Poets

  • Pringle, Thomas 1789 - 1834

    Thomas Pringle was born January 5, 1789, in Blaiklaw, Roxburghshire, and educated at Kelso and afterwards, in 1805, at Edinburgh University. He became clerk, Commissioner of the Public Records of Scotland, and co-editor, Edinburgh Monthly Magazine and Constable's Magazine, in 1817. He married Margaret Brown on July 19 in that year and published his first book of poems, The Autumnal Excursion, in 1819. When he was 30… Read more

    Literary Period: Romantic
  • Prior, Matthew 1664 - 1721

    Literary Period: Augustan
  • Procter, Adelaide 1825 - 1864

    Pseudonym
    Berwick, Mary
    Literary Period: Victorian
  • Puttenham, George 1529 - 1591

    Edmund Bolton attributed The Arte of English Poesie, published anonymously, to George Puttenham in Hypercritica (composed by Bolton in 1621, published in 1722). Puttenham was the nephew of Sir Thomas Elyot, the maker of the first Latin-English dictionary. Little else is known of Puttenham's life or works.

    Literary Period: Elizabethan
  • Quarles, Francis 1592 - 1644

    Literary Period: Caroline
  • Matt Rader is a Canadian poet, editor, and instructor. He's the author of three critically aclaimed books of poetry: A Doctor Pedalled Her Bicycle Over the River Arno (House of Anansi Press, 2011), Living Things (Nightwood Editions, 2008), and Miraculous Hours (Nightwood Editions, 2005). 

    He lives in the Comox Valley on Vancouver Island, British Columbia.

     

    Bibliography

    Poetry:… Read more

    Literary Period: Postmodern
  • Radford, Dollie 1858 - 1920

    Dollie Radford, born in London in 1858 as Caroline Maitland, married fellow poet Ernest Radford in 1883 and published poems as well as fiction for both adults and children until 1910. They had three children, Hester, Margaret, and Maitland. In 1920, she died, a year after Ernest.

    Richardson, Leeanne Marie. "Naturally Radical: the Subversive Poetics of Dollie Radford." Victorian Poetry 38:1 (2000): 109-24.… Read more
    Literary Period: Edwardian
  • Ralegh, Sir Walter 1552 - 1618

    Nicholls, Mark and Penry Williams. "Ralegh, Sir Walter (1554–1618)." Oxford Dictionary of National Biography. Ed. H. C. G. Matthew and Brian Harrison. Oxford: OUP, 2004.
    Literary Period: Elizabethan
  • Born September 5, 1861, Walter Alexander Raleigh received his education at the City of London School, Edinburgh Academy, University College London, and King's College Cambridge. His academic appointments were as Professor of English Literature at the Mohammedan Anglo-Oriental College in Aligarh (1885-87), Professor of Modern Literature at the University College Liverpool (1890-1900), Chair of English Language and… Read more

    Literary Period: Georgian
  • Ramsay, Allan 1686 - 1758

    Literary Period: Augustan
  • Randolph, Thomas 1605 - 1635

    Kelliher, W. H. "Randolph, Thomas (bap. 1605, d. 1635)." Oxford Dictionary of National Biography. Online ed. Ed. Lawrence Goldman. Oxford: OUP, 2004.
    Literary Period: Jacobean
  • Born in 1823, William Brighty Rands published several volumes of children's literature anonymously and contribuetd to periodicals under various pseudonyms, especially Matthew Browne, Henry Holbeach, and T. Talker. He worked as a reporter in the House of Commons and died in 1882. His major publications are

    [Browne, Matthew] Chaucer's England (London: Hurst and Blackett, 1869). Lilliput Levee (1864)… Read more
    Literary Period: Victorian
  • Rankin, Jeremiah Eames. Gospel Temperance Hymnal. 1878. --. Gospel Bells. 1883. --. German-English Lyrics, Sacred and Secular. 1897.
    Literary Period: Realistic
  • Inventor, civil engineer, and molecular physicist, William John Macquorn Rankine was born July 5, 1820, in Edinburgh. After he was educated at the University of Edinburgh, he became surveyor on waterworks and railways in Dublin and Drogheda in Ireland and later for the Caledonian Railway. During this time he made valuable contributions to the understanding of axle fatigue. From 1848, Rankine dedicated himself to study… Read more

