About the Poets

Thomas Hardy
Thomas Hardy was born on June 2, 1840 in Dorset, England. Hardy lived a
rural life in an isolated cottage with his parents and three younger siblings. After
attending the local village school, he moved to the school in a nearby town to
deepen his knowledge of maths and Latin. On his 22nd birthday, he moved to
London became a draftsman in the office of Arthur Bloomfield. In the mid
1860s, due to a lack of funding and declining religious faith caused him to focus
on reading poetry and redirected him to writing. He died on January 11, 1928.

Ella Wheeler Wilcox

Ella Wheeler Wilcox was born on November 5, 1850 in Wisconsin, America.
She was an American journalist and poet who enjoyed reading popular literature
from a young age. Her first published work were some sketches submitted to the
New York Mercury when she was only 14 years old. Soon her poems were
appearing in the Waverly Magazine and Leslie’s Weekly. She died in
Connecticut on October 30, 1919.

Anna Swir
Anna Swir (Świrszczyńska) was born on February 7, 1909 in Warsaw, Poland
to a poor but artistic family. She worked from a young age to support herself
while attending university to study medieval Polish literature. After working as
an editor for some time, she began to publish her poetry. During World War II,
Swir worked as a military nurse during the Warsaw Uprising. She also enjoyed
writing and directing children’s plays. She lived in Krakow from 1945 until her
death from cancer in 1984.

William Butler Yeats

William Butler Yeats was born on June 13, 1865 in Sandymount, Dublin. He
was an Irish a poet, dramatist and writer. His father was a barrister, however,
later became a portrait painter. His mother came from a wealthy merchant
family from Sligo. Yeats spent much of his childhood in London where his
father worked but often travelled home to spend time with his grandparents in
the west of Ireland. He published his first pieces in the mid-1880s while a student
at Dublin's Metropolitan School of Art. In 1923, he was awarded the Nobel Prize
for Literature. Yeats died in 1939 and is still remembered as one of the greatest
poets of Western Europe.

Wendy Cope
Wendy Cope was raised in Kent, England where her parents often recited poetry
to her. After obtaining a BA in history, she trained as a teacher in Oxford
University. Cope spent years teaching before publishing her first poetry book
Making Cocoa for Kingsley Amis (1986). It was a big success which showed
the public her talent. Cope received a Cholmondeley Award and a Michael
Braude Award for Light Verse from the American Academy of Arts and
Letters. She was also awarded an Order of the British Empire in 2010. She now
lives in Winchester, England.