LibriVox volunteers bring you 16 readings of Romance by Andrew Lang, probably best known as Edward Elgar's song My Love Dwelt in a Northern Land. Interestingly, Lang initially refused permission for his words to be used as lyrics, and Elgar's wife Alice wrote alternative words Afar, amidst the Sunny Isles for the song. However, Lang later relented and gave permission for his poem to be used. The poem was initially published in The Century Magazine, May 1882, and this is the version recorded here. Later collections of Lang's poetry omit the third verse. (Summary by Ruth Golding)
16 episodes
LibriVox volunteers bring you ten recordings of "The Wreck of the Hesperus” by Henry Wadsworth Longfellow,the Fortnightly Poem for August 31, 2014. May we each be spared from the wreck of pride on the reef of Norman's Woe. (Summary by MaryAnn).
10 episodes
Librivox volunteers bring you 11 recordings of Wynken, Blynken, and Nod by Eugene Field. This was the Fortnightly Poetry project for September 14-28, 2014."Wynken, Blynken, and Nod" is a popular poem for children written by American writer and poet Eugene Field and published on March 9, 1889. The original title was Dutch Lullaby.The poem is a fantasy bed-time story of three children sailing and fishing in the stars. Their boat is a wooden shoe. The little fishermen symbolize a sleepy child's blinking eyes and nodding head. Summary from Wikipedia.
11 episodes
Arthur Macy was a Nantucket boy of Quaker extraction. His name alone is evidence of this, for it is safe to say that a Macy, wherever found in the United States, is descended from that sturdy old Quaker who was one of those who bought Nantucket from the Indians, paid them fairly for it, treated them with justice, and lived on friendly terms with them. In many ways Arthur Macy showed that he was a Nantucketer and, at least by descent, a Quaker. He often used phrases peculiar to our island in the sea, and was given, in conversation at least, to similes which smacked of salt water. Almost the last time I saw him he said, "I'm coming round soon for a good long gam." (Summary from the Introduction to Poems by Arthur Macy)This was the fortnightly poem for March 13, 2015.
7 episodes
Ella Wheeler Wilcox was an American author and poet, who was considered a popular poet rather than a literary poet, in her poems she expresses sentiments of cheer and optimism in plainly written, rhyming verse. Her world view is expressed in the title of her poem "Whatever Is—Is Best", suggesting an echo of Alexander Pope's "Whatever is, is right."
None of Wilcox's works were included by F. O. Matthiessen in The Oxford Book of American Verse, but Hazel Felleman chose no fewer than fourteen of her poems for Best Loved Poems of the American People, while Martin Gardner selected "The Way Of The World" and "The Winds of Fate" for Best Remembered Poems.
She is frequently cited in anthologies of bad poetry, such as The Stuffed Owl: An Anthology of Bad Verse and Very Bad Poetry. - Summary by Wikipedia
6 episodes
Adelaide Anne Procter was an English poet and philanthropist. She worked prominently on behalf of unemployed women and the homeless, and was actively involved with feminist groups and journals. She became unhealthy, possibly due to her charity work, and died of tuberculosis at the age of 38.
Procter's literary career began when she was a teenager; her poems were primarily published in Charles Dickens's periodicals Household Words and All the Year Round and later published in book form. Her charity work and her conversion to Roman Catholicism appear to have strongly influenced her poetry, which deals most commonly with such subjects as homelessness, poverty, and fallen women.
Procter was the favourite poet of Queen Victoria. Her poetry went through numerous editions in the 19th century; Coventry Patmore called her the most popular poet of the day, after Alfred, Lord Tennyson. Her poems were set to music and made into hymns, and were published in the United States and Germany as well as in England. Nonetheless, by the early 20th century her reputation had diminished, and few modern critics have given her work attention. Those who have, however, argue that Procter's work is significant, in part for what it reveals about how Victorian women expressed otherwise repressed feelings. (summary by Wikipedia)
15 episodes
William Vaughn Moody was an American dramatist and poet. Author of The Great Divide, first presented under the title of The Sabine Woman at the Garrick Theatre in Chicago on April 12, 1906. Moody's poetic dramas included The Masque of Judgment (1900), The Fire Bringer (1904), and The Death of Eve (left undone at his death).
