Nawadiraat

Alan Alexander Milne

A.A. Milne, (born January 18, 1882, London, England—died January 31, 1956, Hartfield, Sussex), English humorist, the originator of the immensely popular stories of Christopher Robin and his toy bear, Winnie-the-Pooh. After attending the University of Cambridge's Trinity College and writing for the literary magazines Granta and Punch, A.A. Milne began a successful career as a novelist, poet and playwright in the 1920s. His best-known works are his two collections of children's poetry, When We Were Young and Now We Are Six, and his two books of stories about the lovable bear Winnie-the-Pooh and his animal friends.

Edward Lear

Edward Lear, (born May 12, 1812, Highgate, near London, England—died January 29, 1888, San Remo, Italy), English landscape painter who is more widely known as the writer of an original kind of nonsense verse and as the popularizer of the limerick. His true genius is apparent in his nonsense poems, which portray a world of fantastic creatures in nonsense words, often suggesting a deep underlying sense of melancholy. Their quality is matched, especially in the limericks, by that of his engaging pen-and-ink drawings.

Eugene Field

Known for his lyrical and long-form verse, Percy Bysshe Shelley was a prominent English Romantic poet and was one of the most highly regarded and influential poets of the 19th century. Born on August 4, 1792—the year of the Terror in France—Percy Bysshe Shelley (the “Bysshe” from his grandfather, a peer of the realm) was the son of Timothy and Elizabeth Shelley. As the elder son among one brother, John, and four sisters, Elizabeth, Mary, Margaret, and Hellen, Percy stood in line not only to inherit his grandfather’s considerable estate but also to sit in Parliament one day. In his position as oldest male child, young Percy was beloved and admired by his sisters, his parents, and even the servants in his early reign as young lord of Field Place, the family home near Horsham, Sussex. Playful and imaginative, he devised games to play with his sisters and told ghost stories to an enrapt and willing-to-be-thrilled audience.

Lewis Carroll

Lewis Carroll, (born January 27, 1832, Daresbury, Cheshire, England—died January 14, 1898, Guildford, Surrey), English logician, mathematician, photographer, and novelist, especially remembered for Alice’s Adventures in Wonderland (1865) and its sequel, Through the Looking-Glass (1871). His poem The Hunting of the Snark (1876) is nonsense literature of the highest order.

Jane Tylor

Imagine setting a simple challenge to almost anyone in the English speaking world regarding fondly remembered poems and songs from their childhood. Ask them to recite the opening lines of the first poem or song that comes to mind and there is a good chance that the majority would say: “Twinkle, twinkle, little star. How I wonder what you are”. It’s one of those little ditties that has been popular worldwide since the 19th century but it is very likely that most would not be able to state who wrote it. Well, the answer is that the English poet and novelist Jane Taylor wrote those famous words. Her poem was set to music, using an old French tune, and the legend was born! Jane was born in September 1783, in London, but she spent her early years living in the small Suffolk town of Lavenham. She had an older sister called Ann, and the pair loved to write poetry and stories together. Their parents gave the girls plenty of encouragement to write and their mother was, herself, responsible for the publication of seven books giving religious and moral advice. Their father was a dissenting minister and engraver.

William Barnes

William Barnes, (born Feb. 22, 1801, Bagber, near Sturminster Newton, Dorsetshire, Eng.—died Oct. 7, 1886, Winterbourne Came, Dorsetshire), English dialect poet whose work gives a vivid picture of the life and labour of rural southwestern England and includes some moving expressions of loss and grief, such as “The Wife A-Lost” and “Woak Hill.” He was also a gifted philologist, and his linguistic theories as well as his poetry influenced two major writers, Thomas Hardy and Gerard Manley Hopkins.

Emily Dickinson

Emily Dickinson (born December 10, 1830, Amherst, Massachusetts, U.S.—died May 15, 1886, Amherst) American lyric poet who lived in seclusion and commanded a singular brilliance of style and integrity of vision. With Walt Whitman, Dickinson is widely considered to be one of the two leading 19th-century American poets. Emily Dickinson is considered one of the leading 19th-century American poets, known for her bold original verse, which stands out for its epigrammatic compression, haunting personal voice, and enigmatic brilliance. Yet it was only well into the 20th century that other leading writers—including Hart Crane, Allen Tate, and Elizabeth Bishop—registered her greatness.

Walt Whitman

Walt Whitman, (born May 31, 1819, West Hills, Long Island, New York, U.S.—died March 26, 1892, Camden, New Jersey), American poet, journalist, and essayist whose verse collection Leaves of Grass, first published in 1855, is a landmark in the history of American literature. Walt Whitman’s poetry was innovative for its verse style and for the way it challenged traditional narratives. He championed the individual soul over social conventions, presenting himself as a rough and free spirit. His poetry has continued to resonate with new generations of Americans, and he is considered a symbol of American democracy.

