Siegfried Sassoon (1886 - 1967)

With war on the horizon, a young Englishman whose life had heretofore been consumed with the protocol of fox-hunting, said goodbye to his idyllic life and rode off on his bicycle to join the Army. Siegfried Sassoon was perhaps the most innocent of the war poets. John Hildebidle has called Sassoon the "accidental hero." Born into a wealthy Jewish family in 1886, Sassoon lived the pastoral life of a young squire: fox-hunting, playing cricket, golfing and writing romantic verses. Being an innocent, Sassoon's reaction to the realities of the war were all the more bitter and violent -- both his reaction through his poetry and his reaction on the battlefield (where, after the death of fellow officer David Thomas and his brother Hamo at Gallipoli, Sassoon earned the nickname "Mad Jack" for his near-suicidal exploits against the German lines -- in the early manifestation of his grief, when he still believed that the Germans were entirely to blame). As Paul Fussell said: "now he unleashed a talent for irony and satire and contumely that had been sleeping all during his pastoral youth." Sassoon also showed his innocence by going public with his protest against the war (as he grew to see that insensitive political leadership was the greater enemy than the Germans). Luckily, his friend and fellow poet Robert Graves convinced the review board that Sassoon was suffering from shell-shock and he was sent instead to the military hospital at Craiglockhart where he met and influenced Wilfred Owen. Sassoon is a key figure in the study of the poetry of the Great War: he brought with him to the war the idyllic pastoral background; he began by writing war poetry reminiscent of Rupert Brooke; he mingled with such war poets as Robert Graves and Edmund Blunden; he spoke out publicly against the war (and yet returned to it); he influenced and mentored the then unknown Wilfred Owen; he spent thirty years reflecting on the war through his memoirs; and at last he found peace in his religious faith. Some critics found his later poetry lacking in comparison to his war poems. Sassoon, identifying with Herbert and Vaughan, recognized and understood this: "my development has been entirely consistent and in character" he answered, "almost all of them have ignored the fact that I am a religious poet." Biography by: Robert Means English Literature Librarian Harold B. Lee Library Brigham Young University

William Cowper (1731 - 1800)

William Cowper was the son of a Hertfordshire rector and was educated at a local boarding school and Westminster School. He studied law at the Inner Temple in London, but never practised it as a career. He suffered from depression all his life and his mental health was fragile. The strain on his mind was increased by his father's decision to ban him from marrying his first love, his cousin Theodora Cowper. 

In 1763 the prospect of an examination for a job in the House of Lords caused a mental breakdown and he attempted suicide. He was nursed back to health by a clergyman, Morley Unwin, and his wife Mary. Cowper stayed with the Unwins and became engaged to Mary after Morley's death. His worsening mental condition made marriage impossible, but they remained close friends. 

Cowper's state of mind was not improved by the company of the curate John Newton, a gloomy Calvinist. Under Newton's influence, Cowper came to believe that he was destined for eternal damnation, and in 1773 he suffered another attack of madness. Although his association with Newton produced the book Olney Hymns (1779), it can hardly be described as a fruitful partnership for Cowper, and his health improved when the preacher left for London. 

Encouraged by Mary Unwin, Cowper wrote a series of moral satires which were published in Poems (1782), and his happier frame of mind at this time can be seen in poems such as 'Retirement ' and 'Conversation'. Another friend, the widow Lady Austen, provided the story for the ballad 'The Journey of John Gilpin', as well as the initial idea which Cowper developed into The Task. 

In his later years Cowper translated Homer and Milton's Greek and Latin poems. The death of Mary Unwin in 1796 resulted in the profound despair which is expressed in his last great poem, 'The Castaway'.

Emily Dickinson (1830 - 1886)

Emily Dickinson (1830-1886) was born in Amherst, Massachusetts, to a family well known for educational and political activity. Her father, an orthodox Calvinist, was a lawyer and treasurer of the local college. He also served in Congress. Dickinson's mother, whose name was also Emily, was a cold, religious, hard-working housewife, who suffered from depression. Her relationship with her daughter was distant. Later Dickinson wrote in a letter, that she never had a mother. 

