READ Famous Poets from England

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Paul McCartney age 75 Sir James Paul McCartney MBE is an English singer-songwriter, multi-instrumentalist, and composer. With John Lennon, George Harrison, and Ringo Starr, he gained worldwide fame as a member of the ...more

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Pete Doherty age 39 Peter "Pete" Doherty is an English musician, writer, actor, poet and artist. He is best known musically for being co-frontman of The Libertines, which he formed with Carl Barât ...more

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Elizabeth I of England Died at 70 (1533-1603) Elizabeth I was Queen of England and Ireland from 17 November 1558 until her death. Sometimes called The Virgin Queen, Gloriana or Good Queen Bess, the childless Elizabeth was the fifth and last ...more

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T. S. Eliot Died at 77 (1888-1965) Thomas Stearns Eliot OM, usually known as T. S. Eliot, was an essayist, publisher, playwright, literary and social critic, and "one of the twentieth century's major poets". He was born ...more

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George Gordon Byron Died at 36 (1788-1824) George Gordon Byron, 6th Baron Byron, later George Gordon Noel, 6th Baron Byron, FRS, commonly known simply as Lord Byron, was an English poet and a leading figure in the Romantic movement. ...more

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Rudyard Kipling Died at 71 (1865-1936) Joseph Rudyard Kipling was an English short-story writer, poet, and novelist. He wrote tales and poems of British soldiers in India and stories for children. He was born in Bombay, in the Bombay ...more

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Samuel Johnson Died at 75 (1709-1784) Samuel Johnson, often referred to as Dr Johnson, was an English writer who made lasting contributions to English literature as a poet, essayist, moralist, literary critic, biographer, editor and ...more

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William Blake Died at 70 (1757-1827) William Blake was an English painter, poet and printmaker. Largely unrecognised during his lifetime, Blake is now considered a seminal figure in the history of the poetry and visual arts of the ...more

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Charlotte Brontë Died at 39 (1816-1855) Charlotte Brontë was an English novelist and poet, the eldest of the three Brontë sisters who survived into adulthood and whose novels have become classics of English literature. She ...more

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Anthony Burgess Died at 76 (1917-1993) John Anthony Burgess Wilson, FRSL – who published under the pen name Anthony Burgess – was an English writer and composer. From relatively modest beginnings in a Catholic family in Manchester, ...more

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W. H. Auden Died at 66 (1907-1973) Wystan Hugh Auden was an Anglo-American poet, born in England, an American citizen, and regarded by many critics as one of the greatest writers of the 20th century. His work is noted for its ...more

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Harold Pinter Died at 78 (1930-2008) Harold Pinter, CH, CBE was a Nobel Prize-winning English playwright, screenwriter, director and actor. One of the most influential modern British dramatists, his writing career spanned more than ...more

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John Keats Died at 26 (1795-1821) John Keats was an English Romantic poet. He was one of the main figures of the second generation of Romantic poets along with Lord Byron and Percy Bysshe Shelley, despite his work having been in ...more

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Wilfred Owen Died at 25 (1893-1918) Wilfred Edward Salter Owen MC was an English poet and soldier, one of the leading poets of the First World War. His shocking, realistic war poetry on the horrors of trenches and gas warfare was ...more

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Siegfried Sassoon Died at 81 (1886-1967) Siegfried Loraine Sassoon, CBE, MC was an English poet, writer, and soldier. Decorated for bravery on the Western Front, he became one of the leading poets of the First World War. His poetry ...more

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Emily Brontë Died at 30 (1818-1848) Emily Jane Brontë was an English novelist and poet who is best known for her only novel, Wuthering Heights, now considered a classic of English literature. Emily was the third eldest of the ...more

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Stephen Spender Died at 86 (1909-1995) Sir Stephen Harold Spender CBE was an English poet, novelist and essayist who concentrated on themes of social injustice and the class struggle in his work. He was appointed the seventeenth Poet ...more

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Walter Raleigh Died at 66 (1552-1618) Sir Walter Raleigh was an English landed gentleman, writer, poet, soldier, politician, courtier, spy, and explorer. He was cousin to Sir Richard Grenville and younger half-brother of Sir ...more

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Alan Hollinghurst age 63 Alan James Hollinghurst FRSL is an English novelist, poet, short story writer and translator. He is the recipient of numerous awards, including the 1989 Somerset Maugham Award, the 1994 James ...more

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Vivian Stanshall Died at 52 (1943-1995) Vivian Stanshall was an English singer-songwriter, musician, author, poet and wit, best known for his work with the Bonzo Dog Doo-Dah Band, for his exploration of the British upper classes in ...more

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Robert Browning Died at 77 (1812-1889) Robert Browning was an English poet and playwright whose mastery of dramatic verse, and in particular the dramatic monologue, made him one of the foremost Victorian poets. His poems are known ...more

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John Dryden Died at 69 (1631-1700) John Dryden was an English poet, literary critic, translator, and playwright who was made Poet Laureate in 1668. He is seen as dominating the literary life of Restoration England to such a point ...more

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Benjamin Zephaniah age 59 Benjamin Obadiah Iqbal Zephaniah is an English writer, dub poet and Rastafari. He was included in The Times list of Britain's top 50 post-war writers in 2008.

