I Used to Know That_ Stuff You Forgot From School - Caroline Taggart [13]
☞ EDITH WHARTON (1862-1937)
She became the first woman to win the Pulitzer Prize for Literature in 1921, for The Age of Innocence, which deals with upper-class society in New York City during the turn of the century, where marriage for connection was encouraged. Wharton could subtly poke fun at the upper classes, while displaying a warm, sympathetic tone. She had ample time and opportunity to observe her subjects, since her maiden name was Edith Newbold Jones, the wealthy family associated with the adage “Keeping up with the Joneses.” Some of her other notable works include The House of Mirth, Ethan Frome, and her unfinished work (finished in 1993 by Marion Mainwaring) The Buccaneers, which was adapted for Masterpiece Theatre in 1995—a series that was soon forgotten.
British Poets
The myths, legends, and romance of the major British poets have sparked millions of imaginations. The following list mentions just a handful of the most familiar ones.
☞ W(YSTAN) H(UGH) AUDEN (1907-73, English)
Shot to renewed fame 20 years after his death, thanks to the film Four Weddings and a Funeral. Stop all the clocks, cut off the telephone, which is recited at the funeral, is taken from his “Twelve Songs.”
☞ ROBERT BURNS (1759-96, determinedly Scottish)
His birthday was January 25, and for some reason many people still celebrate the event by eating haggis and reciting his poetry. In addition to the wonderfully bloodthirsty “Address to a Haggis,” he also wrote “To a Mouse” (Wee sleekit, cow’rin’ tim’rous beastie and The best laid schemes o’ mice an’ men/ Gang aft a-gley) and the words of Auld Lang Syne.
☞ GEORGE GORDON BYRON, LORD BYRON
(1788-1824, English/Scottish)
The one who awoke one morning and found myself famous after the publication of Childe Harold’s Pilgrimage. He led a wild life, left England after one scandal too many, lived in Italy, where he was friendly with Shelley, then fought for Greek insurgents against the Turks. He died at Missolonghi, in Greece, of rheumatic fever.
☞ GEOFFREY CHAUCER (c.1340-1400, English)
Chaucer is credited as being one of the first great poets to write in English rather than in French or Latin. Although his language is pretty unfamiliar to the uninitiated, he is best known for The Canterbury Tales, in which a party of outrageous pilgrims travel from the Tabard Inn in Southwark, London, to Canterbury Cathedral, where they tell stories to pass the time. The prologue presents a vivid portrait of 14th-century life; among the best-known tellers of tales are the Knight, the Miller, the Man of Law, and the Wife of Bath.
☞ SAMUEL TAYLOR COLERIDGE (1772-1834, English)
He wrote only two famous poems—one of them unfinished—but what successes they were: “The Rime of the Ancient Mariner” (that’s the one about the wedding guest and the albatross) and “Kubla Khan” (In Xanadu did Kubla Khan/ A stately pleasure-dome decree). His friend Wordsworth could have learned a useful lesson about quality versus quantity.
☞ JOHN DONNE (1572-1631, English)
The greatest of the metaphysical poets (a loose term for a group of 17th-century poets whose work investigated the world using intellect rather than intuition). His most famous line, “No man is an Island, entire of itself,” oft misquoted, is from a book of devotions rather than a poem.
☞ T(HOMAS) S(TEARNS) ELIOT (1888-1965,
American-born, worked in England) Author of “The Wasteland” (April is the cruellest month) and “The Love Song of J. Arthur Prufrock.”
☞ THOMAS GRAY (1717-71, English)
Gets a mention here because we all have read his Elegy Written in a Country Churchyard:
The curfew tolls the knell of parting day,
The lowing herd wind slowly o’er the lea,
The plowman homeward plods his weary way,
And leaves the world to darkness and to me.
If you wrote only one poem in your life, you probably would have been quite happy to have written that one.1
☞ JOHN KEATS (1795-1821, English)
Another great Romantic, he’s the one who died at