Society of Young Nigerian Writers

Richard Adams

Richard Adams, born in 1920, British writer of fiction and folktales for both adults and children. His best-known work is the novel Watership Down (1972; film version 1978), for which he received the Carnegie Medal (1972) and the Guardian Award (1973). This story about a community of rabbits and its search for a new warren is memorable for the power of its narration and its detailed, knowledgeable descriptions of the countryside and wildlife. The novel has also been interpreted as a political allegory offering a parallel between the various warrens that the rabbits visit and different systems of government and their effects.

Richard George Adams was born in Newbury, Berkshire, England, and educated at Worcester College, University of Oxford, where he studied modern history and received his master of arts degree in 1948. Adams spent the years from 1940 to 1946 in the British army, serving during World War II (1939-1945). Prior to becoming a full-time writer, he was a successful civil servant from 1948 to 1974. Adams is a Fellow of the Royal Society of Literature and the Royal Society of Arts.

His other works include Shardik (1974) and Maia (1984), both set in the imaginary Beklan Empire; The Plague Dogs (1977), written in a similar vein to Watership Down; The Girl in a Swing (1980), one of his few works with a human main character; Traveller (1988), which recounts the events of the American Civil War (1861-1865) from the perspective of Confederate General Robert E. Lee's horse; and a collection of folktales, The Iron Wolf and Other Stories (1980). Almost all of Adams's works have received mixed critical reviews but enjoyed solid popular success.

Fleur Adcock

Fleur Adcock, born in 1934, New Zealand-British writer, who is best known for her poetry, which approaches everyday, domestic subjects with unexpected irony. Adcock was born in Papakura, a city in the north of North Island, New Zealand. From the age of five she attended various schools in England, where her father was a professor of psychology. She returned to New Zealand to study at Victoria University in Wellington, on the northeastern tip of South Island, and she received a master of arts degree in classical studies in 1955. She was a teacher and a librarian in New Zealand from 1958 until 1963, when she emigrated to Britain. She worked as assistant librarian at the Foreign and Commonwealth Office Library, London until 1979, when she became a full-time writer.

Her first collection of poetry, published in Wellington in 1964, was The Eye of the Hurricane, part of which was reprinted in Tigers (1967). These early books established Adcock's straightforward yet ironic style, which she has continued to apply to narratives about personal, social, and political matters, in such collections as the well-received In Focus (1977). Her sharp wit is offset by a relaxed poetic technique and by subtle precision. The Incident Book (1986) includes a series of poems about childhood, and another about men. The subjects of Time Zone (1991) range from domestic matters to questions of contemporary politics, such as the Romanian popular revolt against communist leader Nicolae Ceauşescu in 1989 and support for environmental causes, including the antinuclear stand. Her Selected Poems, published in 1983, was reissued in 1991. Adcock has also been an editor and translator. She edited the Oxford Book of Contemporary New Zealand Poetry (1981). Joseph Addison

Joseph Addison (1672-1719), English essayist, poet, and statesman, whose work, particularly in the periodicals The Tatler and The Spectator, strongly influenced 18th-century English taste and opinion.

Addison was born on May 1, 1672, in Milston, Wiltshire, and educated at the University of Oxford, where he distinguished himself as a classical scholar. In 1699 he was granted a government pension, which he used for travel through Europe. In 1704, about a year after his return to England, Addison was commissioned by the government to write a poem celebrating the British victory that same year at the Battle of Blenheim, in the War of the Spanish Succession (1701-1714). His composition, “The Campaign” (1705), was such an aid to the Whig Party, which was then seeking control of the British government, that his position in both politics and letters was firmly established. From 1708 to 1710 Addison served in the British Parliament as a Whig. In 1709 he became a contributor to The Tatler, a periodical founded by his friend the essayist Sir Richard Steele. Two years later, Steele and Addison founded another periodical, The Spectator, for which Addison subsequently wrote the finest of his many essays. Addison's literary reputation reached its highest point in 1713, when his tragedy Cato was produced in London. It was translated into several languages, and such influential critics as the French writer and philosopher Voltaire pronounced it the finest tragedy in the English language. In the opinion of most critics today, however, this play, an artificial and undramatic work, was overestimated by Addison's contemporaries.

Addison's literary reputation has suffered a decline since his own time, when he was widely considered the most important of English authors. He influenced the literary taste of the 18th-century, in part by resurrecting the neglected ballad form in essays in The Spectator.

Alcuin or Albinus

Alcuin or Albinus (735-804), English scholar and ecclesiastic, whose letters are among the most valuable sources of information about the social life and humanistic learning of 8th-century France. He was born in Yorkshire and educated at the cathedral school of York. He became the head of the school in 778. During a mission to Rome in 780, he became acquainted with Charlemagne. At the request of Charlemagne, Alcuin directed an educational program among the Franks from 781 to 790, thereby exercising lasting influence upon the intellectual life of the Western world. In 794 at the council held at Frankfurt he led the successful fight against adoptionism, a heretical belief then dividing the Catholic church. After a brief visit to his native country, Alcuin returned to France, where he was made abbot of St. Martin of Tours in 796. He wrote many letters, works on rhetoric, and poems. The impetus given to humanistic studies by Alcuin and his successors led not only to a revival of learning but also to the development of the Carolingian, or Caroline, minuscle, a script that influenced the handwriting of the Renaissance in Italy and, indirectly, the Roman letters of the early Italian typesetters, from which modern type is derived.

Brian Wilson Aldiss

Brian Wilson Aldiss, born in 1925, English writer, well known for his works of science fiction and for his advocacy of the establishment of science fiction as a literary genre. Aldiss was born in East Dereham, Norfolk, in eastern England, and moved to Devon, in southwestern England, when he was 12 years of age. He was educated at various public schools before he served with the British army in East Asia between 1943 and 1947. While working as a bookseller in Oxford from 1947 to 1956, Aldiss wrote his first book, The Brightfount Diaries (1955). His first work of science fiction was Non-Stop (1958). During the 1960s he was associated with another English science-fiction writer, Michael Moorcock, and his New Worlds magazine. Aldiss’s work of this period is characterized by innovative literary techniques and open treatment of sex as a theme. His novel Hothouse (1962) won a Hugo Award, given by the World Science Fiction Society.

During the 1970s, Aldiss explored the experiences of a young soldier in Burma (now known as Myanmar) in a collection of novels entitled The Horatio Stubbs Saga. With Frankenstein Unbound (1973), he acknowledged the contribution made to science fiction by the novel Frankenstein (1818) written by English author Mary Wollstonecraft Shelley. In Moreau’s Other Island (1980), Aldiss similarly invoked The Island of Dr. Moreau (1896) by English author H. G. Wells. The Helliconia sequence (1982-1985) is an epic trilogy encompassing the history of an entire planetary system.

Aldiss edited dozens of anthologies and a critical journal entitled Science Fiction Horizons. His book reviews appeared in the Times Literary Supplement, the Guardian, and the Washington Post. His history of science fiction appeared as Billion Year Spree (1973) and later in an updated edition as Trillion Year Spree (1986). The motion picture Artificial Intelligence: AI (2001), written and directed by Steven Spielberg, was based on an Aldiss science-fiction story “Supertoys Last All Summer Long.”

Aldiss brought out two works of autobiography in the late 1990s: The Twinkling of an Eye (1998) and When the Feast Is Finished (1999). He returned to the novel in the early 2000s with The Cretan Teat (2002), a contemporary story of corruption, and Super-State (2002), which takes place in the European Union 50 years in the future.

Sir Norman Angell

Sir Norman Angell (1872?-1967), English author and economist. Originally named Ralph Norman Angell Lane, he was educated at the Lycée de Saint-Omer, France, and the University of Geneva. His studies and his experience as a prospector, rancher, journalist, and editor made him an economist of vision and reputation. According to his principal doctrine, as expressed in The Great Illusion (1910) and The Great Illusion, 1933 (1933), modern nations are so closely related economically and socially that they are logically committed to cooperation with one another, rather than to economic competition, which inevitably leads to war. From 1929 to 1931 Angell served as a member of Parliament. He was knighted in 1931 and was awarded the Nobel Peace Prize in 1933 for his writings and lectures advocating peace. Later works include The Money Game (1936), America's Dilemma (1940), and the autobiography After All (1951).

John Arden

John Arden, born in 1930, English dramatist. His early plays Serjeant Musgrave's Dance (1959) and The Workhouse Donkey (1963) contain trenchant social criticism and show the influence of German dramatist Bertolt Brecht. Subsequent works, often written in collaboration with his wife, Margaretta D'Arcy, express increasing concern with the political situation in Northern Ireland and dissatisfaction with the professional and subsidized theater world.

Arden was born in Barnsley and educated at King's College at the University of Cambridge and at the Edinburgh College of Art, where he qualified as an architect. He first gained attention with a prize-winning radio play, The Life of Man (1956). This success was followed by The Waters of Babylon (1957) and Live Like Pigs (1958), both produced at the Royal Court Theatre. Serjeant Musgrave's Dance is generally regarded as Arden’s finest work; it deals with the realities of war and the tragically unsuccessful attempt by a group of deserters to act effectively against those guilty of encouraging war.

Later plays include The Happy Haven (1960), written with Margaretta d'Arcy; Armstrong's Last Goodnight (1964), which adventurously extended the techniques and political concerns of Serjeant Musgrave's Dance; and Left-handed Liberty (1965). The Island of the Mighty provoked considerable controversy when performed by the Royal Shakespeare Company in 1973.

Jane Austen

Jane Austen (1775-1817), English novelist, noted for her witty studies of early-19th- century English society. With meticulous detail, Austen portrayed the quiet, day-to-day life of members of the upper middle class. Her works combine romantic comedy with social satire and psychological insight.

After her literary experiments as a teenager, Austen had two periods of busy and fruitful writing. The first lasted from 1795 to 1798. During this time she wrote the first versions of Sense and Sensibility, Pride and Prejudice, and Northanger Abbey.

Austen’s family preserved the writing she did as a teenager, which was published more than a century after her death as Love & Freindship and Other Early Works. It includes the story “Love and Freindship” [sic], which Austen completed when she was about 15 years old. It is a comic parody of 18th-century melodramatic fiction.

The main theme of Austen’s first full novel, Sense and Sensibility, is that sensibility— responsiveness, openness, enthusiasm—is highly desirable, but that it must be tempered by good sense and prudence. In other words, a person needs both sense and sensibility for fulfillment and survival. Nineteen-year-old Elinor Dashwood, the elder of the two sisters at the center of the story, combines both qualities; her 16-year-old sister, Marianne, is less balanced.

The novel focuses on the romantic affairs of the two sisters. When Marianne sprains her ankle on a hillside in a rainstorm and handsome John Willoughby rescues her, she follows her heart and passionately responds to what she believes is his courtship. He, however, breaks off the relationship when he learns that Marianne is not rich. In the meantime, Elinor becomes involved with a young man of integrity, Edward Ferrars, who, unknown to her, in a foolish moment of his youth had become secretly engaged to a woman whom he did not love. Both heroines suffer, but Elinor bears her suffering stoically while Marianne dramatizes hers, playing the role of the jilted maiden. Elinor is ultimately rewarded with a happy marriage to Edward while Marianne eventually accepts the proposal of the dull though loyal Colonel Brandon.

