Alexander Barclay, Richard Carew, Humfrey Gifford, Anne Dowriche, Sir Walter Ralegh, Sir Arthur Gorges, Joseph Hall, John Ford, Robert Herrick, Sidney Godolphin, William Strode, William Browne, Mary, Lady Chudleigh, John Gay, Samuel Taylor Coleridge. All of these are poets born in the two westernmost counties of England, or - like Hall and Herrick - poets who were active there. In time we stretch from the very beginning of the 16th century until the early 19th century. We begin with Barclay, a priest at Ottery St. Mary, and we close with Coleridge, the son of a priest at Ottery St. Mary, his...

In the 16th and 17th centuries, Spain experienced a literary Renaissance akin to that in England, with great poets, dramatists and novelists establishing new forms and blazing new trails: Garcilaso de la Vega, Gongora, Quevedo amongst the poets, Lope de Vega & Calderon de la Barca amongst the dramatists (although both were also poets), Cervantes - of course - amongst the prose writers. The Renaissance in England was also a time when translations of contemporary European literature became more common, beginning with contemporary Italian works, and the importation of the Petrarchan sonnet, and...