Consumption

Robert Fuller Murray was born Dec. 26, 1863, in Roxbury, Massachusetts, of John and Emmeline Murray. In 1869 John took his son to Kelso, England, and then to York. He was educated at grammar schools in Ilminster and in Crewkerne. Murray then attended his beloved University of St. Andrews from 1881, succeeding more in English than in classical Greek.

Toru Dutt was born on March 4, 1856, in Rambagan, 12 Manicktollah Street, Calcutta, to father Govin Chunder Dutt and mother Kshetramoni, a family that become Christians in 1862. Toru was the youngest child, arriving after sister Aru and brother Abju (who died in 1865). Their cousin was the poet and civil servant Romesh Chunder Dutt.

Born at Farnham in Surrey, Toplady took an M.A. at Trinity College, Dublin, and proceeded to holy orders in the Anglican church in 1762. He became vicar of Broad Hembury six years later. George Lawton wrote the biography in Within the Rock of Ages: The Life and Work of Augustus Montague Toplady (Cambridge: James Clarke, 1983; BV 330 T6 L3 Emmanuel College Library).

• Boardman, Brigid M. "Thompson, Francis Joseph (1859–1907)." Oxford Dictionary of National Biography. Ed. H. C. G. Matthew and Brian Harrison. Oxford: OUP, 2004. Online ed. Ed. Lawrence Goldman. Jan. 2011.

Born on December 30, 1676, at Bampton, Oxfordshire, John Philips was educated at Winchester from 1691 and Christ Church, Oxford, from 1697. Of his poems, The Splendid Shilling (1701), at first published anonymously, and Cyber (1708) were the most highly regarded in his time. The first imitated Milton, and the second Virgil's Georgick.

Born November 5, 1884, in London, James Elroy Flecker received his education at Uppingham and Trinity College, Oxford. He joined the Consular Service in 1908, was posted to Constantinople in 1910, and he married Helle Skiadaressi, a Greek. From 1911 to 1913 Flecker served as vice-consul at Beirut. Suffering from tuberculosis, he moved to Switzerland where he died January 3, 1915.

Born in Dayton, Ohio, and raised by his mother, Paul Dunbar stood out as the only black student in Central High School, the class poet, the editor of the school newspaper, and the president of its literary club, the Philomathean Society.