Poets

Born in Birmingham, England, on August 20, 1881, Edgar A. Guest settled with his family in Detroit in 1891. Starting in 1895 as a copy boy at the Detroit Free Press, Guest worked his way up as police reporter, exchange editor, and verse columnist. His first, weekly column, "Chaff," began in 1904 and eventually became the daily "Breakfast Table Chat," which was ultimately syndicated to 300 newspapers throughout the… Read more

Jason Guriel is an internationally acclaimed Canadian poet and critic. He was the first Canadian to be awarded Poetry's Frederick Bock Prize in 2007, and followed it with Poetry's Editors Prize for Book Reviewing in 2009. His work has appeared in  numerous publications including Canadian Notes & Queries, Parnassus, Poetry, Reader's Digest and The Walrus.

Bibliography

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Born September 10, 1886, in Bethlehem, Pennsylvania, Hilda Doolittle wrote poetry, plays, fiction, and speculative prose, and experimented in film. She was educated at the Moravian Girls' Seminary and the Friends' Central School, where she was a keen classicist and basketball player in her youth, being tall (5 feet, 11 inches). She entered Bryn Mawr in 1905, which was successful for its friendships with Marianne Moore… Read more

For more poems, see the Academy of America Poets

the… Read more

Sarah Josepha Buell was born October 24, 1788, in Newport, New Hampshire. Self-educated, at 18 she became a schoolteacher in Newport and worked there until 1813, when she married David Hale, a lawyer. At his death nine years later, she was a 34-year-old pregnant mother of four who nonetheless rose to become one of America's most successful women writers. In 1828 she became editor of the Ladies' Magazine, and later as… Read more

Jane Eaton Hamilton is a professional writer of poetry, short fiction, novels and non-fiction, and a master gardener. She has worked as a photographer focusing on art and newborns. As a lesbian activist who came out in 1982, she helped bring same-sex marriage to Canada (Barbeau v. British Columbia, 2003 BCCA 406). Her hobbies are dance, painting, and sketching.

William Hamilton was born in Dumfries, Scotland, immigrated to South Africa, and was educated at the South African College (now University of Cape Town), where he went on to teach English and Philosophy. He died in Flanders, 1917. (Thanks to André le Roux, Reference section, National Library of South Africa, Cape Town, for assistance.)

Thomas Hardy, born in 1840 near Dorchester, took up architectural work, both with a local firm and in London, before turning to writing and publishing novels, beginning with Desperate Remedies in 1871 and ending in Jude the Obscure in 1895. Disgruntled after years of controversy dogged his novels, Hardy turned to poetry, his preferred form, quite late, with Wessex Poems in 1898. Seven more volumes of poetry followed:… Read more

Charles Harpur, a major nineteenth-century Australian poet, made a living as a sheep farmer and civil servant in New South Wales. Elizabeth Perkins first published a good edition of his poems in 1984. His manuscripts can be seen at the Mitchell Library in Sydney.

We are grateful for access to AustLit in the preparation of these poems.

Robert Stephen Hawker was born on Dec. 3, 1803, to Jacob Stephen Hawker and Jane Elizabeth Drewitt. He was educated at Liskeard and Cheltenham Grammar Schools, and Pembroke College and Magdalen College, Oxford, receiving his B.A. in 1828. Hawker brought out his first book of poems, Tendrils, in 1821, and won the Newdigate Prize at Oxford for a poem on Pompeii in 1827. After being ordained a priest in the Anglican… Read more

Caroline Hayward (Mrs. Alfred Hayward) lived at Ravenscourt, near Port Hope. Her Christian name appears in the Fisher Library catalogue.

For a biography, see the Nobel site at http://nobelprize.org/nobel_prizes/literature/laureates/1995/heaney-bio.html.

Nothing is known about the life of Anne Hecht, except that she appears well educated and not to have married, perhaps for reasons she may allude to in her verse advice, particularly in its breath-taking last line, which speaks to women's daily life in 18th-century North America.

