William Blake(1757-1827) was born in London, the son of a Dissenter. In touch with traditions descending from seventeenth-century radicals of his own day, including Tom Paine and Mary Wollstonecraft. He learned drawing and engraving, and later became a painter. He married in 1782, published his first poems in 1783, and, despite poverty, wrote and illustrated his own works. Songs of Innocence and of Experience appeared in 1794.
Emily Dickinson (1830-86) was born in Amherst, Massachusetts, the daughter of Edward Dickinson, a lawyer and politician. Despite receiving a good education, she returned to Amherst, where she spent the rest of her life, at one time writing more than a poem today. Her refusal to compromise her highly condensed expression, which meant that only a tiny fraction of her work was published in her lifetime, makes her seem startlingly modern today.
William Shakespeare (1564-1616) was born in Stratford-upon-Avon. He married Anne Hathaway in 1582 and later went to London, where he became an actor and playwright with the Lord Chamberlain's Men, as well as a poet. His plays are timeless explorations of the human condition, and his dramatic immediacy, poetic imagination, tragic perspectives, compassion, irony and humour make him one of our greatest writers.
Oscar Wilde (1854-1900) was born in Dublin, the son of a surgeon and a poet. He was educated at Trinity College, Dublin and Magdalen College, Oxford, where he won the Newdigate poetry prize. In 1884 he married Constance Lloyd, and in 1888 he published The Happy Prince. His only novel, The Picture of Dorian Gray, appeared in 1890. He had major comedy successes in the theatre until he was ruined by imprisonment for homosexual offences in 1895. The Ballad of Reading Gaol (1898) was inspired by his experience in prison.