Robert Williams Buchanan

Born on August 18, 1841, at Caverswall in Staffordshire and raised in Glasgow, Robert Williams Buchanan grew into a remarkably versatile literary figure. He wrote poetry, fiction, drama, and criticism, and built his reputation in the 1860s with books such as London Poems.

Buchanan was one of those authors who seemed determined to try everything. Alongside poems and novels, he wrote for the stage, and several of his works were later adapted for film. His career was energetic and productive, but also argumentative: he became especially well known for attacking the Pre-Raphaelite circle in his essay on the so-called "fleshly school" of poetry.

He died in London on June 10, 1901. Though not as widely read now as some of his contemporaries, he remains an interesting presence in Victorian literature: talented, combative, and impossible to fit neatly into a single category.