In Sense and Sensibility Austen challenges her readers and her characters to look closely at all facets of an individual’s personality. In so doing, Austen has been criticized for creating characters who are morally good, but too flawed to be appealing. For instance, Elinor may strike an ideal balance between sense and sensibility, but she also can strike the reader as cold and judgmental. Austen recognized that real people are flawed in significant ways, and so she did not permit the characters in her romances to drift too far from life.

Pride and Prejudice is Austen’s first undoubted masterpiece. The book focuses on the Bennet family and the search of the Bennet daughters for suitable husbands. Austen illuminates the topic of husband hunting and marriage in an acquisitive society and shows most of its aspects and consequences—comic, trivial, sensual, opportunistic, desperate, and hopeless. J. G. Ballard

J. G. Ballard, born in 1930, British novelist, short-story writer, and essayist. Ballard’s writing is heavily influenced by science fiction and fantasy, and it explores contemporary concerns about impending environmental catastrophe and the effect on human nature of the ascendancy of technological processes. Perhaps more than any other modern novelist, he has brought other genres into play in the literary novel.

James Graham Ballard was born to a British family living in Shanghai, China. He spent part of his childhood interned with his family in a Japanese prison camp after Japan’s 1941 attack on Pearl Harbor during World War II. Japan had seized Shanghai in 1937 and occupied the city until the end of the war. These wartime experiences inform much of Ballard’s writing, most notably his semi-autobiographical novel Empire of the Sun (1984). Ballard’s family returned to Britain in 1946. Ballard subsequently spent two years, from 1949 to 1951, at the University of Cambridge studying medicine. After leaving Cambridge he worked at various jobs before joining Britain’s Royal Air Force (RAF). After his discharge from the RAF in 1957, he worked on a scientific journal for six years before becoming a full-time writer.

Ballard’s first novel, The Drowned World (1962), imagined the devastation caused by melting polar ice caps. It was followed by two more novels that imagined environmental catastrophes: The Wind from Nowhere (1962) and The Drought (1965). The Crystal World (1966) is set in a forest area in western Africa that, along with its inhabitants, is turning into crystals.

In 1973 Ballard published Crash, a disturbing and explicit meditation on the relationship between sexual desire and automobile crashes. The book was filmed by Canadian director David Cronenberg in 1996; the movie Crash provoked fierce debates over censorship and obscenity. Crash was followed by four more fantasy novels about contemporary civilization: Concrete Island (1974), High-Rise (1975), The Unlimited Dream Company (1979), and Hello America (1981).

Ballard achieved a much wider audience in 1984 with Empire of the Sun, which told a wartime story through the eyes of a young boy and drew on the author’s own experiences. The book was turned into a successful motion picture in 1987 by American director Steven Spielberg. A sequel to the best-selling novel, entitled The Kindness of Women, appeared in 1991.

Francis Beaumont

Francis Beaumont (1584?-1616), English poet and playwright, best known for the tragicomedies he wrote together with John Fletcher. From about 1606 to 1614, the two collaborated on several plays (the exact number is disputed) that were very popular with audiences of the time. Beaumont attended the University of Oxford, England, but did not graduate. In 1600 he was admitted to the Inner Temple in London to study law. His first published poetry was Salmacis and Hermaphroditus (1602), which was put out anonymously. He contributed prefatory verses for the comedy Volpone by English playwright Ben Jonson, and he continued to contribute such verses to Jonson’s works until 1611.

Beaumont's first play, The Woman Hater, was probably written in 1605. His next published play, The Knight of the Burning Pestle (1607?), is a brilliant satire on the literary tastes of the London citizenry. He soon began his collaboration with Fletcher. The production dates of nearly all the works they wrote jointly are uncertain.

Beaumont and Fletcher wrote popular comedies, including The Captain (1613), The Coxcomb (1612), and The Scornful Lady (1613?). The comedies exhibit a vein of comic burlesque characterized by exaggeration. There is also a romantic element to these works that anticipates the style of the duo’s later plays. The pair’s first attempt at tragedy was the play Cupid's Revenge (1611?). Philaster, a tragicomedy dated around 1609, was their first great success. Their two masterpieces are The Maid's Tragedy (1610?) and A King and No King (1611).

Beaumont and Fletcher’s collaborative efforts are characterized by ingenious plots, diversified characters, and realistic dialogue. Their comedies, witty and sophisticated, foreshadow the licentious comedies of the Restoration. Most of the duo’s major plays consist chiefly of a series of incidents, rather than sustained development of character and action. Their plays remained incredibly popular until the closing of the theaters under the Puritan Commonwealth in 1642. Restoration dramatist John Dryden, in his Essay of Dramatic Poesy (1688), explained the favorable public response to the plays by citing their universal appeal.

Samuel Beckett

Samuel Beckett (1906-1989), Irish-born poet, novelist, and playwright, who won international fame with his play En attendant Godot (Waiting for Godot), which premiered in 1953. He won the Nobel Prize in 1969 and influenced a generation of dramatists, including English playwrights Harold Pinter and Tom Stoppard and American playwrights Edward Albee and Sam Shepard.

Beckett went through a period of family conflict and self-doubt, especially after his father’s death in June 1933, which further strained Beckett’s difficult relationship with his mother. From 1934 to 1936 he underwent psychoanalysis in London. He then spent a year traveling in Germany, witnessing firsthand the rise of German dictator Adolf Hitler and Nazism. In October 1937 he settled in Paris more or less permanently. A few months later he was inexplicably stabbed on a Paris street. While recovering in the hospital he was visited by an acquaintance, Suzanne Dumesnil, who would become his lifelong companion and, in 1961, his wife. After Paris fell to the Nazis in 1940 (during World War II), Beckett began working for the French Resistance. His unit was betrayed in August 1942, however, and he and Dumesnil fled on foot to the south of France. They spent the war years in the village of Roussillon, where Beckett wrote the novel Watt (completed 1945; published 1953). For his efforts in fighting the German occupation, he was awarded the Croix de Guerre and the Médaille de la Résistance in 1945 by the French government.

After the war Beckett returned to Paris and entered his most creative period, which he called “the siege in the room” (for the onslaught of ideas and inspiration he experienced), and began writing in French. In this language he was able to break free of the burden of English literary tradition and the influence of James Joyce. Half-jokingly, he explained that in French one could “write without style.” In rapid succession he completed three novels, which slowly found publishers: Molloy (completed 1947; published 1951; translated 1955); Malone meurt (completed 1948; published 1951; translated as Malone Dies, 1956); and L’innomable (completed 1950; published 1953; The Unnamable, 1958); and two plays, Eleutheria and En attendant Godot (completed 1949; published in French in 1952 and in English in 1954).

Devoid of traditional plot and recognizable characters, Beckett’s works attacked systems of communication, including language itself. Rather than representing the observable surface of life, the author seemed intent on demonstrating its inconsistencies and absurdities. Consequently, some early critics saw Beckett as part of a “literature of the absurd,” a representation of life’s irrationality (see Theater of the Absurd). Such an emphasis on this side of his work, however, ignored Beckett’s rational dissection of human consciousness and of the systems through which we struggle to order our lives.

En attendant Godot, about two tramps waiting near a tree on an isolated country road for someone named Godot to arrive, was first performed at the Théâtre Babylone in Paris in January 1953. Written in French and translated into English by the author, the play fused music-hall comedy with philosophic musings about the nature of human existence. Its nearly bare stage and disconnected dialogue defied the conventions of realistic theater and both puzzled and captivated early audiences. With the international success of the play, Beckett’s literary and economic fortunes turned, and publishers were eager to bring out all of his work. From 1953 onward he wrote in both English and French, translating his work from the language of composition into French or English. From 1967 onward he staged most of his own plays, most often in Germany and France. His other major theater works include Fin de partie (1957; Endgame, 1958); Krapp’s Last Tape (1958); Happy Days (1961); and a series of short plays: Play (1963); Eh, Joe (written for television, 1966); That Time (1976); Footfalls (1976); Rockaby (1981); and Ohio Impromptu (1981). William Beckford

William Beckford (1759-1844), English writer and art collector, born at Fonthill Abbey, Wiltshire. In 1770 he inherited an enormous fortune. He traveled extensively in continental Europe, collecting books and objects of art. In 1782 he wrote his principal work, Vathek: An Arabian Tale, in French. It was published in English in 1786 and in the original French in 1787. The fantastic, grandiose, and exotic elements in this tale are consonant with the style of Gothic novels, which were popular during the latter half of the 18th century. This book, as well as Beckford's extravagant estates, decadent lifestyle, and his aloofness from society, gave him the reputation of being a morose and eccentric genius. Beckford also wrote two burlesques of sentimental novels, and sketches of his travels.

Sir Max Beerbohm

Sir Max Beerbohm (1872-1956), English essayist, critic, and caricaturist, born in London, half-brother of the actor Sir Herbert Beerbohm Tree. He began his literary career with contributions to The Yellow Book, a quarterly magazine. A prominent figure in London life, Beerbohm knew everybody and caricatured everybody, emphasizing the eccentricities of British social, political, and literary personalities in a long series of witty drawings. He was knighted in 1939.

Except for his one novel, Zuleika Dobson (1911), a satire on life at the University of Oxford, Beerbohm's books are mainly compilations of his periodical and newspaper articles. He was the drama critic of the Saturday Review from 1898 to 1912, succeeding George Bernard Shaw in the post. Important among these writings are the collections of essays The Happy Hypocrite (1897) and And Even Now (1920); parodies of authors of his day, A Christmas Garland (1912); pictorial caricatures, The Poet's Corner (1904) and Rossetti and His Circle (1922); radio lectures delivered between 1935 and 1945, Mainly on the Air (1947); and articles on the London stage, Around Theatres (reissued in 1953).

Aphra Behn

Aphra Behn (1640?-1689), English novelist and dramatist. It is thought that as a child she was taken to live in Suriname, West Indies, by a couple named Amis, who may have been her parents. In 1658, when England surrendered Suriname to the Dutch, she returned to England, where she married a merchant named Behn. Charles II, king of England, apparently employed Aphra as a spy in Antwerp during the war of 1665 to 1667 against the Dutch. She was not paid for her work and was jailed briefly for debt. She later turned to writing for a living and became probably the first professional female writer in England. In her time, perhaps only John Dryden, a friend, rivaled her versatility and productivity. She is acclaimed in this role by Virginia Woolf in A Room of One's Own, though in her own time she suffered accusations of plagiarism and lewdness on account of her gender.

