Poets

David Herbert Lawrence was born on September 11, 1885, in Eastwood, Nottinghamshire, to a coal-mining father he could sometimes despise and a mother whom he revered. Later Lawrence wrote about his life with them in Sons and Lovers. After his education, he taught at Eastwood School, and then in Ilkeston, Derbyshire, before obtaining a teaching certificate from Nottingham University College in 1908. He then became… Read more

Born at Grenfell, New South Wales, June 17, 1867, Henry Lawson was Australia's first great short-story writer and poet. Educated at New Pipeclay and at the Catholic school at Mudgee, and influenced by his mother's writing, Lawson discovered literature. His deafness became evident when he was nine years old and was total five years later. His first jobs were building and carriage making, and Lawson never found a decent… Read more

Born July 22, 1849, in New York city to Moses and Esther Nathan Lazarus, assimilated, Sephardic Jews, Emma Lazarus grew up in New York city and Newport, Rhode Island. In 1866 she published her first book, Poems and Translations, after which Emerson acted as her informal mentor. Admetus and Other Poems followed in 1871 and Alide: an Episode of Goethe's Life, a novel, in 1874. Lazarus deeply felt the persecution of the… Read more

Stephen (Butler) Leacock was born in Swanmoor, Hampshire, on December 30, 1869, and came to Canada in 1876. He was educated at Upper Canada College, Strathroy Collegiate Institute, and the University of Toronto (B.A. 1891). He taught modern languages at Upper Canada College in Toronto from 1889 to 1899. Then he undertook graduate studies at the University of Chicago and obtained his PhD in 1903. He lectured at McGill… Read more

Brought up in Brackley, Northamptonshire, the daughter of a gardener, and educated only within her family, Mary Leapor worked as her father's housekeeper after her mother's death in 1742. She wrote poetry that came to the attention of Bridget Freemantle, a member of the local gentry. Freemantle encouraged Mary to publish in London, but she died of the measles before her only book, Poems upon Several Occasions (1748,… Read more

Born on May 12, 1812, in London, Edward Lear as a teenager found artistic work drawing zoological specimens for illustrated books. One of his patrons was the earl of Derby, for whose children he devised the Book of Nonsense, published in 1846, the year after he had given drawing lessons to Queen Victoria. After 1837 he left England, returning only occasionally until his death at San Remo in January 1888. Lear suffered… Read more

Born on August 19, 1891, in Slane, Ireland, Francis Ledwidge left school when twelve years old to work on a farm, on the roads, and in the mines. Before he entered World War I in October 1914 in the 5th battalion of the Royal Inniskillings, Ledwidge published verse in the Drogheda Independent. He acted as secretary of a farm workers' union in Meath and then insurance commissioner for Navan, Meath's county town. As… Read more

Rosanna Eleanor Mullins was born in Montreal and educated at the Convent of the Congregation of Notre Dame. She contributed poems, serialized novels, and short stories to the Literary Garland (1847-51) and other journals. She married in 1851 Dr. Jean-Lukin Leprohon and, of their 13 children, eight survived. The two poems in this selection reveal what this marriage meant to her. Later she published the novels for which… Read more

Born in London, graduated from Newnham College, Cambridge, and living her adult life mainly at the family home, 7 Endsleigh Gardens, London, Amy Levy was a feminist Jewish poet and novelist of distinction. She published three volumes of verse, Xantippe and other Verse (1881), A Minor Poet and Other Poems (1884; 1894), and A London Plane-Tree and Other Verse (posthumously in 1889). She also brought out three novels in… Read more

Li Bai (Chinese: 李白; pinyin: Lǐ Bái and/or Lǐ Bó, 701 – 762, also well known as Li Po) was one of the greatest poets of the Tang dynasty, often called China's "golden age" of poetry. A highly serious, productive, and much estimated poet, Li Bai experimented with the traditional rules of versification. About one thousand extant poems are attributed to him. Thirty-four appear in the popular anthology. Three Hundred Tang… Read more

Abraham Lincoln was born 12 February 1809 near Hodgenville, Kentucky, and grew up with little formal schooling. Self-educated, he was eventually elected to the Illinois House of Representatives and served from 1834 to 1842. Admitted to the bar in 1836, Lincoln used law as a gateway into politics, which dominated his life. He became Vice-Presidential candidate for the (new) Republic Party in 1856 and was elected 16th… Read more

Vachel Lindsay was born in Springfield, Illinois, on November 10, 1879. After graduating from Hiram College, Ohio, in 1900, he began a short-lived career in art and lectured at the Y.M.C.A. in New York. In 1906 he made a walking tour of the south in which he handed out a poem, "The Tree of Laughing Bells," in return for food and a place to sleep -- a venture described later in his A Handy Guide for Beggars (New York:… Read more

Michael Lista is a Canadian poet, editor, and critic. He is the author of Bloom (House of Anansi Press), which was named one of Quill and Quire's ten best books of 2010. His work has appeared internationally in venues such as Arc Poetry Magazine, Border Crossings, and Poetry. Currently, Michael is the Poetry Editor at The Walrus, and writes the monthly column On Poetry for The National Post. 

 … Read more

Henry Livingston Jr. was born in Poughkeepsie, New York, on Oct. 13, 1748. The Livingston family was one of the important colonial and revolutionary families of New York. The Poughkeepsie branch, descended from Gilbert, the youngest son of Robert Livingston, 1st Lord of Livingston Manor, was not as well off as the more well-known branches, descended from sons Robert and Philip. Two other descendants of Gilbert… Read more

Henry Wadsworth Longfellow was born in Portland, Maine, on February 27, 1807, and was educated at Portland Academy and alongside Nathaniel Hawthorne at Bowdoin College and then at Harvard University. He taught at Bowdoin from 1829 to 1835 as a professor of foreign languages after travelling widely in Europe 1826-29, and he joined Harvard as Smith Professor of French and Spanish in 1836 (replacing George Ticknor) and… Read more

Robert Lowry, born March 12, 1826, graduated in 1854 from the University of Lewisburg (Bucknell University) and became a baptist minister in West Chester, Pennsylvania, New York City, and Brooklyn before rejoining Lewisburg in 1869 as a faculty member and then its chancellor. From 1875 to 1885 he was Pastor to Park Avenue Baptist Church, and from 1880 to 1886 President of the New Jersey Baptist School Union. He… Read more

Mina Gertrude Lowy was born on 27 December 1882 in Hampstead, London to Sigmund Felix Lowy, a tailor, and Julia Bryan. Loy was educated at home before attending a progressive school in London. Despite the fact that her mother wanted nothing more than a good marriage for her daughter, Mina managed to attend Munich Künstlerinnenverein, the Society of Female Artists' school, followed by further art training at the… Read more

Born on January 4, 1835, in Coulston, Surrey, Lyall received his education at Eton and Haileybury College. He joined the Indian civil service at Bulandshahr in the Doab in 1856 and served in many capacities until his retirement in 1887. After being honoured for fighting in the Mutiny in 1857-58, Lyall successively became commissioner of Nagpur, commissioner of West Berar, the governor-general's agent in Rajputana, and… Read more

Henry Francis Lyte was born on June 1, 1793, at Ednam, Scotland, and educated at Portora Royal School, Enniskillen, County Fermanagh (the alma mater of Oscar Wilde and Samuel Beckett, in Northern Ireland) and Trinity College, Dublin, where he won the Chancellor's Prize for English verse three years in a row, and from which he graduated in 1814. After being ordained in the Church of England, Lyte became a minister in… Read more

Thomas Macaulay was born October 25, 1800, at Rothley Temple, Leicestershire, was educated at Trinity College, Cambridge, and was called to the Bar in 1826. His political career began in the House of Commons as a Whig member for the borough of Calne, and then for Leeds. In 1834, the year of his successful appointment to the Supreme Council of India codifying criminal law, Macaulay publiushed Essays Critical and… Read more

Born in Kenmare, Scotland, Evan MacColl arrived in Canada already a published poet of Gaelic in 1850. His early books of verse were Mountain Minstrel (1836) and Clarsach Nam Beann (1838). He worked in the Liverpool Custom House and then, owing to health problems, emigrated to Kingston, Ontario (where he is buried). There he worked for the Provincial Customs of Upper Canada but did not gain further advancement owing to… Read more

For more poems, see the Academy of America Poets:
        The Watergaw
and The Poetry Foundation:
       from A Drunk Man Looks at the Thistle
       … Read more

Born on June 9, 1922, in Shanghai, the son of American missionaries (John Gillespie Magee and Faith Emmeline Backhouse), John Gillespie Magee Jr. received his education at the American School, Nanking (1929-31), St. Clare's near Walmer, Kent (1931-35), Rugby School (1935-39), and Avon Old Farms School, near Hartford, Connecticut (1939-40). Young Magee won the Rugby Poetry Prize in 1939 for his "Brave New World," and… Read more

Stéphane Mallarmé (1842-1898) spent his life as a teacher of English in France. He contributed to various reviews but became known as a poet only some fifteen years before his death. Mallarmé might be called a high priest of poetry. He constantly polished his poems, striving to improve their harmonic effects and to refine the subtlety of the inner world he sought to portray. For this reason, some of his poetry seems… Read more

Short-story writer and poet, Katherine Mansfield, a pseudonym for Kathleen Mansfield Beauchamp (from 1910), was born on October 14, 1888, in Wellington, New Zealand. She was educated in the cello at Queen's College, London, 1903-1906, after which she returned to study music in New Zealand 1907-08. She came back to London in 1908, married George Bowden (a musician), March 2, 1909, separated from him the same day, and… Read more

Little is known about Marie de France except that she lived in England where she composed, among other things, some Lais (1167-1184) and a collection of fables adapted from Latin sources. She was of noble birth and the French she uses is the standard literary French of the time.