Hopkins was born in Essex. In 1863, he entered Oxford University. There, he experienced a spiritual crisis that led him to join the Roman Catholic Church in 1866. Hopkins entered the Jesuit order in 1868 (see Jesuits). He then stopped writing and burned the manuscripts of his poems. Hopkins returned to writing in 1875 after being encouraged by a Jesuit superior. He was ordained a priest in 1877.

Raleigh, Sir Walter (1552?-1618), is one of the most colorful figures in English history. He was a soldier, explorer, writer, and businessman. He spelled his last name Ralegh.

His expeditions. Raleigh became deeply interested in exploration, like many prominent English people of his day. He sent several expeditions to America, and spent a fortune trying to establish an English colony there. His settlers landed in what is now the state of North Carolina and explored the coast as far as present-day Florida. Raleigh and Elizabeth, who was known as "The Virgin Queen," named much of what is now the Eastern United States Virginia, in honor of the queen.

Raleigh's first colonizing expedition left Plymouth in April 1585. It established a colony on Roanoke Island in Pamlico Sound. But sickness and fear caused the survivors of this first English colony in North America to go home with Sir Francis Drake in 1586.

His fall. Raleigh lost the queen's favor by marrying one of her attendants. Hoping to recover his position and the money he had spent, he led an expedition to Guiana, in South America, to search for El Dorado, a legendary land of gold. However, the expedition failed.

Elizabeth died in 1603, and the new king, James I, distrusted and feared Raleigh. He charged Raleigh with treason and imprisoned him in the Tower of London. There Raleigh lived comfortably for 12 years with his family and servants, and wrote his History of the World. He was released in 1616 to lead an expedition to search for gold in South America. The king ordered him not to invade Spanish territory. But Raleigh's men attacked the Spaniards. Raleigh's son Wat was killed in the attack, and Raleigh was forced to abandon the project.

Upon his return to England, he was sentenced to death for disobeying orders. Raleigh met his fate bravely. He joked with the executioner and even gave the signal for the ax to fall. He was executed in London on Oct. 29, 1618.

Southwell, Robert (1561?-1595), was a Roman Catholic martyr and poet. He was born at Horsham St. Faith, in Norfolk, England, and educated in France. He became a Jesuit in 1580 and was ordained a priest in 1585. In 1586, Southwell returned to England on a mission to win converts, an offence that was punishable by death under the Protestant reign of Queen Elizabeth I. In 1592, he was betrayed and imprisoned in the Tower of London. He was convicted of treason and hanged on Feb. 21, 1595.

Southwell was the leading Roman Catholic literary figure in Elizabethan England. He wrote many letters to Roman Catholics in England that were secretly published or circulated as manuscripts. Southwell's poetry has been praised for its simplicity and direct quality. His use of striking imagery points to the work of the Metaphysical poets in England during the 1600's. Southwell's best-known poems are "St. Peter's Complaint" and "The Burning Babe."

Shakespeare, William (1564-1616), was an English playwright and poet. He is generally considered the greatest dramatist the world has ever known and the finest poet who has written in the English language. Shakespeare has also been the world's most popular author. No other writer's plays have been produced so many times or read so widely in so many countries.

Many reasons can be given for Shakespeare's broad appeal. But his fame basically rests on his understanding of human nature. Shakespeare understood people as few other artists have. He could see in a specific dramatic situation the qualities that relate to all human beings. He could thus create characters that have meaning beyond the time and place of his plays. Yet his characters are not symbolic figures. They are remarkably individual human beings. They struggle just as people do in real life, sometimes successfully and sometimes with painful and tragic failure.

Shakespeare wrote at least 37 plays, which have traditionally been divided into comedies, histories, and tragedies. These plays contain vivid characters of all types and from many walks of life. Kings, pickpockets, drunkards, generals, hired killers, shepherds, and philosophers all mingle in Shakespeare's works.

In addition to his deep understanding of human nature, Shakespeare had knowledge in a wide variety of other subjects. These subjects include music, the law, the Bible, military science, the stage, art, politics, the sea, history, hunting, woodcraft, and sports. Yet as far as scholars know, Shakespeare had no professional experience in any field except the theater.

Shakespeare was born to what today would be called middle-class parents. His birthplace was the small market town of Stratford-upon-Avon. Shortly after he married at the age of 18, Shakespeare apparently left Stratford to seek his fortune in the theatrical world of London. Within a few years, he had become one of the city's leading actors and playwrights. By 1612, when he seems to have partially retired to Stratford, Shakespeare had become England's most popular playwright.

Shakespeare has had enormous influence on culture throughout the world. His works have helped shape the literature of all English-speaking countries and of such countries as Germany and Russia. Shakespeare also contributed greatly to the development of the English language. He freely experimented with grammar and vocabulary and so helped prevent literary English from becoming fixed and artificial.

Shakespeare's influence on language has not been limited to writers and scholars. Many words and phrases from Shakespeare's plays and poems have become part of our everyday speech. They are used by millions of people who are unaware that Shakespeare created them. For example, Shakespeare originated such familiar phrases as fair play, a foregone conclusion, catch cold, and disgraceful conduct. As far as scholars can tell, Shakespeare also invented such common words as assassination, bump, eventful, and lonely.

Many people can identify lines and passages as Shakespeare's even though they have never seen or read one of his plays. Examples include "To be, or not to be," "Friends, Romans, countrymen, lend me your ears," and "A horse! a horse! my kingdom for a horse!"

Shakespeare's genius as a poet enabled him to express an idea both briefly and colorfully. In his tragedy Othello, for example, he described jealousy as "the green-eyed monster which doth mock the meat it feeds on." In the tragedy King Lear, Shakespeare described a daughter's ingratitude toward her father as "sharper than a serpent's tooth."