Among Behn's many works are poems and plays, the latter including her most popular play, The Rover (1677; second part, 1681); The City Heiress (1682), a satire of London life; and The Lucky Chance (1686), which explored one of Behn's favorite themes, the folly of arranged marriages. Her novel Oroonoko (1688?), the story of an African prince sold into slavery in Suriname, influenced the development of the English novel and is important for several reasons. It introduces the figure of the noble savage, later developed by Jean Jacques Rousseau, foreshadows later novels on the anticolonial theme, pioneers in the effort to depict a realistic background, and may be the first English philosophical novel. The novel formed the basis of a tragedy of the same name written by the English dramatist Thomas Southerne, produced in 1695.

Gertrude Bell

Gertrude Bell (1868-1926), British archaeologist, writer, and government official. Gertrude Margaret Lowthian Bell was born in county Durham, England, and educated at Lady Margaret Hall, University of Oxford. From 1899 to 1914 she made several archaeological expeditions in Asia Minor and on the Arabian Peninsula. Her expert knowledge of those regions led her into service with British intelligence forces in the Middle East during World War I. In 1917 she went to Baghdād, Iraq, to serve in the British political office. She was influential in determining the British terms for Iraqi independence and in the election of Faisal I as the first king of Iraq. Her works include Poems from the Divan of Hafiz (1897), The Desert and the Sown (1907), Amurath to Amurath (1911), The Palace and the Mosque of Ukhaidir (1914), and Letters of Gertrude Bell (2 volumes, 1927).

Hilaire Belloc

Hilaire Belloc (1870-1953), English writer, born in La Celle-Saint- Cloud, France, and educated at the University of Oxford. He became a British subject in 1902 and served in Parliament from 1906 to 1910. He and writer G. K. Chesterton edited a weekly journal expounding their conservative social views, beginning in 1911. Belloc was a popular and prolific author. His early works include Danton (1899), Robespierre (1901), The Path to Rome (1902), and mordantly humorous verse such as The Bad Child's Book of Beasts (1896) and Cautionary Tales for Children (1907). A devout Roman Catholic, his religious and political convictions strongly colored his serious works. He offered an alternative to socialism in The Servile State (1912) and reinterpreted history in History of England (4 volumes, 1925-1931), Charles I (1933), Cromwell (1934), and Charles II (1939).

Alan Bennett

Alan Bennett, born in 1934, English playwright and actor. Born in Leeds, England, Bennett studied history at Oxford University and received a B.A. degree in 1957. He first came to public attention in the revue Beyond the Fringe, which opened at the Edinburgh Festival in Scotland in 1960 and played before enthusiastic audiences in London and New York City in the early 1960s. Bennett coauthored and performed in the revue along with director Jonathan Miller, satirist Peter Cook, and actor Dudley Moore.

Bennett’s first stage play was Forty Years On (1968), an allegory about the decline of Britain set in an imaginary boys’ school called Albion House. Several stage plays followed, each stamped with Bennett’s idiosyncratic brand of gentle, self-mocking satire. They include Getting On (1971), Habeas Corpus (1973), The Old Country (1977), and The Madness of George III (1991), on which he based his screenplay for the motion picture The Madness of King George (1994). He returned to the boys’ school setting with The History Boys (2004), a play that raises questions about the meaning of education.

Bennett has also written plays for television, including An Englishman Abroad (1983) about Guy Burgess, a British diplomat and spy who fled to the Soviet Union. It was later staged as a double bill titled Single Spies (1988), along with A Question of Attribution about another spy, British art historian Anthony Blunt. With Talking Heads (1988) and Talking Heads 2 (1998), Bennett created two series of tragicomic monologues in which the characters reveal their self-deceptions. Maggie Smith starred as an alcoholic vicar’s wife in the Talking Heads monologue “Bed Among the Lentils.”

Writing Home (1994), a witty collection of extracts from Bennett’s diaries, reached British bestseller lists soon after publication. At its core is “The Lady in the Van,” the story of an eccentric homeless woman who took up temporary residence in Bennett’s driveway and stayed there for 15 years. Bennett turned the story into a play titled The Lady in the Van, also starring Maggie Smith, in 1997. His satirical novel The Laying on of Hands, about the death of a celebrity masseur, was published in 2001.

Arnold Bennett

Arnold Bennett (1867-1931), English novelist, playwright, and essayist, born in Hanley, Staffordshire (the real-life model for one of the “Five Towns” of his novels). Bennett was educated at the University of London and for a time was editor of a magazine for women. After 1900 he devoted himself entirely to writing; dramatic criticism was one of his foremost interests. Bennett is best known, however, for his novels, several of which were written during his residence in France. These include Anna of the Five Towns (1902); his masterpiece, The Old Wives' Tale (1908); and the Clayhanger series—Clayhanger (1910), Hilda Lessways (1911), and These Twain (1916)—published collectively in 1926 as The Clayhanger Family. Bennett's fiction is a straightforward yet sympathetic report on the restricted lives of commonplace people living in dingy manufacturing towns. Of his plays, two achieved considerable popularity: Milestones (1912) and The Great Adventure (1913), a dramatization of his novel Buried Alive (1908). Later writings include Riceyman Steps (1923), the bleak story of a miserly bookseller who starves himself to death.

James Berry

James Berry (1924?- ), Jamaican-born British writer and editor of poetry and short stories, whose work reflects the transcultural uniqueness of being “black British,” addressing both the West Indian folklore and language and the minority immigrant experience in England. His work also illustrates his belief in the connection between preserving the Jamaican language and preserving Caribbean culture.

Born in a Jamaican village, Berry emigrated to London in 1948. He worked in the International Telegraphs Department of the post office from 1951 until 1977, when the award of a C. Day Lewis Fellowship allowed him to write full time.

Berry's volumes of poetry include Lucy's Letter and Loving (1982), in which the speaker, Lucy, is an uneducated Jamaican woman who feels alienated in Britain. Chain of Days (1985) was written, it seems, with the influences of the younger performance and jazz poets who followed in Berry's wake. Other volumes of his verse include Fractured Circles (1979); When I Dance (1988), a series of West Indian folktales; and Rough Sketch Beginning (1996), a collection of Jamaican poetry for children. Berry's short stories are collected in A Thief in the Village (1987), narrated from the perspective of young Jamaican children, and Anancy- Spiderman (1988).

In 1981 Berry won Britain's National Poetry Competition for his “Fantasy of an African Boy.” He is the editor of two anthologies, Bluefoot Traveler: An Anthology of West Indian Poets of Britain (1976) and News for Babylon (1984).

Sir John Betjeman

Sir John Betjeman (1906-84), poet laureate of England (1972-84), born in London. His memories of growing up are humorously chronicled in a verse autobiography, Summoned by Bells (1960). Starting with his Ghastly Good Taste in 1933, he wrote numerous works on English architecture and popular guides to old churches and other landmarks.

Betjeman was called the bard of nostalgia for his lyrical skill at evoking the past, particularly the moods and images of actual places—gaslit depots and red-brick Victorian houses. A militant preservationist, he aimed his poetic wit at those who, in the name of progress, threatened to despoil the English countryside.

Isabella Lucy Bird Bishop

Isabella Lucy Bird Bishop (1831-1904), British world traveler and author, who circled the globe three times and was the first woman to become a member of the Royal Geographical Society.

Isabella Bishop (born Isabella Bird) was a clergyman’s daughter from Yorkshire, England. As a child she was plagued by chronic health problems, suffering from insomnia, severe headaches, and spinal problems. When she was 21, her family sent her on a sea voyage to Canada and the United States, hoping that travel would help restore her health. Although Bird continued to have health problems for the rest of her life, travel seemed to have a positive effect.

After sailing first to Nova Scotia and up the St. Lawrence River, Bird toured the Great Lakes as far west as Chicago. In Davenport, Iowa, she witnessed pioneers and wagon trains bound for Nebraska, Utah, and Oregon. Bird returned to England in 1855, and in 1856 she published a well-received account of her experiences in America, entitled The Englishwoman in America.

In 1872 Bird set out on the first of her three trips around the globe. She sailed to Australia and New Zealand, and across the Pacific to the Hawaiian Islands. On the island of Hawaii, she climbed the volcanic mountain Mauna Loa. Bird then sailed to San Francisco and traveled into the Sierra Nevada by train. From near Lake Tahoe, she set out by horseback toward the Rocky Mountains. Four months and 1300 km (800 mi) later she reached Fort Collins, Colorado. Bird returned to England the following year.

In 1877 Bird traveled to Japan, where she spent time with the Ainu people of Japan’s northernmost islands. Next she went to Hong Kong and the city of Melaka (now in Malaysia), and toured the interior of the Malay Peninsula, at times traveling by elephant. Bird married John Bishop, her sister’s former physician, in 1881. They lived for the next few years in Edinburgh, Scotland. In 1886, however, John Bishop died.

After her husband’s death, Isabella Bishop undertook a short course in nursing and in 1890 took part in a military-geographical expedition to Persia (present-day Iran). She traveled from Baghdād to Tehrān, then headed northward into the Central Asian regions of Kurdistān and Armenia, reaching the shores of the Black Sea at Trabzon, in northeastern Turkey. In 1892 Bishop became the first woman to be elected to the Royal Geographical Society.

Starting in 1894, Bishop journeyed across Korea and China, where she established several hospitals. In 1896 she traveled in a small boat up the Yangtze River as far as was navigable. In 1904 Bishop visited Morocco, her only trip to the African continent. She died later that year. Richard Doddridge Blackmore

Richard Doddridge Blackmore (1825-1900), English novelist, born in Longworth, Berkshire, and educated at the University of Oxford. He wrote several volumes of poetry before the publication of his first novel, Clara Vaughn (1864). His reputation was established by Lorna Doone (1869), a historical novel with a 17th-century setting; it remains his best- known work. Among Blackmore's other writings are the novels Cradock Nowell (1866), Alice Lorraine (1875), Springhaven (1887), and Dariel (1897).

William Blake

William Blake (1757-1827), English poet, painter, and engraver, who created an unusual form of illustrated verse; his poetry, inspired by mystical vision, is among the most original, lyric, and prophetic in the language.

Blake, the son of a hosier (stocking-maker), was born November 28, 1757, in London, where he lived most of his life. Largely self-taught, he was, however, widely read, and his poetry shows the influence of the German mystic Jakob Boehme, for example, and of Swedenborgianism (see Swedenborg, Emanuel). As a child, Blake wanted to become a painter. He was sent to drawing school and at the age of 14 was apprenticed to James Basire, an engraver. The young Blake had to draw monuments in the old churches of London, a task he thoroughly enjoyed.

After his seven-year apprenticeship was over, Blake studied briefly at the Royal Academy, but he rebelled against the aesthetic doctrines of its president, Sir Joshua Reynolds. Reynolds was a neoclassicist who took a very academic approach to the study of art. Blake preferred to draw from his imagination. At the Royal Academy Blake did, however, establish friendships with such artists as John Flaxman and Henry Fuseli, whose work may have influenced him.

In 1784 Blake married Catherine Boucher, the daughter of a gardener, who proved a devoted wife. The Blakes set up a print shop; although it failed after a few years, for the rest of his life Blake eked out a living as an engraver and illustrator. His wife helped him print the illuminated poetry for which he is remembered today.

