Poets

Edmund Vance Cooke, popularly known as "the poet laureate of childhood," was born on June 5, 1866, in Port Dover, Ontario, Canada. He began working at 13-14 years old for the White Sewing Machine Co. factory and stayed there for 14 years until he became a self-employed poet and lecturer in 1893. His first book of poems, A Patch of Pansies, came out the next year. Four years later, he married Lilith Castleberry; and… Read more

Little is known of Dr. D. Cooper other than that six songs of his survive in manuscripts and a fragment of an early printed book of the period. For this text, see R. L. Greene, The Early English Carols (1935), no. 465; and John Stevens, Music & Poetry in the Early Tudor Court (London: Methuen, 1961): 408-09 (and Appendix B, nos. 34, 91, 152, 261, 284, 335, for his other works).

Born Rupert John Cornford in Cambridge on 27 December 1915, the eldest son of Francis Macdonald Cornford, a professor of… Read more

Adela Florence Cory was born on April 9, 1865, at Stoke Bishop, Gloucestershire, to Colonel Arthur Cory and Fanny Elizabeth Griffin. She was brought up by relations in England and attended school in Richmond near London while her father, in the Bombay army, was posted in Lahore, India. Once she reached sixteen, she joined him first in Lahore and then in Karachi, where she and her sisters, Isabell and Vivian (a… Read more

Educator (his tenure as Assistant Master of Eton College lasted from 1845 to 1872) and author of A Guide to Modern British History (New York: Holt, 1880-82), William Johnson became William Johnson Cory after his retirement. A brief biography appears in the third edition of Ionica, his translation of classical poems, as edited by Arthur C. Benson (London: G. Allen, 1905; PR 4507 C57I6 1905 Robarts Library). Francis… Read more

Dani Couture is a Toronto-based writer and editor. She is the author of two collections of poetry: Good Meat (Pedlar Press, 2006), and Sweet (Pedlar Press, 2010), which won the Relit Award for Poetry and was a finalist for the Trillium Book Award for Poetry. Her first novel, Algoma, was published by Invisible Publishing in 2011. Currently, she's the Literary Editor at This Magazine. 

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In a preface dated April 20, 1901, Craig introduces his one book of verse by explaining that it "possesses neither literary nor poetic merit" and that it "is published at the request of sundry friends of the author employed on the Beira and Mashonaland Railways" (7).

No other biographical information is available.

Born the daughter of a nonconformist minister in Stoke-on-Trent in Staffordshire, Dinah Mulock took her mother and siblings to London and supported them by writing novels, the most successful of which, John Halifax, Gentleman (1856), enabled her eventually to build Corner House in Shortlands, Kent, where she spent the rest of her life. She married George Lillie Craik, of the Macmillan publishing firm, in 1865; and… Read more

Born on November 1, 1871, in Newark, New Jersey, Stephen Crane grew up in Port Jervis and Asbury Park. Educated at the Hudson River Institute, Lafayette College, and Syracuse University until 1890, he did journalistic work and eked out a poor living as a writer until the publication of his The Red Badge of Courage in 1895, followed by a re-issue of Maggie: A Girl of the Streets a year later. He published only two… Read more

Adelaide Crapsey taught at Kemper Hall (1902-04), Miss Lowe's Preparatory School, Stamford, Conn. (1906-08), and Smith College (1911-12). She invented the quintain and died much too young for one with such astonishing skill as a poet.

Isabella Valancy Crawford was born in Dublin in 1850 (according to conjecture, on Dec. 25), the sixth child of Dr. Stephen Dennis Crawford and Sidney Scott Crawford. The family emigrated to Canada and settled in Paisley, Ontario, in 1857, where her father became the settlement's family doctor. An alcoholic who embezzled town funds, Crawford uprooted his family again in 1861 and moved to Lakefield in the Kawarthas,… Read more

Lynn Crosbie has a Ph.D. in English Literature from the University of Toronto and is a Toronto-based writer. The author of five collections of poems, most recently, Missing Children (McClelland and Stewart, 2003), Crosby is also an anthologist, editing The Girl Wants To: Women's Representations of Sex and the Body (Coach House: 1993), Click: Becoming Feminists (MacFarlane Walter & Ross: 1997), and Plush:5 Gay… Read more

Thomas William Hodgson Crosland was born in Leeds on July 21, 1865. He was among the most acerbic men of letters and journalists of his lifetime. An anti-Scottish Tory and Monarchist, a Methodist, Crosland earned his living as a Fleet Street reviewer, critic, and editor for journals like The Outlook, The Academy, and the Penny Illustrated Paper. A close friend of Lord Alfred Douglas, Crosland was notorious for his… Read more

For more poems, see the Academy of America Poets

Charles was born on 24 November 1394, the first surviving son of Louis d'Orléans and Valentina Visconti of Milan. The Duchess Valentina was banished from court in 1396 and as a result, Charles and his siblings were brought up in their father's multiple châteaux along the Loire. From an early age he was tutored by Nicolas Garbet, his father learned secretary; the young Charles proved himself to be an excellent Latinist… Read more

Daniel's Complete Works were edited by A. B. Grosart and published in five volumes, 1885-96. The Defense of Ryme and a selection of the poems were edited by A. C. Sprague (Harvard University Press, 1930).