Dickinson was educated at Amherst Academy (1834-47) and Mount Holyoke Female Seminary (1847-48). Around 1850 she started to compose poems - "Awake ye muses nine, sing me a strain divine, / Unwind the solemn twine, and tie my Valentine!" she said in her earliest known poem, dated March 4, 1850. It was published in Springfield Daily Republican in 1852. 

The style of her first efforts was fairly conventional, but after years of practice she began to give room for experiments. Often written in the metre of hymns, her poems dealt not only with issues of death, faith and immortality, but with nature, domesticity, and the power and limits of language. From c.1858 Dickinson assembled many of her poems in packets of 'fascicles', which she bound herself with needle and thread. A selection of these poems appeared in 1890. 

In 1862 Dickinson started her life long correspondence and friendship with Thomas Wentworth Higginson (1823-1911), a writer and reformer, who commanded during the Civil War the first troop of African-American soldiers. Higginson later published Army Life in a Black Regiment in 1870. On of the four poems he received from Dickinson was the famous 'Safe in their Alabaster Chambers.' 


Biography from: ReadPrint.com

Anne Bronte (1820 - 1849)

Anne Bronte was born on January 17th 1820 at Thornton, Bradford in Yorkshire, the youngest of the six children. Her mother died in 1821. 

Emily and Anne write poetry and stories for their imaginary world of Gondal. Few survive, but they worked together on poems and the Gondal sagas into the 1840's In 1835 she enrolled at Miss Wooler's school at Roe Head Mirfield, she left in 1837. 

From 1839 to 1840 Anne worked as a governess to the Ingham family at Blake Hall, Mirfield. From 1840 to 1845 she works for the Robinson family at Thorp Green York, she takes her first trips to Scarborough with them in the summer vacation. 

In May 1846 under the Pseudonym of Currer Ellis and Acton Bell, a book of Poems was published, Anne contributed 21 poems. 

In July 1847, the publishers; Thomas. Cautley. Newby accept Agnes Grey which is published the following December. In July 1848 Anne completes her novel The Tenant of Wildfell Hall. 

In January 1849 Anne is diagnosed with tuberculosis, on the 24th May 1849 Charlotte Anne and Ellen Nussey leave for Scarborough, in a hope the sea air might alleviate the Anne's symptoms. On 28th May 1849 Anne Bronte died at 2 o'clock in the afternoon aged 29 at Scarborough. She was buried in St Mary's churchyard on Castle Hill overlooking the bay.

Ella Wheeler Wilcox (1850 - 1919)

Ella Wheeler Wilcox (November 5, 1850–October 30, 1919) was an American author and poet. Her best-known work was Poems of Passion, and her autobiography, The Worlds and I was published in 1918 shortly before her death. A popular rather than a literary poet, her poems express sentiments of cheer and optimism in plainly written, rhyming verse. Her world view is expressed in the title of her poem "Whatever Is—Is Best" (suggesting an echo of Pope's "Whatever is, is right."). None of her work was included by F. O. Matthiesen in The Oxford Book of American Verse, but Hazel Felleman chose no less than thirteen of her poems for Best Loved Poems of the American People, while Martin Gardner selected "Solitude" and "The Winds of Fate" for Best Remembered Poems. She is frequently cited in parody collections (Pegasus Descending, others). Sinclair Lewis indicates Babbitt's lack of literary sophistication by having refer to a piece of verse as "one of the classic poems, like 'If' by Kipling, or Ella Wheeler Wilcox's 'The Man Worth While'". Biography by: This article is licensed under the GNU Free Documentation License and uses material adapted in whole or in part from the Wikipedia article on Ella Wheeler Wilcox.

Sidney Lanier (1842 - 1881)

Sidney Lanier was born in Macon, Georgia on February 3, 1842. He attended a Macon academy in 1857 took up studies at Oglethorpe University in Milledgeville, Georgia. He graduated from Oglethorp in 1860 and 
after a brief period as a tutor there (1860-61) joined the Macon Volunteers to fight for the Confederacy. 

During the war he began writing his first novel Tiger-Lilies (which was published in 1867). In 1864 he was captured and imprisoned at Point Lookout, Maryland where he contracted tuberculosis. He was released in February 1865 and returned to Macon where he worked as a tutor, hotel clerk, and principal of an academy in Prattville, Alabama and studied law with his father. In bad health he attempted to practice law from 1869 until 1873 but finally decided to devote himself to literary efforts. 