Besides influencing language and literature, Shakespeare has affected other aspects of culture in the English-speaking world. His plays and poems have long been a required part of a liberal education. As a result, Shakespeare's ideas on such subjects as heroism, romantic love, and the nature of tragedy have helped shape the attitudes of millions of people. His brilliant portrayals of historical figures and events have also influenced our thinking. For example, many people visualize Julius Caesar, Mark Antony, and Cleopatra as Shakespeare portrayed them, not as they have been described in history books.

Even historians themselves have been influenced by Shakespeare's greatness. Shakespeare lived in England during the reign of Queen Elizabeth I, a period known as the Elizabethan Age. Historians consider the Elizabethan Age as a peak of English culture. But one can question whether the period would seem so important if Shakespeare had not lived and worked in it.

Shakespeare's widespread influence reflects his astonishing popularity. His plays have been a vital part of the theater in the Western world since they were written more than 300 years ago. Through the years, most serious actors and actresses have considered the major roles of Shakespeare to be the supreme test of their art.

Shakespeare's plays have attracted large audiences in big, sophisticated cities and in small, rural towns. His works have been performed on the frontiers of Australia and New Zealand. They were part of the cultural life of the American Colonies and provided entertainment in the mining camps of the Old West. Today, there are theaters in England, the United States, and Canada dedicated to staging some of Shakespeare's works yearly.

Shakespeare's plays appeal to readers as well as to theatergoers. His plays—and his poems—have been reprinted and translated countless times. Indeed, a publishing industry flourishes around Shakespeare, as critics and scholars examine every aspect of the man, his writings, and his influence. Each year, hundred of books and articles appear on Shakespearean subjects. Thousands of scholars from all over the world gather in dozens of meetings annually to discuss topics related to Shakespeare. Special libraries and library collections focus upon Shakespeare. Numerous motion pictures have been made of his plays. Composers have written operas, musical comedies, and instrumental works based on his stories and characters.

The world has admired and respected many great writers. But only Shakespeare has generated such varied and continuing interest—and such constant affection.

His poetry. Donne wrote poetry on a variety of subjects and used many different genres (poetic types). His early Satires and Elegies follow classical models, but they also have a distinctly modern flavor. In Songs and Sonnets, his best-known group of poems, Donne wrote both tenderly and cynically of love. His major love poems include "The Canonization" and "The Extasie."

Later, Donne turned to writing religious poetry. He produced a superb series of Holy Sonnets, including "Death be not proud" and "Batter my heart, three person'd God." Donne also wrote a moving meditative poem called "Good Friday, 1613. Riding Westward" and three magnificent hymns. He wrote nearly 200 poems, but only a few were published during his lifetime. The others circulated in manuscript copies and were not published until 1633. Donne's poetry was somewhat ignored during the 1700's and 1800's, but in the early 1900's, interest in his poetry revived. Modern poets, including T. S. Eliot, have praised and imitated Donne's works.

Donne's language is dramatic, witty, and sometimes shocking. He used a variety of imagery and based his rhythms on everyday speech. At times, the complexity of his thought makes his meaning difficult to understand, but his poems always unfold in a logical way. He had a genius for creating extended poetic metaphors called conceits. In the metaphysical conceit, the poet developed a lengthy, complex image to express precisely his view of a person, object, or feeling. Donne's lyric "A Valediction: Forbidding Mourning" contains his most famous conceit. Donne compares the souls of separated lovers to the legs of a compass:

Herbert, George (1593-1633), was a leading English poet of the 1600's. His major volume of poems, The Temple (1633), was published shortly after his death and achieved wide popularity and influence. In this collection of 164 short lyric poems, Herbert artfully and lovingly described what he called "the many spiritual conflicts that have passed betwixt God and my soul."

Herbert wrote mainly on religious subjects. In the poem "Jordan (II)," he declared, "There is in [God's] love a sweetness ready penn'd" that the poet needs only to "copy out." Herbert used great metrical variety, employing more than 140 different stanza patterns. He used intimate, sometimes homely imagery to express himself in poetry of great depth and emotional precision. Herbert's poems include "The Altar," "The Collar," "The Pulley," and three separate poems called "Love." In addition, he wrote the well-known Anglican hymn "Let All the World In Every Corner Sing."

Herbert was born into a noble Welsh family. He served in Parliament in 1624 and 1625. In 1626, he was ordained a deacon in the Church of England. He then worked his way through the spiritual conflicts described in The Temple and became rector at Bemerton, near Salisbury, in 1630. That same year, he was ordained to the priesthood.

Carew, Thomas (1595?-1639?), an English writer, was one of the most distinguished of the Cavalier poets, a group of poets at the court of King Charles I. These writers became renowned for their wit and elegance of style and for their direct approach to the themes of love and beauty.

Carew's poetry, in common with that of other Cavalier poets, was deeply influenced by the writers Ben Jonson and John Donne. One of Carew's most impressive poems is an elegy on the death of Donne. His love poems include "A Rapture" and "To my Inconstant Mistris." Carew was born in the county of Kent, England, and educated at Oxford University. His poems appeared in 1640. 

Davenant, Sir William (1606-1668), was an English playwright. His name is also spelled D'Avenant.

Davenant was born in Oxford. During the 1630's, he wrote elaborate spectacles called masques and romantic plays such as Love and Honour (1634) and The Platonic Lovers (1635). During the civil war and Commonwealth periods in England (1642-1660), when plays were banned, Davenant attempted a new theatrical form, the opera. In 1656, he wrote and produced The Siege of Rhodes, generally considered the first English opera.

Davenant supported the Crown during the civil war. After the restoration of Charles II to the English throne in 1660, Davenant became one of two men authorized to reopen the theaters in London. Davenant thus had tremendous influence over theater productions and the careers of playwrights and performers. He oversaw the appearance of the first actresses permitted on the English stage.

