Monthly Archives: June 2011
Percy Bysshe Shelley
Percy Bysshe Shelley (1792-1822). The quote in the picture caption–at left: “I wish no living thing to suffer pain”–suggests precisely the shift embodied in the idea of Romantic natural history. The poet exhibited a fascination with natural phenomena from his early … Continue reading
Posted in Literary Figures
Tagged astronomy, chemistry, Frankenstein, poetry, science, Shelley
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Felicia Hemans (1793 – 1835) Emily Arndt, Class of ’13, Dickinson College Felicia Hemans has received increased attention in recent years as scholars focus more and more on verse written by women during the nineteenth century. She was born in … Continue reading
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John Clare
John Clare (1793-1864) is often considered to be the quintessential nature poet of the Romantic era. He was acclaimed as a “nature poet” from the time his first volume, Poems Descriptive of Rural Life and Scenery, appeared in 1820. Unlike Robert … Continue reading
Posted in Literary Figures
Tagged animals, natural history, plants, poetry
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John Keats
John Keats had as much sensitivity toward the natural world as any author of the period. From his earliest lyrical fragments and letters to the great odes of 1819, his writing consistently incorporates an astonishing number of natural images, as … Continue reading
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Tagged animals, bird, poetry, Romanticism, seasons
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Mary Wollstonecraft Shelley
Mary Wollstonecraft Shelley (1797-1851) was the daughter of Mary Wollstonecraft and William Godwin, the wife of Percy Bysshe Shelley, and the author of one of the most widely read and often redacted novels of the past two centuries. Frankenstein; or, … Continue reading
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Tagged Erasmus Darwin, fiction, Frankenstein, Gothic, prose, Shelley, women
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Letitia Landon (1802-38) Emily Arndt, Class of ’13, Dickinson College I teach my lip its sweetest smile, My tongue its softest tone; I borrow others’ likeness, till Almost I lose my own. (“Lines of Life,” The Venetian Bracelet) … Continue reading
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Thomas Lovell Beddoes (1803-49)
Thomas Lovell Beddoes was a dramatist and poet who also practiced medicine. His father Thomas Beddoes was a famous science writer and medical doctor whose friendship with Coleridge led to Coleridge’s interest in the Higher Criticism (the study of the Bible … Continue reading
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Alfred, Lord Tennyson
Tennyson (1809-1892) is not the last Romantic, but he is the last poet of the nineteenth-century to fully capture, in his early poems, the lyrical spirit of his great predecessors. An early poem like “Timbuctoo” echoes the naturalistic cadences of … Continue reading
Posted in Literary Figures
Tagged Charles Darwin, evolution, poetry, science, Victorian
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Robert Browning (1812-89) Like Tennyson, Browning may not be the last of the Romantic poets, but he is alone among the early Victorians in his appreciation of the natural world in all of its richness, from the “yellowing fennel” (l. … Continue reading
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Tagged animals, literature, poetry, Romanticism, Victorian
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Titian Peale II (1799-1885) Jennifer Lindbeck, Class of ’98, Dickinson College and Ashton Nichols, Department of English Youngest son (and sixteenth child) of artist and naturalist Charles Willson Peale, Titian Peale II showed an early interest in natural … Continue reading
Posted in Artists & Illustrators
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