Blake began writing poetry at the age of 12, and his first printed work, Poetical Sketches (1783), is a collection of youthful verse. Amid its traditional, derivative elements are hints of his later innovative style and themes. As with all his poetry, this volume reached few contemporary readers.

In 1789, unable to find a publisher for his Songs of Innocence, Blake and his wife engraved and printed the work at home. This was the first large work created in his novel method of “illuminated printing,” which combined text and decorations on a single etched plate. Blake’s most popular poems have always been Songs of Innocence, and the volume displays characteristics that become more marked in Blake’s later work. It is written in a lyric style of great freshness, simplicity, and directness.

Bloomsbury Group Bloomsbury Group, popular collective designation for a number of English intellectuals prominent in the first quarter of the 20th century, all of whom were individually known for their contributions to the arts or to social science. Although the group was primarily social and had no unified platform, its members criticized one another's work and were all devoted to experimentation. Their painting and literature, perhaps best characterized as modernist, were chiefly motivated by a strong reaction against the monumental formalism and sterile realism of the late 19th century. The name of the group is derived from a residential district near the British Museum in central London where most of the members lived. They included the writers Virginia Woolf and her husband, Leonard Sidney Woolf; the art critics Roger Fry and Clive Bell; the economist John Maynard Keynes; the biographer Lytton Strachey; the literary and drama critic Desmond MacCarthy; the novelist and essayist E. M. Forster; and the painters Vanessa Bell and Duncan Grant.

Enid Blyton

Enid Blyton (1897-1968), British writer, considered one of the most successful and controversial British children's authors of the 20th century. She is best known for her three series of books: Famous Five (1945-1950), Secret Seven (1953-1962), and Adventure (1946-1952).

Enid Mary Blyton was born in London and grew up in Beckenham, a London suburb, where she was educated at a girls' boarding school. Her father left the family when Blyton was 13 years of age, and it is believed that she did not get along well with her mother. After boarding school, Blyton spent two years training as a kindergarten teacher at the National Froebel Union Teaching School in Ipswich. In southeastern England, she taught for one year at Bickley Park School in Kent and spent four years as a governess in Surrey, during which time she began publishing her writing. Child Whispers (1922), a collection of poems, was her first book.

She married Hugh Pollock, her editor at Newnes Publishing, in 1924 (Mary Pollock was another name under which she wrote). Blyton's daughter Gillian was born in 1931, and her daughter Imogen in 1935. Many of Blyton's stories are said to have been inspired by the play of her daughters. During the 1930s she began writing “Enid Blyton's Children's Page” in Teachers' World, a journal distributed in British schools. In 1937 Blyton's first full-length fiction work, The Wishing Chair, was published. She followed it with three well-known series of stories, which achieved widespread recognition: The Famous Five series, aimed primarily at early adolescents; the Adventure series for older adolescents; and the Secret Seven series, written for a younger audience. Blyton and Pollock divorced in 1942, and in 1943 she married Kenneth Darrell Waters (whose name was probably the inspiration for Darrell Rivers, a character in her Malory Towers series of school stories).

Since the publication of her Noddy series (1954-1965) of storybooks for young children, Blyton has been the subject of some controversy. Her books have been criticized for what some consider poor quality of writing and negative racial and gender stereotypes, and have been occasionally excluded from library collections. However, her work does enjoy an enduring popularity with children. Robert Bolt

Robert Bolt (1924–1995), English dramatist and screenwriter, known for writing historical plays, such as A Man for All Seasons (1960). Robert Oxton Bolt was born in Sale, Lancashire, attended Manchester University, and for several years taught English and history in secondary schools. He was 33 when the success of one of his earliest plays, Flowering Cherry (1957), persuaded him to become a full-time writer.

Widely considered his most important play, A Man for All Seasons deals with the tragic relationship between English king Henry VIII (1509-1547) and English statesman Sir Thomas More. The play illustrates Bolt's ability to dramatize political and moral issues using a clear dramatic structure, strong characterization, and expressive dialogue. Bolt’s later plays were less successful, though Vivat! Vivat Regina! (1970) also illustrates his ability to bring history vividly to life, and Revolution (1977), a critical but not popular success, shows Bolt's continued willingness to tackle intellectually ambitious works.

Bolt’s screenplays include Lawrence of Arabia (1962), Dr. Zhivago (1965), A Man for All Seasons (1966), Ryan's Daughter (1970), Lady Caroline Lamb (1972), which he also directed, The Bounty (1984), and The Mission (1986). He won Academy Awards for Dr. Zhivago and A Man for All Seasons.

Charles Booth

Charles Booth (1840-1916), British shipowner, statistician, and sociological writer, born in Liverpool. He is known chiefly for the report Life and Labour of the People in London (17 volumes, 1891- 1903), in which he revealed the shocking extent of poverty in the city. Booth also wrote works on old-age pensions, which helped to bring about passage of the Old Age Pensions Act (1908). He was president of the Royal Statistical Society from 1892 to 1894.

George Henry Borrow

George Henry Borrow (1803-81), English writer, born in East Dereham, Norfolk. Early in his career he led a nomadic life, traveling, frequently on foot, throughout England. He described many of his adventures in Lavengro (1851) and its sequel, The Romany Rye (1857). He traveled in Europe and East Asia from 1833 to 1840, first as a translator and agent of the British and Foreign Bible Society and later as a newspaper correspondent. Throughout his stay in Europe, and at his private estate in England, he associated with Roma (gypsies), studying their traditions and customs. Zincali, or the Gypsies in Spain (1841), based on his observations, was followed by The Bible in Spain (3 volumes, 1843), his most successful work.

James Boswell

James Boswell (1740-1795), Scottish writer, who became a close friend and biographer of the writer Samuel Johnson. Boswell was born in Edinburgh, and educated at the universities of Glasgow, Edinburgh, and Utrecht. Boswell was admitted to both the Scottish and English bars and practiced law but devoted himself primarily to the pursuit of a literary career. His most important early work was An Account of Corsica (1768), a sympathetic study of the struggle for independence of that island, written after an extended tour of Europe.

In 1763 Boswell met the writer Samuel Johnson, and from 1772 until Johnson's death in 1784 the two men were closely associated. In 1773 Boswell was admitted to Johnson's Literary Club, which included the statesman Edmund Burke, the writer Oliver Goldsmith, the painter Sir Joshua Reynolds, and the actor David Garrick. Thereafter, Boswell devoted much of his time to compiling detailed records of Johnson's activities and conversation. Boswell's accounts covered periods of daily association with Johnson in London and also described a trip that the two friends made through Scotland to the Hebrides in 1773. After the death of Johnson, Boswell's Journal of a Tour to the Hebrides (1785) and Life of Samuel Johnson (1791) were published. Boswell is best known for the latter work, which is generally considered a masterpiece of biography.

In 1927 an extensive collection of Boswell's letters, notes, and journals was discovered at Malahide Castle in Ireland. Yale University acquired these papers in 1949, and under its auspices they were prepared for scholarly publication in 18 volumes. Several volumes, beginning with Boswell's London Journal (1950), have been edited for general readership; one of the latest in the series is Boswell: The Applause of the Jury, 1782-1785 (1981).

William Lisle Bowles

William Lisle Bowles (1762-1850), English poet and clergyman, born in King's Sutton, Northamptonshire, and educated at the University of Oxford. He was vicar of Bremhill, Wiltshire, from 1804 to 1850. His Fourteen Sonnets (1789) deeply influenced the romantic poets Robert Southey, Samuel Taylor Coleridge, and William Wordsworth. The Spirit of Discovery (1804), The Grave of the Last Saxon (1822), and St. John in Patmos (1833) are among Bowles's longer poems.

Boz

Boz, pseudonym of Charles Dickens, which was taken from Dickens's childhood nickname for his younger brother, Augustus. Dickens used the pseudonym while contributing newspaper pieces to London's Morning Chronicle, as well as for his early work Sketches by Boz (1836) and for the first printing of The Pickwick Papers (1837).

Kenneth Branagh

Kenneth Branagh, born in 1960, British actor, director, and producer, known for his motion-picture adaptations of dramas by English playwright William Shakespeare. Born in Belfast, Northern Ireland, he moved with his family to England at the age of ten. Branagh studied at the Royal Academy of Dramatic Arts (RADA) in London until 1981. His first professional engagement was in 1982 in Another Country at the Queen’s Theatre in London, after which he became a familiar actor on British television.

Branagh joined the Royal Shakespeare Company (RSC) in 1984, where his most notable performance was in the title role of William Shakespeare’s Henry V. The following year he wrote and directed his first play, Tell Me Honestly. In 1987 Branagh formed the Renaissance Theatre Company and starred in its first production, Public Enemy, which he also wrote. The company went on to produce a variety of Shakespeare plays and other classics, often directed by or starring Branagh.

Branagh’s international status was confirmed in 1989 when he directed and starred in a film version of Henry V, for which he received two Academy Award nominations. Films he has directed and performed in since then include Dead Again (1991), Peter’s Friends (1992), Much Ado About Nothing (1993), Mary Shelley’s Frankenstein (1994), Hamlet (1996), Love's Labours Lost (2000), As You Like It (2006), The Magic Flute (2006), and Sleuth (2007). Branagh also played the roles of the conspiratorial Iago in Othello (1995) and Gilderoy Lockhart in Harry Potter and the Chamber of Secrets (2002), and directed A Midwinter’s Tale (1995).

Branagh won an outstanding lead actor Emmy for his role as the Nazi Reinhard Heydrich in the TV movie Conspiracy (2001) and played polar explorer Sir Ernest Shackleton in a television dramatization of Shackleton’s 1914 attempt to cross the Antarctic. Branagh returned to the stage to play the title roles in Shakespeare’s Hamlet (1992) with the Royal Shakespeare Company, and Richard III (2002) at Sheffield’s Crucible Theatre.

Robert Seymour Bridges

Robert Seymour Bridges (1844-1930), English poet, poet laureate of Britain (1913-1930), born in Walmer, Kent, and educated at Eton College and the University of Oxford. Bridges was a practicing physician until 1881, when he developed pneumonia. After he recovered, he devoted himself to writing. Bridges experimented with prosody (the study of the metrical structure of verse) and was noted for introducing a new meter based on syllables, not accents, into English verse. Among his poetic works are Prometheus, the Fire-Giver (1883); The Poetical Works (1912); and The Testament of Beauty (1929), generally considered his masterpiece. He also wrote verse dramas and critical essays, and in 1913 became one of the founders of the Society for Pure English. In 1918 Bridges published a complete edition of the poetry of his friend from Oxford, Gerard Manley Hopkins, thus bringing it out of obscurity.