Waller, Edmund (1606-1687), was an English poet. He perfected an even-flowing form of verse, written mostly in iambic pentameter couplets. This form had a great influence on the poetry of the Augustan Age of English literature in the early 1700's. Waller's poems include panegyrics (poems of praise) to public figures, as well as courtly love lyrics. All his work was smooth and refined. Most of Waller's poetry emphasized the elegant features of civilized life. Perhaps his best-known lyric is "Go, lovely rose" (1655). Waller was born into a wealthy country family of what is now Buckinghamshire. He suffered exile for his support of the king during the Puritan revolution, but was then pardoned by Parliament in 1651. Waller remained in favor with the court after the Restoration in 1660.

Milton, John (1608-1674), was an English poet and political writer. He is the author of Paradise Lost (1667, revised 1674), considered by many to be the greatest epic poem in the English language. He also wrote Paradise Regained (1671) and Samson Agonistes (1671). Milton composed the first two of these works, and probably also the last, when he was totally blind.

Milton wrote Paradise Lost to "justify the ways of God to man." The 12-book poem retells the Biblical story of the Creation and the fall of Adam and Eve against the backdrop of Satan's rebellion against God and expulsion from heaven. Paradise Regained is a four-book "brief epic" written, like Paradise Lost, in blank verse. Based loosely on the Gospels, it narrates Christ's successful withstanding of Satan's temptations. Samson Agonistes tells the Biblical story of Samson in the style of Greek tragic drama. It depicts Samson, betrayed by Dalila (Delilah) and blinded by the Philistines, defeating his captors at the cost of his life.

Milton had a thorough knowledge of classical Greek and Latin authors and was greatly influenced by them. But, as a Protestant, he emphasized the Bible as interpreted by the individual believer. Through his poetry, Milton wanted to do for England "what the greatest and choicest wits of Athens, Rome, or modern Italy, and those Hebrews of old" did for their countries "with this over and above of being a Christian."

His early life and works. Milton was born in London on Dec. 9, 1608. He attended St. Paul's School and then Christ's College at Cambridge University. While at Cambridge, he wrote "On the Morning of Christ's Nativity" (1629) and the companion poems "L'Allegro" and "Il Penseroso" (both 1631?). Although his early training prepared him for a religious career, he came to believe "tyranny had invaded the church." He chose instead to dedicate himself to God's service as a poet. Upon graduating from Cambridge in 1632, he went to Horton, his father's country home, to study and write.

At Horton, Milton wrote two major pieces. Comus (1634), a masque (dramatic presentation with music), concerns the nature of virtue. Milton wrote the words, and the noted musician Henry Lawes wrote the music. "Lycidas" (1637), considered by many to be the finest short poem in English, is a pastoral elegy commemorating the death of his friend Edward King. In this poem, Milton for the first time subordinated classical sources to a Christian vision as he did in his mature art.

Milton left Horton in 1638 for a 15-month European tour. While in Italy, Milton heard of a growing conflict between the bishops of the Church of England and the Puritans. He returned to England to support the Puritan cause through a series of political writings.

During this 20-year period, Milton turned away from poetry to work on behalf of Parliament and the Commonwealth through his prose. In all his writings, he championed radical political and religious views. In Of Reformation in England (1641), he criticized the Church of England. In The Ready and Easy Way to Establish a Free Commonwealth (1660), he cried out against the prospect of the restoration of King Charles II to the throne. He defended the people's right to choose and depose their rulers in The Tenure of Kings and Magistrates (1649).

Milton married 16-year-old Mary Powell in 1643. But their marriage was unhappy. She left Milton after a month or two and did not return for two years. Milton gained notoriety by writing a series of pamphlets in favor of divorce in certain cases. In 1644, he published his most famous prose work, Areopagitica, a defense of freedom of the press.

Milton's work and constant study strained his weak eyes, and he was completely blind by 1652. His wife died the same year. He wrote the sonnet "When I Consider How My Light Is Spent" (1655) about his blindness. In 1656, Milton married Katherine Woodcock. She died 16 months later. Milton probably wrote the sonnet "Methought I Saw My Late Espoused Saint" (1658) about her.

Retirement. Charles II was restored to the throne in 1660, and a number of people held responsible for the execution of Charles I were tried and executed. Milton was arrested, but not harmed. He went into retirement and married Elizabeth Minshull in 1663. Milton wrote Paradise Lost, Paradise Regained, and probably Samson Agonistes, his masterpieces, during his final years. These works are in part a response to his own blindness and the collapse of the Puritans' hopes for the establishment of Christ's kingdom on earth. Milton's major poems fulfill his ambition to "leave something so written to aftertimes, as they should not willingly let it die." They confirm his reputation as England's foremost nondramatic poet.

Suckling, Sir John (1609-1642), was the most famous member of the Cavalier poets, a group associated with the court of King Charles I of England. In his famous comedy The Way of the World (1700), William Congreve called the poet "natural, easy Suckling." Suckling was notorious for his wild living and his best verse has a witty and knowing quality.

Suckling's plays include Aglaura (1637). His short poems were published four years after his death in a collection of his writings titled Fragmenta Aurea. Suckling's ability as a literary critic can be seen in "A Session of Poets" (1637), a verse review of poetry in his day.

Suckling was born in Middlesex (now part of London), and served in the army. In 1641, he was accused of plotting to gain control of the army for the king. He fled to Paris and died there, perhaps having poisoned himself.

Crashaw, Richard (1613-1649), an English poet, wrote poetry that is noted for its sensuous mysticism and for its extravagant imagery. Most of his best-known poems were collected in Steps to the Temple (1646).