E. R. "Bus" Davey grew up in London, Ontario. In 1943 he was posted to the Royal Air Force Banff Strike Wing (Scotland) as a member of the 404 squadron of the Royal Canadian Air Force. On October 2, 1944, piloting Beaufighter "Q" (#LV 189), Davey died as a result of a mid-air collision with Beaufighter F. "Amongst the effects of F/O Davey a copy of a poem, Extinction (The Airman's Prayer) was discovered. After the… Read more

Poet, translator, novelist, and man of letters, John Davidson spent the first part of his life as a teacher in Greenock, Glasgow, Perth, Crieff, and other places. In 1884 he married Margaret Macarthur, who bore him two sons. In 1899 he moved to London and earned a living by journalism. His second and third volumes of verse, Fleet Street Eclogues (1893), proved popular, established his reputation, and earned the… Read more

José-Maria de Heredia (1842-1905) was born in Cuba of a Spanish father and a French mother. Educated in France, he became the disciple and close friend of Leconte de Lisle. Like the latter, he cultivates erudition, impersonality, and perfection of form. Heredia excelled in sonnets, and these were made into a collection by him in 1893 under the tide Les Trophées.

Jean de La Fontaine (1621-1695) is the most widely read and the best loved of French classical writers. In France every school child studies his fables and leams some of them by heart. La Fontaine is a conscientious artist who also wrote longer poems and Contes et nouvelles en vers, and it is a mistake to think of him as writing primarily for children. Even in the fables, the apparently facile charm is a result of… Read more

Alphonse de Lamartine (1790-1869) was born of a noble family at Mâcon, where he spent a happy childhood with his mother and sisters. In October 1816 Lamartine visited Aix-les-Bains where he met Madame Julie Charles, who, as Elvire, was to inspire many of the poems in the famous Méditations poétiques. She was ill with tuberculosis, but it was agreed that they would meet again the next summer at the same spot. Lamartine… Read more

Leconte de Lisle (1818-1894) was born on Reunion Island off East Africa. He studied law in France but spent his life as a journalist and translator. Like Vigny, he is a pessimist, but he refuses to express his personal despair. He turns for inspiration to the classics and the Orient. In his cult of perfection of form with erudition, Leconte de Lisle had great influence on the younger poets of his day.

Alfred de Musset (1810-1857) belonged to a distinguished family. After brilliant studies, he became a popular member of fashionable society and began to write poetry and plays. The great event in Musset's life was an unhappy love affair with George Sand (1833-4), which inspired his most poignant works (the "Nuits" On ne badine fas avec l'amour, and so on) but left him broken in spirit.

Henri de Régnier (1864-1936) is the author of many novels and short stories as well as collections of poetry and essays on literary criticism. He began as a disciple of Leconte de Lisle and Heredia and later became one of the chiefs of the Symbolist movement. His poetry is notable for its delicate effects and the perfection of its form.

Pierre de Ronsard (1524-1585), who was the leader of the "Pléiade," is a poet of superlative technique and tremendous variety. After a brief career as a page in the royal household, cut short by an illness which left him deaf, Ronsard along with Du Bellay became a member of a group which studied Greek and Latin under the famous humanist, Dorat. In his Odes and the unsuccessful epic La Franciade, we see very clearly… Read more

Alfred de Vigny (1797-1863) was a rather austere man, proud of his noble birth and the restrictive demands of the military career which was traditional in his family. His poetry is philosophic and the lessons it teaches are stoic: nature is cruel or indifferent and man must accept his destiny unflinchingly; the thinker is isolated from his fellow-men but only through knowledge can we hope to strive for the best,… Read more

Henry Louis Vivian Derozio, described by P. Lal as a "Calcutta Eurasian of Portuguese Indian ancestry," was born on April 18, 1809, and educated in a private English-speaking school in the Dharmatala or (today) Esplanade area around the Shahid Minar in Calcutta. A journalist who contributed verse to the India Gazette and brought out a book of English poetry, The Fakeer of Jungheera in 1828, Derozio by that year had… Read more