Brontë

Brontë, name of three English novelists, also sisters, whose works, transcending Victorian conventions, have become beloved classics. The sisters Charlotte Brontë (1816-1855), Emily (Jane) Brontë (1818-1848), and Anne Brontë (1820-1849), and their brother (Patrick) Branwell Brontë (1817-1848), were born in Thornton, Yorkshire: Charlotte on April 21, 1816, Emily on July 30, 1818, and Anne on March 17, 1820. Their father, Patrick Brontë, who had been born in Ireland, was appointed rector of Haworth, a village on the Yorkshire moors; it was with Haworth that the family was thenceforth connected. In 1821, when their mother died, Charlotte and Emily were sent to join their older sisters Maria and Elizabeth at the Clergy Daughters' School in Cowan Bridge; this was the original on which was modeled the infamous Lowood School of Charlotte Brontë's novel Jane Eyre. Maria and Elizabeth returned to Haworth ill and died in 1825. Charlotte and Emily were later taken away from the school due to the grim conditions and the sisters' illness.

The Brontë children's imaginations transmuted a set of wooden soldiers into characters in a series of stories they wrote about the imaginary kingdom of Angria—the property of Charlotte and Branwell—and the kingdom of Gondal—which belonged to Emily and Anne. A hundred tiny handwritten volumes (started in 1829) of the chronicles of Angria survive, but nothing of the Gondal saga (started in 1831), except some of Emily's poems. The relationship of these stories to the later novels is a matter of much interest to scholars.

Charlotte went away to school again, in Roe Head, in 1831, returning home a year later to continue her education and teach her sisters. She returned to Roe Head in 1835 as a teacher, taking Emily with her. Emily returned home three months later and was replaced by Anne, who stayed for two years. In 1842, conceiving the idea of opening a small private school of their own, and to improve their French, Charlotte and Emily went to Brussels, to a private boarding school. The death of their aunt, who had kept house for the family, compelled their return, however. Emily stayed at Haworth as housekeeper. Anne worked as a governess in a family near York, where she was joined as tutor by Branwell, who had failed first as a portrait painter and then as a railway clerk. Charlotte went back to Brussels, her experiences there forming the basis of the rendering, in Villette (1853), of Lucy Snowe's loneliness, longing and isolation. In 1845 the family was together again. Branwell, who had been dismissed from his tutorship, presumably because he had fallen in love with his employer's wife, was resorting increasingly to opium and drink.

Charlotte's discovery of Emily's poems led to the decision to have the sisters' verses published; these appeared, at their own expense, as Poems by Currer, Ellis and Acton Bell (1846), each sister using her own initials in these pseudonyms. Two copies were sold.

Each sister then embarked on a novel. Charlotte's Jane Eyre was published first, in 1847; Anne's Agnes Grey and Emily's Wuthering Heights appeared a little later that year. Speculation about the authors' identities was rife until they visited London and met their publishers.

On their return to Haworth they found Branwell near death. Emily caught cold at his funeral, and died December 19, 1848. Anne too died, on May 28, 1849. Her second novel, The Tenant of Wildfell Hall, had been published the year before; the account of a drunkard's degeneration, it was as deeply rooted in personal observation as Agnes Grey, the study of a governess's life.

Alone now with her father at Haworth, Charlotte resumed work on the novel Shirley (1849).

Peter Brook

Peter Brook, born in 1925, English stage and motion-picture director, recognized for his contributions to the development of 20th-century theater. He was born in London and educated at the University of Oxford. Brook's success as a director began at a young age with stagings in London in his late teens. He directed English actor Alec Guinness in Vicious Circle (1945) and English actors Paul Scofield and John Gielgud in Venice Preserv'd (1953). Beginning in the 1940s, he directed many productions for the Royal Shakespeare Company. Brook successfully utilized the experimental theories of German dramatist Bertolt Brecht, Russian director Vsevolod Meyerhold, and Polish director Jerzy Grotowski, among others, in addition to the theater-of-cruelty concept of French writer and actor Antonin Artaud. His noted productions include Marat/Sade (1964; film 1967), A Midsummer Night's Dream (1970), Antony and Cleopatra (1978), The Tempest (1987), and Pelléas and Mélisande (1992).

In 1970 Brook founded the International Centre of Theatre Research, in Paris, to explore the fundamentals of historical and worldwide drama. His international company presented experimental productions, including The Ik (1975); The Conference of Birds (1976), a Persian fable; Ubu Roi (1977); The Cherry Orchard (1981); La tragédie de Carmen, (1983), an adaptation of the opera Carmen (1875), by French composer Georges Bizet; The Mahabharata (1985), a nine-hour adaptation of the Indian epic poem (see Mahabharata); and Qui est la? (1996), an adaptation of Hamlet. Brook's motion pictures, some of which are also experimental in nature, include The Beggar's Opera (1953), Lord of the Flies (1963), Tell Me Lies (1968), King Lear (1971), La Tragédie de Carmen (1984), and The Mahabharata (1989). He has written several books about theater, including The Empty Space (1968), The Shifting Point, 1946-1987 (1987), and The Open Door: Thoughts on Acting and Theatre (1993). Brook's memoir, Threads of Time: Recollections, was published in 1998. Rupert Brooke

Rupert Brooke (1887-1915), English poet. Rupert Chawner Brooke was born in Rugby, Warwickshire, and educated at King's College, University of Cambridge. While serving with the British Royal Naval Division during World War I, Brooke died of blood poisoning in Greece. His untimely death, his great personal attraction, and the charm of his verse made him a symbol of all the gifted youth killed in that war. His first collection Poems, was published in 1911; “The Old Vicarage, Grantchester,” Brooke's tribute to a lovely village near Cambridge, appeared in 1912. The poet's most famous work, the sonnet sequence 1914 and Other Poems, was published in the year of his death. These poems continue the boyish idealism of his earlier poetry. In The Letters of Rupert Brooke (1968) are found poignant views on the tragedy and waste of war. His experiences in the United States and Canada are described in Letters from America (1916).

ANITA BROOKNER

Anita Brookner, born in 1928, English novelist and art historian, who is well respected for her scholarly works on art history. She achieved recognition as a novelist when her novel Hotel du Lac (1984) received Britain's most prestigious literary award, the Booker Prize, in 1984.

Born in London, Brookner received her bachelor of arts degree from King's College, University of London, of which she was made a fellow in 1990. She received her Ph.D. degree in art history from the Courtauld Institute of Art, London, in 1952. An expert on 18th-century painting, she became the first woman to hold a position as Slade Professor at the University of Cambridge (1967-1968). She has written several highly acclaimed works of art criticism, including those on French painters Jean-Antoine Watteau, Jean-Baptiste Greuze, and Jacques-Louis David. Soundings (1998) is a collection of Brookner’s essays on art history. In Romanticism and Its Discontents (2000), she charted the rise and decline of the romantic movement in 19th-century France.

Brookner's first novel was A Start in Life (1981), and she has generally published one book every year since then. Hotel du Lac (1984), which was adapted for television in 1986, is her most famous novel and established her reputation. Like most of her fiction, this story concerns a woman who, although self-sufficient in nearly every respect, is still in search of romantic love. Brookner's other novels include Brief Lives (1990), A Closed Eye (1991), Fraud (1992), Family Romance (1993), A Private View (1995), Incidents in the Rue Laugier (1996), Altered States (1997), and Visitors: A Novel (1998). In a change from her earlier novels focusing on lonely women, Brookner told the story of a lonely man trapped by family duty in Making Things Better (2003). She has also edited compilations of the stories of American writer Edith Wharton. In 1990 Brookner was made a Commander of the British Empire (CBE), a member of an honorary order of knighthood.

Sir Thomas Browne

Sir Thomas Browne (1605-1682), English physician and essayist, born in London, and educated at Winchester College, University of Oxford, and abroad at the universities of Montpellier, Padua, and Leiden. He received a degree in medicine from Leiden about 1633. He then lived and practiced medicine in Norwich, England. In 1671 he was knighted by Charles II for his antiquarian scholarship. Browne’s first important work, Religio Medici (Religion of a Doctor), probably written in 1635, is a rambling discourse in which skepticism and scientific reasoning are mixed with faith and revelation. Pseudodoxia Epidemica (1646), commonly known as Vulgar Errors, is encyclopedic in scope and length. In this work Browne speculates on the origins of human error and analyzes popular superstitions, but the book has an unscientific approach. Hydriotaphia: Urn-Burial and The Garden of Cyrus appeared together in 1658. Urn-Burial is a treatise on death and burial customs throughout the world. The Garden of Cyrus, his most bizarre work, examines historically the mystical significance of the number five, particularly in horticulture. The rich imagery and eloquence of his writing style have earned him deservedly high rank among the masters of English prose.

William Browne

William Browne (1591?-1645?), English poet, born in Tavistock, Devonshire, and educated at the University of Oxford. Browne is most remembered for Britannia's Pastorals (Book I, 1613; Book II, 1616; Book III, which was unfinished and remained in manuscript form until it was published in 1852), admired for their beautiful descriptions of pastoral life. The Shepheards Pipe (1614), written by Browne and other poets, is a collection of eclogues, or conversations among shepherds. Browne's poetry influenced the work of the poets John Milton, John Keats, and Elizabeth Barrett Browning.

Elizabeth Barrett Browning

Elizabeth Barrett Browning (1806-1861), English poet, political thinker, and feminist. Browning was born at Coxhoe Hall, Durham, and privately educated. In 1826 her An Essay on Mind and Other Poems was published anonymously. Her translation of Prometheus Bound, by the Greek dramatist Aeschylus, appeared in 1833 and was highly regarded. Five years later, in The Seraphim and Other Poems, she expressed Christian sentiments in the form of classical Greek tragedy. She was incapacitated for nearly a decade after 1838 as a result of a childhood spinal injury and lung ailment. She continued writing, however, and in 1844 produced a volume of poems including “The Cry of the Children” and “Lady Geraldine's Courtship,” with an American edition that had an introduction by Edgar Allan Poe. These verses were so highly regarded that in 1850, when William Wordsworth died, Browning was suggested as his successor as poet laureate of England.

In 1845 the poet Robert Browning began to write to Elizabeth to praise her poetry. Their romance, which was immortalized in 1930 in the play The Barretts of Wimpole Street, by Rudolf Besier, was bitterly opposed by her father. In 1846, however, the couple eloped and settled in Florence, Italy, where Elizabeth regained her health and bore a son at age 43. Her Sonnets from the Portuguese, dedicated to her husband and written in secret before her marriage, was published in 1850. Critics generally consider the Sonnets, one of the most widely known collections of love lyrics in English, to be her best work. She expressed her intense sympathy with the struggle for the unification of Italy in the collections of poems Casa Guidi Windows (1848-1851) and Poems Before Congress (1860). Her longest and most ambitious work is the didactic, romantic poem in blank verse Aurora Leigh (1856), in which she defends a woman's right to intellectual freedom and addresses the concerns of the female artist. This work is undergoing a critical reassessment and is newly appreciated.

Robert Browning

Robert Browning (1812-1889), English poet, especially noted for perfecting the dramatic monologue (literary composition in which the speaker reveals his or her character). Browning was born in Camberwell (now part of London). He had almost no formal education after the age of 14 and was largely self-taught. His first volume of poetry, Pauline, appeared in 1833 without signature. It was followed by a dramatic poem, “Paracelsus” (1835), that brought him into prominence among the literary figures of the day. “Paracelsus” was the first poem in which Browning used a Renaissance setting, a familiar motif in his later work. During the next few years Browning wrote several unsuccessful plays. From 1841 to 1846, a series of poems under the title Bells and Pomegranates appeared, including “Pippa Passes,””My Last Duchess,” and “The Bishop Orders His Tomb.” His Dramatic Lyrics (1842) included “The Pied Piper of Hamelin,” and Dramatic Romances and Lyrics (1845) included “How We Brought the Good News from Ghent to Aix.”