Crashaw was born in London. He graduated from Pembroke College, Cambridge University, and became a fellow of Peterhouse College. He lost his fellowship because of his sympathies toward Roman Catholicism. In 1645, he went to Paris. He became a Catholic and later traveled to Rome.

Cowley, Abraham (1618-1667), was an English poet and essayist whose first volume of verse was published when he was 15. His major publications include Poetical Blossoms (1633), The Mistress (1647), and his unfinished epic, Davideis (1656). Cowley began as a rather derivative, mechanical love poet, strongly influenced by poet John Donne and his followers. Later, Cowley began to write Odes in the manner of the Greek poet Pindar. This new style produced his best poem, "Ode to the Royal Society." Samuel Johnson published a famous attack on the metaphysical poets in his Life of Cowley (1779).

Cowley was born in London. As a follower of Charles II, he served the royalist cause in exile during the Puritan revolution. He returned to favor after the Restoration in 1660. That year, Cowley helped form the Royal Society, an organization that promotes the natural sciences, and became one of its first members.

Lovelace, Richard (1618-1657), was a member of a group of English lyric poets called the Cavalier poets. These poets emphasized ideals of love, beauty, and honor. Lovelace is known chiefly for a few famous lines. "Stone walls do not a prison make,/Nor iron bars a cage" comes from the poem "To Althea, from Prison" (1642). "I could not love thee, dear, so much,/Loved I not honor more" appears in the poem "To Lucasta, Going to the Wars" (1648).

Lovelace was born either in Woolwich or in the Netherlands. He was educated at Oxford University. Lovelace served as a soldier in the army of King Charles I. He was imprisoned twice during the civil war that broke out in 1642. He wrote his two famous poems in prison. Lovelace lost his estate while he was serving the king, and he died in poverty.

Whitman, Walt (1819-1892), was an American poet who wrote Leaves of Grass. This collection of poems is considered one of the world's major literary works.

Whitman's poems sing the praises of the United States and of democracy. The poet's love of America grew from his faith that Americans might reach new worldly and spiritual heights. Whitman wrote: "The chief reason for the being of the United States of America is to bring about the common good will of all mankind, the solidarity of the world."

Whitman may have begun working on Leaves of Grass as early as 1848. The book's form and content were so unusual that no commercial publisher would publish it. In 1855, he published the collection of 12 poems at his own expense. In the preface, Whitman wrote: "The United States themselves are essentially the greatest poem." Between 1856 and 1892, Whitman published eight more revised and enlarged editions of his book. He believed that Leaves of Grass had grown with his own emotional and intellectual development.

His work. Beginning students of Whitman will find it easiest to study the poems separately. They should try to understand each poem's imagery, symbolism, literary structure, and unity of theme.

"Song of Myself," the longest poem in Leaves of Grass, is considered Whitman's greatest. It is a lyric poem told through the joyful experiences of the narrator, simply called "I," who chants the poem's 52 sections. Sometimes "I" is the poet himself—"Walt Whitman, an American." In other passages, "I" speaks for the human race, the universe, or a specific character being dramatized. Like all Whitman's major poems, "Song of Myself" contains symbols. For example, in the poem he describes grass as a symbol of life—"the babe of vegetation," "the handkerchief of the Lord/A scented gift and remembrancer designedly dropt."

"Out of the Cradle Endlessly Rocking" tells of a man recalling a boyhood experience in which a mockingbird lost its mate in a storm at sea. The memory of the bird's song teaches the man the meaning of death and thus the true vocation of a poet: to celebrate death as merely part of the cycle of birth, life, death, and rebirth.

Whitman wrote "When Lilacs Last in the Dooryard Bloom'd" on the death of Abraham Lincoln. Lincoln died in April, a time of rebirth in nature. As his coffin is transported from Washington, D.C., to Springfield, Ill., it passes the young wheat, "every grain from its shroud in the dark-brown fields uprisen." Whitman says that each spring the blooming lilac will remind him not only of the death of Lincoln, but also of the eternal return to life. The evening star Venus symbolizes Lincoln, who has "droop'd in the western sky."

In "Passage to India," Whitman sees achievements in transportation and communication as symbols of universal brotherhood. Individuals are to be united with themselves and then with God, the "Elder Brother."

A group of Civil War poems called "Drum Taps" describes battlefield scenes and Whitman's emotions during wartime. "O Captain! My Captain!," another poem on Lincoln's death, is Whitman's most popular poem, but differs from his others in rhyme and rhythm. The "Children of Adam" poems defend the sacredness of sex. The "Calamus" poems praise male companionship.

Whitman wrote in a form similar to thought-rhythm, or parallelism. This form is found in Old Testament poetry. It is also found in sacred books of India, such as the Bhagavad-Gita, which Whitman may have read in translation. The rhythm of his lines suggests the rise and fall of the sea he loved so much. This structure is better suited to expressing emotion than to logical discussion.

In general, Whitman's poetry is idealistic and romantic while his prose is realistic. His best prose is in a book of essays, mostly autobiographical, called Specimen Days (1882). Whitman's essay "Democratic Vistas" (1871) deals with his theory of democracy and with the creation of a democratic literature.

His life. Walter Whitman was born in West Hills, Long Island, New York, and grew up in Brooklyn. He worked as a schoolteacher, printer, and journalist in the New York City area. He wrote articles on political questions, civic affairs, and the arts. Whitman loved mixing in crowds. He attended debates, the theater, concerts, lectures, and political meetings. He often rode on stagecoaches and ferries just to talk with people.

During the Civil War, Whitman was a government clerk and a volunteer assistant in the military hospitals in Washington, D.C. After the war, he worked in several government departments until he suffered a stroke in 1873. He spent the rest of his life in Camden, N.J., where he continued to write poems and articles.