He taught English at Harvard and Radcliffe until 1895, when he went to Chicago where he was an instructor at the University of Chicago, and from 1901 to 1907 assistant professor of English and rhetoric. - Summary by Wikipedia
11 episodes
The editor of the volume Made in the Trenches includes these poignant notes:
Corporal Streets, in submitting these sonnets some months ago, wrote: "They express not only my feelings but the feelings of thousands of others who, like myself, are on the verge of departure from England."
Cpl. Streets, in a letter accompanying later poems, also wrote: "They were inspired while I was in the trenches, where I have been so busy that I have had little time to polish them. I have tried to picture some thoughts that pass through a man's brain when he dies. I may not see the end of the poems, but hope to live to do so. We soldiers have our views of life to express, though the boom of death is in our ears. We try to convey something of what we feel in this great conflict to those who think of us, and sometimes, alas! mourn our loss. We desire to let them know that in the midst of our keenest sadness for the joy of life we leave behind we go to meet death grim-lipped, clear-eyed, and resolute-hearted."
He didn't survive, killed in action on 1st July 1916. - Summary by Ruth Golding
15 episodes
Eugene Field, Sr. was an American writer, best known for his children's poetry and humorous essays.
Field first started publishing poetry in 1879, when his poem "Christmas Treasures" appeared in A Little Book of Western Verse. Over a dozen volumes of poetry followed and he became well known for his light-hearted poems for children, among the most famous of which are "Wynken, Blynken, and Nod" and "The Duel" (which is perhaps better known as "The Gingham Dog and the Calico Cat"). Equally famous is his poem about the death of a child, "Little Boy Blue". Field also published a number of short stories, including "The Holy Cross" and "Daniel and the Devil." - Summary by Wikipedia
8 episodes
George Eric Mackay was an English minor poet, now remembered as the sponging half-brother of Marie Corelli, the best-selling novelist. Mackay and Corelli, born Mary Mackay, were the children of Charles Mackay, by different mothers.
As a poet he is described as "execrable", and reliant on Corelli's promotion of his works. Mackay achieved some reputation in his time for Letters of a Violinist (1886). It sold 35,000 copies; he repaid Corelli's efforts by implying he wrote her novels. - Summary by Wikipedia
14 episodes
A popular poet rather than a literary poet, in her poems she expresses sentiments of cheer and optimism in plainly written, rhyming verse. Her world view is expressed in the title of her poem "Whatever Is—Is Best".
She made a very popular appearance during World War I in France, reciting her poem, The Stevedores ("Here's to the Army stevedores, lusty and virile and strong...") while visiting a camp of 9,000 US Army stevedores. (Wikipedia)
11 episodes
Thomas Hardy, OM was an English novelist and poet. A Victorian realist in the tradition of George Eliot, he was influenced both in his novels and in his poetry by Romanticism, especially William Wordsworth. Charles Dickens was another important influence. Like Dickens, he was highly critical of much in Victorian society, though Hardy focused more on a declining rural society. - Summary by Wikipedia
10 episodes
Rudyard Kipling was an English journalist, short-story writer, poet, and novelist.
Kipling was one of the most popular writers in the United Kingdom, in both prose and verse, in the late 19th and early 20th centuries. Henry James said: "Kipling strikes me personally as the most complete man of genius (as distinct from fine intelligence) that I have ever known." In 1907, at the age of 42, he was awarded the Nobel Prize in Literature, making him the first English-language writer to receive the prize, and its youngest recipient to date. He was also sounded out for the British Poet Laureateship and on several occasions for a knighthood, both of which he declined. - Summary by Wikipedia
11 episodes
The verses of Emily Dickinson belong emphatically to what Emerson long since called "the Poetry of the Portfolio,"—something produced absolutely without the thought of publication, and solely by way of expression of the writer's own mind.