In 1846 Browning married the poet Elizabeth Barrett (see Elizabeth Barrett Browning). Because of her ill health, worsened by the English climate, they made their home in Florence, Italy, in the palace later made famous by Elizabeth's poem, Casa Guidi Windows. There he wrote Christmas Eve and Easter-Day (1850) and a series of dramatic monologues, published collectively as Men and Women (1855), which included “Fra Lippo Lippi” and “Andrea del Sarto,” studies of Renaissance artists.

Following Elizabeth's death in 1861, Browning returned to London, where he wrote Dramatis Personae (1864) and what is regarded as his masterpiece, The Ring and the Book (4 volumes, 1868-1869). Concerning the events of a 17th-century Italian murder trial, the Ring is an extended dramatic monologue among a number of characters and has been praised as a perceptive psychological study. This was the first poem that brought Browning widespread fame.

In 1878 Browning returned to Italy, where his only son made his home. During this last period he wrote the prose narrative Dramatic Idylls (1879 and 1880) and Asolando, which appeared on December 12, 1889, the day he died in Venice. Although his wife's reputation as a poet was greater than his own during his lifetime, Robert Browning today is considered one of the major poets of the Victorian era. He is most famous for the development of the dramatic monologue, for his psychological insight, and for his forceful, colloquial poetic style.

Edward Bulwer-Lytton

Edward Bulwer-Lytton (1803-1873), English novelist, dramatist, and politician. Edward George Earle Lytton, 1st Baron Bulwer-Lytton, was born in London and educated at the University of Cambridge. After graduation in 1826, he figured prominently in British and Continental social circles, which were intimately described in Pelham (1828), his first popular novel. From 1831 to 1841 he was a Liberal Party member of Parliament, where he supported the Reform Bill of 1832. He broke with the Liberal Party and in 1852 returned to Parliament as a Conservative. Lytton was appointed colonial secretary in 1858 and was created a baron in 1866. He displayed remarkable versatility as a writer, and he is remembered chiefly for his historical novels. Among the more notable of these are The Last Days of Pompeii (1834) and Rienzi (1835). Lytton was also the author of several successful plays, including The Lady of Lyons (1838) and Richelieu (1839). Among his other works are the novels Falkland (1827), Eugene Aram (1832), and The Caxtons (1849).

John Bunyan

John Bunyan (1628-88), English writer and Puritan minister, author of The Pilgrim's Progress, one of the most famous religious allegories in the English language.

Bunyan was born in November 1628 at Elstow, near Bedford, the son of a tinker. He served an apprenticeship at his father's trade, and at about the age of 17, during the civil war, fought in the Parliamentary army. About 1648 he married Margaret Bentley, a member of one of the Puritan sects of the day; Bunyan experienced a religious conversion and joined her church.

In 1655 Bunyan became one of the leaders of a congregation of Nonconformists in Bedford, giving sermons as a lay preacher. After his wife died, Bunyan remarried and became a popular preacher, speaking to large audiences. However, after the restoration of Charles II in 1660, Puritans lost the privilege of freedom of worship, and it was declared illegal to conduct divine service except in accordance with the forms of the Church of England. Bunyan, who persisted in his unlicensed preaching, was confined to Bedford county jail from 1660 to 1672, although during a part of this time he was allowed a degree of freedom and was able to support his family by making shoelaces.

While Bunyan was in prison his library consisted of the Bible and the Book of Martyrs by the theologian John Foxe. Studying the content and literary style of these works, Bunyan began to write religious tracts and pamphlets. Before his release he wrote the first of his major works, the spiritual autobiography Grace Abounding to the Chief of Sinners (1666).

In 1675 Bunyan was imprisoned for six months, and during that time he probably wrote the major part of his masterpiece, The Pilgrim's Progress from This World to That Which Is to Come, a prose allegory of the pilgrimage of a soul in search of salvation (1st part published 1678; 2nd part, 1684). Ten editions of this great work were printed during Bunyan's lifetime, and it eventually became the most widely read book in English after the Bible. It exerted great influence on later English writers. Noted for its simple, biblical style, The Pilgrim's Progress is now generally considered one of the finest allegories in English literature, and it has been translated into many languages. Anthony Burgess

Anthony Burgess (1917-1993), British novelist and critic, best known for his controversial novel A Clockwork Orange (1962). Burgess was born in Manchester and was educated at the University of Manchester. He served in the army from 1940 to 1946 and then became a lecturer at Birmingham University. From 1948 to 1950 Burgess worked for the ministry of education. He was later appointed education officer in the Colonial Service and was based in Borneo and Malaya from 1954 to 1959. During his time abroad Burgess wrote his first three novels: Time for a Tiger (1956), The Enemy in the Blanker (1958), and Beds in the East (1959), published together as The Malayan Trilogy in 1972.

Burgess's novel A Clockwork Orange, set in a violent future in which gangs of adolescents terrorize society, earned him enormous publicity. For the characters in his book, he invented a language composed of a combination of words from English and American slang and the Russian language. The work gained a cult following after the release in 1971 of the motion-picture version by American director Stanley Kubrick. Burgess's prolific literary output during the 1960s and 1970s was characterized by skillful verbal inventiveness and pointed social satire. Two later novels, notable for their ambitiousness of scope, are Earthly Powers (1980) and Kingdom of the Wicked (1985). The latter explores the subject of the early church in the Roman Empire. Burgess’s last novel was A Dead Man in Deptford (1993), an interpretation of the life and death of 16th- century English playwright Christopher Marlowe.

Burgess's works of literary criticism include studies of Irish writer James Joyce and biographies of English writer D. H. Lawrence and American writer Ernest Hemingway. He also wrote two volumes of autobiography, Little Wilson and Big God (1987) and You've Had Your Time (1990). One Man’s Chorus (posthumously published, 1998) collects Burgess’s essays on a range of subjects, including the British government and his own writing.

Fanny Burney

Fanny Burney (1752-1840), English novelist and diarist, daughter of the musical historian Charles Burney. She was born in King's Lynn and was self-educated. Her first novel, Evelina, was published anonymously in 1778. After she acknowledged herself as author of the book, she became a favorite of the leading literary figures of the day, particularly Samuel Johnson and members of his famous Literary Club. From 1786 to 1791 Burney was Keeper of the Robes for Queen Charlotte. In 1793 she married a French Royalist refugee, General Alexandre d'Arblay. Madame d'Arblay's fame rests principally on her diary, which she began on May 30, 1768, and kept for 17 years. It was published posthumously in two sections, Diary and Letters of Madame d'Arblay (1842-1846) and The Early Diary of Frances Burney (1889). These volumes are valuable for the excellent picture they gave of contemporary people, customs, and court life. Her other novels are, like Evelina, sentimental but witty descriptions of innocent young women entering society; they include Cecilia (1782), Camilla (1796), and The Wanderer (1814).

Sir Richard Burton

Sir Richard Burton (1821-1890), British explorer, linguist, and student of Asian cultures, one of the most famous mid-19th century European explorers of Africa. He is also known for his definitive translation of stories known under the title Arabian Nights and for his valuable travel literature on western Asia, Africa, and South America.

Richard Francis Burton was born in Torquay, England, to an English army officer and his wealthy wife, the latter rumored to be descended from the French Bourbon kings. He was reared in France, England, and Italy and educated haphazardly along the way by tutors until he entered Trinity College, University of Oxford, in 1840. A headstrong young man, Burton preferred to study subjects that interested him— such as Arabic, philosophy, and mysticism—rather than the subjects in the standard curriculum. He was expelled from Oxford in 1842.

Deeply interested in Asian life and languages, Burton joined the army of the English East India Company in 1842 and served in Sind (what is now southern Pakistan) for seven years. During this time he traveled in Pakistan and western India, mixed with local people (sometimes passing as Asian in bazaars), and became increasingly familiar with local customs and proficient in several local languages as well as Persian and Arabic. These experiences set the stage for Burton’s pilgrimage to the Islamic holy city of Mecca in 1853, which he made in the disguise of an Afghan physician. Burton became one of the first non-Muslims to enter Mecca. He sketched the central shrine, the Kaaba, and participated in all the rituals associated with the pilgrimage without being detected. These travels— which Burton described vividly in Personal Narrative of a Pilgrimage to El- Medinah and Meccah (1855)—brought him fame throughout Europe.

Samuel Butler

Samuel Butler (1835-1902), English novelist, born at Langar-cum- Barnstone, Nottinghamshire, and educated at the University of Cambridge. Rather than becoming a clergyman, as his father wished, Butler immigrated to New Zealand, where he was a successful sheep rancher from 1860 to 1864, when he returned to England.

Butler is best known for his satirical works. In Erewhon (1872), the story of an imaginary land, he criticized the customs and manners of contemporary England. His most important work is the novel The Way of All Flesh, published posthumously in 1903. It is a satirical autobiographical study of mid-Victorian family life. His works include studies in Darwinism, such as Life and Habit (1878); several works on the Homeric legends, including The Authoress of the Odyssey (1897); and Erewhon Revisited (1901).

A. S. Byatt

A. S. Byatt, born in 1936, British writer and scholar, who gained worldwide recognition for her novel Possession (1990), which in 1990 won the Booker Prize, Britain's highest literary award. She was born Antonia Susan Drabble in Sheffield, England, the oldest of four children. At the age of 13, she and her sister, British novelist Margaret Drabble, were sent to Mount School, a Quaker boarding school in York, England. Byatt then attended, on scholarship, Newnham College, University of Cambridge, and received her bachelor of arts degree in 1957. She worked toward her doctorate in 17th-century English literature at Bryn Mawr College in Bryn Mawr, Pennsylvania (1957-1958), and at Somerville College, University of Oxford (1958-1959). She left Oxford in 1959 to marry Ian Byatt, a British economist. Their first child, Antonia, was born in 1960 and their second child, Charles, was born in 1961.

In 1964 Byatt began working as a part-time teacher of literature at the University of London and at the Central School of Arts and Crafts, London. That same year she published her first work, Shadow of a Sun, a novel about a young woman attempting to escape the influence of her novelist father. In subsequent novels, Byatt similarly draws her characters from academic and artistic worlds, reflecting her own background.

Byatt published her first critical work, Degrees of Freedom: The Novels of Iris Murdoch, in 1965. Her second novel, The Game (1967), is about the relationship between two sisters, both of whom are contemporary novelists. Many believe this story to have parallels to the acknowledged rivalry between Byatt and her sister Margaret. Byatt's second critical work, Wordsworth and Coleridge in Their Time (1970), was her last book for six years.

