Public Figures & Cultural Luminaries

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Julián del Casal

Julián del Casal y de la Lastra

Cuba

1863-11-07 – 1893-10-21 (29 years old)

Brilliant Parnassian and decadent modernist poet whose exquisite collections 'Hojas al viento', 'Nieve', and 'Bustos y rimas' introduced French aestheticism and sonic precision to Spanish-language verse.

Havana, Cuba

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Mary Ann Shadd Cary

Mary Ann Shadd

United States

9 October 1823 – 5 June 1893 (69 years old)

Courageous abolitionist and educator who moved to Canada West after the Fugitive Slave Act, founding The Provincial Freeman newspaper in 1853 to champion Black emancipation.

Landover, United States

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Alfred, Lord Tennyson

Alfred Tennyson, 1st Baron Tennyson

Great Britain

1809 – 1892 (83 years old)

Victorian Poet Laureate whose magnificent lyric music in In Memoriam A.H.H., 'The Charge of the Light Brigade', and 'Ulysses' came to define the Victorian spirit.

London, United Kingdom

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Walter Whitman Jr. (Walt Whitman)

Walt Whitman

United States

31 May 1819 – 26 March 1892 (72 years old)

The foundational poet of American democracy and father of free verse whose self-published masterpiece Leaves of Grass (Song of Myself, 'I celebrate myself, and sing myself') captured the expansive, inclusive spirit of the American continent.

Camden (New Jersey), United States

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Jean Nicolas Arthur Rimbaud

Arthur Rimbaud

France

20 October 1854 – 10 November 1891 (37 years old)

Precocious prodigy of world poetry who invented surreal free verse and declared 'Je est un autre' (I is another) before the age of twenty in Le Bateau Ivre and Une Saison en Enfer, subsequently abandoning literature forever to wander as a trader in Africa.

Marseille (Bouches-du-Rhône), France

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Herman Melville

United States

1 August 1819 – 28 September 1891 (72 years old)

Visionary American novelist whose maritime epic Moby-Dick; or, The Whale (1851)—opening with 'Call me Ishmael' and Captain Ahab's monomaniacal pursuit of the cosmic white whale—stands as one of humanity's supreme literary monuments.

New York City, United States

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Jan Neruda

Jan Nepomuk Neruda

Kingdom of Bohemia

1834-07-09 – 1891-08-22 (57 years old)

Leading realist poet, journalist, and master of the feuilleton whose 1878 collection 'Tales of the Lesser Quarter' immortalized Old Prague, inspiring Chilean poet Pablo Neruda to adopt his surname in homage.

Prague, Czech Republic

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Robert Browning

Great Britain

1812 – 1889 (77 years old)

Victorian poetic genius who mastered the dramatic monologue, plumbing psychological depths in 'My Last Duchess', Men and Women, and The Ring and the Book.

London, United Kingdom

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Wilkie Collins

William Wilkie Collins

Great Britain

1824 – 1889 (65 years old)

Pioneering Victorian novelist and close collaborator of Charles Dickens who created the modern detective novel in The Moonstone and sensation fiction in The Woman in White.

London, United Kingdom

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Auguste de Villiers de L'Isle-Adam

Jean-Marie-Mathias-Philippe-Auguste de Villiers de L'Isle-Adam

France

1838 – 1889 (50 years old)

Impoverished Breton nobleman and pioneer of French Symbolism whose 1886 science-fiction novel L'Ève future coined the term 'Android' and whose occult verse drama Axël contains the famous line: 'As for living, our servants will do that for us'.

Paris, France

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Gerard Manley Hopkins

Great Britain

1844 – 1889 (44 years old)

Visionary English Jesuit poet who revolutionized modern verse through sprung rhythm and concepts of inscape and instress in 'The Windhover' and 'Pied Beauty'.

Dublin, Ireland

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Jules Barbey d'Aurevilly

Jules-Amédée Barbey d'Aurevilly

France

1808 – 1889 (80 years old)

Flamboyant Norman monarchist dandy, critic, and novelist known as 'Le Connétable des Lettres', whose 1874 short-story masterpiece Les Diaboliques explored dark erotic passions, sin, and Catholic mysticism.

Saint-Sauveur-le-Vicomte (Manche), France

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Max Waller

Maurice Warlomont

Belgium

1860 – 1889 (29 years old)

Brilliant young literary critic and polemicist who founded the seminal revue La Jeune Belgique in 1881, rallying a generation of Belgian authors under the banner of pure aestheticism ('Soyons nous-mêmes').

Brussels, Belgium

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Juan Montalvo

Juan María Montalvo Fiallos

Ecuador

1832-04-13 – 1889-01-17 (56 years old)

One of the greatest prose essayists in the Spanish language, hailed as the 'Cervantes of the Americas', whose fiery pamphlets 'La Dictadura Perpetua' relentlessly denounced tyranny, famously saying of García Moreno: 'My pen killed him.'

Ambato, Tungurahua, Ecuador

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Nataniel Aguirre

Nataniel Aguirre González de Prada

Bolivia

1843-10-10 – 1888-09-11 (44 years old)

Celebrated 19th-century Bolivian novelist and statesman whose 1885 masterwork 'Juan de la Rosa' is revered as the quintessential national novel of Bolivian independence.

Cochabamba, Bolivia

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Ahmad Faris al-Shidyaq

أحمد فارس الشدياق

Lebanon

1804 – 20 September 1887 (83 years old)

Literary titan of the Nahda, author of the groundbreaking experimental novel 'Leg over Leg' (Al-Saq ala al-Saq), and founder of 'Al-Jawa'ib'.

Beirut, Lebanon

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