Poets

Editor and owner of the Novascotian, then leader of the Reformers' party, Joseph Howe in 1848 obtained for Nova Scotia status as the first British colony to achieve responsible government. He became Liberal party premier of the province's government from 1860 to 1863, a federal cabinet minister under Sir John A. Macdonald in 1869, and Lieutenant-governor of Nova Scotia in 1873, just prior to his death. Although he… Read more

Julia Ward was born in New York and married Samuel Gridley Howe in 1843. They had six children and co-edited the abolitionist organ The Commonwealth. Her penning of "The Battle Hymn of the Republic" and her extraordinary work on behalf of the state and women earned her many honors: she was the first woman elected to the American Academy of Arts and Letters, and President of the New England Woman Suffrage Association.… Read more

Mary Botham, born at Coleford, Gloucestershire, was daughter of Samuel Botham, a Quaker, and in 1821 married William Howitt. They turned to joint-authoring for a living and made a success of their many interests. She wrote novels such as Wood Leighton, a history of the United States, and many poems and stories for children; and she translated both the Swedish novels of Frederica Bremer and Hans Christian Anderson's… Read more

Born February 1, 1902, in Joplin, Missouri, Langston Hughes grew up and was educated in Lawrence, Kansas, and Cleveland, Ohio. He briefly enrolled in Columbia University in New York in 1921, the year that he published "The Negro Speaks of Rivers" in Crisis, a journal which was edited by W. E. B. Du Bois. In 1923-24 Hughes worked as a seaman on trips to Africa and Europe. In April 1925 his poem "The Weary Blues" won… Read more

Victor Hugo (1802-1885) in his writing reflects many of the literary tendencies of the century which his life almost spanned. As a prolific poet, he first imitated classical forms in his Odes et poésies diverses (1822), then turned to exotic descriptive poetry in Les Orientales (1829), meditative verse in Les Feuilles d'Automne (1831) and so on, satiric poetry in Les Châtiments (1853), and epic poetry in the grand… Read more

Essayist, translator of Henri Bergson, aesthetic philosopher, lecturer, and imagist poet whose entire published output was six poems at the time of his death, and whose essays were edited by Sir Herbert Edward Read posthumously in Speculations (1924) and Notes on Language and Style (1929). In 1906-07 he travelled in Canada and was deeply affected by the vastness of its prairies. He enlisted in the British army in the… Read more

Henrietta (Hettie) Anne Heathorn, the daughter of a brewer, met the scientist Thomas Huxley in Sydney, Australia, in 1847, during his term aboard the HMS Rattlesnake. Huxley returned to England in 1850, unhappily leaving his fiancée behind in Sydney. Their loving correspondence survives for the eight years of their separation. In 1855 she at last joined him in England and they married in July. They shared, over a… Read more

Thomas Henry Huxley, the great Victorian scientist, "Darwin's bulldog," was born in Ealing on May 4, 1825. Despite having only two years of formal schooling, he obtained his M.B. at London University in 1845. This led to a posting as a naval surgeon with H.M.S. Rattlesnake on a surveying voyage to Australia from 1846 to 1850. Research undertaken on this trip led to anatomical papers on the hydrozoa and medusae that… Read more

Helen Fiske, born in Amherst, Mass., took her two last names from her husbands. She married Edward Bissell Hunt first, was widowed young, in 1865, and shortly afterwards had lost both sons from that marriage as well. Ten years later, she married a quaker, William Sharpless Jackson and lived in Colorado Springs with him. Helen was a long-time friend of Emily Dickinson and, besides becoming much more famous than her… Read more

The standard edition of Johnson’s verse is the sixth volume of the Yale Edition of the Works of Samuel Johnson: Poems, ed. E. L. McAdam, Jr., and George Milne (New Haven and London: Yale UP, 1964).

The standard edition of Jonson's Works is the monumental one by Herford and Simpson (11 vols.; London: Oxford University Press, 1925-53). Most of Jonson's poems appeared first in the Folio of 1616, the later poems in the Second Folio of 1640.

The Times obituary is as follows: "Lieutenant-Colonel Stanley de Vere Julius, who died last week at Millbank Military Hospital, at the age of 54, was educated at St. Laurence College, joined The Royal Sussex Regiment from Sandhurst i n 1896, and served throughout the Tirah campaign. He passed through the Staff College, Quetta, and a pamphlet of his, "Notes on Striking Natives," attracted the favourable notice of Lord… Read more

Francis Scott Key was born in Frederick, Maryland, on August 1, 1779, and after an education at St. John's College, Annapolis, he worked as an attorney, first in his home town, and then in Georgetown, in Washington, D.C. In 1814 the British seized Dr. William Beanes in retreat from Washington, and Key was dispatched to arrange his release. This accomplished, Key spent the night of September 13-14 on an American ship… Read more

Aline Murray Kilmer was born August 1, 1888, in Norfolk, Virginia, educated at Rutgers Prep School and the Vail-Deane School in Elizabeth, New Jersey. She and the poet Joyce Kilmer married in 1908. Candles That Burn (New York: George H. Doran, 1919), was her first volume of verse. Vigils followed in 1921, and The Poor King's Daughter and Other Poems in 1925. Selected Poems appeared in 1929. Her Hunting a Hair Shirt… Read more

Poet and literary journalist, Joyce Kilmer was born in New Brunswick, New Jersey, attended Rutgers and obtained his A.B. degree from Columbia University in 1908, and married Aline Murray the same year. They had four children, and during this time Kilmer became a Roman Catholic. By 1913, he was working on the Sunday magazine and book-review sections of the New York Times, but his first book of poems, Trees and Other… Read more

