An epigram is a brief, interesting, memorable, sometimes surprising or satirical statement. The word derives from the Greek ἐπίγραμμα. This literary device has been practiced for over two millennia.
Hesiod was an ancient Greek poet generally thought to have been active between 750 and 650 BC, around the same time as Homer.
Frederic Ogden Nash was an American poet well known for his light verse, of which he wrote more than 500 pieces. With his unconventional rhyming schemes, he was declared by The New York Times to be the country's best-known producer of humorous poetry.
Thomas Stearns Eliot was a poet, essayist and playwright. He was a leading figure in English-language Modernist poetry where he reinvigorated the art through his use of language, writing style, and verse structure. He is also noted for his critical essays, which often re-evaluated long-held cultural beliefs.
Cædmon is the earliest English poet whose name is known. A Northumbrian cowherd who cared for the animals at the double monastery of Streonæshalch during the abbacy of St. Hilda, he was originally ignorant of "the art of song" but learned to compose one night in the course of a dream, according to the 8th-century Christian historian and saint Bede. He later became a zealous monk and an accomplished and inspirational Christian poet. He is venerated as a saint in the Eastern Orthodox Church, Roman Catholicism and Anglicanism, with a feast day on 11 February.
Samarra is a city in Iraq. It stands on the east bank of the Tigris in the Saladin Governorate, 125 kilometers (78 mi) north of Baghdad. The modern city of Samarra was founded in 836 by the Abbasid caliph al-Mu'tasim as a new administrative capital and military base. In 2003 the city had an estimated population of 348,700. During the Iraqi Civil War (2006-08), Samarra was in the "Sunni Triangle" of resistance.
Charles Lamb was an English essayist, poet, and antiquarian, best known for his Essays of Elia and for the children's book Tales from Shakespeare, co-authored with his sister, Mary Lamb (1764–1847).
The Greek Anthology is a collection of poems, mostly epigrams, that span the Classical and Byzantine periods of Greek literature. Most of the material of the Greek Anthology comes from two manuscripts, the Palatine Anthology of the 10th century and the Anthology of Planudes of the 14th century.
The Knight in the Panther's Skin is a Georgian medieval epic poem, written in the 12th or 13th century by Georgia's national poet Shota Rustaveli. A definitive work of the Georgian Golden Age, the poem consists of over 1600 Rustavelian Quatrains and is considered to be a "masterpiece of the Georgian literature". Until the early 20th century, a copy of this poem was part of the dowry of every bride.
Electra, also Elektra or The Electra, is a Greek tragedy by Sophocles. Its date is not known, but various stylistic similarities with the Philoctetes and the Oedipus at Colonus lead scholars to suppose that it was written towards the end of Sophocles' career. Jebb dates it between 420 BC and 414 BC.
Frank Laurence Lucas was an English classical scholar, literary critic, poet, novelist, playwright, political polemicist, Fellow of King's College, Cambridge, and intelligence officer at Bletchley Park during World War II.
Rose Amy Fyleman was an English writer and poet, noted for her works on the fairy folk, for children. Her poem "There are fairies at the bottom of our garden" was set to music by English composer Liza Lehmann. Her carol "Lift your hidden faces", set to a French carol tune, was included in the Anglican hymnal Songs of Praise (1925), The Oxford Book of Carols (1928) as well as in the Hutterian Brotherhood's Songs of Light (1977).
Edward Verrall Lucas, CH was an English humorist, essayist, playwright, biographer, publisher, poet, novelist, short story writer and editor.
The Woman Clothed with the Sun; being The Confession of John McHaffie concerning his sojourn in the Wilderness among the folk called the Buchanites, is a historical novella by the British writer F. L. Lucas. It purports to be an account, written in 1814 by a Scottish minister of the Kirk in middle age and published posthumously, of his youthful bewitchment by Elspeth Buchan and of the time he spent in the 1780s among the Buchanites. First published in 1937, it was Lucas's second historical novella, the first being The Wild Tulip (1932); he had also published a prize-winning historical novel, Cécile (1930).
Françoise Eléonore Dejean de Manville, Countess of Sabran and then Marquise of Boufflers, was a French socialite and letter writer whose life extended from the Ancien Régime through the French Revolution and First French Empire to the Bourbon Restoration. She is known for the letters she exchanged with Stanislas de Boufflers, whom she eventually married.
Ariadne (1932) is a short epic or long narrative poem of 3,300 lines, by the British poet F. L. Lucas. It tells the story of Theseus and Ariadne, with details drawn from various sources and original touches based on modern psychology. It was Lucas's longest poem. His other epic reworking of myth was Gilgamesh, King of Erech (1948).
F. L. Lucas's Messene Redeemed (1940) is a verse drama or long poem, based on Pausanias, about the struggle for independence of ancient Messene against Sparta. As well as narrating Messenian history from earliest times to the defeat of Sparta at Leuctra and the return of the exiles, it dramatizes two episodes in play-form: one from the First Messenian War – the "honour killing" of his daughter Laodice by Aristodemus at Ithome, and one from the end of the Second – the last hours of Eira.
Harold Henry Abbott was an English schoolmaster, for the last fifteen years of his career headmaster of grammar schools, who published poetry as H. H. Abbott.
Delphine de Sabran, Marquise de Custine was a French society hostess and woman of letters. Known for her beauty and intelligence, Madame de Abrantès referred to de Custine as "one of those lovely creatures that God gives to the world in a moment of munificence". During the French Revolution she was imprisoned at Carmes Prison. She was freed after the fall of Maximilien Robespierre but was left widowed. After the revolution she focused on the education of her son, Astolphe-Louis-Léonor, Marquis de Custine, taking him to Italy and Switzerland. A freethinker, she was a prominent literary and social figure during the Napoleonic era.
Queenie Scott-Hopper was the pen name of Mabel Olive Scott-Hopper, an English author of children’s stories, poetry, and devotional literature.
