Prospect of Eton College, wasn't published until 1747 and his masterpiece, Elegy Written in a Country Churchyard, wasn't published until 1751. Thomas was a shy man but had a very large array of correspondences and friends. Thomas died in 1771.
William Blake
Blake was born in 1757 and was raised in London where he spent most of his life. He was not only a poet but a deep thinking book illustrator and engraver. He was a very imaginative and based his own opinions and beliefs around his deep thoughts and different ways of seeing things. He fancied a unique was of printing his poetry. A method where he engraved his works on metal and then hand-painted the prints that they made. He died in 1827.
Robert Burns
Burns was a Scottish poet who was born in Alloway. Burns grew up in his father's footsteps and became a farmer. He remained in the business almost his whole life, even though he was a skilled writer. Because of the hardships that farmers face Burns knew how to take joy in the pleasures of life and how to enjoy them while they last. It was this knowledge and his keen understanding of love, joy, friendship, and fellowship that made his writings a success. In 1788 Burns married Armour. Together they had nine children. Burns's literary success help him land a job as a tax and customs official and he held this job until his death in 1796.
William Wordsworth
William was born in 1770 in Cockermouth and in 1787 attended Cambridge University like most poets of his time. During this year William wrote his first significant literary piece. William's mother died when he was only seven and his father died when he was thirteen. In 1802 William took the hand of Mary Hutchinson and together they had five children. William wrote many literary works in life including 523 sonnets. He died in 1850.
Lord Byron
Gordon was born in 1788 in London but spent most of the first ten years of his life living with his mother in Scotland. George Gordon was given the title "Lord Byron" when his great-uncle died in 1798. He was only ten at the time. Lord Byron's father died when he was three. Lord Byron attended Cambridge University and Harrow School. Byron's first literary piece was severely criticized by the Edinburgh Review, a Scottish literary magazine, so he retaliated by publishing a verse satire attacking every well known critic and literary figure of the time. In 1815 Byron married Anne Isabella and they had one child, a daughter named Ada, before they broke up and Byron left England for good in 1816. Byron dabbled in romance and politics for the rest of his life until he died of an illness in Missolonghi, Greece in 1824.
Percy Shelly
Shelly was born into a very wealthy and politically involved family on August 4, 1792. He excelled in his studies and attended Eton and Oxford University. He was expelled in 1811 for writing a pamphlet titled The Necessity of Atheism. Later that year he ran off and eloped with sixteen year old Harriet Westbrook. After three years he abandoned her and ran away with Mary Wollstonecraft Godwin, the daughter of a political philosopher who greatly influenced Shelly. The two later got married and had three children, two of which died at birth. Shelly tried to motivate the Irish to rebel against the English until he went into exile in Italy in 1818. There he wrote many literary works including the play The Cenci. After his wife's death Shelly's writing became more somber and sympathetic. His poems became sad and hopeless near the end of his days . He died in 1822.
William Bryant
William Cullen Bryant was born in 1794 in Cummington, Massachusetts. Bryant's first poem was published when he was only thirteen years old. It was The Embargo, a poem that ridiculed President Thomas Jefferson. This started Bryant's long career as a writer. He published most of his famous works before 1840. Towards the end of Bryant's life he left Massachusetts and took up the job as a coeditor of a magazine in New York City. He served in this position until his death in 1878.
This is the complete article, containing 730 words
(approx. 2 pages at 300 words per page).