Lord Byron

Lord Byron (born January 22, 1788, London, England—died April 19, 1824, Missolonghi, Greece) British Romantic poet and satirist whose poetry and personality captured the imagination of Europe. Renowned as the “gloomy egoist” of his autobiographical poem Childe Harold’s Pilgrimage (1812–18) in the 19th century, he is now more generally esteemed for the satiric realism of Don Juan (1819–24). "I was born for opposition,” Byron proclaimed in Don Juan, Canto XV. The outstanding elements of his poetry both support his self-analysis and insure his enduring reputation. As a major political and social satirist, he repeatedly denounces war, tyranny, and hypocrisy. As an untiring champion of liberty, he firmly believed that “Revolution / Alone can save the earth from hell’s pollution”, a tenet he defended with his life.

Robert Burns

Robert Burns (born January 25, 1759, Alloway, Ayrshire, Scotland—died July 21, 1796, Dumfries, Dumfriesshire) national poet of Scotland, who wrote lyrics and songs in Scots and in English. Burns wrote in a variety of forms: epistles to friends, ballads, and songs. His best-known poem is the mock-heroic Tam o’ Shanter. He is also well known for the over three hundred songs he wrote which celebrate love, friendship, work, and drink with often hilarious and tender sympathy. He was also famous for his amours and his rebellion against orthodox religion and morality. Robert Burns died from heart disease at the age of thirty-seven. On the day of his death, Jean Armour gave birth to his last son, Maxwell.

Sylvia Plath

Sylvia Plath (born October 27, 1932, Boston, Massachusetts, U.S.—died February 11, 1963, London, England) American poet whose best-known works, such as the poems “Daddy” and “Lady Lazarus” and the novel The Bell Jar, starkly express a sense of alienation and self-destruction closely tied to her personal experiences and, by extension, the situation of women in mid-20th-century America. She saw her world in the flame of the ultimate substance and the ultimate depth. And this is the distinction of her language, that every word is Baraka: the flame and the rose folded together. Poets have often spoken about this ideal possibility but where else, outside these poems, has it actually occurred? If we have the discrimination to answer this question, we can set her in her rightful company.”

William Butler Yeats

William Butler Yeats, (born June 13, 1865, Sandymount, Dublin, Ireland—died January 28, 1939, Roquebrune-Cap-Martin, France), Irish poet, dramatist, and prose writer, one of the greatest English-language poets of the 20th century. He received the Nobel Prize for Literature in 1923. He was appointed to the Irish Senate in 1922. Yeats is one of the few writers whose greatest works were written after the award of the Nobel Prize. Whereas he received the Prize chiefly for his dramatic works, his significance today rests on his lyric achievement. His poetry, especially the volumes The Wild Swans at Coole (1919), Michael Robartes and the Dancer (1921), The Tower (1928), The Winding Stair and Other Poems (1933), and Last Poems and Plays (1940), made him one of the outstanding and most influential twentieth-century poets writing in English. His recurrent themes are the contrast of art and life, masks, cyclical theories of life (the symbol of the winding stairs), and the ideal of beauty and ceremony contrasting with the hubbub of modern life.

Robert Frost

Robert Frost (born March 26, 1874, San Francisco, California, U.S.—died January 29, 1963, Boston, Massachusetts) American poet who was much admired for his depictions of the rural life of New England, his command of American colloquial speech, and his realistic verse portraying ordinary people in everyday situations. Frost was the most widely admired and highly honoured American poet of the 20th century. Amy Lowell thought he had overstressed the dark aspects of New England life, but Frost’s later flood of more uniformly optimistic verses made that view seem antiquated. Louis Untermeyer’s judgment that the dramatic poems in North of Boston were the most authentic and powerful of their kind ever produced by an American has only been confirmed by later opinions. Gradually, Frost’s name ceased to be linked solely with New England, and he gained broad acceptance as a national poet.

Rudyard Kipling

Rudyard Kipling, (born December 30, 1865, Bombay [now Mumbai], India—died January 18, 1936, London, England), English short-story writer, poet, and novelist chiefly remembered for his celebration of British imperialism, his tales and poems of British soldiers in India, and his tales for children. He received the Nobel Prize for Literature in 1907. Kipling was the recipient of many honorary degrees and other awards. In 1926 he received the Gold Medal of the Royal Society of Literature, which only Scott, Meredith, and Hardy had been awarded before him.

John Keats

John Keats (born October 31, 1795, London, England—died February 23, 1821, Rome, Papal States [Italy]) English Romantic lyric poet who devoted his short life to the perfection of a poetry marked by vivid imagery, great sensuous appeal, and an attempt to express a philosophy through classical legend. He is best known for his odes, including "Ode to a Grecian Urn," "Ode to a Nightingale," and his long form poem Endymion. His usage of sensual imagery and statements such as “beauty is truth and truth is beauty” made him a precursor of aestheticism.

