Context is important for me. Works of creation, athletic greatness, life-itself does not happen in a vacuum. There is always context. And where there is context there is influence.

One of the things I created for myself years ago is a something I call “Writers/Artists in Context.” It is something I refer to often when I am reading, writing, or thinking about Art.

I keep it in the Notes app on my iPhone.

Since it is something I have found valuable, I thought I would share it here.

WRITERS/ARTISTS IN CONTEXT

ROMANTIC POETS

William Blake (28 November 1757 – 12 August 1827)

William Wordsworth (7 April 1770 – 23 April 1850)

Lord Byron (22 January 1788 – 19 April 1824)

Percy Bysshe Shelly (4 August 1792 – 8 July 1822)

John Keats (31 October 1795 – 23 February 1821) 

AMERICAN LETTERS

Henry David Thoreau (July 12, 1817 – May 6, 1862)

Walt Whitman (May 31, 1819 – March 26, 1892)

Mark Twain (November 30, 1835 – April 21, 1910)

PHILOSOPHY

Soren Kirkegaard (5 May 1813 – 11 November 1855)

Friedrich Nietzsche (15 October 1844 – 25 August 1900)

ADVENTURE FICTION 

Alexandre Dumas (24 July 1802 – 5 December 1870)

Jules Verne (8 February 1828 – 24 March 1905)

H.G. Welles (21 September 1866 – 13 August, 1946)

Edgar Rice Burroughs (1 September, 1875 – 19 March 1950)

MUSIC

Gabriel Faure (12 May 1845 – 4 November 1924)

ART

Paul Cezanne (19 January 1839 – 22 October 1906)

Claude Monet (14 November 1840 – 5 December 1926)

Vincent Van Gogh (30 March 1853 – 29 July 1890)

THE BIG FOUR

Bram Stoker 

11/08/1847 – 02/20/1912

(Dublin)

Robert Louis Stevenson

11/13/1850 – 12/03/1894

(Edinburgh)

Sir Arthur Conan Doyle 

05/22/1859 – 07/07/1930

(Edinburgh)

W.B. Yeats

06/13/1865 – 01/28/1939

(County Dublin)