A New Kind of Literary Pulse

American scholar, civil rights activist, Pan-Africanist, pacifist and writer, he published many articles, poems, novels and speeches which awarded him large recognition after his death. After the US failed to renew his passport, he became a citizen of Ghana in 1963, where he died of old age while working on an encyclopedia of the African diaspora.

American poet, journalist and essayist, Walt Whitman was part of the transition between transcendentalism and realism. Among the most influential poets of the American literature, he is regarded as the father of the free verse. His verse collection, Leaves of Grass, first published in 1855 and revised until his death, is a landmark in the history of American literature even though it was ... [+]

The American writer, essayist, biographer and diplomat, Washington Irving, was called "the first American man of letters". He is best known for his short stories "Rip Van Winkle" and "The Legend of Sleepy Hollow". He was among the first American writers to get international fame. As a politician, he advocated writing should become a legitimate profession and argued in favour of stronger bans to ... [+]

Willa Cather was an American writer who was well known for her Prairy Trilogy, novels about frontier life on the Great Prairie. She was also awarded the Pulitzer Prize in 1923 for her novel One of Ours, set during Word War I.

English poet, painter and printmaker, William Blake was largely disregarded during his lifetime. However, he is nowadays recognized as the earliest and most original of all Romantic poets.

Blake was unfairly considered mad by his contemporaries for his eccentric views on society. He was politically influenced by the French and American Revolutions and was hostile to almost all forms of ... [+]

William Wordsworth was a major English Romantic poet. His joint publication with Samuel Taylor Coleridge, The Lyrical Ballads, helped to launch Romanticism in English literature.

His contact with the French Revolution brought about his interest in the "common" people’s life, troubles and speeches, which were of the utmost importance to his following works.

From 1843 to his death, he was ... [+]

William Butler Yeats was regarded as one of the greatest English writing poets of the 20th century. That Irish poet, he was also one of the driving forces behind the Irish Literary Revival. That literary movement was associated with the growth of Irish nationalism and linked with a revival of interest in Ireland’s Gaelic heritage. He was awarded the Nobel Prize in Literature in the year 1923.

An editor, anthologist, critic, and published poet himself, Braithwaite was a key figure in the revival of American poetry in the early decades of the twentieth century. From 1913 to 1929 he published the Anthology of Magazine Verse, an important annual collection that showcased the work of emerging poets on the American scene. "At a critical moment in our nation's literature, it was his voice ... [+]