Poets

Eustache Deschamps (1346(?)-1406) was the leading French poet of his day. He was a Champenois by birth but spent most of his life in the service of Charles V and Charles VI under whom he held a number of important posts. He was… Read more

Pier Giorgio Di Cicco, born in Arezzo, Italy, in 1949, grew up in Montreal, Toronto, and Baltimore, and then moved to Toronto in 1967, where he studied as an undergraduate at the University of Toronto until the early 1970s. In his first career, as poet and literary editor, he paused after his eleventh collection of poems, Virgin Science (1986). Two years earlier he had taken vows as a brother in the Order of St.… Read more

Charles Dickens was born on Feb. 7, 1812, in Portsea and grew up in Chatham. At twelve years old, his father was jailed for debt, and the entire family suffered poverty and humiliation. Young Dickens began working as a clerk in legal offices and soon, by studying shorthand, became a court reporter, eventually in the House of Commons, for various newspapers including The Morning Chronicle. Then he moved into writing.… Read more

For more poems, see the Academy of America Poets

Charlotte Eliza Dixon published at least three volumes of poems:

Jeramy Dodds is 2011--12 Canadian Writer-in-Residence at the University of Calgary.

Robert Dodsley wrote both Servitude (1729) and The Muse in Livery (1732) while working for the Hon. Mrs. Lowther. Later he devised several plays, The Toyshop (1735), The Blind Beggar of Bethnal Green (1741), and Cleone (1758). His chief fame comes from publishing and selling, at his shop the Tully's Head in Pall Mall, literature by Mark Akenside, Thomas Gray, Oliver Goldsmith, Samuel Johnson, Alexander Pope, Edward… Read more

All the poems by Donne included here, except "The First Anniversary" (1611) and "The Second Anniversary" (1612), were first published, after Donne's death, in the 1633 or 1635 editions of Poems, by J. D. Most of the non-religious poems may have been written by the time he was twenty-five.

Mark Doty was born in Maryville, Tennessee, in 1953, and went through high school in Tucson, Arizona, where he entered the University of Arizona. In 1971 he married Ruth Dawson, a poet, and took a B.A. at Drake University in Des Moines, Iowa, at which he also taught for one year. During these years, he made his life's work poetry. He co-authored three chapbooks with her, which he no longer credits as his own work.… Read more

The standard edition of Drayton's works is by J. W. Hebel, K. Tillotson, and B. H. Newdigate (5 vols.; Oxford: Blackwell, 1931-41). The Poems are edited by E. J. M. Buxton ("Muses' Library" 2 vols., London: Routledge and Kegan Paul, 1953).

An immigrant to Montreal from Ireland, Drummond graduated with an M.D. from McGill University in 1884 and started practising in the eastern townships (along the St. Lawrence River) to which his dialect poems so often refer. In 1888 he moved to Montreal. It was ten years later, well after his marriage to May Isobel Harvey, that Drummond published his first book of poetry, The Habitant (1897). His preface includes the… Read more

The texts used are based on Douglas Grant's Reynard Library edition (Hart-Davis, 1952). The specific edition used by Professor Grant is given for each work here. The spelling has been modernized, but not the punctuation. Note that the punctuation is generally rhetorical rather than syntactical.

Joachim Du Bellay (1522-1560) was a member of the group of poets known as the "Pléiade." He was the author of the celebrated Defense et Illustration de la langue francoyse (1549), which sought to break with mediaeval traditions mainly by following the example of the best Greek and Latin poetry. Du Bellay himself wrote intensely personal lyric poetry, much of which was inspired by nostalgia and disillusionment during a… Read more

Born in Dayton, Ohio, and raised by his mother, Paul Dunbar stood out as the only black student in Central High School, the class poet, the editor of the school newspaper, and the president of its literary club, the Philomathean Society. After some years of menial work, and without having been able to study at college, Dunbar published his first book of verse, Oak and Ivy (1893) and met Frederick Douglass in Chicago,… Read more

Romesh Chunder Dutt was born in Calcutta on August 13, 1848, and received his education there and at University College and the Middle Temple, London. He was called to the bar and in 1869 passed the examination for entrance to the Indian civil service, in which he served -- as the only native Indian in the nineteenth century to rise to executive authority -- from 1871 to 1897. His positions included collector of… Read more