Whitman believed that the vitality and variety of his life reflected the vitality and variety of American democracy during his time. Most critics accept this view of the man and his poems. However, some insist Whitman was not a prophetic spokesman, but simply a powerful and unusual lyric poet.

Frost, Robert (1874-1963), became the most popular American poet of his time. He won the Pulitzer Prize for poetry in 1924, 1931, 1937, and 1943. In 1960, Congress voted Frost a gold medal "in recognition of his poetry, which has enriched the culture of the United States and the philosophy of the world." Frost's public career reached a climax in January 1961, when he recited his poem "The Gift Outright" at the inauguration of President John F. Kennedy.

His life. Robert Lee Frost was born in San Francisco on March 26, 1874. After the death of his father in 1885, his family moved back to New England, the original family home. Frost briefly attended Dartmouth and Harvard colleges but did not earn a degree. In the early 1890's, he worked in New England as a farmer, an editor, and a schoolteacher, absorbing the materials that were to form the themes of many of his most famous poems. In 1912, he moved briefly to England where his poetry was well-received and where he met poets William Butler Yeats and Ezra Pound. His first volume of poetry, A Boy's Will, appeared in 1913. His final collection, In the Clearing, appeared in 1962.

His poems. Frost's poetry is identified with New England, particularly Vermont and New Hampshire. Frost found inspiration for many of his finest poems in the region's landscapes, folkways, and speech mannerisms. His poetry is noted for its plain language, conventional poetic forms, and graceful style. He was deeply influenced by classical poets, especially Horace. Many of Frost's earliest poems are as richly developed as his later ones.

In his longer, more elaborate poems, Frost writes about complex subjects in a complex style.

A similar varied pattern can be found in Frost's character studies. "The Witch of Coos" is a comic account of the superstitions of rural New England. In "Home Burial," this same setting is the background of tragedy centering around a child's death. In "The Hill Wife," Frost shows the loneliness and emotional poverty of a rural existence driving a person insane.

By placing people and nature side by side, Frost often appears to write the kind of Romantic poetry associated with England and the United States in the 1800's. There is, however, a crucial difference between his themes and those of the older tradition. The Romantic poets of the 1800's believed people could live in harmony with nature. To Frost, the purposes of people and nature are never the same, and so nature's meanings can never be known. Probing for nature's secrets is futile and foolish. Humanity's best chance for serenity does not come from understanding the natural environment. Serenity comes from working usefully and productively amid the external forces of nature. Frost often used the theme of "significant toil"—toil by which people are nourished and sustained. This theme appears in such famous lyrics as "Birches," "After Apple-Picking," and "Two Tramps in Mud Time."

Poe, Edgar Allan (1809-1849), was an American poet, short-story writer, and literary critic. Poe's stormy personal life and his haunting poems and stories combined to make him one of the most famous figures in American literary history.

Poe's influence on literature has been immense. His short story "The Murders in the Rue Morgue" (1841) is considered the first modern detective story. His reviews of American novelist Nathaniel Hawthorne mark him as the first significant theorist of the modern short story. His poetry and his stories of terror are among the most influential in modern literature. Writers as diverse as the Scottish writer Robert Louis Stevenson and Russian author Fyodor Dostoevsky have used Poe's stories to launch their own fictional experiments. Poe celebrated pure forms of beauty and opposed the didactic (a tendency to instruct or moralize) in poetry. These attitudes laid a foundation for later literary movements, notably symbolism

Poe worked as an editor and contributor to magazines in several cities, including Richmond, Virginia; New York City; and Philadelphia. He unsuccessfully tried to found and edit his own magazine, which would have granted him financial security and artistic control in what he considered a hostile literary marketplace.

During his lifetime, Poe made many enemies through his challenge to moralistic limits on literature, his confrontation with the New England literary establishment, and his biting critical style. Some readers too easily identified Poe with the mentally disturbed narrators of his tales, a belief reinforced by Rufus Griswold, Poe's literary executor. Griswold wrote a malicious obituary (1849) and memoir (1850) of Poe that combined half-truths and outright falsehoods about Poe's personal habits and conduct. Griswold portrayed Poe as envious, conceited, arrogant, and bad-tempered. Griswold's portrait severely damaged Poe's reputation and delayed a serious consideration of the writer's place in American literature. But Poe's later rediscovery by the French poets Charles Baudelaire, Stephane Mallarme, and Paul Valery helped restore his reputation.

Poe's life. Poe was born in Boston, the son of traveling actors. His father deserted the family. After his mother died in 1811, Poe became a ward of John Allan, a wealthy Richmond merchant. The Allan family lived in the United Kingdom from 1815 to 1820 before returning to Richmond. In 1826, Poe enrolled at the University of Virginia. There he acquired gambling debts that John Allan refused to pay. Eventually, Poe was forced to withdraw from the university.

Poe's relationship with Allan deteriorated, and the young man enlisted in the U.S. Army in 1827. During the same year, Poe's first book was published. Its title was Tamerlane and Other Poems, "By a Bostonian." While waiting for an appointment to the U.S. Military Academy, Poe published his second volume of poems, Al Aaraaf, Tamerlane, and Minor Poems (1829). Both collections show the influence of the English poet Lord Byron. In 1830, Poe entered the U.S. Military Academy at West Point, New York, where he excelled in the study of languages. But he was expelled in 1831 for neglecting his duties.

Poe's Poems (1831) contained two important poems, "To Helen" and "Israfel." He began to publish tales in the early 1830's while living with his aunt Maria Clemm and her daughter Virginia. Poe suffered financial difficulties, especially after being ignored in John Allan's will. He received help from American novelist John P. Kennedy in winning an editorial post with the Southern Literary Messenger in Richmond. In 1836, Poe married Virginia Clemm, his 13-year-old cousin. For the Messenger, Poe contributed reviews, original or revised poems and stories, and two installments of The Narrative of Arthur Gordon Pym.