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Rupert Brooke Died at 28 (1887-1915) Rupert Chawner Brooke was an English poet known for his idealistic war sonnets written during the First World War, especially "The Soldier". He was also known for his boyish good ...more

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Samuel Taylor Coleridge Died at 62 (1772-1834) Samuel Taylor Coleridge was an English poet, literary critic and philosopher who, with his friend William Wordsworth, was a founder of the Romantic Movement in England and a member of the Lake ...more

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Edward Carpenter Died at 85 (1844-1929) Edward Carpenter was an English socialist poet, philosopher, anthologist, and early LGBT activist. A leading figure in late 19th- and early 20th-century Britain, he was instrumental in the ...more

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Ben Jonson Died at 65 (1572-1637) Ben Jonson was an English playwright, poet, and literary critic of the seventeenth century, whose artistry exerted a lasting impact upon English poetry and stage comedy. He popularised the ...more

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Lord Alfred Douglas Died at 75 (1870-1945) Lord Alfred Bruce Douglas, nicknamed Bosie, was an English author, poet and translator, better known as the friend and lover of writer Oscar Wilde. Much of his early poetry was Uranian in theme, ...more

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James Fenton age 68 James Martin Fenton FRSL FRSA is an English poet, journalist and literary critic. He is a former Oxford Professor of Poetry.

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Charlotte Lennox Died at 74 (1730-1804) "Mrs Lenox was the author of "The Female Quixote" and various other works . In he "Shakespeare Illustrated" she gives an account of the source of whence the poet derived ...more

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Paul Weller age 59 Paul Weller is a film score composer.

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Robert Graves Died at 90 (1895-1985) Robert von Ranke Graves was an English poet, novelist, critic, and classicist. During his long life he produced more than 140 works. Graves's poems—together with his translations and innovative ...more

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Aphra Behn Died at 49 (1640-1689) Aphra Behn [Aphara] was a British playwright, poet, translator and fiction writer from the Restoration era. As one of the first English women to earn her living by her writing, she broke ...more

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Jane West Died at 94 (1758-1852) Jane West, who published as Prudentia Homespun and Mrs. West, was an English novelist, poet, playwright, and writer of conduct literature and educational tracts.

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Thomas Hardy Died at 88 (1840-1928) Thomas Hardy, OM was an English novelist and poet. A Victorian realist in the tradition of George Eliot, he was influenced both in his novels and in his poetry by Romanticism, especially William ...more

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Labi Siffre age 72 Labi Siffre is a British poet, songwriter, musician, and singer.

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Sebastian Shaw Died at 89 (1905-1994) Sebastian Lewis Shaw was an English actor, director, novelist, playwright and poet. During his 65-year career, he appeared in dozens of stage performances and more than 40 film and television ...more

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John Ruskin Died at 81 (1819-1900) John Ruskin was the leading English art critic of the Victorian era, also an art patron, draughtsman, watercolourist, a prominent social thinker and philanthropist. He wrote on subjects ranging ...more

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Percy Bysshe Shelley Died at 30 (1792-1822) Percy Bysshe Shelley was one of the major English Romantic poets, and is regarded by some critics as amongst the finest lyric poets in the English language. A radical in his poetry as well as ...more

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Dorothy L. Sayers Died at 64 (1893-1957) Dorothy Leigh Sayers was a renowned English crime writer, poet, playwright, essayist, translator and Christian humanist. She was also a student of classical and modern languages. She is best ...more

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Joseph Addison Died at 47 (1672-1719) Joseph Addison was an English essayist, poet, playwright, and politician. He was the eldest son of The Reverend Lancelot Addison. His name is usually remembered alongside that of his ...more

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George Herbert Died at 40 (1593-1633) George Herbert was a Welsh-born English poet, orator and Anglican priest. Herbert's poetry is associated with the writings of the metaphysical poets, and he is recognized as "a pivotal ...more

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Anne Askew Died at 25 (1521-1546) Anne Askew was an English poet and Protestant who was condemned as a heretic. She is the only woman on record known to have been both tortured in the Tower of London and burnt at the stake. She ...more

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Roy Fisher age 88 Roy Fisher is a British poet and jazz pianist. He was one of the first British writers to absorb the poetics of William Carlos Williams and the Black Mountain poets into the British poetic ...more

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Edmund Spenser Died at 47 (1552-1599) Edmund Spenser was an English poet best known for The Faerie Queene, an epic poem and fantastical allegory celebrating the Tudor dynasty and Elizabeth I. He is recognised as one of the premier ...more

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John Donne Died at 59 (1572-1631) John Donne was an English poet and a cleric in the Church of England. He is considered the pre-eminent representative of the metaphysical poets. His works are noted for their strong, sensual ...more

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Anne Stevenson age 85 Anne Stevenson is an American-British poet and writer.

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Alexander Pope Died at 56 (1688-1744) Alexander Pope was an 18th-century English poet. He is best known for his satirical verse, as well as for his translation of Homer. Famous for his use of the heroic couplet, he is the ...more

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Genesis P-Orridge age 68 Genesis Breyer P-Orridge is an English singer-songwriter, musician, poet, performance artist, and occultist. P-Orridge rose to notability as founder of the COUM Transmissions artistic ...more

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John Milton Died at 66 (1608-1674) John Milton was an English poet, polemicist, man of letters, and a civil servant for the Commonwealth of England under Oliver Cromwell. He wrote at a time of religious flux and political ...more