Monthly Archives: June 2011
Thomas Warton (1728-90)
Five years the Poet Laureate of England (1785-90), Thomas Warton was one of those 19th century authors who contributed to the rise of the Gothic element in English literature while also being one of the first great literary historians in … Continue reading
Posted in Literary Figures
Comments Off on Thomas Warton (1728-90)
William Cowper
William Cowper (1731-1800) and his poetry were important parts of the emerging discourse of British nature writing. He is a key transitional figure, whose conventional piety–“God made the country, and man made the town” (The Task, I, l. 749)–is frequently … Continue reading
Posted in Literary Figures
Comments Off on William Cowper
Anna Laetitia Barbauld
Anna [Aiken] Barbauld letter (Dickinson College Special Collections) Jennifer Lindbeck, Class of ’98, Dickinson College Anna Laetitia Aikin Barbauld (1743-1825) was born on June 20, 1743, in Leicestershire, England, the eldest daughter of John Aikin, a Dissenting clergyman and … Continue reading
Posted in Literary Figures
Tagged mouse, poetry, Priestley, women
Comments Off on Anna Laetitia Barbauld
Charlotte Smith (1749-1806) Emily Arndt, Class of ’13, Dickinson College, and Ashton Nichols, Department of English Like Cowper and Clare, Charlotte Smith elevated the ordinary details of the natural world into suitable subjects for poetry. She also helped to establish … Continue reading
Posted in Literary Figures
Comments Off on
William Blake
William Blake is a particularly complex figure in terms of a romantic natural history. On the one hand, Blake was hostile to “vegetable” nature in all its forms. He saw the natural world as a sign of our “fallen” condition, … Continue reading
Posted in Literary Figures
Tagged art, painting, poetry, Romanticism, tiger
Comments Off on William Blake
Robert Burns (1759-96) Robert Burns summed up his attitude toward human beings by announcing that he was “truly sorry man’s dominion / Has broken nature’s social union” (“To a Mouse, on Turning Up Her Nest with the Plough, November, 1785”). His … Continue reading
Posted in Literary Figures
Comments Off on
Ann Radcliffe (1764-1823) Emily Arndt, Class of ’13, Dickinson College Influenced by Gothic and Romantic elements of Charlotte Smith’s writing, Ann Radcliffe furthered the literary link between the natural and supernatural worlds in her novels. Her six novels: The Castles … Continue reading
Posted in Literary Figures
Comments Off on
William Wordsworth
William Wordsworth (1770-1850) is the Romantic poet most often described as a “nature” writer; what the word “nature” meant to Wordsworth is, however, a complex issue. On the one hand, Wordsworth was the quintessential poet as naturalist, always paying close … Continue reading
Samuel Taylor Coleridge
Samuel Taylor Coleridge perhaps took his revolutionary ideals to an extreme when he spoke directly to a quadruped in “To A Young Ass” by saying, “I hail thee BROTHER.” Coleridge’s poetry and prose writings, however, are pervaded by a sense … Continue reading
Posted in Literary Figures
Comments Off on Samuel Taylor Coleridge
Lord Byron
George Gordon, Lord Byron may have referred to Erasmus Darwin as “that mighty master of unmeaning rhyme” (“English Bards and Scotch Reviewers” [1809]), but Byron’s poetry helped to construct a version of the natural world that affected readers throughout the … Continue reading