Poe produced several of his finest tales in the late 1830's, including "Ligeia," "The Fall of the House of Usher," and "William Wilson." These and other stories were incorporated into Tales of the Grotesque and Arabesque (1839). In 1841, he became an editor of Graham's Magazine, to which he contributed "The Murders in the Rue Morgue."

Poe won greater recognition with "The Gold Bug" (1843), a prize-winning tale that appeared in Philadelphia's Dollar Newspaper. The poem "The Raven" (1845) made him famous. Two more collections, Tales and The Raven and Other Poems, appeared in 1845. Early in 1845, Poe antagonized many people with a scathing campaign against the popular American poet Henry Wadsworth Longfellow for supposed plagiarisms. At a public appearance in Boston later that year, Poe admitted to being drunk, which further alienated the public.

Poe's later years were colored by economic hardship and ill health. Nevertheless, he published the story "The Cask of Amontillado" (1846), "The Philosophy of Composition" (1846), and part of his "Marginalia," a collection of critical notes written for various periodicals during the 1840's.

Virginia Poe died of tuberculosis in 1847, after five years of illness. Poe then sank into poor health, and his literary productivity declined. In the middle and late 1840's, he sought to support himself as a lecturer. His lecture on "The Universe" was expanded into Eureka: A Prose Poem (1848), which explores the mysteries of the universe.

In 1849, Poe became engaged to marry the widowed Sarah Elmira Royster Shelton, his boyhood sweetheart. On his way to bring Mrs. Clemm to the wedding, Poe stopped in Baltimore. On October 3, he was found semiconscious and delirious outside a tavern used as a polling place. The cause of his death four days later was listed as "congestion of the brain," though the precise circumstances of his death have never been fully explained.

Nearly all Poe's criticism on poetry was written for the magazines for which he worked. Although the pieces were published intermittently, they reflect a remarkably coherent, self-conscious view of poetry and of the creative process. Poe wrote "The Philosophy of Composition" to explain how he composed "The Raven." The essay opposes the romantic assumption that the poet works in a "fine frenzy" of pure inspiration. Instead, Poe wrote a carefully deliberate account of poetic creation. The essay analyzes the central role of "effect," the conscious choice of an emotional atmosphere that is more important than incident, character, and versification. Poe also offered his famous pronouncement that the death of a beautiful woman is the most poetical topic in the world. In "The Poetic Principle" (1850), Poe claimed that poetry works to achieve "an elevating excitement of the soul," an emotional state that could not be long sustained. He further declared that a "long poem" is a contradiction in terms.

Poe believed that a poem's emotional impact was enhanced by music or "sweet sound." He thus devoted considerable attention to techniques of versification, especially in his essay "The Rationale of Verse" (1848).

Poe's "Sonnet—To Science" (1829) subtly shows how beauty is destroyed by the coldness of the modern scientific intellect. "To Helen" (1831) is a brilliant example of precision and balance and perhaps Poe's classic poetic statement on the idealization of women.

Despite its theatrical effects and stylistic flaws, "The Raven" (1845) is Poe's best-known poem and one of the most famous works in American literature. It treats his favorite theme, the death of a beautiful woman. This theme also appears in "The Sleeper" (1841) and "Ulalume" (1847). In all three poems, Poe chose elaborate musical and metrical effects, aspects of his verse that have been widely criticized and parodied. Poe sought an incantatory quality in his verse—that is, a hypnotic quality of rhythm.

Reflecting his interest in musical effects, Poe made no rigid distinction between music and poetry. "Eldorado" (1849), which originated as a song of the American West about the California gold rush, is an outstanding example. Poe went beyond the poem's topical nature. The theme is universalized, as a knight learns that the true Eldorado is a wealth beyond this world.

Much of Poe's early fiction was written for Tales of the Folio Club, a series of satires on the literary pretensions of his day that was never published as a separate volume. In these pieces, serious and satirical elements coexist. These stories, the most notable of which are "Metzengerstein" and "The Assignation," do not conform to his principle of "unity of effect." Rather, the tone is a combination of "half banter, half satire." Poe's only long work of fiction, the sea story The Narrative of Arthur Gordon Pym (1838), may have been begun in this style. But modern critics have uncovered suggestions of mythical, religious, and visionary meaning in the work's ending.

Poe's most famous fictional expression of the unity of effect is "The Fall of the House of Usher" (1839). The story is a portrait of a suffering artist isolated from the tides of life. Subtle psychological meanings can also be found in "Ligeia," "The Cask of Amontillado," and "William Wilson." In all three tales, bizarre and frightening details and events conceal Poe's subtle probing of the warfare he observed in the human soul.

Bishop, Elizabeth (1911-1979), an American poet, wrote poems that offer exquisitely detailed descriptions of landscapes, animals, and objects. But her seemingly calm, objective style can be deceptive, because many of her poems contain deep emotional undercurrents. Her emphasis on outward appearance and precise detail is a way of controlling and containing intense feelings of fear, anxiety, loss, and desire.

Bishop often explored the way in which travel can make the familiar seem strange, and the strange seem familiar. In poems about maps, pictures, foreign countries, and domestic scenes, Bishop showed how easily the world can become puzzling, mysterious, even threatening. But she also showed how we can find ways to live in the world with a slightly ironic sense of comfort and belonging.

Stylistically, Bishop's poems display a relaxed, conversational tone, though many are written in difficult verse forms. Bishop sometimes spent years revising a single poem, yet her language always sounds fresh and spontaneous.