    Literary Period: Victorian
  • John Reibetanz has published five collections of poetry. The most recent, Mining for Sun, was shortlisted for the ReLit Poetry Award in 2001. He was awarded First Prize in the Petra Kenney Poetry Competition in 2003. In addition to poetry, his publications include essays on Elizabethan drama and on modern and contemporary poetry, along with a book on King Lear and translations of modern German poetry. He is a… Read more

    Literary Period: Unknown
  • Literary Period: Modern
  • Born October 7, 1849, James Whitcomb Riley gave up formal education in Greenfield Academy, Indiana, early to do art and make a living however he could, as by sign-painting, one-man stand-up comedy, and medicine shows at home and on the road. He then turned to journalism, first in Greenfield, and afterwards with the Anderson Democrat and the Indianapolis Journal from 1877 to 1885, by 1879 as its resident verse-humorist… Read more

    Literary Period: Unknown
  • Rimbaud, Arthur 1854 - 1891

    Arthur Rimbaud (1854-1891) was a youthful prodigy. He began writing poetry in his early teens and, after running away from home, met Verlaine who took him under his wing. All of Rimbaud's poetry was composed before he reached the age of twenty, when he gave up writing for the life of an adventurer. In his most advanced poetry, Rimbaud abandons logic for suggestion. Disconnected series of evocative words or phrases are… Read more

    Literary Period: Unknown
  • Charles G. D. Roberts was born on January 10, 1860, in Douglas, New Brunswick, and grew up near the Tantramar marshes by Sackville. Educated at Fredericton Collegiate School from 1874 to 1876, and at the University of New Brunswick from 1876 to 1879, Roberts quickly published his first book of poetry, Orion, and Other Poems (Philadelphia: Lippincott, 1880; PS 8485 .O22 O7). He married Mary Fenety that same year, and… Read more

    Literary Period: Modern
  • Heaney, Frances Gale. Theodore Goodridge Roberts. University of New Brunswick, 1960. Northland Lyrics: William Carman Roberts, Theodore Roberts & Elizabeth Roberts Macdonald. Ed. Charles G.D. Roberts. Boston: Small, Maynard, 1899. Roberts, Theodore Goodridge. The Leather Bottle. Toronto: Ryerson Press, 1934. Internet Archive. --.The Lost Shipmate. Toronto: Ryerson Press, 1926. --.Seven Poems.… Read more
    Literary Period: Modern
  • Robertson, James. Arachnia, Occasional Verses. Ed. A. J. Robertson. London: Macmillan, 1904. --. Sermon Preached in Haileybury College Chapel March 25th, 1888. Hertford: S. Austin & Sons, 1888.
    Literary Period: Unknown
  • Literary Period: Unknown
  • Edwin Arlington Robinson was born on Dec. 22, 1869, at Head Tide in Maine and until 1897 lived at the family home in Gardiner, Maine, aside from several years as a student at Harvard University. For the rest of his life he moved in New York and devoted his life to writing poetry. Robinson earned a small living first as a subway inspector and then in the city's customs office. He resided in rooms at boarding houses in… Read more

    Literary Period: Modern
  • Robinson, Mary 1758 - 1800

    Pseudonym
    Perdita, Bramble, Tabitha
    Levy, Martin J. "Robinson, Mary [Perdita] (1756/1758?–1800)." Oxford Dictionary of National Biography. Ed. H. C. G. Matthew and Brian Harrison. Oxford: OUP, 2004.
    Literary Period: Romantic
  • Roscoe, William 1753 - 1831

    William Roscoe was born March 8, 1753, in Liverpool. In 1774 he became an attorney and during his long life proved a great supporter of the city and its arts. Of the several volumes of poetry that he published, some on the slavery trade, others on Liverpool and its environs, only one poem, The Butterfly's Ball and the Grasshopper's Feast, which he wrote for his son Robert, had lasting popularity. It first appeared in… Read more

    Literary Period: Romantic
  • Alexander Macgregor Rose was born August 17, 1846, in Tomantoul, Banffshire. He graduated from the University of Aberdeen in 1867 and became, in 1870, Master of the Free Church School in Gairloch, Rossshire. After returning to Aberdeen to study Divinity from 1871, he was ordained on Sept. 9, 1875, and became minister at the Free Church of Evie and Rendall, Orkney. Bankrupt, and in disgrace, Rose left Scotland, his… Read more