In 1873 Lanier moved to Baltimore and played first flute in the Peabody Orchestra. It was during this period that he devoted much of his writing to poetry and the study of poetry. While he lived during the orchestra season in Baltimore he returned to Georgia each way to spend time with his family. 

Lanier did not finally move his family to Baltimore until 1877. He began to teach at private schools and in 1878 Lanier presented a course on Shakespeare at the Peabody Institute. His studies and writings of the period resulted in lectures at Johns Hopkins University on English poetry, Chaucer and Shakespeare, and the English novel. 

Lanier's health began to decline in 1881 and he took up residence in North Carolina where died that same year. Lanier had four sons, all whom survived him. 


[Sources: Webster's American Biographies 607 (Springfield, Massachusetts: Merriam-Western Inc., 1974) (Charles Van Doren, gen. ed.); Archivist Biographical Sketch, Sidney Lanier Papers, Johns Hopkins University, Baltimore, Maryland] 

William Shakespeare (1564 - 1616)

For all his fame and celebration, William Shakespeare remains a mysterious figure with regards to personal history. There are just two primary sources for information on the Bard: his works, and various legal and church documents that have survived from Elizabethan times. Naturally, there are many gaps in this body of information, which tells us little about Shakespeare the man. William Shakespeare was born in Stratford-upon-Avon, allegedly on April 23, 1564. Church records from Holy Trinity Church indicate that he was baptized there on April 26, 1564. Young William was born of John Shakespeare, a glover and leather merchant, and Mary Arden, a landed heiress. William, according to the church register, was the third of eight children the Shakespeare household—three of whom died in childhood. John Shakespeare had a remarkable run of success as a merchant, and later as an alderman and high bailiff of Stratford, during William's early childhood. His fortunes declined, however, in the 1570s. There is great conjecture about Shakespeare's childhood years, especially regarding his education. It is surmised by scholars that Shakespeare attended the free grammar school in Stratford, which at the time had a reputation to rival Eton. While there are no records extant to prove this claim, Shakespeare's knowledge of Latin and Classical Greek would tend to support this theory. In addition, Shakespeare's first biographer, Nicholas Rowe, wrote that John Shakespeare had placed William "for some time in a free school." John Shakespeare, as a Stratford official, would have been granted a waiver of tuition for his son. As the records do not exist, we do not know how long William attended the school, but certainly the literary quality of his works suggest a solid education. What is certain is that William Shakespeare never proceeded to university schooling, which has stirred some of the debate concerning the authorship of his works. The next documented event in Shakespeare's life is his marriage to Anne Hathaway on November 28, 1582. William was 18 at the time, and Anne was 26—and pregnant. Their first daughter, Susanna, was born on May 26, 1583. The couple later had twins, Hamnet and Judith, born February 2, 1585 and christened at Holy Trinity. Hamnet died in childhood at the age of 11, on August 11, 1596. For seven years, William Shakespeare effectively disappears from all records, turning up in London circa 1592. This has sparked as much controversy about Shakepeare's life as any period. Rowe notes that young Shakespeare was quite fond of poaching, and may have had to flee Stratford after an incident with Sir Thomas Lucy, whose lands he allegedly hunted. There is also rumor of Shakespeare working as an assistant schoolmaster in Lancashire for a time, though this is circumstantial at best. It is estimated that Shakespeare arrived in London around 1588 and began to establish himself as an actor and playwright. Evidently, Shakespeare garnered envy early on for his talent, as related by the critical attack of Robert Greene, a London playwright, in 1592: "...an upstart crow, beautified with our feathers, that with his Tiger's heart wrapped in a player's hide, supposes he is as well able to bombast out a blank verse as the best of you: and being an absolute Johannes fac totum, is in his own conceit the only Shake-scene in a country." Greene's bombast notwithstanding, Shakespeare must have shown considerable promise. By 1594, he was not only acting and writing for the Lord Chamberlain's Men (called the King's Men after the ascension of James I in 1603), but was a managing partner in the operation as well. With Will Kempe, a master comedian, and Richard Burbage, a leading tragic actor of the day, the Lord Chamberlain's Men became a favorite London troupe, patronized by royalty and made popular by the theatre-going public. When the plague forced theatre closings in the mid-1590s, Shakespeare and his company made plans for the Globe Theatre in the Bankside district, which was across the river from London proper. Shakespeare's success is apparent when studied against other playwrights of this age. His company was the most successful in London in his day. He had plays published and sold in octavo editions, or "penny-copies" to the more literate of his audiences. It is noted that never before had a playwright enjoyed sufficient acclaim to see his works published and sold as popular literature in the midst of his career. While Shakespeare could not be accounted wealthy, by London standards, his success allowed him to purchase New House and retire in comfort to Stratford in 1611. William Shakespeare wrote his will in 1611, bequeathing his properties to his daughter Susanna (married in 1607 to Dr. John Hall). To his surviving daughter Judith, he left £300, and to his wife Anne left "my second best bed." William Shakespeare allegedly died on his birthday, April 23, 1616. This is probably more of a romantic myth than reality, but Shakespeare was interred at Holy Trinity in Stratford on April 25. In 1623, two working companions of Shakespeare from the Lord Chamberlain's Men, John Heminges and Henry Condell, printed the First Folio edition of the Collected Works, of which half the plays contained therein were previously unpublished. The First Folio also contained Shakespeare's sonnets. William Shakespeare's legacy is a body of work that will never again be equaled in Western civilization. His words have endured for 400 years, and still reach across the centuries as powerfully as ever. Even in death, he leaves a final piece of verse as his epitaph: ..

