Donald Ward sold his first story to CBC when he was nineteen-years-old and has written professionally for the last forty years. His fiction is thoughtful and humourous and always accessible, no matter…
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…
James Joyce was an Irish novelist, poet, and a pivotal figure in 20th-century modernist literature, renowned for his highly experimental approach to language and narrative structure, particularly his …
In 1934, scientist Carl Sagan was born in Brooklyn, N.Y. After earning bachelor and master's degrees at Cornell, Sagan earned a double doctorate at the University of Chicago in 1960. He became profess…
After Napoleon III seized power in 1851, French writer Victor Marie Hugo went into exile and in 1870 returned to France; his novels include The Hunchback of Notre Dame (1831) and Les Misérables…
Henri René Albert Guy de Maupassant was a popular 19th-century French writer. He is one of the fathers of the modern short story. A protege of Flaubert, Maupassant's short stories are characterized by…
Frederick Douglass (né Frederick Augustus Washington Bailey) was born a slave in the state of Maryland in 1818. After his escape from slavery, Douglass became a renowned abolitionist, editor and femin…
French writer Honoré de Balzac (born Honoré Balzac), a founder of the realist school of fiction, portrayed the panorama of society in a body of works, known collectively as La comédie humaine.
Herbert George Wells was born to a working class family in Kent, England. Young Wells received a spotty education, interrupted by several illnesses and family difficulties, and became a draper's appre…