    Literary Period: Victorian
  • Rosenberg, Isaac 1890 - 1918

    Stallworthy, Jon. "Rosenberg, Isaac (1890–1918)." Oxford Dictionary of National Biography. Ed. H. C. G. Matthew and Brian Harrison. Oxford: OUP, 2004.
    Literary Period: Edwardian
  • Pseudonym
    Alleyne, Ellen
    Literary Period: Victorian
  • Bullen, J. B. "Rossetti, Dante Gabriel (1828–1882)." Oxford Dictionary of National Biography. Ed. H. C. G. Matthew and Brian Harrison. Oxford: OUP, 2004.
    Literary Period: Victorian
  • Rosemarie Rowley was born in Dublin in 1942. After a spell working in the Agricultural Institute in Dublin, which she left for ecological reasons, she went to England to work for the BBC and as a schoolteacher in Birmingham. She attended Trinity College, Dublin, for her first degree in English, Irish, and Philosophy, graduating with a Distinction in English in the late 'sixties. Opportunities for employment were few… Read more

    Literary Period: Modern
  • Love, Harold. "Sackville, Charles, sixth earl of Dorset and first earl of Middlesex (1643–1706)." Oxford Dictionary of National Biography. Ed. H. C. G. Matthew and Brian Harrison. Oxford: OUP, 2004. Online ed. Ed. Lawrence Goldman. Jan. 2008.
    Literary Period: Restoration
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    Zim, Rivkah. "Sackville, Thomas, first Baron Buckhurst and first earl of Dorset (c.1536–1608)." Oxford Dictionary of National Biography. Ed. H. C. G. Matthew and Brian Harrison. Oxford: OUP, 2004. Online ed. Ed. Lawrence Goldman. Oct. 2009.
    Literary Period: Tudor
  • Sandburg, Carl 1878 - 1967

    Carl Sandburg's parents were Swedish immigrants who settled in Galesburg, Illinois, where he was born. After a time of manual labour, Sandburg spent four years (without obtaining a degree) at its Lombard College and went on to a career in journalism in Chicago as associate editor of System and editorial writer for the Daily News. He published eight volumes of poems--his Chicago poems quickly made him a popular bard in… Read more

    Literary Period: Modern
  • Margaret E. Sangster was born Margaret Munson on February 22, 1838, in New Rochelle, New York, and attended schools in Paterson, New Jersey, and Brooklyn, New York. She gave up an early career in writing when she married George Sangster in 1858. At his death in 1871, she returned to writing, becoming associate editor of Hearth and Home. In 1875, she edited "Christian at Work" and then the "Christian Intelligencer," in… Read more

    Literary Period: Realistic
  • Santayana, George 1863 - 1952

    Born Augustin Nicholas Ruiz de Santayana y Borais on December 16, 1863, George Santayana was raised for eight years in Avila before moving with his family to America. He lived in Boston and was educated at Harvard University, from which he graduated in 1889 with his doctorate and joined its faculty. After the publication of his The Life of Reason (1905-06), Santayana became a full professor, but he reputedly left the… Read more

    Literary Period: Modern
  • Sargent, Epes 1813 - 1880

    Gale, Robert L. "Sargent, Epes." American National Biography Online. American Council of Learned Societies, 2000.
    Literary Period: American Renaissance
  • Sarton, May 1912 - 1995

    Hunting, Constance. "May Sarton". Dictionary of Literary Biography, Volume 48: American Poets, 1880-1945, Second Series. A Bruccoli Clark Layman Book. Edited by Peter Quartermain, University of British Columbia. The Gale Group, 1986. pp. 376-386. Sarton, May. Encounter in April. Boston, MA: Houghton, 1937. PS3537 .A832 E UNIV Laidlaw Library at University College. --. Inner Landscape. Boston, MA: Houghton,… Read more
    Literary Period: Modern
  • Sassoon, Siegfried 1886 - 1967

    Hart-Davis, Rupert. "Sassoon, Siegfried Loraine (1886–1967)." Oxford Dictionary of National Biography. Ed. H. C. G. Matthew and Brian Harrison. Oxford: OUP, 2004. Online ed. Ed. Lawrence Goldman. Oct. 2009.
    Literary Period: Unknown
  • Born in Ottawa in 1862, educated at Smith's Falls, Ontario, and Stanstead, Quebec, Scott obtained a position at 17 years old as a clerk in the Indian Branch of the federal government and before his retirement in 1932 had risen to become deputy superintendent of the Department of Indian Affairs.  From 1893 to 1947 he published nine volumes of poetry:

