Coventry Patmore: 14 Percy Street, Fitzrovia, London W1

Coventry Patmore: not a name I was instantly familiar with I must confess; despite passing beneath this rather theatrical-sounding monicker many times in my nocturnal Fitzrovian sojourns.

But Patmore did not, in fact tread the boards. His plaque announces him as a poet and essayist, and though all but forgotten today he was a household name in the nineteenth century.

Patmore first came to prominence through his friendship with Dante Gabriel Rosetti, which led in turn to his being made an honorary member of the Pre-Raphaelite Brotherhood, to whose magazine he contributed his poem 'The Seasons'.

He became best known much later in his career though, after publishing 'The Angel In The House' a typical mid-Victorian paean to the feminine ideal which enjoyed enormous popularity toward the end of the century.

I shall leave the last words to Coventry himself:

"I have written little, but it is all my best; I have never spoken when I had nothing to say, nor spared time or labour to make my words true. I have respected posterity; and should there be a posterity which cares for letters, I dare to hope that it will respect me."