American literary critic, born in New York, educated at Columbia University, Radcliffe, and Vassar. She taught at the University of Connecticut and the CUNY Graduate School. Like Elaine Showalter, Moe…
William Shakespeare was an English playwright, poet, and actor. He is widely regarded as the greatest writer in the English language and the world's pre-eminent dramatist. He is often called England's…
Jane Austen was an English novelist known primarily for her six novels, which implicitly interpret, critique, and comment upon the English landed gentry at the end of the 18th century. Austen's plots …
Herman Melville was an American novelist, short story writer, and poet of the American Renaissance period. Among his best-known works are Moby-Dick (1851); …
Wilkie Collins was an English novelist and playwright, best known for The Woman in White (1860), an early sensation novel, and The Moonstone (1868), a pioneering work of detective fiction. Born to lan…
Henry Fielding (1707 - 1754) 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…
Jean Rhys, CBE (born Ella Gwendolyn Rees Williams; 24 August 1890–14 May 1979) was a British novelist who was born and grew up in the Caribbean island of Dominica. From the age of 16, she mainly resid…
Born Angela Olive Stalker in Eastbourne, in 1940, Carter was evacuated as a child to live in Yorkshire with her maternal grandmother. As a teenager she battled anorexia. She began work as a journalist…
Djuna Barnes was an artist, illustrator, journalist, playwright, and poet associated with the early 20th-century Greenwich Village bohemians and the Modernist literary movement.
Sylvia Townsend Warner was born at Harrow on the Hill, the only child of George Townsend Warner and his wife Eleanora (Nora) Hudleston. Her father was a house-master at Harrow School and was, for many…
Mary Elizabeth Braddon was a British Victorian era popular novelist. She was an extremely prolific writer, producing some 75 novels with very inventive plots. The most famous one is her first novel, L…
The author of some twenty works of fiction and memoir, Annie Ernaux is considered by many to be France’s most important writer. In 2022, she was awarded the Nobel Prize in Literature. She has also won…
Edward Morgan Forster, generally published as E.M. Forster, was an English novelist, essayist, and short story writer. He is known best for his ironic and well-plotted novels examining class differenc…
Cassandra Clare was born to American parents in Tehran, Iran and spent much of her childhood travelling the world with her family, including one trek through the Himalayas as a toddler where she spent…
I was born in Reading (not great, but it could have been Slough), studied Ancient and Modern History at New College, Oxford, and I've got a PhD in art history from the University of Sussex.
Charlotte Brontë was an English novelist, the eldest out of the three famous Brontë sisters whose novels have become standards of English literature. See also Emily Brontë and Anne Brontë.
A.S. Byatt (Antonia Susan Byatt) is internationally known for her novels and short stories. Her novels include the Booker Prize winner Possession, The Biographer’s Tale and the quartet, The Virgin in …
Elizabeth Cleghorn Gaskell, née Stevenson (29 September 1810 – 12 November 1865), often referred to simply as Mrs. Gaskell, was an English novelist and short story writer during the Victorian era. Her…
Mary Wollstonecraft was an eighteenth century British writer, philosopher, and feminist. Among the general public and specifically among feminists, Wollstonecraft's life has received much more attenti…
Henrik Johan Ibsen was a major Norwegian playwright largely responsible for the rise of modern realistic drama. He is often referred to as the "father of modern drama." Ibsen is held to be the greates…
Margaret Oliphant Wilson Oliphant (née Margaret Oliphant Wilson) was a Scottish novelist and historical writer, who usually wrote as Mrs. Oliphant. Her fictional works encompass "domestic realism, the…