Bishop was born in Worcester, Massachusetts. She won the 1956 Pulitzer Prize for poetry for Poems: North and South—A Cold Spring (1955). The Complete Poems: 1927-1979 was published in 1983, and The Collected Prose, in 1984.

Sandburg, Carl (1878-1967), was an American poet, biographer, and historian. Two major themes dominate his works. One is a search for the meaning of American history. The other involves his enthusiasm for the American common man. Quoting the English writer Rudyard Kipling, Sandburg said of himself: "I will be the word of the people. Mine will be the bleeding mouth from which the gag is snatched. I will say everything."

Sandburg was born in Galesburg, Illinois. He left school at the age of 13 and did odd jobs around Galesburg for several years. Sandburg described his boyhood in the small Midwestern town in his highly praised autobiography, Always the Young Strangers (1953). Its sequel, Ever the Winds of Chance (1983), was published after his death. It describes the years from 1898 to 1907.

When he was about 18, Sandburg traveled throughout the Midwest as a hobo. After the Spanish-American War began in 1898, he served briefly in the U.S. Army in Puerto Rico. That same year, he returned to Galesburg, where he attended Lombard College. He left college in 1902 without graduating. For about 10 years, he was active in Socialist Party politics in Wisconsin.

Sandburg worked as a newspaper writer, primarily in Chicago, from 1912 to the late 1920's. He first won fame—for his poetry—during that period. Then the success of the first part of his great biography, Abraham Lincoln, enabled him to leave journalism and concentrate on a literary career. Sandburg was one of several important American writers who lived in Chicago from about 1912 to the mid-1920's. These writers included Sherwood Anderson, Theodore Dreiser, Ben Hecht, and Edgar Lee Masters. They are frequently called the Chicago School.

His poetry. One of Sandburg's best-known early poems, "Chicago" (1914), portrays the brutality and ugliness he saw in American cities. The poem also pays tribute to the energy and power of modern industry. In making the city his subject, Sandburg followed a tradition in American poetry that began with Walt Whitman during the mid-1800's. In form, style, and theme, many of Sandburg's works resemble the poems in Whitman's collection, Leaves of Grass.

After 1920, Sandburg began to collect American ballads, folk tales, and legends. He presented many ballads and folk songs in The American Songbag (1927).

Sandburg introduced much American folklore into his poetry. In his long free-verse poem The People, Yes (1936), he included tall tales about such fictional and real characters as Paul Bunyan and Christopher Columbus. Sandburg ended the poem with the American people vigorously on the march, seeking new forms of self-expression, and asking the questions, "Where to? What next?"

Sandburg believed deeply in the value of life, and he strongly opposed war. In his dramatic short poems "Grass" (1918) and "A.E.F." (1920), Sandburg protested against the folly and waste of war.

Some critics consider Sandburg's poetry crude and sentimental. But most critics agree that he accomplished his goal of being the voice of the American people and a spokesman for American democracy. Sandburg's Complete Poems (1950) won the 1951 Pulitzer Prize for poetry.

His prose. To Sandburg, Abraham Lincoln represented all that was best in the American character. Sandburg also regarded the Civil War as the most important event in American history. From 1920 to 1939, he wrote six volumes of history about Lincoln and the Civil War. In Abraham Lincoln: The Prairie Years (two volumes, 1926), Sandburg dealt with Lincoln's career up to his election as President. Then, in Abraham Lincoln: The War Years (four volumes, 1939), Sandburg provided one of the fullest accounts of Lincoln's presidency ever written. For this work, Sandburg received the 1940 Pulitzer Prize for history. Many people rank this work as the finest historical biography of the 1900's.

Sandburg wrote three volumes of humorous stories for children—Rootabaga Stories (1922), Rootabaga Pigeons (1923), and Potato Face (1930). He also wrote a historical novel, Remembrance Rock (1948).

Arnold, Matthew (1822-1888), was one of the intellectual leaders of Victorian England. He ranks with Lord Tennyson, Robert Browning, and Gerard Manley Hopkins among the greatest Victorian poets. Arnold was also the most important English literary critic of his time. He was a major social critic, and wrote important works on religion and education.

Arnold's most famous poem, "Dover Beach," describes the "melancholy, long, withdrawing roar" of the "Sea of Faith." His poetry resembles the poetry of our own time in its yearning for peace and its portrayal of personal loneliness. Faced with these difficulties, Arnold often counseled resignation and endurance.

Arnold's prose includes the literary criticism in Essays in Criticism (1865, second series 1888) and the social criticism of Culture and Anarchy (1869). Arnold judged both literature and Victorian society according to the standard of "the best that is known and thought in the world." He found recent writers of his time such as Shelley, Wordsworth, or Burns inadequate when measured against Homer, Dante, or Shakespeare. Arnold condemned what he felt was the tendency toward anarchy (lawlessness) in Victorian culture. Arnold found his society resisting the new ideas that come from a "free play of the mind," which he highly valued. He hoped that maintaining high standards of judgment would aid the return of better literature and a better society.

Arnold was born in Laleham. His father was Thomas Arnold, headmaster of Rugby, the famous English secondary school. Arnold attended Rugby and Oxford University. In 1851, he became an inspector of schools for the British government, a post at which he worked hard for the next 35 years. Most of his poems were published between 1849 and 1855. His prose appeared after 1855. Arnold served as professor of poetry at Oxford from 1857 to 1867. He was the first person in that post to lecture in English instead of Latin.

Shelley, Percy Bysshe, (1792-1822), was one of the great English lyric poets. He experimented with many literary styles and had a lasting influence on many later writers, particularly Robert Browning, Algernon Charles Swinburne, William Butler Yeats, George Bernard Shaw, and Thomas Hardy.

