Authors, Poets & Novelists Posters & Prints: “Cob...-Col...-”
for literature & language arts classrooms, homeschoolers, and scholars.

William Cobbett
b. 3-9-1763; Farnham, Surrey, England
d. 6-18-1835

Pamphleteer, journalist and farmer William Cobbett is best remembered today for his 1830 Rural Rides, an extensive social commentary on agrarian life in the early nineteenth century, first published in serialized form.

Cobbett was ‘prickly’ to any authority, calling out for justice for the wrongs he saw:

• he had to flee England to escape retribution for calling attention to the corruption of Army officers,
• he wrote from a pro-British position under the pseudonym Peter Porcupine while in the young U.S. from 1792-1800 (and was successfully sued by Benjamin Rush),
• then back to England where he was found treasonously libel causing him to flee to the U.S. again from 1817-1819.

Eventually Cobbett was elected to to the House of Commons where he attacked corruption in government, the 1834 Poor Law, and voiced the cause of the persecuted and unjustly sentenced Tolpuddle Martyrs.

A reported 8,000 people attended his funeral.

• William Cobbett by G. K. Chesterton

Catherine Trotter Cockburn
b. 8-16-1679; London, England
d. 5-11-1749

Novelist, dramatist, and philosopher Catharine Trotter Cockburn published her first work, a novel The Adventures of a Young Lady, later retitled Olinda's Adventures, anonymously in 1693, at the age of 14.

In her day intellectuals such as William Congreve and John Locke encouraged her; today her reputation is rising due to the interest in gender studies and feminist literature.

Catherine Trotter Cockburn quote ~
• “...when a Woman appears in the World under any distinguishing Character, she must expect to be the mark of ill Nature...” dedication of Fatal Friendship play.

• Catharine Trotter Cockburn: Philosophical Writings (1702-1747)

Jean Cocteau
b. 7-5-1889; Maisons-Laffitte, France
d. 10-11-1963

Avant-garde poet, dramatist, playwright and filmmaker Jean Cocteau was also an internationally acclaimed artist.

Jean Cocteau quote ~
• “A true poet does not bother to be poetical. Nor does a nursery gardener scent his roses.”
• “The worst tragedy for a poet is to be admired through being misunderstood.”
• “Poets don't draw. They unravel their handwriting and then tie it up again, but differently.”
• “Art is a marriage of the conscious and the unconscious.”
• “The reward of art is not fame or success but intoxication: that is why so many bad artists are unable to give it up.”
• “Children and lunatics cut the Gordian knot which the poet spends his life patiently trying to untie.”
• “If a hermit lives in a state of ecstasy, his lack of comfort becomes the height of comfort. He must relinquish it.”
• “I love cats because I enjoy my home; and little by little, they become its visible soul.”
• “The extreme limit of wisdom, that's what the public calls madness.”
• “Mystery has its own mysteries, and there are gods above gods. We have ours, they have theirs. That is what's known as infinity.”
• “A film is a petrified fountain of thought.”
• “Film will only became an art when its materials are as inexpensive as pencil and paper.”

• Orphic Trilogy - Criterion Collection (1950)

J. M. Coetzee
b. 2-9-1940; Cape, Cape Province, Union of South Africa

Novelist, critic, and translator, J. M Coetzee, now an Australian citizen living in Adelaide, was awarded the 2003 Nobel Prize in Literature for one “who in innumerable guises portrays the surprising involvement of the outsider”.

J. M. Coetzee quote ~
• “I used to think that the people who created [South Africa's] laws that effectively suspended the rule of law were moral barbarians. Now I know they were just pioneers ahead of their time.” criticising contemporary anti-terrorism laws as resembling those employed by the apartheid regime in South Africa

Samuel Taylor Coleridge
b. 10-21-1772; Ottery St. Mary, Devon, England
d. 7-25-1834

English poet, critic, and philosopher, Samuel Taylor Coleridge, along with his friends, poets William Wordsworth and Robert Southey, were founders of the Romantic Movement in England and called the Lake Poets. Coleridge was also a long time friend of Charles Lamb. Coleridge is best known for his Rime of the Ancient Mariner where an albatross is a major symbol-
He prayeth best, who loveth best / All things both great and small; / For the dear God who loveth us, / He made and loveth all,
and Kubla Khan -
In Xanadu did Kubla Khan / A stately pleasure-dome decree: / Where Alph, the sacred river, ran / Through caverns measureless to man / Down to a sunless sea.

• Coleridge's Poetry & Prose, Samuel Taylor Coleridge
• Literary Techniques Posters - Repetition

Louise Colet
née Revoil
b. 8-15-1810; Aix-en-Provence, France
d. 3-9-1876; Paris

Poet Louise Colet was the paramour (lover) of Gustave Flaubert and is said to be the inspiration for the adulterous Madame Bovary character of his most famous novel.

Sidonie Gabrielle Colette
b. 1-28-1873; Yonne, France
d. 8-3-1954; Paris

Colette is considered France's greatest woman writer. Her 1944 novel Gigi was made into a Broadway play (starring Audrey Hepburn) and an Academy award winning musical (1958).

Colette quotes ~
• “Be happy. It's one way of being wise.”
• “I love my past, I love my present. I am not ashamed of what I have had, and I am not sad because I no longer have it.”
• “Sit down and put down everything that comes into your head and then you're a writer. But an author is one who can judge his own stuff's worth, without pity, and destroy most of it.”
• “To a poet, silence is an acceptable response, even a flattering one.”
• “You must not pity me because my sixtieth year finds me still astonished. To be astonished is one of the surest ways of not growing old too quickly.”
• “Our perfect companions never have fewer than four feet.”

• The Collected Stories of Colette

Vittoria Colonna
b. April, 1490; Marinoa, Italy
d. 2-25-1574; San Silvestro

Marchioness of Pescara, Vittoria Colonna, was an accomplished Renaissance poet. After the death of her husband due to battle wounds she made the acquaintance of Michelangelo who wrote sonnets and made drawings for her.

• Sonnets for Michelangelo: A Bilingual Edition

Wilkie Collins
b. 1-8-1824; London, England
d. 9-23-1889

Writer Wilkie Collins was a very popular Victorian Era novelist, playwright and short story author. Collins was also editor of Charles Dickens' Household Words and several of Collins works were serialized in the Dickens weekly All the Year Round.

The actress Ada Cavendish portrayed characters in many of Collins' plays.

• Wilkie Collins Books