Toru Dutt was born on March 4, 1856, in Rambagan, 12 Manicktollah Street, Calcutta, to father Govin Chunder Dutt and mother Kshetramoni, a family that become Christians in 1862. Toru was the youngest child, arriving after sister Aru and brother Abju (who died in 1865). Their cousin was the poet and civil servant Romesh Chunder Dutt. Both girls honed their English and French during a four-year residence in England and… Read more

For one poem by Bob Dylan, see The Poetry Foundation

Mary Ann Evans was born on Nov. 22, 1819, near Nuneaton, Warwickshire, to Robert Evans and Christiana Pearson. She was educated at Nuneaton and Coventry (1841-). Her first publication was a poem in the Christian Observer (Jan. 1840). After leaving the Church, she moved to London in 1849 and edited The Westminster from 1851 to 1853. From 1854 to his death in 1878, she lived with George Henry Lewes, editor of the Leader… Read more

Thomas Stearns Eliot was born on September 26, 1888, in St. Louis, Missouri. He received his education at Smith Academy there, at Milton Academy in Massachusetts, and at Harvard University, where he obtained a B.A. and M.A. in philosophy (1909-10) and taught briefly in 1913-14. His Ph.D. thesis on F. H. Bradley was approved in 1916 after some years of study abroad -- at the Sorbonne in Paris, in Munich, and at Merton… Read more

Ralph Waldo Emerson was born on May 25, 1803, in Boston and attended Boston Latin School from 1812 to 1817, and Harvard from then to 1821. His first career, as a school-teacher, lasted four years, after which he was licensed to preach as a Unitarian. In 1829 he was ordained minister of Second Church in Boston and married his first wife, Ellen Louisa Tucker. After her death from consumption in 1831 Emerson left the… Read more

Daniel Decatur Emmett was born in Mt. Vernon, Ohio, on October 29, 1815. After working in newspaper offices, and serving in the army, Emmett played in circus bands. Emmett organized the first black minstrel company, the Virginia Minstrels, in New York in 1843; he played the violin, and his band was a great success. From 1857 to 1865 he worked with the Bryant Minstrels, during which time he wrote "Dixie's Land" and… Read more

George Essex Evans, born on June 18, 1863, in London, emigrated to Australia in 1881 and became District Registrar, Toowoomba. He published three volumes of verse, The Repentance of Magdalene Despar (1891), Loraine and Other Verses (1898), and The Secret Key and Other Verses (1906). He and Mrs. Blanche Hopkins married and had one son, Bowen. There is a monument in Webb Park, Toowoomba, to Evans, who died on November… Read more

Born in Grahamstown, South Africa, in 1885, Kingsley Fairbridge was educated at St. Andrew's College, but at eleven, his family moved to Umtali in the eastern highlands of Rhodesia. He was a Rhodes scholar at Oxford, where he graduated with a first from Exeter College in October 1908. In the following year he published Veld Verse and Other Lines. His life work was the founding of the "Society for the Furtherance of… Read more

Born October 23, 1786, Barron Field married Jane Carncroft in 1816 and became Supreme Court Judge, Sydney, in February 1817. He published the first book of verse in Australia in 1819.

Eugene Field was born in St. Louis, Missouri in 1850, educated in Monson and Williamstown, Mass., at Knox College (Galesburg, Illinois), and at the University of Missouri. His career in journalism saw him write for newspapers in St. Louis, Kansas City, Denver, and finally--from 1883 until his death in 1895--Chicago, where he authored a column called "Sharps and Flats" for The Chicago Daily News. He married Julia… Read more

Born November 5, 1884, in London, James Elroy Flecker received his education at Uppingham and Trinity College, Oxford. He joined the Consular Service in 1908, was posted to Constantinople in 1910, and he married Helle Skiadaressi, a Greek. From 1911 to 1913 Flecker served as vice-consul at Beirut. Suffering from tuberculosis, he moved to Switzerland where he died January 3, 1915. Influenced both by his classical… Read more