A recluse by temperament and habit, literally spending years without setting her foot beyond the doorstep, and many more years during which her walks were strictly limited to her father's grounds, she habitually concealed her mind, like her person, from all but a very few friends; and it was with great difficulty that she was persuaded to print, during her lifetime, three or four poems. Yet she wrote verses in great abundance. (from the Introduction to Poems: Three Series, Complete, by Emily Dickinson)
13 episodes
John Clare was an English poet, the son of a farm labourer, who came to be known for his celebratory representations of the English countryside and his lamentation of its disruption. His poetry underwent a major re-evaluation in the late 20th century, and he is now often considered to be among the most important 19th-century poets. His biographer Jonathan Bate states that Clare was "the greatest labouring-class poet that England has ever produced. No one has ever written more powerfully of nature, of a rural childhood, and of the alienated and unstable self". - Summary by Wikipedia
13 episodes
The Willows is a parody on the verse of Edgar Allan Poe.
Francis Bret Harte was an American author and poet, best remembered for his short fiction featuring miners, gamblers, and other romantic figures of the California Gold Rush. In a career spanning more than four decades, he wrote poetry, fiction, plays, lectures, book reviews, editorials, and magazine sketches in addition to fiction. As he moved from California to the eastern U.S. to Europe, he incorporated new subjects and characters into his stories, but his Gold Rush tales have been most often reprinted, adapted, and admired. - Summary by Wikipedia
6 episodes
Christina Georgina Rossetti was an English poet who wrote a variety of romantic, devotional, and children's poems. She is famous for writing Goblin Market and Remember, and the words of the Christmas carol In the Bleak Midwinter.
Rossetti was educated at home by her mother and father, who had her study religious works, classics, fairy tales and novels. Rossetti delighted in the works of Keats, Scott, Ann Radcliffe and Matthew Lewis. The influence of the work of Dante Alighieri, Petrarch and other Italian writers filled the home and would have a deep impact on Rossetti's later writing. Their home was open to visiting Italian scholars, artists and revolutionaries. - Summary by Wikipedia
12 episodes
Jean Ingelow was an English poet and novelist. - Summary by Wikipedia
13 episodes
Dora Maria Sigerson Shorter was an Irish poet and sculptor, who after her marriage in 1895 wrote under the name Dora Sigerson Shorter. She was a major figure of the Irish Literary Revival, publishing many collections of poetry from 1893. Her friends included Katharine Tynan, Rose Kavanagh and Alice Furlong, writers and poets. - Summary by Wikipedia
10 episodes
Bryan Waller Procter (pseud. Barry Cornwall) was an English poet. Rather unknown outside Britain in his times and largely considered to be imitator of greater romantic authors, Barry Cornwall however inspired Alexander Pushkin to some translations and imitations in 1830. - Summary by Wikipedia
12 episodes
He was young in years, and younger in heart, a lover of youth; and youth, if it could learn and could be warned, might win a lesson from his life. Many of us have trod in his path, and, by some kindness of fate, have found from it a sunnier exit into longer days and more fortunate conditions. Others have followed this well-beaten road to the same early and quiet end as his. (from HIS POEMS: WITH MEMOIR by Andrew Lang)
12 episodes
George Pope Morris was an American editor, poet, and songwriter.
Critic and writer Edgar Allan Poe acknowledged the popularity of Morris's songs, "which have taken fast hold upon the popular taste, and which are deservedly celebrated". In April 1840, Poe wrote that Morris was "very decidedly, our best writer of songs—and, in saying this, I mean to assign him a high rank as poet". Willis wrote of Morris: "He is just what poets would be if they sang like birds without criticism... nothing can stop a song of his". (Wikipedia)
6 episodes
John Clare was an English poet, the son of a farm labourer, who came to be known for his celebratory representations of the English countryside and his lamentation of its disruption. His poetry underwent a major re-evaluation in the late 20th century, and he is now often considered to be among the most important 19th-century poets. His biographer Jonathan Bate states that Clare was "the greatest labouring-class poet that England has ever produced. No one has ever written more powerfully of nature, of a rural childhood, and of the alienated and unstable self". - Summary by Wikipedia
11 episodes
William McKendree Carleton was an American poet. Carleton's poems were most often about his rural life.
