Category Archives: Literary Figures

John Dyer was a Welsh painter and poet who is often seen as a naturalistic forerunner of Wordsworth. Although primarily known for one loco-descriptive poem, “Grongar Hill,” he is important for the careful and acurate observation evident throughout his works … Continue reading →

Thomas Gray is another forerunners of the Romantic movement in British literature. Although much of his poetry fits well into the conventions of 18th-century English verse, his sense of specific places, his emphasis on the picturesque, his naturalistic observations, and … Continue reading →

Christopher Smart (a.k.a. Jack, Kit and Kitty Smart) was a legendary “mad” poet, although his madness was the highly suspect result of tensions within his family, between Smart and his father-in-law, a jealous publisher who imprisoned Smart in an asylum … Continue reading →

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 →

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 →

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 →

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 →