Daniel Defoe was an English novelist, journalist, merchant, pamphleteer and spy. He is most famous for his novel Robinson Crusoe, published in 1719, which is claimed to be second only to the Bible in …
David Cordingly is an English naval historian with a special interest in pirates. He held the position of Keeper of Pictures and Head of Exhibitions at the National Maritime Museum in Greenwich, Engla…
Eric Arthur Blair was an English novelist, poet, essayist, journalist and critic who wrote under the pen name of George Orwell. His work is characterised by lucid prose, social criticism, opposition t…
A mystic lyricism and precise imagery often marked verse of German poet Rainer Maria Rilke, whose collections profoundly influenced 20th-century German literature and include The Book of Hours (19…
Novelist Jeanette Winterson was born in Manchester, England in 1959. She was adopted and brought up in Accrington, Lancashire, in the north of England. Her strict Pentecostal Evangelist upbringing pro…
Henry Fielding was an English dramatist, journalist and novelist. The son of an army lieutenant and a judge's daughter, he was educated at Eton School and the University of Leiden before returning to …
Laurence Sterne was an Irish-born English novelist and an Anglican clergyman. He is best known for his novels The Life and Opinions of Tristram Shandy, Gentleman, and A Sentimental Journey Through Fra…
Aphra Behn, or Ayfara Behn, of the first professional women authors in English on Britain wrote plays, poetry, and her best known work, the prose fiction Oroonoko (1688).
George Grossmith was an English comedian, writer, composer, actor, and singer. His performing career spanned more than four decades. As a writer and composer, he created 18 comic operas, nearly 100 mu…
Marcus Rediker is Distinguished Professor of Atlantic History at the University of Pittsburgh and Senior Research Fellow at the Collège d’études mondiales in Paris. He is the author of numerous prize-…
Jeremy Dickson Paxman is a British journalist, author and television presenter. He has worked for the BBC since 1977. He is noted for a forthright and abrasive interviewing style, particularly when in…
"William Congreve was an English playwright and poet.... William Congreve wrote some of the most popular English plays of the Restoration period of the late 17th century. By the age of thirty, he had …
People consider that Russian writer Nikolai Vasilievich Gogol (Николай Васильевич Гоголь) founded realism in Russian literature. His works include The Overcoat (1842) and Dead Souls (1842).
Charles John Huffam Dickens (1812-1870) was a writer and social critic who created some of the world's best-known fictional characters and is regarded as the greatest novelist of the Victorian era. Hi…
BELOW ARE TWO VERSIONS OF MY BIOGRAPHY: THE SHORT ONE I USE FOR INTRODUCTIONS TO MY BOOK TALKS, AND THE LONGER VERSION, WHICH GOES A BIT DEEPER ON MY BACKGROUND, AND HOW I BECAME A WRITER.
Robert Louis Balfour Stevenson was a Scottish novelist, poet, and travel writer, and a leading representative of English literature. He was greatly admired by many authors, including Jorge Luis Borges…
Alexandre Olivier Exquemelin (also spelled Esquemeling, Exquemeling, or Oexmelin) was a French writer best known as the author of one of the most important sourcebooks of 17th century piracy, first pu…
John Meade Falkner, the son of a country cleryman, was born in 1858. After taking his degree at Oxford, he went to Newcastle-upon-Tyne as a private tutor to the sons of Andrew Noble. When they had gro…
The Wakefield Mystery Play cycle is the work of many authors, some sourced from the York Cycle. However, the most significant contribution has been attributed to an anonymous author known as the "Wake…
Also known as Fanny Burney and, after her marriage, as Madame d’Arblay. Frances Burney was a novelist, diarist and playwright. In total, she wrote four novels, eight plays, one biography and twenty vo…
