Ben Jonson (1572-1637)

Ben Jonson was born around June 11, 1572, the posthumous son of a clergyman. He was educated at Westminster School by the great classical scholar William Camden and worked in his stepfather’s trade, bricklaying. The trade did not please him in the least, and he joined the army, serving in Flanders. He returned to England [...]

William Alabaster (1567-1640)

William Alabaster, or Alablaster, was born at Hadleigh, Suffolk in 1567. He was educated at Hadleigh grammar school, Westminster School and Trinity College, Cambridge, which he entered as a scholar in 1584. He took his B.A. in 1587, and M.A. in 1591. In 1592 he was incorporated of the University of Oxford.1 While at Cambridge, [...]

Life of Sir Thomas Overbury (1581-1613)

Source: 1911 Encyclopedia Britannica Sir Thomas Overbury (1581 – September 15, 1613), English poet and essayist, and the victim of one of the most sensational crimes in English history, was the son of Nicholas Overbury, of Bourton-on-the-Hill, and was born at Compton Scorpion, near Ilmington, in Warwickshire. In the autumn of 1595 he became a [...]

Sir Francis Bacon

    Excerpted from: A Short Biographical Dictionary of English Literature. John W. Cousins, ed. J M Dent & Co, London, 1910. Bacon, Francis, Lord Verulam, and Viscount St. Alban’s, philosopher and statesman, was the youngest son of Sir Nicholas Bacon, Lord Keeper, by his second wife, a daughter of Sir Anthony Cooke, whose sister [...]

King James I

by John Butler James I of England and VI of Scotland was born in 1566, the son of Mary, Queen of Scots, and Henry, Lord Darnley. James had to face difficulties from his earliest years—his mother was an incompetent ruler who quarrelled with politicians and churchmen such as John Knox, and she may have been [...]

Seamus Heaney

Digging For some context on Seamus Heaney, see the Context section of Storm on the Island Subject Matter Structure and Language Imagery and Sound Attitude, tone and ideas Comparison

W B Yeats: Song of the Old Mother

The Poem The Song of the Old Mother I rise in the dawn, and I kneel and blow Till the seed of the fire flicker and glow; And then I must scrub and bake and sweep Till stars are beginning to blink and peep; And the young lie long and dream in their bed Of [...]