"Elizabeth Barrett Moulton-Barrett [Browning] was born March 6, 1806 in Durham, England. Her father, Edward Moulton-Barrett, made most of his considerable fortune from Jamaican sugar plantations, and in 1809 he bought Hope End, a 500-acre estate near the Malvern Hills. Elizabeth lived a privileged childhood, riding her pony around the grounds, visiting other families in the neighborhood, and arranging family theatrical productions with her eleven brothers and sisters..." Click here to read more
Click here for Elizabeth Barrett Browning on the Victorian Web
"Kelly Cherry (b. 1940) was born in Baton Rouge, Louisiana. She received a B.A. from Mary Washington College and an M.F.A. from the University of North Carolina at Greensboro...." Click here to read more
Click here for a selected bibliography of Mary, Lady Chudleigh
"On June 21, 2001, Billy Collins was appointed as the Library's new Poet Laureate Consultant in Poetry. In 2002, he was appointed to a second term, continuing through 2003. He is Distinguished Professor of English at Lehman College, City University of New York, where he has taught for the past 30 years...." Click here to read more (from the Library of Congress)
"Emily Dickinson was born in Amherst, Massachusetts, in 1830. She attended Mount Holyoke Female Seminary in South Hadley, but severe homesickness led her to return home after one year. Throughout her life, she seldom left her house and visitors were scarce..." Click here to read more
More information about Emily Dickinson (by Dr. Donna Campbell, Washington State University)
Dickinson Electronic Archive
"Gwen Harwood (1920–95) was born in Brisbane, Queensland. Her father played the piano and violin, and Gwen took piano lessons, hoping to become a musician. She became a music teacher in Brisbane. She learned German and read widely in German poetry and philosophy, especially the philosophical writings of Wittgenstein..." Click here to read more from Australian Literature Resources
"Born in 1902 in Joplin, Missouri, Langston Hughes grew up mainly in Lawrence, Kansas, but also lived in Illinois, Ohio, and Mexico.
By the time Hughes enrolled at Columbia University in New York, he had already launched his literary career with his poem "The Negro Speaks of Rivers" in the Crisis, edited by W E. B. Du Bois. He had also committed himself both to writing and to writing mainly about African Americans..." Click here to read more
"The life and work of Andrew Marvell are both marked by extraordinary variety and range. Gifted with a most subtle and introspective imagination, he turned his talents in mid-career from incomparable lyric explorations of the inner life to panegyric and satiric poems on the men and issues involved in one of England's most crucial political epochs. The century which followed Marvell's death remembered him almost exclusively as a politician and pamphleteer. Succeeding periods, on the other hand, have all but lost the public figure in the haunting recesses of his lyric poems" -Lord, George deF, qtd. in http://www.luminarium.org/sevenlit/marvell/marvbio.htm
"Dorothy Parker Rothschild represented one of the most accomplished feminist and successful literary writers in women’s history. Existing from 1893-1967, she became known as one of the most brilliant writers from the early 1900s. Born in West End, New Jersey, and attaining her success from New York, she became one of the most brilliant writers that revolutionized American thinking then and after. Dorothy Parker lived a full and prosperous life, even though she did not have a happy childhood..." Click here to read more
"Linda Pastan was born in New York City, graduated from Radcliffe College and received an MA from Brandeis University..." Click here to read more
"There is no writer of comparable influence and achievement in so many areas of the contemporary women's movement as the poet and theorist Adrienne Rich. Over the years, hers has become one of the most eloquent, provocative voices on the politics of sexuality, race, language, power, and women's culture. There is scarcely an anthology of feminist writings that does not contain her work or specifically engage her ideas, a women's studies course that does not read her essays, or a poetry collection that does not include her work or that of the next generation of poets steeped in her example...." Click here to read more
"William Shakespeare was born in April 1564 in the town of Stratford-upon-Avon, on England's Avon River. When he was eighteen, he married Anne Hathaway. The couple had three children—their older daughter Susanna and the twins Judith and Hamnet. Hamnet, Shakespeare's only son, died in childhood..." Click here to read more (from Folger Shakespeare Library)
