Pre-1900 Poetry Context

Sir Thomas Wyatt

Believed to have had a sexually charged relationship with Anne Boleyn before she marrird Henry VIII, lyrical poet

William Shakespeare

First 126 sonnets dedicated to a Mr WH. Elizabethan times, marriage was subservient contract and grim reaper was popular. Features popular Elizabethan beauty ideals

John Donne

Metaphysical and carpe diem poetry. Renaissance time period; people believed that during sex, blood mixed together

Andrew Marvell

Metaphysical and carpe diem poetry. 17th Century men = crude. Puritanism = line of Catholicism allowing no pleasure

Richard Lovelace

Cavalier poet, carpe diem poetry. Part of James I Court. Used rake and wronged woman ideas

John Wilmot, Earl of Rochester

Restoration period, Puritanism is coming to an end, mocking fidelity and other attitudes towards love. Rake-ish character. Part of Charles II court, prom would've been presented to his friends

William Blake

Romantic poet, he was a dissenter, challenged institutions such as the church

Robert Burns

Sentimental poetry, in love with a married woman who was leaving to Jamaica to reconcile with her husband. Social constraints on love = regret?

Lord Byron

'Mad, bad and dangerous to know'. Within his day wildly popular, had many bisexual affairs. Unsupported to write the poem after having seen a beautiful woman named Wilmot at a party in London, in mourning, wearing a black glittering dress

Christina Rossetti

Part of the pre-Raphaelite movement, who rejected classical. 'Arts for ads sake', spiritual and controversial poetry. Published when she was 31, both her and her father had depression and an illness, suspected TB

Thomas Hardy

Victorian realist. Loved Florence Hennicker, but both of them were married. Stands up for women's rights, only to benefit him?

John Keats

Couldn't be with his love due to financial problems then illness. Lost mother and brother to TB then accounted to it himself and knew he was dying due to it. Does age 25. Born in east London then moved to Italy

Ernest Dowson

Decadent movement. Sexually experimental, linking to pre-Raphaelite. Unrequited love for an eleven year old girl to whom he proposed to when he was 23. She declined. Cynara - comes from Greek word for artichoke, representative of love and hope