"What Robert Burns did for the Scottish cotter and the Reverend William Barnes has done for the English farmer, Will Carleton has done for the American--touched with the glamour of poetry the simple and monotonous events of daily life, and shown that all circumstances of life, however trivial they may appear, possess those alternations of the comic and pathetic, the good and bad, the joyful and sorrowful, which go to make up the days and nights, the summers and winters, of this perplexing world". - Summary by Wikipedia
7 episodes
"Her death is not only a great loss to those who knew and loved her: it is a great loss to Canadian literature and to the Canadian nation. I must think that she will hold a memorable place among poets in virtue of her descent and also in virtue of the work she has left behind, small as the quantity of that work is. I believe that Canada will, in future times, cherish her memory more and more, for of all Canadian poets she was the most distinctly a daughter of the soil, inasmuch as she inherited the blood of the great primeval race now so rapidly vanishing, and of the greater race that has supplanted it." (Theodore Watts-Dunton, from the Introduction to Flint and Feather)
10 episodes
Andrew Lang was a Scottish poet, novelist, literary critic, and contributor to the field of anthropology. He is best known as a collector of folk and fairy tales. The Andrew Lang lectures at the University of St Andrews are named after him. - Summary by Wikipedia
15 episodes
Alexander Hamilton Laidlaw was born in Scotland. He graduated from Philadelphia Central High School in 1845.
He practiced medicine from 1856-1905 and published some works including Soldier Songs and Love Songs, 1898, from which our Fortnightly Poem is taken. (David Lawrence)
7 episodes
Sir William Schwenck Gilbert was an English dramatist, librettist, poet and illustrator best known for the fourteen comic operas (known as the Savoy operas) produced in collaboration with the composer Sir Arthur Sullivan. The most famous of these include H.M.S. Pinafore, The Pirates of Penzance and one of the most frequently performed works in the history of musical theatre, The Mikado.
In 1890, Gilbert produced Songs of a Savoyard, (the source of this Weekly Poem), a volume of sixty-nine detached lyrics from the Savoy Operas, each with a new title, and some of them slightly reworded to account for the changed context. - Summary by Wikipedia
9 episodes
There is little information on Theodosia Garrison available. This poem is taken from The Dreamers and Other Poems, George H. Doran Company, 1917. (David Lawrence)
8 episodes
Jean McKishnie Blewett was a Canadian journalist, author and poet.
Blewett published her first novel, Out of the Depths in 1879. In 1896, she won a $600 prize from the Chicago Times-Herald for her poem "Spring".
She was a regular contributor to The Globe, a Toronto newspaper and in 1898 became editor of its Homemakers Department. In 1919, assisted by the Imperial Order of the Daughters of the Empire, she published a booklet titled Heart Stories to benefit war charities. During this time she regularly lectured on topics such as temperance and suffragism. - Summary by Wikipedia
12 episodes
Among the twelve hundred poems which have emanated from my too prolific pen there are some forty or fifty which treat entirely of that emotion which has been denominated "the grand passion"—love. A few of those are of an extremely fiery character. (from the Preface to Love and Passion by the authoress)
14 episodes
His career spanned more than forty years, and his stories, poems, and articles were published in more than 225 magazines. His work appeared alongside that of his contemporaries, including Mark Twain, Sax Rohmer, James B. Hendryx, Berton Braley, F. Scott Fitzgerald, Don Marquis, Will Rogers, and Edgar Rice Burroughs.
