X-Nico

unusual facts about English poetry


No Crystal Stair

Fighting racism and sexism, Marion schools her girls in manners, English poetry and the need for an education; her elegant neighbour and rival (both women are in love with railway porter Edmund Thompson) teaches the children the ways of the street and their black cultural heritage.


1570 in poetry

Thomas Bateson, also spelled "Batson" or "Betson", birth year uncertain (died 1630), English writer of madrigals

1575 in poetry

August 14 – Robert Hayman (died 1629) poet, colonist and Proprietary Governor of Bristol's Hope colony in Newfoundland; his book, 'Qvodlibets ("What you will"), published in 1628, was the first book of English poetry written in what would become Canada.

1628 in poetry

Robert Hayman, Qvodlibets ("What you will"), the first book of English poetry written in what would become Canada, written by the Proprietary Governor of Bristol's Hope colony in Newfoundland

1725 in poetry

July 24 – John Newton (died 1807), English, clergyman, former slave-ship captain and author of many hymns, including Amazing Grace

1740 in poetry

Samuel Henley (died 1815) English clergyman, school teacher, college principal, antiquarian, writer and poet

1745 in poetry

Charles Dibdin (died 1814), English musician, dramatist, novelist, poet, actor and songwriter

1771 in poetry

July 30 – Thomas Gray (born 1716), English poet, classical scholar and professor at Cambridge University; died in Cambridge, then buried beside his mother in the churchyard of Stoke Poges, the setting for his famous 1750 poem, Elegy Written in a Country Churchyard

1808 in poetry

March 22 – Caroline Norton (died 1877), English society beauty, novelist, poet, pamphleteer and playwright

1809 in poetry

March 31 – Edward Fitzgerald (died 1883), English writer and poet best known for his English translation of The Rubaiyat of Omar Khayyam

1815 in poetry

December 29 – Samuel Henley (born 1740), English clergyman, schoolteacher, college principal, antiquarian, writer and poet

1883 in poetry

Edward Fitzgerald, 74, English poet and translator, best known for his translation of the Rubáiyát of Omar Khayyám

Bhagwan Datt Sharma

He has always been admired for his depth of knowledge of Scandinavian literature, Latin literature, English and Hindi poetry.

The Four and Twenty Elders Casting their Crowns before the Divine Throne

The Four and Twenty Elders Casting their Crowns before the Divine Throne is a pencil drawing and watercolour on paper by the English poet, painter and printmaker William Blake.


see also

Anglo-Saxon poetic line

Eduard Sievers created type-lines based on the metrical patterns that he saw in Old English poetry, and named them in alphabetical order according to the most frequently used.

Carolyn Forché

Among her translations are Mahmoud Darwish's Unfortunately, It Was Paradise: Selected Poems (2003), Claribel Alegría's Sorrow (1999), and Robert Desnos's Selected Poetry (with William Kulik, for the Modern English Poetry Series, 1991).

Henry Neele

Neele also gave lectures on the history of English poetry in 1826–7 at the Russell Institution and repeated these at the Western Literary and Scientific Institution in Whitcomb Street.

Jacques Roubaud

He is a retired Poetry professor from EHESS and a member of the Oulipo group, he has also published poetry, plays, novels, and translated English poetry and books into French such as Lewis Carroll's The Hunting of the Snark.

Malcolm Lipkin

During the 1970s, the influence of 17th-century English poetry resulted in Four Departures for Soprano and Violin (settings of Herrick) and The Pursuit (Symphony No.2), inspired by a quatrain of Andrew Marvell.

Raffaele La Capria

A particular interest was English poetry of the 1930s: as well as writing numerous articles he translated works including T. S. Eliot's Four Quartets.

Raven banner

The Function of the Beasts of Battle in Old English Poetry. PhD Dissertation, 1976, State University of New York at Stony Brook.

Roderick the Last of the Goths

In 1909, Maurice Fitzgerald claimed, in regards to the description of Florinda's rape and confession, that "there are few scenes in English poetry of a more intense dramatic feeling".

Solomon Mutswairo

His two explicitly political historical novels, about 19th century pro-independence figure Kadungure Mapondera and Chaminuka, a sage from Zimbabwean folklore, were both written in English, and his English poetry is in a similar vein.

Thomas Coxeter

Coxeter's manuscript collections were largely used in Theophilus Cibber's Lives of the Poets and in Thomas Warton's History of English Poetry.