The History of Poets (who lived in London)
Virginia Woolf is very well known in literary circles, she wrote several books, and was part of the so-called Bloomsbury Set, a group of writers and thinkers in London, who would meet up to discuss philosophy and politics, in the years before and after World War I.
Other members of the group included her sister Vanessa (read more on her below), her husband Leonard plus the writer E M Forster (who wrote the book A Room with a View, made into a blockbuster film).
Although Virginia spent a lot of time in Cornwall, in her later years she lived near Glynde (in East Sussex, now home to a private village and famous opera house). She and her husband also founded a book publishing company that became an outlet for her fragile mental health, as a creative pacifist during wartime.
Alas Virginia’s depression was so bad. That one day she filled her coat pockets with stones, and walked into the River Ouse. She was just 59 years old.
Walking on the South Downs?
Follow the Countryside Code to keep all creatures safe. Keep dogs away from steep banks, mushrooms (and other toxic plants/trees) and on leads during nesting season (and near barnyard friends and wild ponies).
At the coast, keep away from nesting birds and never walk on sand dunes. Learn how to keep dogs safe by the seaside (check beach bans before travel).
How to upright an overturned sheep
If when out walking you see a sheep on its back (due to pregnancy or rain-soaked wool), just firmly right it back (or it will die) then stay with it, until the rain has drained off.
Vanessa Bell (Virginia’s painter sister)
Vanessa Bell was often overshadowed with her art, by her writing sister, but she was a radical artist, whose work pioneered modernism in England. She was painting abstract around 40 years before artists became known for similar work in St Ives. She also designed her sister’s striking book jackets.
She had a complicated love life. Living in a Sussex farmhouse with her husband, her lover (and her lover’s lover?!) She and Clive Bell had an open marriage, often taking other partners through their lifetime. Which you can imagine would be controversial today, let alone back then.
She even had a child with her lover, raised by her husband. Then even more strange, her daughter married the former lover of her biological father (26 years older). They had four children (one daughter tragically also died by drowning in the Thames, age just 29)
Wentworth House, Hampstead (home to John Keats)
John Keats (one of England’s favourite Romantic poets) found inspiration in Hampstead, and his house on Keats Grove continues to draw visitors who want to step into the poet’s world. Originally built as a pair of houses, the poet resided in one half, and his friend Charles Brown (a literary critic) lived in the other.
Keats House gives us a close look at John’s life. Sharing not just his work but the calm beauty that shaped his writing. John’s illness from TB (caring for his seriously ill brother) meant that he died just 25.
Keats House is where John Keats wrote many of his best-known poems, including “Ode to a Nightingale” and “Ode on a Grecian Urn”. Living in this leafy part of Hampstead gave him space to think, write and recover from heartbreak and illness.
The setting helped shape his verse, and standing in the same rooms lets you sense the quiet that guided his words. The house itself is a well-preserved piece of late Georgian design, built in 1815. Its light-filled rooms, elegant fireplaces and pretty sash windows show off the style of the period.
The lovely gardens are perfect for a stroll, and it’s easy to imagine Keats wandering among the flowers as he searched for new ideas. The house’s simple charm helps connect visitors with the past in a direct, heartfelt way.
Who was poet John Keats?
John Keats was one of England’s most successful Romantic poets, but although he produced many masterpieces in six years, he died at the tragically young age of just 25. He trained as a surgeon before his poetry career, and until his death from TB, had published 54 poems and three novels.
TB was like a curse on his family (though it was more that nearly everyone back then died from the disease). He lost his parents and a brother to TB before dying of it himself. And even the surviving brother (who emigrated to North America, died of TB almost 20 years later).
What poems did Keats write?
If you’ve never heard of his name, you’ve likely heard of his poems. His most famous one was Ode to a Nightingale (now in the public domain): And here’s an except from ‘To Autumn’:
Where are the songs of spring? Ay, Where are they?
Think not of them, thou hast thy music too,
While barred clouds bloom the soft-dying day,
And touch the stubble-plains with rosy hue;
Then in a wailful choir the small gnats mourn
Among the river sallows, borne aloft
Or sinking as the light wind lives or dies;
And full-grown lambs loud bleat from hilly bourn;
Hedge-crickets sing; and now with treble soft
The red-breast whistles from a garden-croft;
And gathering swallows twitter in the skies.
The History of a Camden House (two poets)
Fitzroy Road is a leafy suburb of Primrose Hill, that is home to a two-times blue plaque house, a red-brick Victorian terrace, where two famous poets once lived, 100 years apart. This image shows Sylvia’s spirit returning.
Sylvia Plath (a young American poet)
Sylvia Plath was an American poet, who moved in with her children following the separation from her husband (Ted Hughes, who would go on to become Poet Laureate in later years). It was there she wrote some of her best-loved poetry.
Despite being known more for her neurotic writings about humans, she also wrote some wonderful poems about pheasants, flowers and wild bears. All poets love nature!
There is a sad ending, while Sylvia was suffering from severe depression, during the famed bitter-cold winter of 1963. A stunning beautiful and talented women, she gave cookies to her children, sealed their bedroom doors with tape, and put her head in the oven. She was just 30 years old.
Sylvia is buried near Hebden Bridge in Yorkshire. And almost 50 years later, her son (a baby at the time) also committed suicide. Her daughter Frieda Hughes also became a writer, and is also a respected painter and sculptor.
Also resided in by W.B. Yeats
Irish poet W.B Yeats (the initials stood for William Butler) lived in the same house, almost 100 years earlier. His used his unique influence to to intelligently campaign for Irish independence, away from the violent nationalism gathering pace back home.
He married late in life (age 52), but it was all quite strange. He proposed four times to Irish nationalist Maud Gonne. And after she refused him, he proposed to her daughter?! Later on he did marry, to a young woman Georgie Hyde-Lees.
They had two children:
Michael Butler Yeats became a barrister and Fianna Fáil politician, and married a classically-trained Irish harpist. Anne Yeats became a painter and never married, focusing her life on creative expression.
