CONTEXT

• Valentine- Duffy was a LGTBQ writer that was challenged by a radio station to come up with a original love poem for Valentines day.
• A wife in London- Hardy wrote this during the Boer war, and he was very critical or war himself.
• The Soldier- Brooke wrote this at the start of WW1 before battle, expressing brave ideas and a pro war sense
• Sonnet 43 by E. Barret Browning - poem to Robert Browning, she was devoutly religious and ill for most of her life.
• Afternoons- Larkin was a perennial outsider (observational poetry), and the poem was written around gender roles of women
• Ozymandias - Shelley was a Romantic, and wrote the poem after hearing about a explorers discovery - of a semi destroyed statue of Ramesses II.