Percy Bysshe Shelley

Known for his lyrical and long-form verse, Percy Bysshe Shelley was a prominent English Romantic poet and was one of the most highly regarded and influential poets of the 19th century. Born on August 4, 1792—the year of the Terror in France—Percy Bysshe Shelley (the “Bysshe” from his grandfather, a peer of the realm) was the son of Timothy and Elizabeth Shelley. As the elder son among one brother, John, and four sisters, Elizabeth, Mary, Margaret, and Hellen, Percy stood in line not only to inherit his grandfather’s considerable estate but also to sit in Parliament one day. In his position as oldest male child, young Percy was beloved and admired by his sisters, his parents, and even the servants in his early reign as young lord of Field Place, the family home near Horsham, Sussex. Playful and imaginative, he devised games to play with his sisters and told ghost stories to an enrapt and willing-to-be-thrilled audience.

John Milton

John Milton was a 17th century historian, journalist and poet born on December 9th, 1608 in London, England. He was best known for his writing of Paradise Lost. Milton first planned to become a priest. He studied at Cambridge University and afterwards decided to abandon this path to become a full time writer and poet. Milton became very active in politics, and often wrote political pamphlets along with his other writings. As a protestant who believed in freedom of worship, Milton was often at odds with the Roman Catholic Church, an organization strongly opposed to the protestants. Eventually, John Milton would work for the English government under Oliver Cromwell after the removal of the monarchy.

William Blake

William Blake (28 November 1757 – 12 August 1827) was an English printmaker, painter and poet. Largely unrecognised during his lifetime, Blake is now considered a seminal figure in the history of the poetry and visual arts of the Romantic Age. He saw the arts in all their forms as offering insights into the metaphysical world and his broader aims were primarily theological and philosophical.

Oscar Wilde

Oscar Wilde was an Anglo-Irish playwright, novelist, poet, and critic. He is regarded as one of the greatest playwrights of the Victorian Era. In his lifetime he wrote nine plays, one novel, and numerous poems, short stories, and essays. Wilde was a proponent of the Aesthetic movement, which emphasized aesthetic values more than moral or social themes. This doctrine is most clearly summarized in the phrase 'art for art's sake'. Besides literary accomplishments, he is also famous, or perhaps infamous, for his wit, flamboyance, and affairs with men. He was tried and imprisoned for his homosexual relationship (then considered a crime) with the son of an aristocrat.

William Shakespeare

William Shakespeare was born in April 1564 in Stratford-upon-Avon, England. He is one of the world's most highly esteemed writers, and is thought to be the most quoted author in history, second only to the Bible. His plays and poems have been studied, analyzed, read, and loved for centuries. Little is known about William Shakespeare's childhood or education, but scholars agree that he likely attended the King's New School. He was working as an actor and playwright in London by the year 1592, and was also a managing partner in the acting company the Lord Chamberlain's Men. After James I was crowned king in 1603, the theater company's name was changed to the King's Men, and it grew to be quite popular.

William Wordsworth

The English poet William Wordsworth is considered to be one of the most important literary figures in modern history, as well as one of the leading purveyors of the Romantic Movement. He was born in 1770, in Cumbria, and was one of four children. Over the course of his life, he continued to return to the Lake District, and eventually passed away in Cumbria, in 1850. The influence of William Wordsworth should not be underestimated, as he not only helped to kick-start the Romantic Age, he also formed half of one of the most famous literary partnerships in history. The friendship that he shared with fellow poet Samuel Taylor Coleridge is now the stuff of legend, as is the subsequent fallout after the friendship fell apart.

Knowledge

Fueling Us

World's First
Multilingual Literature Platform

Alan Alexander Milne

Edward Lear

Eugene Field

Lewis Carroll

Jane Tylor

William Barnes

Emily Dickinson

Walt Whitman

Lord Byron

Robert Burns

Sylvia Plath

William Butler Yeats

Robert Frost

Rudyard Kipling

John Keats

Percy Bysshe Shelley

John Milton

William Blake

Oscar Wilde

William Shakespeare

William Wordsworth

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Knowledge

Fueling Us

World's First Multilingual Literature Platform

Alan Alexander Milne

Edward Lear

Eugene Field

Lewis Carroll

Jane Tylor

William Barnes

Emily Dickinson

Walt Whitman

Lord Byron

Robert Burns

Sylvia Plath

William Butler Yeats

Robert Frost

Rudyard Kipling

John Keats

Percy Bysshe Shelley

John Milton

William Blake

Oscar Wilde

William Shakespeare

William Wordsworth

Subscribe to our newsletter.

World's First
Multilingual Literature Platform