Ernest Hemingway was born in Oak Park, Illinois, July 21, 1899, the son of a doctor. He became a reporter in Kansas City after leaving school and volunteered on ambulance duty in Italy in World War I, where he was wounded and won the Croce de Guerra. He became a reporter in Toronto for The Star after the war and in 1921 moved to Paris among literary Americans such as Ezra Pound. Fewer than a hundred poems survive from… Read more

"Graham Lee Hemminger '17, promotion director of the Topics Publishing Co. and a member of its board of directors, died December 19, at his home at Great Neck, N.Y.

Among Penn Staters, Hemminger is probably best remembered for a bit of doggerel he composed while he was editor of Froth, the campus humor magazine. Faced with two blank inches on page 19 of the November 1915 issue, he penned ["Tobacco is a dirty… Read more

The son of Henry V and Catherine of Valois, Henry was born Dec. 6, 1421, and came to the throne of England and then of France on his father's death, Sept. 1, 1422. John, duke of Bedford, was appointed protector on Dec. 5. Henry was crowned Nov. 12, 1437, and married Margaret of Anjou, April 23, 1445, who was more astute at politics and warfare than her husband, who was pious and deeply concerned with education. For… Read more

Second son of Henry VII and Elizabeth of York, Henry VIII came to the throne in 1509 very young and united the houses of York and Lancaster, the white and red roses. Having been tutored by the poet John Skelton, and entrusting government for the first decade of his reign to Cardinal Wolsey, the young king devoted himself to scholarship, writing songs, court revels, music, hunting, riding, and jousting. Although… Read more

Herbert's poems were first published shortly after his death, in The Temple, Sacred Poems and Private Ejaculations by Mr. George Herbert, 1633. Some of them had already circulated in MS. His poems are so full of biblical echoes or quotations, and his images so often liturgical, that only full annotation (rather than mere reference) can properly bring out his indebtedness.

The astronomer John Frederick William Herschel was born on March 7, 1792, in Slough, Buckinghamshire. He attended Dr. Gretton's School in Hitcham, Eton College (briefly), and St. John's College Cambridge first as a student (1809-13), and then as elected fellow, graduating with M.A. in 1816. Many honours came to him quickly. The Royal Society elected him a fellow in 1813, he received the Copley Medal in 1821, he became… Read more

Arthur Clement Hilton was born in 1851 and educated at Marlborough College and St. John's College, Cambridge, where he published in 1872 The Light Green, a collection of verse parodies. After graduating from Wells Theological College in January 1873, Hilton was ordained deacon on March 1, 1874, became curate of St. Clement and St. Mary, Sandwich, and was ordained priest in 1875. He took his M.A. at Cambridge in 1876… Read more

Katharine Tynan, born on January 23, 1861, in Dublin, was educated at the Sienna Convent in Drogheda. She authored over one hundred novels, a five-volume autobiography, and several books of poems. Her friends included George Russell, W. B. Yeats, Christina Rossetti, and Alice Meynell. She married Henry Albert Hinkson, lawyer and novelist, in 1883 and they had three children. She lived both in Ireland and England and… Read more

Born in Cambridge, Massachusetts, on August 29, 1809, Oliver Wendell Holmes proceeded to Phillips Academy and Harvard, from which he graduated in 1829. His first, most popular poem, written at 21, was "Old Ironsides." Like most of Holmes' poems, this was an occasional piece, prompted by some incident. After his degree, he studied in Boston, Harvard, and Paris medical schools before graduating with a Harvard M.D. in… Read more

George Moses Horton was born in slavery about 1797 on William Horton's tobacco plantation in Northampton Country, North Carolina. Growing up as a cow-hand in Chatham county, where his master moved, George educated himself to read scripture and to make poems. At 17 years old, he became the property of William's son James and was set to work at a horse-drawn plough. In the 1820s, George spent his time off on weekends in… Read more