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To The South Downs
"To The South Downs," also known as Charlotte Turner Smith's "Sonnet V," is one of Smith's earliest sonnets and the first to describe the River Arun and her childhood landscape. The poem first appeared in the first edition of Smith's '' Elegiac Sonnets'' in 1784. Background Smith grew up at an estate named Bignor Park in West Sussex, where she could see the River Arun at a distance. An unhappy marriage and poverty took her away from this childhood home, though it remained important to her. The title page of the first edition of ''Elegiac Sonnets'' identified her as "Charlotte Smith, of Bignor Park" even though she no longer lived there. The Sussex landscape, including the hills of the South Downs, is frequently important to Smith's poetry; her last work, ''Beachy Head'', also describes the South Downs. Poem The poem was first published in ''The European Magazine'' in October 1782, and reprinted in ''The New Annual Register'' in January 1784, before being collected in Smith's ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
Charlotte Turner Smith
Charlotte Smith (née Turner; – ) was an English novelist and poet of the School of Sensibility whose ''Elegiac Sonnets'' (1784) contributed to the revival of the form in England. She also helped to set conventions for Gothic fiction and wrote political novels of sensibility. Despite ten novels, four children's books and other works, she saw herself mainly as a poet and expected to be remembered for that. Smith left her husband and began writing to support their children. Her struggles for legal independence as a woman affect her poetry, novels and autobiographical prefaces. She is credited with turning the sonnet into an expression of woeful sentiment and her early novels show development in sentimentality. Later novels such as ''Desmond'' and '' The Old Manor House'' praised the ideals of the French Revolution. Waning interest left her destitute by 1803. Barely able to hold a pen, she sold her book collection to pay debts and died in 1806. Largely forgotten by the mid-19t ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
River Arun
The River Arun () is a river in the English county of West Sussex. At long, it is the longest river entirely in Sussex and one of the longest starting in Sussex after the River Medway, River Wey and River Mole. From the series of small streams that form its source in the area of St Leonard's Forest in the Weald, the Arun flows westwards through Horsham to Nowhurst where it is joined by the North River. Turning to the south, it is joined by its main tributary, the western River Rother, and continues through a gap in the South Downs to Arundel to join the English Channel at Littlehampton. It is one of the faster flowing rivers in England, and is tidal as far inland as Pallingham Quay, upstream from the sea at Littlehampton. The Arun gives its name to the Arun local government district of West Sussex. The first major improvements to the river were made between the 1540s and the 1570s, when Arundel became a port, and navigation up to Pallingham was improved, but barges had di ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
Elegiac Sonnets
''Elegiac Sonnets'', titled ''Elegiac Sonnets, and Other Essays by Charlotte Sussman of Bignor Park, in Sussex'' in its first edition, is a collection of poetry written by Charlotte Smith, first published in 1784. It was widely popular and frequently reprinted, with Smith adding more poems over time. ''Elegiac Sonnets'' is credited with re-popularizing the sonnet form in the eighteenth century. It is notable for its poetic representations of personal emotion, which made it an important early text in the Romantic literary movement. Publication history The first edition of ''Elegiac Sonnets'' in 1784 was a single volume with sixteen sonnets and three other poems. Six of these sonnets had previously appeared in the periodicals ''The European Magazine'' and ''The New Annual Register''. The ninth edition, in 1800, was the last which Smith supervised. The last edition to add new poems, the tenth edition in 1812, was two volumes, with fifty-nine sonnets and eight other poems. Conten ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
West Sussex
West Sussex is a county in South East England on the English Channel coast. The ceremonial county comprises the shire districts of Adur, Arun, Chichester, Horsham, and Mid Sussex, and the boroughs of Crawley and Worthing. Covering an area of 1,991 square kilometres (769 sq mi), West Sussex borders Hampshire to the west, Surrey to the north, and East Sussex to the east. The county town and only city in West Sussex is Chichester, located in the south-west of the county. This was legally formalised with the establishment of West Sussex County Council in 1889 but within the ceremonial County of Sussex. After the reorganisation of local government in 1974, the ceremonial function of the historic county of Sussex was divided into two separate counties, West Sussex and East Sussex. The existing East and West Sussex councils took control respectively, with Mid Sussex and parts of Crawley being transferred to the West Sussex administration from East Sussex. In the 2011 censu ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
South Downs
The South Downs are a range of chalk hills that extends for about across the south-eastern coastal counties of England from the Itchen valley of Hampshire in the west to Beachy Head, in the Eastbourne Downland Estate, East Sussex, in the east. The Downs are bounded on the northern side by a steep escarpment, from whose crest there are extensive views northwards across the Weald. The South Downs National Park forms a much larger area than the chalk range of the South Downs and includes large parts of the Weald. The South Downs are characterised by rolling chalk downland with close-cropped turf and dry valleys, and are recognised as one of the most important chalk landscapes in England. The range is one of the four main areas of chalk downland in southern England. The South Downs are relatively less populated compared to South East England as a whole, although there has been large-scale urban encroachment onto the chalk downland by major seaside resorts, including most notably ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
Beachy Head (poem)