In 1972 Byatt's son Charles was killed by a drunk driver. This event is said to have had a major effect on her life and her subsequent career. After the death of her son, Byatt accepted a full-time teaching position at University College, London.

In 1983 Byatt left University College to become a full-time writer. Possession (1990) was her breakthrough as a novelist. Its protagonists are two academics who become romantically involved during their research into a 19th-century love affair. The two love stories are compared and contrasted. Following the publication of Possession, Byatt was made Commander of the British Empire (CBE), an honorary member of a British order of knighthood. The publication of A Whistling Woman (2002) completed Byatt’s so-called Frederica Quartet, which through its central character Frederica Potter depicts changing patterns of intimacy and family life in England from the 1950s to the 1970s. The other novels of the quartet are The Virgin in the Garden (1978), Still Life (1985), and Babel Tower (1996). Byatt's other works include Iris Murdoch (1976), Sugar and Other Stories (1987), Passions of the Mind: Selected Writings (1991), Angels and Insects (1992), The Matisse Stories (1993), and The Biographer’s Tale (2001).

Lord Byron

Lord Byron (1788-1824), English poet, who was one of the most important and versatile writers of the romantic movement (see Romanticism).

The publication in 1812 of the first two cantos of the travelogue Childe Harold’s Pilgrimage brought Byron fame. The poem presents a view of Europe colored by the violent sensibilities of its melancholic and passionate narrator, Childe Harold. Childe Harold is the first example of what came to be known as the Byronic hero, the isolated, self-reliant young man of stormy emotions who shuns humanity and wanders through life weighted by a sense of guilt for mysterious sins of his past. The Byronic hero is, to some extent, modeled on the life and personality of Byron himself. Byron went on to develop this hero figure in the four Oriental tales, The Giaour (1813), The Bride of Abydos (1813), The Corsair (1814), and Lara (1814). In Hebrew Melodies (1815) the familiar Byronic theme of exile becomes a meditation on the Jewish Diaspora.

Byron married Anna Isabella Milbanke in 1815. After giving birth to a daughter, Augusta Ada, Byron’s only legitimate child, Lady Byron left her husband. In 1816 Byron agreed to legal separation from his wife. Rumors about his incestuous relationship with his half-sister Augusta and doubts about his sanity led to his being ostracized by society. Deeply embittered, Byron left England in 1816 and never returned.

In Geneva, Byron wrote the third canto of Childe Harold and the narrative poem The Prisoner of Chillon (1816). He next established residence in Venice, where he produced, among other works, the fourth and final canto of Childe Harold (1818) and the first two cantos of Don Juan (1818-1819). Byron’s first verse drama, Manfred, was completed in 1819. Not intended for the stage, Manfred is a drama of ideas. It draws on the legend of Faust, who gave his soul to the devil in exchange for superhuman powers. Unlike Faust, Manfred, the ideal Byronic hero, rejects the opportunity to barter with the powers of darkness. Instead he becomes fully autonomous, independent of any external control. As a result, Manfred is judged and eventually destroyed by his own mind.

After traveling through Italy for two years, Byron settled in Pisa in 1821. He wrote the verse dramas Cain and Sardanapalus and the narrative poems Mazeppa and The Island during these years. In 1822, with the poets Percy Bysshe Shelley and Leigh Hunt, he started a journal called The Liberal, but Shelley’s death by drowning that year and a quarrel with Hunt put an end to this venture after only three issues had been printed.

Byron’s masterpiece, Don Juan (1823), a mock epic in 16 cantos, attacks the vices of hypocrisy, oppression, complacency, lust, and greed. It draws on the legend of Don Juan, a Spanish hero renowned for his promiscuous affairs with women. Byron uses satire to create a comical Don Juan who is not the active seducer but the passive seduced. Thomas Campion Thomas Campion (1567-1620), English poet and musician, born in London. A successful London physician, Campion was also a writer and a lutenist and a composer of delicate, expressive vocal music. His reputation rests chiefly on his lyric poems, which are distinguished for their musical quality and charm; they were set to music by Campion and his contemporaries. Among them are “Cherry Ripe” and “Whether Men Do Laugh or Weep.” His other works include Poemata (1595), Latin epigrams; the words and music for such court masques as The Lord's Masque (1613); Observations on the Arte of English Poesie (1602), an argument against the use of rhyme in poetry (Campion himself nevertheless employed rhyme); and four books of Ayres for lute and voice (1601-c. 1617).

Thomas Carew

Thomas Carew (1595?-1639?), English poet, born probably in West Wickham, Kent, and educated at the University of Oxford. In 1630 he became a court official to Charles I, who presented him with an estate. Carew was the first of the so-called Cavalier poets. He was strongly influenced by both Ben Jonson and John Donne. He wrote numerous short songs and light love lyrics, many of which were set to music by English composers. The poems are notable for their sensuous imagery and polished beauty. Carew is also well known for a longer love poem, “The Rapture,” a masque, and the poem “Elegy on the Death of Dr. Donne.”

Thomas Carlyle

Thomas Carlyle (1795-1881), Scottish essayist and historian, who was an influential social critic. He was born in Ecclefechan on December 4, 1795, and educated as a divinity student at the University of Edinburgh. After five years of study he abandoned the clergy in 1814 and spent the next four years teaching mathematics. Dissatisfied with teaching, Carlyle moved to Edinburgh in 1818, where, after studying law briefly, he became a tutor and wrote articles for the Edinburgh Encyclopedia. He also made an intensive study of German literature, publishing Wilhelm Meister's Apprenticeship (1824), a translation of the novel Wilhelm Meisters Lehrjahre (1795-1796) by the German writer Johann Wolfgang von Goethe. Carlyle also wrote Life of Schiller (1825), which appeared first in serial form in 1823 and 1824 in the London Magazine. After a trip to Paris and London, he returned to Scotland and wrote for the Edinburgh Review, a literary periodical.

In 1826 Carlyle married Jane Baillie Welsh, a writer, whom he had met in 1821. After 1828 the Carlyles lived on a farm in Craigenputtock, Scotland, where Carlyle wrote a philosophical satire, Sartor Resartus (The Tailor Retailored). The work, first published between 1833 and 1834 in Fraser's Magazine, is partly autobiographical. In the guise of a “philosophy of clothes,” Carlyle comments on the falseness of material wealth; and in the form of a philosophical romance, he details the crises in his life and affirms his spiritual idealism. In the satire, Carlyle emerged as a social critic deeply concerned with the living conditions of British workers. At the farm he also wrote some of his most distinguished essays, and he established a lifelong friendship with the American essayist Ralph Waldo Emerson. In 1834 Carlyle moved to the Chelsea section of London, where he soon became known as the Sage of Chelsea and was a member of a literary circle that included the essayists Leigh Hunt and John Stuart Mill.

In London Carlyle wrote The French Revolution, A History (2 volumes, 1837), a historical study concentrating on the oppression of the poor, which was immediately successful. This was followed by a series of lectures, in one of which, published as On Heroes, Hero-Worship, and the Heroic in History (1841), he contended that world civilization had developed because of the activities of heroes. Lewis Carroll

Lewis Carroll (1832-98), English author, mathematician, and logician, best known for his creation of the immortal fantasy Alice's Adventures in Wonderland.

Carroll was born Charles Lutwidge Dodgson in Daresbury, Cheshire, on January 27, 1832, and was educated at Rugby and at Christ Church College, University of Oxford. From 1855 to 1881 he was a member of the faculty of mathematics at Oxford. He was the author of several mathematical treatises, including Euclid and His Modern Rivals (1879). In 1865 he published under his pseudonym Alice's Adventures in Wonderland. Its sequel, Through the Looking-Glass and What Alice Found There, appeared in 1871. These were followed by Phantasmagoria and Other Poems (1869), The Hunting of the Snark (1876), and a novel, Sylvie and Bruno (2 volumes, 1889-93). He died at Guildford, Surrey, on January 14, 1898.

Always a friend of children, particularly little girls, Carroll wrote thousands of letters to them, delightful flights of fantasy, many illustrated with little sketches. They have been collected and published as The Letters of Lewis Carroll (2 volumes, 1979) by Morton N. Cohen and Roger L. Green. Carroll gained an additional measure of fame as an amateur photographer. Most of his camera portraits were of children in various costumes and poses, including nude studies; he also did portraits of adults, including the actress Ellen Terry and the poets Alfred, Lord Tennyson and Dante Gabriel Rossetti. Apparently because his posing of children was criticized, he abandoned photography in 1880.

The Alice stories, which have made the name Lewis Carroll famous throughout the world, and have been translated into many languages, were originally written in 1862 for Alice Liddell, a daughter of Henry George Liddell, dean of Christ Church College. On publication, the works, illustrated by the English cartoonist Sir John Tenniel, became immediately popular as books for children. Their subsequent appeal to adults is based upon the ingenious mixture of fantasy and realism, gentle satire, absurdity, and logic. The names and sayings of the characters, such as the March Hare, the Mad Hatter, the Cheshire Cat, and the White Knight, have become part of everyday speech.

Barbara Cartland

Barbara Cartland (1901-2000), British novelist, best known as the 20th century’s most prolific romance writer. During her seven decades of work Cartland produced more than 700 books, earning the title the Queen of Romance.

Mary Barbara Hamilton Cartland was born near Birmingham, England, and published her first novel, Jigsaw, in 1923. Most of Cartland’s briskly paced novels are set in 19th-century Britain, France, or Russia and center around virginal young women who are swept off their feet by handsome aristocrats. Her heroines never sleep with their lovers before marriage and none of her books include explicit sex scenes. Two typical Cartland titles are Theft of a Heart (1966) and The Reluctant Bride (1970). Later in her career Cartland resisted pressure from her publishers to produce more complicated, modern romances, continuing to turn out her chaste romantic fantasies.

By the 1960s Cartland had become the most prolific romance novelist in the world—by dictating her stories to personal assistants, she was able to produce 7,000 words per day. In 1976 she published 21 books, a world record for number of books published in a year. During her lifetime Cartland sold more than 650 million copies of her books worldwide; for several years the Guinness Book of World Records listed her as the best-selling living novelist. In 1991 Queen Elizabeth made Cartland a dame of the British Empire.

Besides novels, Cartland also wrote biographies, books on beauty advice, children’s stories, radio plays, and six autobiographies. Her last novel, Love, Lies and Marriage, was published in 1997.

Margaret Cavendish

Margaret Cavendish (1623-1673), British philosopher and prolific author of books, essays, and poems on natural philosophy. These works include discussions on matter and motion and on the natural state of woman as the lesser sex. Cavendish once claimed that her sole purpose for publishing extensively was to achieve fame. She believed that the only way for a woman to attain this goal was through innovation in philosophy.

Cavendish was born Margaret Lucas at St. John's near Colchester in Essex, England. Her father was a wealthy landowner. Educated by tutors at home, she studied singing, dancing, reading, and other subjects considered suitable for girls of proper upbringing. In 1643 she became an attendant to Queen Henrietta Maria. When the queen was exiled to Paris in 1644, Margaret moved with her. In exile she met her husband, William Cavendish, a Royalist commander, who later became Duke of Newcastle. When they married in 1645, she left the queen's court.