Charlotte Bronte (1816 - 1855)

Charlotte Bronte is best known for her novel, Jane Eyre. Not many know that the sufferings depicted in this book are records of Charlotte’s own experiences. 


Charlotte Bronte was born in 1816 at Hartshead, England, but moved shortly after her birth to Haworth, Yorkshire. Her father, Patrick, was a poor English clergyman and was eccentric and abusive. The parsonage was dreary and unpleasant, a low, oblong, stone building standing at the top of the straggling village on a steep hill without 

shelter of a tree. The churchyard pressed won on it on both sides, and behind it was a long tract of wild moors. 



On the direction of their father, the Bronte children were fed a vegetable diet and clothed in coarse clothes to make them hardy and to prevent their becoming proud. But they were far from hardy; on the contrary, they were small, feeble, and stunted in growth. Their mother died from cancer when they were all young, and while her sister, Elizabeth Branwell came to care for them, the children were left mostly to themselves. 


Four of the girls were sent away to school, Charlotte among them. They were sent to the Clergy Daughter’s School at Cowan Bridge in Lancashire. The food was poor and insufficient and they were treated with inhuman severity. The Lowood School in Jane Eyre was modeled after this school, and “Miss Scratchhard” in the novel was modeled after the manager of the school. A fever broke out at the school and the girls returned home, but two of the sisters died as a result of the treatment and the sickness contracted at the school. 


When Charlotte was nineteen years old, she became a teacher. But because of her bad health, she had to give it up. She then took a position as a governess, but the people treated her poorly, so this, too, was given up. She decided then to establish a private school with her sisters Emily and Anne. Charlotte and Emily went to Brussels to prepare for this by studying under M. Hegier. At the end of six months time they were employed in the school they were attending, but at a small salary. They returned to England and attempted to gather pupils for their own private school, but found this very difficult, and gave up the task. 


Next they turned to literary work. The Bronte sisters had written many stories and poems as children as the romped around the Yorkshire moors, so they were quite well prepared for this new endeavor. They issued a volume of poems, but it met with little success. Their next venture was in prose tales. The productions were, “The Professor”, by Charlotte; “Wuthering Heights”, by Emily, and “Agnes Grey”, by Anne. Each wrote under an assumed name. While those of Emily and Anne were accepted, Charlotte’s was rejected everywhere she submitted it and was not published until after her death. 


In the face of all this failure and discouragement, Charlotte went on to write “Jane Eyre”. It met with immediate success. It was translated into most of the languages of Europe, and was put on stage in England and Germany under the title “The Orphan of Lowood”. 


Charlotte’s writing became her passport into the highest of literary circles of London and all of Europe, meeting the most prominent writers of the time. But she was a rather shy woman and didn’t like the spotlight, so she returned to her home. She was still in poor health, as she had been most of her life, and died in March of 1855.