    The Magic House and Other Poems. Ottawa: J. Drurie, 1893. B-… Read more
    Literary Period: Georgian
  • Djwa, Sandra. Politics of the Imagination: A Life of F.R. Scott. Toronto: McClelland and Stewart, 1987. Richardson, Keith. "Scott, Francis Reginald (Frank)." The Canadian Encyclopedia. Scott, F.R. The Collected Poems of F. R. Scott. Toronto: McClelland and Stewart, 1981. --. The Dance is One.… Read more
    Literary Period: Modern
  • Frederick George Scott, known as "the poet of the Laurentians," was born in Montreal in 1861 and educated at Bishop's College, Lennoxville (B.A., 1881; M.A., 1884). Made an Anglican priest in 1886, he become rector of St. Matthew's Church in Quebec City. He published 13 books of poetry in his lifetime: Justin and Other Poems (1885), The Soul's Quest and Other Poems (1888), My Lattice and Other Poems (1894), The… Read more

    Literary Period: Georgian
  • Scott, Sir Walter 1771 - 1832

    Hewitt, David. "Scott, Sir Walter (1771–1832)." Oxford Dictionary of National Biography. Ed. H. C. G. Matthew and Brian Harrison. Oxford: OUP, 2004. Online ed. Ed. Lawrence Goldman. May 2008.
    Literary Period: Romantic
  • Macpherson, Jay. "Scriven, Joseph Medlicott." Dictionary of Canadian Biography Online. Vol. XI (1881-1890). University of Toronto / Université Laval, 2000. Scriven, Joseph Medlicott. Hymns and other Verses. Peterborough, Ontario, 1869.
    Literary Period: Victorian
  • Seaman, Owen 1861 - 1936

    Mellini, Peter. "Seaman, Sir Owen, baronet (1861–1936)." Oxford Dictionary of National Biography. Ed. H. C. G. Matthew and Brian Harrison. Oxford: OUP, 2004. Online ed. Ed. Lawrence Goldman. May 2006.
    Literary Period: Georgian
  • Edmund Hamilton Sears was born on April 6, 1810, and educated at Union College in Schenectady, New York, 1831-34, and Harvard Divinity School, from which he graduated in 1837. He became a missionary for the American Unitarian Association, a minister for congregations in Wayland and Lancaster, Massachusetts, and editor, from 1859 to 1871, of The Monthly Religious Magazine. Married to Ellen Bacon, with four children, he… Read more

    Literary Period: American Renaissance
  • Love, Harold. "Sedley, Sir Charles, fifth baronet (bap. 1639, d. 1701)." Oxford Dictionary of National Biography. Ed. H. C. G. Matthew and Brian Harrison. Oxford: OUP, 2004. Online ed. Ed. Lawrence Goldman. Oct. 2005.
    Literary Period: Restoration
  • Seeger, Alan 1888 - 1916

    Born in New York and Harvard-educated in Italian studies, Seeger edited the Harvard Monthly in 1906. He had travelled to Paris and settled in his Latin Quarter in 1912, where he enlisted in the Foreign Legion and served in World War I. He was killed at Belloy-en-Santerre and received posthumously the Croix de Guerre and the Medaille Militaire. William Archer brought out an edition of his collected poems in 1917, and… Read more

    Literary Period: Modern
  • Service, Robert W. 1874 - 1958

    Klinck, Carl F. Robert Service. McGraw-Hill Ryerson, 1976. Service, Robert W. --. Songs of a Sourdough. Toronto: William Briggs, 1907. --. Ballads of a Cheechako. Toronto: William Briggs, 1909. --. Rhymes of a Rolling Stone. Toronto: William Briggs, 1912. --. Rhymes of a Red Cross Man. Toronto: William Briggs, 1916. --. Ballads of a Bohemian. Toronto: G.J. McLeod, 1921. --. Twenty Bath-Tub… Read more
    Literary Period: Edwardian
  • Holland, Peter. "Shakespeare, William (1564–1616)." Oxford Dictionary of National Biography. Ed. H. C. G. Matthew and Brian Harrison. Oxford: OUP, 2004. Online ed. Ed. Lawrence Goldman. Jan. 2011. Internet Shakespeare Editions. Ed. Michael Best. Victoria, British Columbia: University of Victoria, 1996-.
    Literary Period: Tudor
  • Pseudonym
    Hermit of Marlow
    O'Neill, Michael. "Shelley, Percy Bysshe (1792–1822)." Oxford Dictionary of National Biography. Ed. H. C. G. Matthew and Brian Harrison. Oxford: OUP, 2004. Online ed. Ed. Lawrence Goldman. Jan. 2009.
    Literary Period: Romantic