The Cavendishes remained in Paris until the Restoration in 1660. During their 15 years abroad, Margaret was influenced by William's brother Charles, a scientist, and the Newcastle Circle, an intellectual group to which she and her husband belonged. This group included English philosopher and political theorist Thomas Hobbes and French philosopher, scientist, and mathematician René Descartes. Having no formal training in mathematics or science, Cavendish based much of her philosophy on atomism, a belief that all matter is composed of one material—atoms. Cavendish made no distinction between inanimate and animate objects or between mind and body, putting her in opposition to the philosophy of Descartes and Hobbes. She also argued against the work of experimentalists, such as the English scientist Robert Hooke and the Irish-born English scientist Robert Boyle, who used the new microscopes and telescopes to study matter. Cavendish did not trust these devices, or even the human senses, claiming that they were unreliable and distorted the truth. Experimental philosophy was impractical, she said, because it did not enhance the fundamental properties of the object being viewed. For example, she asked if inspection of a bee under a microscope would bring more honey.

Cavendish wrote many books and essays expressing her strong viewpoints. These include Elements of Philosophy, The Philosophical and Physical Opinions (1655), Philosophical Letters, Observations upon Experimental Philosophy (1666), and Grounds of Natural Philosophy (1668). These last three books represent her most significant work.

Despite her outspoken opinions and numerous publications, Cavendish was not well known in her time. The intellectuals familiar with her work did not take it seriously. After appearing in 1667 before the Royal Society, a prestigious, exclusively male scientific organization, she was viewed by the members as being an eccentric. Nevertheless, she was an anomaly in her time—a woman who was not afraid to speak her mind in the company of men.

George Chapman

George Chapman (1559?-1634), English dramatist and translator of classical literature, born near Hitchin, Hertfordshire. He is most famous for his translations of Homer's Iliad and Odyssey, which were printed together in 1616 and were followed by a collection of Homeric hymns in 1624. They were the inspiration for the poem “On First Looking into Chapman's Homer” by the English poet John Keats. Chapman's interest in the classics, particularly the philosophy of stoicism, had a great impact on his tragedies, including Bussy D'Ambois (1607), The Conspiracy and Tragedy of Charles, Duke of Byron (1608), and Caesar and Pompey (1631). His comedies, on the other hand, are lively and realistic; the most famous are May Day (1611), The Widow's Tears (1612), and Eastward Ho! (1605), which was written in collaboration with the English dramatists Ben Jonson and John Marston. Chapman also translated the poems of the Italian poet Petrarch in 1612, the Works and Days of the ancient Greek poet Hesiod in 1618, and a poem by the Roman satirist Juvenal in 1629.

Thomas Chatterton

Thomas Chatterton (1752-1770), English poet, born in Bristol. As a boy he learned to read from an old, Gothic-lettered Bible, and studied medieval inscriptions and manuscripts. At the age of 14 he was apprenticed to an attorney but devoted all his spare time to writing manuscripts in imitation of those he had studied. From 1765 to 1770 he wrote a series of poems in imitative Middle English, purported to be the work of Thomas Rowley, an imaginary 15th- century monk. In 1769 he sent to the English writer Horace Walpole a manuscript containing several of his so-called Rowley poems. Walpole, at first enthusiastic, rejected the manuscripts when he found that they were not genuine.

Not finding the study of law congenial, Chatterton went to London in 1770 to engage in literary work. He wrote at a furious rate, producing squibs, political essays, satiric poems, tales, and letters. His work earned him little, however, and, despairing, he eventually committed suicide. The Rowley poems are characterized by rich invention, intensely romantic imagination, and sensitive feeling. They greatly influenced the work of several of the English romantic poets.

Geoffrey Chaucer

Geoffrey Chaucer (1343?-1400), one of the greatest English poets, whose masterpiece, The Canterbury Tales, was one of the most important influences on the development of English literature. His life is known primarily through records pertaining to his career as a courtier and civil servant under the English kings Edward III and Richard II.

Chaucer wrote for and may have read his works aloud to a select audience of fellow courtiers and officials, which doubtless sometimes included members of the royal family. The culture of the English upper class was still predominantly French, and Chaucer's earliest works were influenced by the fashionable French poets Guillaume de Machaut and Jean Froissart and by the great 13th-century dream allegory Le Roman de la Rose, by the French poets Guillaume de Lorris and Jean de Meun. The common theme of these works is courtly love.

Chaucer claimed to have translated Le Roman de la Rose, but if he did, all that survives is a fragment. His first important original work, The Book of the Duchess, is an elegy for John of Gaunt's first wife, Blanche, who died in 1369. In a dream the poet encounters a grieving knight in black (Gaunt) who movingly recounts his love and loss of “good fair White” (Blanche). The House of Fame and The Parlement of Foules, also dream poems, show the influence of Dante and of Giovanni Boccaccio, whose works Chaucer probably encountered on his first journey to Italy. The unfinished House of Fame gives a humorous account of the poet's frustrating journey in the claws of a giant golden eagle (the idea is from Dante) to the palace of the goddess Fame. In The Parlement he witnesses an inconclusive debate about love among the different classes of birds. All three dream visions, written from about 1373 to about 1385, contain a mixture of comedy and serious speculation about the puzzling nature of love.

In this period, Chaucer also translated and adapted religious, historical, and philosophical works: a life of Saint Cecilia; a series of medieval “tragedies,” brief lives of famous men cast down by adverse fortune; a translation of De Consolatione Philosophiae (The Consolation of Philosophy), written by the Roman philosopher Anicius Boethius to proclaim his faith in divine justice and providence. The latter work profoundly influenced Chaucer's Troilus and Criseyde (1385?) and The Knight's Tale, both adapted from romances by Boccaccio.

Troilus, a poem of more than 8000 lines, is Chaucer's major work besides The Canterbury Tales. It is the tragic love story of the Trojan prince Troilus, who wins Criseyde (Cressida), aided by the machinations of his close friend, her uncle Pandarus, and then loses her to the Greek warrior Diomede. The love story turns into a deeply felt medieval tragedy, the human pursuit of transitory earthly ideals that pale into insignificance beside the eternal love of God. The poem ends with the narrator's solemn advice to young people to flee vain loves and turn their hearts to Christ. Chaucer's characters are psychologically so complex that the work has also been called the first modern novel.

Lord Chesterfield

Lord Chesterfield (1694-1773), English writer and statesman, best known for his witty and worldly Letters to His Son and Letters to His Godson.

Philip Dormer Stanhope, 4th Earl of Chesterfield, was born on September 22, 1694, in London, and educated at the University of Cambridge. He was elected to the House of Commons in 1715. In 1726, after succeeding to the earldom of Chesterfield, he entered the House of Lords. A supporter of Sir Robert Walpole, Chesterfield served as ambassador to the Dutch Republic (1728-32) and also as lord high steward (1730-33) but was dismissed because he opposed the passage of an excise tax. Chesterfield then joined the opposition. As lord lieutenant of Ireland (1745-64) Chesterfield sought to effect peace among the opposing factions. He later served as secretary of state to George II. Chesterfield died on March 24, 1773, in London.

Chesterfield's fame as a man of letters rests upon a series of letters, published after his death, that give a faithful account of the manners and customs of aristocratic society in 18th-century England, written in a graceful and witty style. One series, Letters to His Son (1774), were addressed to his illegitimate son, Philip Stanhope. A second series, Letters to His Godson (1890), was addressed to another Philip Stanhope, a distant cousin and godson whom Chesterfield adopted as his heir after the death of his son. Chesterfield was a friend of many writers, including Voltaire, Alexander Pope, and Jonathan Swift.

G. K. Chesterton

G. K. Chesterton (1874-1936), English writer, who became popular for his brilliant, vigorous, and witty style, despite holding sometimes controversial views. Gilbert Keith Chesterton was born in London and educated at Saint Paul’s School and the Slade School of Art in London. Although originally a liberal in his philosophy, he later became a conservative. In the late 1890s Chesterton formed a lasting friendship with English writer Hilaire Belloc, also a conservative, and the two men established a journal to expound their views. Chesterton became a Roman Catholic in 1922, and many of his works, even those written before his conversion, are defenses of Roman Catholicism and religious orthodoxy in general.

In 1900 Chesterton published his first books, the poetry collections The Wild Knight and Greybeards at Play. His more important nonfiction works include books of literary criticism, such as Robert Browning (1903), Charles Dickens (1906), and George Bernard Shaw (1909); theological studies, such as Orthodoxy (1909), St. Francis of Assisi (1923), and St. Thomas Aquinas (1933); and books of social criticism, such as The Defendant (1901) and What’s Wrong With the World (1910). Today Chesterton is perhaps most famous for his novels The Napoleon of Notting Hill (1904), a futuristic fantasy, and The Man Who Was Thursday (1908), a witty allegory, and for a series of detective stories relating the adventures of Father Brown, a mild-mannered Roman Catholic sleuth. Agatha Christie

Agatha Christie (1890-1976), English novelist, who was a prolific writer of mystery stories. She was born in Torquay. The Mysterious Affair at Styles (1920) began her career. Her mysteries are noted for clever and surprising twists of plot and for the creation of two unconventional fictional detectives, Hercule Poirot and Miss Marple. Poirot is the hero of many of her works, including the classic The Murder of Roger Ackroyd (1926) and Curtain (1975), in which the detective dies.

Her first marriage, to Archibald Christie, ended in divorce in 1928. In 1930, while traveling in the Middle East, Christie met the noted English archaeologist Sir Max Mallowan. They were married that year, and from that time on Christie accompanied her husband on annual trips to Iraq and Syria. She used the expeditions as material for Murder in Mesopotamia (1930), Death on the Nile (1937), and Appointment with Death (1938).

Christie's plays include The Mousetrap, produced continuously in London since 1952, and Witness for the Prosecution (1953; film 1957), for which she received the New York Drama Critics' Circle Award for 1954-1955. Her stories have been made into a number of television series and films, most centering on her characters Hercule Poirot and Miss Marple. In 1971 she was made a Dame Commander of the Order of the British Empire.

Colley Cibber

Colley Cibber (1671-1757), English playwright and actor, born in London. Cibber took leading parts in many comedies and soon established his reputation as an actor. He also wrote comedies. In 1696, Love's Last Shift was produced, followed by 29 other plays, such as The Careless Husband (1704). As playwright and comedian, Cibber was closely connected with the Drury Lane Theatre, of which he became manager in 1710. His play Nonjuror (1717), an adaptation of Tartuffe, by Molière, as the story of a rebellious English priest, won the approval of George I and may have been the reason for the selection of Cibber as poet laureate in 1730. Cibber retired from the stage in 1733, although he occasionally reappeared. Disliked for his extreme conceit, he was satirized by the poet Alexander Pope in The Dunciad (1743), in which he was the main character, and by the novelist Henry Fielding in Joseph Andrews (1742). Cibber wrote his famous Apology, an autobiography, in 1740.

John Clare

John Clare (1793-1864), English poet, born in Helpstone, