By Dr Oliver Tearle (Loughborough University)
Walt Whitman (1819-92) is one of the few great nineteenth-century American poets. With his innovative free verse and celebration of the American landscape, he made his poetry a sort of literary declaration of independence, his long, sprawling lines having an almost prophetic quality.
By Dr Oliver Tearle (Loughborough University)
The writer O. Henry was a prolific author of short stories, and a number of them are still widely taught in schools and colleges; his brief tales with their surprising twist endings are still read and enjoyed by people around the world.
But who was O. Henry? Was that the author’s real name? What did the ‘O.’ stand for? And how was the life of ‘O. Henry’ as surprising, and full of twists, as his work?
By Dr Oliver Tearle (Loughborough University)
Emily Dickinson (1830-86) is one of the most original poets of the nineteenth century. If we set her work alongside that of her contemporaries, perhaps it is only Walt Whitman, who pioneered free verse, and, in Britain, Gerard Manley Hopkins, who opted for ‘sprung rhythm’ over more traditional metre in his poetry, who seem to ‘match’ Dickinson for distinctive vitality and freshness of approach.
By Dr Oliver Tearle (Loughborough University)
Robert Frost (1874-1963) is one of the most important, and popular, American poets of the twentieth century. Over a long career, he wrote poems about everything from the natural world to the founding of America, from his own childhood and youth to the landscape of New England.
By Dr Oliver Tearle (Loughborough University)
Langston Hughes (1901-67) was a key figure in the Harlem Renaissance in New York in the 1920s. A prolific writer, he was a novelist, playwright, social activist, and journalist, among many other things (he even wrote a musical).