His life. Shelley was born on Aug. 4, 1792, in Sussex into a wealthy and politically prominent family. He had a stormy career at Eton College and Oxford University, from which he was expelled in 1811 for writing a pamphlet called The Necessity of Atheism.

Shelley believed the Irish were being oppressed by their English rulers. He tried to rouse the Irish to rebel against England in his pamphlet An Address to the Irish People (1812). He wrote Queen Mab (1813), a revolutionary poem which attacked both political tyranny and orthodox Christianity. In 1816, Shelley and his wife became close friends with the poet Lord Byron in Geneva, Switzerland. That friendship led to an ongoing exchange of ideas that Shelley commemorated in Julian and Maddalo (1824), a poem in the form of a conversation.

After March 1818, Shelley went into exile in Italy. There he wrote a series of important works, including the play The Cenci (1820) and the poems Prometheus Unbound (1820), The Witch of Atlas (1820), Epipsychidion (1821), and Hellas (1822). The death of an acquaintance, the English poet John Keats, inspired his elegy Adonais (1821). On July 8, 1822, Shelley drowned while sailing near Livorno (sometimes called Leghorn), Italy.

His writings. Shelley's poems are emotionally direct, but difficult to understand intellectually. Much of his poetry is openly autobiographical, including his most famous lyric "Ode to the West Wind" (1819). Shelley's spiritual attitudes were intensely personal and tended to oppose traditional Christian views. Shelley felt that spiritual truth was not based on either supernatural revelation or natural experience. Instead, he thought truth could be understood by the imagination alone. Shelley debated the role of the imagination as a spiritual guide in "Mont Blanc" (1816). This powerful meditative poem first revealed Shelley's mature style. Another early lyric, "Hymn to Intellectual Beauty" (1816), tells of Shelley's decision to devote his life to the pursuit of ideals. He also developed this theme in his poem Alastor (1816).

In his most ambitious long poem, the lyrical drama Prometheus Unbound, Shelley attempted to combine his imaginative faith with his hopes for humanity's redemption here on earth. Like much of Shelley's work, this play is based on classical Greek models. Prometheus, the creative power in humanity, is liberated by Demogorgon, a mythical figure who stands for inevitable change in human events. Prometheus forgives his tormentor, Jupiter, symbolizing the poem's insistence on the power of mercy, forgiveness, and selfless love. At the end of the play, tyrannical earthly rulers and corrupt governmental institutions are defeated and love and beauty reign, though perhaps not forever. Shelley examined the practical moral implications of these ideas in his realistic Elizabethan-style tragedy, The Cenci.

Shelley's later poetry became more somber and skeptical. The Irish poet William Butler Yeats described Shelley's theme as an increasing conflict between infinite desire and the inability fully to realize such desire. The autobiographical Epipsychidion records Shelley's vision of ideal love finding its lasting home in an earthly paradise. The poem describes his supposed success in achieving that vision through his love for an Italian noblewoman, Emilia Viviani. In the end, however, the poem casts doubt on that success and, even more, on the ability of mere words to describe such perfection.

In 1821, Shelley wrote his famous essay A Defence of Poetry. The work is valuable for its insights into poetry and Shelley's attempt to use his views on imagination to define the role of poets. He asserts that poets sow the seeds of future reforms but do not themselves live to witness their realization.

In the preface to the second edition of Lyrical Ballads (1800), Wordsworth outlined ideas about poetry that have since been identified with romanticism. He argued that serious poems could describe "situations from common life" and be written in the ordinary language "really used by men." He believed such poems could clarify "the primary laws of our nature." Wordsworth also insisted that poetry is "emotion recollected in tranquility" and that a poet is "a man speaking to men," different from his fellows only in the degree of his sensitivity but not in any essential way.

Wordsworth has frequently been praised for his descriptions of nature. However, he rightly claimed that his primary interest was the "mind of man." In fact, a key section of his poem The Prelude: or, Growth of a Poet's Mind insists that love of nature leads to the love of humanity. His finest poems, including the "Lucy" lyrics (1798-1799), "Michael" (1800), "Resolution and Independence" (1802), and "The Solitary Reaper" (1807), dramatize how imagination creates spiritual values out of the memory of sights and sounds in nature.

Early life. Wordsworth was born in Cockermouth, which is now in the county of Cumbria. His mother died in 1778, his father in 1783. Relatives provided for his education. Wordsworth entered Cambridge University in 1787, the year he wrote his first significant poem. During a summer vacation in 1790, he visited France, then in turmoil because of the French Revolution. After graduating from Cambridge in 1791, he returned to France and became a supporter of the revolution. He returned to England in December 1792. Although liberal in his youth, he later became politically and religiously conservative. As a result, he was severely criticized by poets Lord Byron and Robert Browning and others as a traitor to his own youthful principles. Wordsworth was appointed poet laureate in 1843.

Later career. Wordsworth married Mary Hutchinson in 1802. They had five children. Wordsworth was deeply saddened by the drowning death of his brother John in 1805. His sadness was reflected in his poem "Elegiac Stanzas Suggested by a Picture of Peele Castle" (1806). This poem may have marked the end of Wordsworth's youthful creative period. It seems to reject his early optimistic belief, stated in "Tintern Abbey," that "nature never did betray the heart that loved her." In 1807, Wordsworth published one of the most famous poems in English literature, "Ode: Intimations of Immortality." In this piece, Wordsworth praised childhood and urged individuals to rely on intuition.

Wordsworth's masterpiece is his long autobiographical poem, The Prelude. He wrote it between 1798 and 1805, but he continued to revise it for the rest of his life. The poem was published in 1850, shortly after his death. The revisions that Wordsworth made in The Prelude between 1805 and 1850 clearly indicate how his values changed as he aged. In its best passages, The Prelude achieves a remarkable combination of simplicity and grandeur.