Tagged: poetry

Robert Louis Stevenson poetry offers vivid and compelling images of childhood, travel, and more.

Robert Louis Stevenson Poetry

Robert Louis Stevenson, in addition to his famous prose works, also wrote poetry ranging from children’s nursery rhymes to poems of travel and adventure. Here are a few samples for your enjoyment. From A...

As Kingfishers Catch Fire by Gerard Manley Hopkins

As Kingfishers Catch Fire

As Kingfishers Catch Fire by Gerard Manley Hopkins As kingfishers catch fire, dragonflies dráw fláme; As tumbled over rim in roundy wells Stones ring; like each tucked string tells, each hung bell’s Bow swung...

Anne Bradstreet was an early member of the Massachusetts town of Ipswich.

Anne Bradstreet Biography

Anne Bradstreet was the first American Puritan writer; the first writer published in America; the first female poet published in both England and America.

William Blake by Thomas Philips

William Blake Biography (1911)

The William Blake biography from the 1911 Encyclopedia Brittanica offers an opinionated glimpse of the life and style of author and artist, William Blake.

Cultivating a Pleasant Speaking Voice

When teaching the art of recitation or rhetoric, we sometimes forget to teach one element essential for confident presentation: a pleasant, well-modulated speaking voice. A timid, squeaky, mumbling, or breathy voice is not only be tiring to use, but can be a social and business liability. Here are a few ideas for cultivating a pleasant, well-modulated speaking voice.

Engraving of George Herbert, poet.

George Herbert Biography

George Herbert (1593–1633) wrote some of the most beautiful devotional poetry in the English language. Learn more about this poet’s life and work.

Edgar Lee Masters, as photographed in 1915.

Edgar Lee Masters Biography

What did contemporary scholars think of Edgar Lee Masters (1868-1950) during his lifetime? Here’s an interesting biography and analysis published in 1918, written by popular Yale professor William Lyon Phelps. Edgar Lee Masters was...

Robert Frost, American poet

Robert Frost Resources

Robert Frost Resources Robert Lee Frost (1874 – 1963) was a highly-regarded American poet known for realistic depictions of New England rural life as well as his use of American colloquial speech. His work used homespun...

Fitzgerald Audio Recordings

F. Scott Fitzgerald Audio Recordings Listen to these 1940s recordings of F. Scott Fitzgerald reading and reciting famous literature — he has a magnificent, magical voice that seems to give insight into his works...

Christina Rossetti was an English poet best known for "In the Bleak Midwinter" and "Goblin Market."

Christina Rossetti Biography

Christina Rossetti Biography Christina Georgina Rossetti (1830 – 1894) was an English poet who wrote a variety of romantic, devotional, and children’s poems. She is famous for writing the words to the Christmas carol In the Bleak Midwinter. The Life...

Portrait of William Butler Yeats by John Singer Sargent.

William Butler Yeats Poetry

William Butler Yeats (1865 – 1939) was an Irish Symbolist poet, as well as a two-term Irish Senator. He was a master of traditional poetry forms, and is widely considered one of the most...

Una and the Lion from Edmund Spenser's The Faerie Queene- {{PD-US}} – published in the US before 1923 and public domain in the US.

Spenser Timeline

What happened during Faerie Queene author Edmund Spenser’s life? This Spenser timeline covers the years from Spenser’s birth in 1552 to his death in 1599.

T.S. Eliot and Virginia Woolf were friends who influenced each other's works.

T. S. Eliot Biography

This biography of T.S. Eliot comes from the Yale Modernism Lab, where you’ll find a wealth of resources about modernist writers in the years 1914-1926. You can view their original works and find out...

George Orwell as he faced the world in 1936.

George Orwell Resources

Would you like to learn more about George Orwell, the author of Animal Farm and Nineteen Eighty-Four? George Orwell (1903-1950) was the pseudonym of Eric Arthur Blair, an English novelist whose work is known for...

Ralph Waldo Emerson was an American Transcendentalist poet and writer.

Ralph Waldo Emerson Biography

Biography of Ralph Waldo Emerson (1803-1882) by Dr. Ann Woodlief Ralph Waldo Emerson is truly the center of the American transcendental movement, setting out most of its ideas and values in a little book, Nature,...

Richard Austin recites Gerard Manley Hopkins' poetry all over the world.

Richard Austin Recites Hopkins’ Poetry

Richard Austin Recites Hopkins’ Poetry Richard Austin grew up in the same corner of England as Gerard Manley Hopkins. Thus blessed with the correct native accent, he now recites Hopkins’ poetry all over the...

Pied Beauty by Gerard Manley Hopkins

Pied Beauty by Gerard Manley Hopkins GLORY be to God for dappled things— For skies of couple-colour as a brinded cow; For rose-moles all in stipple upon trout that swim: Fresh-firecoal chestnut-falls; finches’ wings;...

Mark Twain, as photographed by A.F. Bradley, c. 1907, from the Library of Congress.

Mark Twain Resources Index

Resources for Mark Twain (1835-1910) Samuel Langhorne Clemens (1835 – 1910), better known by his pen name Mark Twain, was an American writer, humorist, entrepreneur, publisher, and lecturer. His best-known novels include The Adventures...

Edgar Allan Poe, from a 1904 daguerrotype.

Edgar Allan Poe Resources

Many writers in the American canon have written both poetry and prose; few, however, are equally known for both. Edgar Allan Poe was one such writer. Indeed, it is almost as difficult to find...

A E Housman Poetry

Alfred Edward Housman (1859 – 1936), usually known as A. E. Housman, was an English classical scholar and poet. His cycle of poems, A Shropshire Lad evoke the dooms and disappointments of youth in the...