According to Glenn Blalock, Ben King was born on March 17, 1857 in St. Joseph, Michigan, married Aseneth Belle Latham, of St. Joseph, on November 27, 1883, in Chicago, and had two sons by her. King belonged to the Chicago Press Club and to the Whitechapel Club, which attracted authors and journalists. King published verse in newspapers and journals like The Century, sometimes under the pseudonym Bow Hackley. King died… Read more

Edith L. M. King was born at Pietermaritzburg, Natal, South Africa, became a student in England, and afterwards taught at Eunice High School, Bloemfontein, where she was headmistress at her retirement in 1922. King spent five years studying art in Paris and exhibited her art with the Everard Group (her older sister was Ruth Everard) and elsewhere. (Thanks to André le Roux, Reference section, National Library of South… Read more

Novelist, short-story writer, and poet, John Raymond Knister was born in 1899 at Ruscomb, near Stoney Point, Lake St. Clair, where he drowned while swimming in August 1932. He left his widow Myrtle Gamble and a daughter Imogen Givens. Educated at Victoria College, University of Toronto, and Iowa State University, Knister made a sparse living first on his father's farm near Blenheim, Ontario, and then as a journalist,… Read more

Mullin, Katherine. "Knox, Edmund George Valpy (1881–1971)." Oxford Dictionary of National Biography. Online ed. Ed. Lawrence Goldman. Oxford: OUP, 2011.

Isa Craig, born Oct. 17, 1831, in Edinburgh, was largely self-educated in literature. By 1853, she worked at and contributed poems to the newspaper the Scotchman. Her first book, Poems by Isa, came out in 1856. She left Scotland for London in 1857, where she was employed as secretary for the National Association for the Promotion of Social Science. Her most famous poem was an ode on Burns, which won a prize at the… Read more

William Knox was born August 17, 1789, in Lillieslief, Roxburghshire, and educated there and at Loretto Academy in Musselburgh. He took up farming from his parents but abandoned it for journalism, and especially poetry. He brought out three volumes of verse, The Lonely Hearth, and Other Poems (North Shields, 1818), The Songs of Israel (Edinburgh, 1824), and The Harp of Zion (Edinburgh, April 1825). Robert Southey, an… Read more

For more poems, see the Academy of America Poets

and The Poetry Foundation

Books

Anthologies

François Tristan l'Hermite (1601-1655) led an adventurous and nomadic life, part of which he describes in Le Page disgracié. He travelled in England, Norway, and Flanders, as well as France. In addition to eight plays, Tristan wrote a great deal of lyric poetry, some heroic verses, and a collection of religious devotions, L'Office de la Sainte Vierge. His work is fresh and natural and marked by his independent spirit… Read more

Jules Laforgue (1860-1887) was born in Montevideo of Breton parents but his early years were spent at Tarbes in the Hautes Pyrénées. He came to Paris as an adolescent and later spent five years in Germany (1881-1886), where he met and married a young English woman. He died of tuberculosis after seven months of marriage. Laforgue is a poet of anguish concerned with the ultimate meaning of life. He sees personal daily… Read more

Born February 10, 1775, in London and educated at Christ's Hospital, Charles Lamb was a minor poet (and friend of S. T. Coleridge), but also the earliest editor of Elizabethan drama, and the greatest essay-writer of his age. He first took a job at South Sea House and from 1792 to his retirement in 1825 at East India House. Without much of an inheritance, Charles lived with his sister Mary Lamb throughout his life.… Read more

Archibald Lampman was born in 1861 in Morpeth, Ontario, a village near Chatham and Ridgetown at the intersection of routes 3 and 17. His family moved to Gore's Landing on Rice Lake in 1867 but he received his education at the Collegiate Institute in Cobourg, Trinity College School in Port Hope, and Trinity College (now University of Toronto), where he edited the college newspaper and graduated in Classics in 1882.… Read more

Frederick Locker Lampson was born in London in May, 1821. After a brief education, he obtained clerkships in Somerset House and then the Admiralty in Whitehall. Financial security came when he married Lady Charlotte Bruce in Paris in July 1849, a union that continued until her death in 1872 and issued in a daughter, Eleanor. His claim to fame in poetry is London Lyrics (1857), a collection of light verse that went… Read more

Born in Winnipeg, Manitoba, Ian Lancashire went to school at Churchill High School and received his B.A. Honours degree in English and Philosophy from the University of Manitoba in 1964. He received his M.A. (1965) and Ph.D. (1969) at the University of Toronto and became a lecturer in 1968 at Erindale College. He joined the Records of Early English Drama project in 1975 and founded the Centre for Computing in the… Read more

Born and educated in London, L. E. L. (as she signed her prolific output of poems, stories, and novels) was one of the most popular women writers of the nineteenth century and earned an excellent livelihood from her writings, which she needed to support her parents and siblings. Her historical novel Ethel Churchill (1837) has been thought her best work; it is available in a facsimile edition by Scholars' Facsimiles… Read more

Born March 31, 1844, in Selkirk, Scotland, Andrew Lang was educated at Selkirk Grammar School, Edinburgh Academy, the University of St. Andrews, the University of Glasgow, and Balliol College, Oxford, from which he graduated with a B.A. (honours) in 1866. He took up a fellowship at Merton College in Oxford from 1868 to 1875, in which year he married Lenora Blanche Alleyne. Over his lifetime, Lang brought out nine… Read more