Alfred, Lord Tennyson

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The Right Honourable
The Lord Tennyson
FRS

1869 Carbon print by Julia Margaret Cameron

6 August 1809
Born Somersby, Lincolnshire
United Kingdom
6 October 1892 (aged 83)
Died Haslemere, Surrey
United Kingdom
Occupation Poet laureate

Influences[show]
Alfred Tennyson, 1st Baron Tennyson, FRS (6 August 1809 – 6 October 1892) was
Poet Laureate of the United Kingdom during much of Queen Victoria's reign and
remains one of the most popular poets in the English language.

Tennyson excelled at penning short lyrics, "In the valley of Cauteretz", "Break,
Break, Break", "The Charge of the Light Brigade", "Tears, Idle Tears" and "Crossing
the Bar". Much of his verse was based on classical mythological themes, such as
Ulysses, although In Memoriam A.H.H. was written to commemorate his best friend
Arthur Hallam, a fellow poet and fellow student at Trinity College, Cambridge, who
was engaged to Tennyson's sister, but died from a cerebral hemorrhage before they
were married. Tennyson also wrote some notable blank verse including Idylls of the
King, Ulysses, and Tithonus. During his career, Tennyson attempted drama, but his
plays enjoyed little success.

Tennyson wrote a number of phrases that have become commonplaces of the English
language, including: "Nature, red in tooth and claw", "'Tis better to have loved and
lost / Than never to have loved at all", "Theirs not to reason why, / Theirs but to do
and die", "My strength is as the strength of ten, / Because my heart is pure",
"Knowledge comes, but Wisdom lingers", and "The old order changeth, yielding
place to new". He is the second most frequently quoted writer in The Oxford
Dictionary of Quotations after Shakespeare.[1]

Felicia Hemans
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Felicia Hemans

Born 25 September 1793

 Liverpool, England
16 May 1835
Died
Dublin, Ireland
Occupation Poet
Nationality British

Felicia Hemans (25 September 1793 – 16 May 1835) was an English poet.

Contents
[hide]

• 1 Early life and works

• 2 Later life
• 3 Legacy
• 4 Further reading

• 5 External links

[edit] Early life and works

She was born Felicia Dorothea Browne in Liverpool, a granddaughter of the

Venetian consul in that city. Her father's business soon brought the family to
Denbighshire in North Wales, where she spent her youth. They made their home near
Abergele and St. Asaph (Flintshire), and it is clear that she came to regard herself as
Welsh by adoption, later referring to Wales as "Land of my childhood, my home and
my dead". Her first poems, dedicated to the Prince of Wales, were published in
Liverpool in 1808, when she was only fourteen, arousing the interest of no less a
person than Percy Bysshe Shelley, who briefly corresponded with her. She quickly
followed them up with "England and Spain" [1808] and "The domestic affections",
published in 1812, the year of her marriage to Captain Alfred Hemans, an Irish army
officer some years older than herself. The marriage took her away from Wales, to
Daventry in Northamptonshire until 1814.

During their first six years of marriage, Felicia gave birth to five sons, including
Charles Isidore Hemans, and then the couple separated. Marriage had not, however,
prevented her from continuing her literary career, with several volumes of poetry
being published by the respected firm of John Murray in the period after 1816,
beginning with "The Restoration of the works of art to Italy" (1816) and "Modern
Greece" (1817). "Tales and historic scenes" was the collection which came out in
1819, the year of their separation.

William Wordsworth
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For the Scottish composer, see William Wordsworth (composer).
William Wordsworth

Portrait of William Wordsworth by Benjamin Robert Haydon (NPG).

7 April 1770
Born Wordsworth House, Cockermouth,
England
23 April 1850 (aged 80)
Died
Cumberland, England
Occupation Poet
Genres Poetry
Literary
Romanticism
movement
Lyrical Ballads, Poems in Two Volumes,
Notable work(s)
The Excursion

William Wordsworth (7 April 1770 – 23 April 1850) was a major English Romantic
poet who, with Samuel Taylor Coleridge, helped to launch the Romantic Age in
English literature with the 1798 joint publication Lyrical Ballads.

Wordsworth's magnum opus is generally considered to be The Prelude, a

semiautobiographical poem of his early years which he revised and expanded a
number of times. It was posthumously titled and published, prior to which it was
generally known as the poem "to Coleridge." Wordsworth was Britain's Poet Laureate
from 1843 until his death in 1850.

Robert Barr (writer)

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Robert Barr (writer)

September 16, 1849

Born
Glasgow, Scotland
October 21, 1912
Died
Woldingham, Surry, England,
Pen name Luke Smart
Educator, Journalist, Editor, Publisher and
Occupation
Novelist
Nationality Scottish

Robert Barr (September 16, 1849 – October 21, 1912[1]) was a British-Canadian
short story writer and novelist, born at Glasgow, Scotland.
Contents
[hide]

• 1 Early Years in Canada

• 2 London Years
• 3 Death
• 4 Works
• 5 Notes
• 6 References

• 7 External links

[edit] Early Years in Canada

Robert Barr emigrated with his parents to Upper Canada at age four and was educated
in Toronto at Toronto Normal School. Barr became a teacher and eventual headmaster
of the Central School, Windsor, Ontario, from which position he began to contribute
short stories - often based on first hand experiences - to the Detroit Free Press. In
1876 Barr quit his teaching position to become a staff member of that publication, in
which his contributions appeared under the signature "Luke Sharp." His adoption of
this nom de plume hearkened back to his days attending school in Toronto. At that
time he would pass on his daily commute a shop sign reading, "Luke Sharpe,
Undertaker", a combination of words Barr found amusing in their incongruity.[2] At
the Detroit Free Press Barr also rose through the ranks, eventually becoming news
editor.[3]

[edit] London Years

In 1881 Barr decided to "vamoose the ranch", as he put it, and removed to London, to
establish there the weekly English edition of the Free Press.[4] In 1892 he founded
The Idler magazine, choosing Jerome K. Jerome as his collaborator (wanting, as
Jerome said, "a popular name"). He retired from its co editorship in 1895. In London
of the 1890s Barr became a more prolific author - turning out a book a year - and on
familiar terms with many of the best-selling writers of his day, including Bret Harte
and Stephen Crane. Most of his literary output was of the crime genre, then quite in
vogue. When Arthur Conan Doyle's Sherlock Holmes stories were making their
literary splash Barr published in the Idler the first Holmes parody, "The Adventures
of Sherlaw Kombs" (1892), a spoof that was continued a decade later in another Barr
story, "The Adventure of the Second Swag" (1904). Despite the jibe at the growing
Holmes phenomenon Barr and Doyle remained on very good terms. Doyle describes
him in his memoirs Memories and Adventures as, "a volcanic Anglo - or rather Scot-
American, with a violent manner, a wealth of strong adjectives, and one of the kindest
natures underneath it all."[5]

[edit] Death

Robert Barr passed away after battling heart disease on October 21, 1912, at his home
in Woldingham, a small village to the southeast of London.[6]