Despite the enormous volume of his work, Butler was, for most of his life, only a part-time author. He worked full-time as a banker and was very active in his local community. A founding member of both the Dutch Treat Club and the Authors League of America, Butler was an always-present force in the New York City literary scene. ( Wikipedia)
15 episodes
Canada has full right to be proud of her poets, a small body though they are; but not only does Mr. Carman stand high and clear above them all—his place (and time cannot but confirm and justify the assertion) is among those men whose poetry is the shining glory of that great English literature which is our common heritage. (Bliss Carmen: An Appreciation; [Later Poems by Bliss Carmen] McClelland & Steward, 1921)
14 episodes
But how short was his day, and how slender his opportunity! From the time he was of age he waged a constant, courageous, hopeless fight against adverse circumstance for room to live and write. Much very dear, and sweet, and most sympathetic helpfulness he met in the city of his adoption, and from friends elsewhere, but he could not command the time and leisure which might have lengthened his life and given him opportunity to write the music and the verse with which his soul was teeming. Yet short as was his literary life, and hindered though it were, its fruit will fill a large space in the garnering of the poetic art of our country. (Poems of Sidney Lanier - Memorial by William Hayes Ward)
13 episodes
William Cullen Bryant was an American romantic poet, journalist, and long-time editor of the New York Evening Post. Bryant edited the very successful Picturesque America which was published between 1872 and 1874. This two-volume set was lavishly illustrated and described scenic places in the United States and Canada.
In his last decade, Bryant shifted from writing his own poetry to a blank verse translation of Homer's works. He assiduously worked on the Iliad and The Odyssey from 1871 to 1874. He is also remembered as one of the principal authorities on homeopathy and as a hymnist for the Unitarian Church, both legacies of his father's enormous influence on him. - Summary by Wikipedia
18 episodes
Margaret Steele Anderson was born in Louisville, Kentucky in 1867 and was educated in the public school of Louisville, with special courses at Wellesley College. From 1901 Miss Anderson was Literary Editor of the `Evening Post' of Louisville, and was known as one of the most discriminating critics of the South. She published only one volume of verse, "The Flame in the Wind", 1914. (David Lawrence
9 episodes
Dr. O'Hagan writes with a clear eye, a sane mind, and a
sensitive heart. While agreeing in the main with Walter de
la Mare, that "every book lives or perishes by virtue or default
of its artistic sincerity," we feel disposed to add that the personality of the author has much to do with the popularity and life of his book.
W. R. HARRIS. - AN APPRECIATION - The Collected Poems of Thomas O'Hagan
McClelland & Stewart 1922
11 episodes
Bowles came from a line of Church of England clergymen. His great-grandfather Matthew Bowles, grandfather Dr Thomas Bowles and father William Thomas Bowles had all been parish priests.
In 1789 he published, in a very small quarto volume, Fourteen Sonnets, which were received with extraordinary favour, not only by the general public, but by such men as Samuel Taylor Coleridge and Wordsworth. - Summary by Wikipedia
11 episodes
Madison Julius Cawein was a poet from Louisville, Kentucky.
Cawein's poetry allied his love of nature with a devotion to earlier English and European literature, mythology, and classical allusion. - Summary by Wikipedia
10 episodes
Ernest Vincent Wright was an American author known for his book Gadsby, a 50,000-word novel which, except for the introduction and a note at the end, did not use the letter "e".
The biographical details of his life are unclear. A 2002 article in the Village Voice by Ed Park said he might have been English by birth but was more probably American. The article said he might have served in the navy and that he has been incorrectly called a graduate of MIT. The article says that he attended a vocational high school attached to MIT in 1888 but there is no record that he graduated. Park said rumors that Wright died within hours of Gadsby being published are untrue. - Summary by Wikipedia
11 episodes
Ella Wheeler Wilcox was an American author and poet. Her best-known work was Poems of Passion. Her most enduring work was "Solitude", which contains the lines, "Laugh, and the world laughs with you; weep, and you weep alone" - Summary by Wikipedia
7 episodes
