Eleanor Stackhouse Atkinson (1863–1942) was a journalist, publisher, and author. Born in Indiana, she began her career as a schoolteacher in Indianapolis and Chicago. She wrote for the Chicago Tribune…
Edith Wharton emerged as one of America’s most insightful novelists, deftly exposing the tensions between societal expectation and personal desire through her vivid portrayals of upper-class life. Dra…
Joseph Conrad was a Polish-British novelist and story writer. He is regarded as one of the greatest writers in the English language and, although he did not speak English fluently until his twenties, …
Philippa Pearce was an acclaimed English author of children’s literature, best remembered for her classic time-slip novel Tom’s Midnight Garden, which won the 1958 Carnegie Medal and remains a staple …
Penelope Lively is the author of many prize-winning novels and short-story collections for both adults and children. She has twice been shortlisted for the Booker Prize: once in 1977 for her first nov…
Vera Caspary, an acclaimed American writer of novels, plays, short stories and screenplays, was born in Chicago in 1899. Her writing talent shone from a young age and, following the death of her fathe…
Anita Brookner published her first novel, A Start In Life in 1981. Her most notable novel, her fourth, Hotel du Lac won the Man Booker Prize in 1984. Her novel, The Next Big Thing was longlisted (alon…
Sir Ernest Henry Shackleton (1874-1922) was an Anglo-Irish merchant naval officer who made his reputation as an explorer during what is known as the Heroic Age of Antarctic Exploration, a period of di…
Margaret Kennedy was an English novelist and playwright. She attended Cheltenham Ladies' College, where she began writing, and then went up to Somerville College, Oxford in 1915 to read history. Her fi…
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…
Archibald Joseph Cronin was a Scottish novelist, dramatist, and non-fiction writer who was one of the most renowned storytellers of the twentieth century. His best-known works are The Citadel and The …
Sylvia ‘Sally’ Carson, the youngest of three sisters, was born in 1902 in Surrey and brought up by her widowed mother in Dorset. She attended Bournemouth High School then studied dance and gymnastics …