''Beachy Head'' is a long blank verse poem by the English Romantic poet and novelist Charlotte Turner Smith, published in 1807, the year after her death, as part of the volume ''Beachy Head and Other Poems''. The poem imagines events at the coastal cliffs of Beachy Head from across England's history, to meditate on what Smith saw as the modern corruption caused by commerce and nationalism. It was her last poetic work, and has been described as her most poetically ambitious work. As a Romantic poem, it is notable for its naturalist rather than sublime presentation of the natural world. Smith wrote ''Beachy Head'' between 1803 and 1806, near the end of her life, when she was struggling with debt and ill-health. Smith supported French revolutionary ideals; though, as the poem was being composed, England was engaged in the Napoleonic Wars with France, and Beachy Head was regarded as a likely invasion point for the French army. As she was composing the poem, Smith wrote sixty-four ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
Thomas Gray
Thomas Gray (26 December 1716 – 30 July 1771) was an English poet, letter-writer, classics, classical scholar, and professor at Pembroke College, Cambridge, Pembroke College, Cambridge. He is widely known for his ''Elegy Written in a Country Churchyard,'' published in 1751. Gray was a Self-criticism, self-critical writer who published only 13 poems in his lifetime, despite being very popular. He was even offered the position of Poet laureate, Poet Laureate in 1757 after the death of Colley Cibber, though he declined. His writing is conventionally considered to be Preromanticism, pre-Romantic but recent critical developments deny such Teleology, teleological classification. Early life and education Thomas Gray was born in Cornhill, London. His father, Philip Gray, was a scrivener and his mother, Dorothy Antrobus, was a milliner. He was the fifth of twelve children, and the only one to survive infancy.John D. Baird, 'Gray, Thomas (1716–1771)', ''Oxford Dictionary of National ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
Ode On A Distant Prospect Of Eton College
"Ode on a Distant Prospect of Eton College" is an 18th-century ode by Thomas Gray. It is composed of ten 10-line stanzas, rhyming ABABCCDEED, with the B lines and final D line in iambic trimeter and the others in iambic tetrameter Iambic tetrameter is a poetic meter in ancient Greek and Latin poetry; as the name of ''a rhythm'', iambic tetrameter consists of four metra, each metron being of the form , x – u – , , consisting of a spondee and an iamb, or two iambs. There .... In this poem, Gray coined the phrase "Ignorance is bliss". It occurs in the final stanza of the poem: References English poems {{poem-stub ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
Thames River
The River Thames ( ), known alternatively in parts as the River Isis, is a river that flows through southern England including London. At , it is the longest river entirely in England and the second-longest in the United Kingdom, after the River Severn. The river rises at Thames Head in Gloucestershire, and flows into the North Sea near Tilbury, Essex and Gravesend, Kent, via the Thames Estuary. From the west it flows through Oxford (where it is sometimes called the Isis), Reading, Henley-on-Thames and Windsor. The Thames also drains the whole of Greater London. In August 2022, the source of the river moved five miles to beyond Somerford Keynes due to the heatwave in July 2022. The lower reaches of the river are called the Tideway, derived from its long tidal reach up to Teddington Lock. Its tidal section includes most of its London stretch and has a rise and fall of . From Oxford to the Estuary the Thames drops by 55 metres. Running through some of the drier parts of ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
Romanticism
Romanticism (also known as the Romantic movement or Romantic era) was an artistic, literary, musical, and intellectual movement that originated in Europe towards the end of the 18th century, and in most areas was at its peak in the approximate period from 1800 to 1850. Romanticism was characterized by its emphasis on emotion and individualism, clandestine literature, paganism, idealization of nature, suspicion of science and industrialization, and glorification of the past with a strong preference for the medieval rather than the classical. It was partly a reaction to the Industrial Revolution, the social and political norms of the Age of Enlightenment, and the scientific rationalization of nature. It was embodied most strongly in the visual arts, music, and literature, but had a major impact on historiography, education, chess, social sciences, and the natural sciences. It had a significant and complex effect on politics, with romantic thinkers influencing conservatism, libe ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
William Wordsworth
William Wordsworth (7 April 177023 April 1850) was an English Romantic poet who, with Samuel Taylor Coleridge, helped to launch the Romantic Age in English literature with their joint publication ''Lyrical Ballads'' (1798). Wordsworth's ''magnum opus'' is generally considered to be ''The Prelude'', a semi-autobiographical poem of his early years that he revised and expanded a number of times. It was posthumously titled and published by his wife in the year of his death, before which it was generally known as "the poem to Coleridge". Wordsworth was Poet Laureate from 1843 until his death from pleurisy on 23 April 1850. Early life The second of five children born to John Wordsworth and Ann Cookson, William Wordsworth was born on 7 April 1770 in what is now named Wordsworth House in Cockermouth, Cumberland, (now in Cumbria), part of the scenic region in northwestern England known as the Lake District. William's sister, the poet and diarist Dorothy Wordsworth, to whom he wa ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
Sonnets
A sonnet is a poetic form that originated in the poetry composed at the Court of the Holy Roman Emperor Frederick II in the Sicilian city of Palermo. The 13th-century poet and notary Giacomo da Lentini is credited with the sonnet's invention, and the Sicilian School of poets who surrounded him then spread the form to the mainland. The earliest sonnets, however, no longer survive in the original Sicilian language, but only after being translated into Tuscan dialect. The term "sonnet" is derived from the Italian word ''sonetto'' (lit. "little song", derived from the Latin word ''sonus'', meaning a sound). By the 13th century it signified a poem of fourteen lines that followed a strict rhyme scheme and structure. According to Christopher Blum, during the Renaissance, the sonnet became the "choice mode of expressing romantic love". During that period, too, the form was taken up in many other European language areas and eventually any subject was considered acceptable for writers o ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
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