From a relatively early age Moore showed an interest in music and other performing arts. He sometimes appeared in musical plays with his friends, such as The Poor Soldier by John O'Keeffe (music by William Shield), and at one point had ambitions to become an actor. Moore attended several Dublin schools including Samuel Whyte's English Grammar School in Grafton Street where he learned the English accent with which he spoke for the rest of his life. In 1795 he graduated from Trinity College, which had recently allowed entry to Catholic students, in an effort to fulfill his mother's dream of him becoming a lawyer. Moore was initially a good student, but he later put less effort into his studies. His time at Trinity came amidst the ongoing turmoil following the French Revolution, and a number of his fellow students such as Robert Emmet were supporters of the United Irishmen movement, although Moore himself never was a member. (from A BIOGRAPHICAL SKETCH BY WILLIAM M. ROSSETTI - the introduction to THE COMPLETE POEMS OF SIR THOMAS MOORE)
8 episodes
William Butler Yeats was an Irish poet and one of the foremost figures of 20th-century literature. A pillar of both the Irish and British literary establishments, his earliest volume of verse was published in 1889, and its slow-paced and lyrical poems display Yeats's debts to Edmund Spenser, Percy Bysshe Shelley, and the poets of the Pre-Raphaelite Brotherhood. From 1900, Yeats's poetry grew more physical and realistic. In 1923, he was awarded the Nobel Prize in Literature. (Wikipedia )
10 episodes
Much is written about success and failure in the career of literature, about the reasons which enable one man to reach the front, and another to earn his livelihood, while a third, in appearance as likely as either of them, fails and, perhaps, faints by the way. Mr. R. F. Murray, the author of The Scarlet Gown, was among those who do not attain success, in spite of qualities which seem destined to ensure it, and who fall out of the ranks. To him, indeed, success and the rewards of this world, money, and praise, did by no means seem things to be snatched at. To him success meant earning by his pen the very modest sum which sufficed for his wants, and the leisure necessary for serious essays in poetry. Fate denied him even this, in spite of his charming natural endowment of humour, of tenderness, of delight in good letters, and in nature. He died young; he was one of those whose talent matures slowly, and he died before he came into the full possession of his intellectual kingdom. He had the ambition to excel,αίεν αριστευειν, as the Homeric motto of his University runs, and he was on the way to excellence when his health broke down. He lingered for two years and passed away. (introductory MEMOIR by ANDREW LANG to 'ROBERT F. MURRAY (author of the scarlet gown) HIS POEMS'. )
11 episodes
This poem is taken from Volume X, A Library of American Literature:
An Anthology in Eleven Volumes. 1891.
Vols. IX–XI: Literature of the Republic, Part IV., 1861–1889
11 episodes
Anna Katharine Green was an American poet and novelist. She was one of the first writers of detective fiction in America and distinguished herself by writing well plotted, legally accurate stories. Green has been called "the mother of the detective novel". - Summary by Wikipedia
15 episodes
James Whitcomb Riley was an American writer, poet, and best-selling author. During his lifetime he was known as the "Hoosier Poet" and "Children's Poet" for his dialect works and his children's poetry respectively. As a poet, Riley achieved an uncommon level of fame during his own lifetime. He was honored with annual Riley Day celebrations around the United States and was regularly called on to perform readings at national civic events. - Summary by Wikipedia
9 episodes
Eliza Paul Kirkbride Gurney was a Quaker minister who, when her husband Joseph John Gurney died in 1847, continued the labours of a traveling minister. She corresponded with Abraham Lincoln, who was found to have a two year old letter from Eliza, carefully “treasured up” by him in his breast pocket when assassinated. - Summary by David Lawrence
15 episodes
Paterson lived and worked in Sydney for most of his adult life, but his poems mostly presented a highly romantic view of the bush and the iconic figure of the bushman. Influenced by the work of another Australian poet John Farrell, his representation of the bushman as a tough, independent and heroic underdog became the ideal qualities underpinning the national character. His work is often compared to the prose of Henry Lawson, particularly the seminal work, "The Drover's Wife", which presented a considerably less romantic view of the harshness of rural existence of the late 19th century.
(In regard to this poem. When an attorney is called before the Full Court to answer for any alleged misconduct it is not usual to publish his name until he is found guilty; until then the matter appears in the papers as "In re a Gentleman, One of the Attorneys of the Supreme Court," or, more shortly, "In re a Gent., One.") - Summary by Wikipedia
12 episodes
Rossetti began writing down and dating her poems from 1842, mostly imitating her favoured poets. From 1847 she began experimenting with verse forms such as sonnets, hymns and ballads; drawing narratives from the Bible, folk tales and the lives of the saints. Her early pieces often feature meditations on death and loss, in the Romantic tradition. - Summary by Wikidepia
16 episodes
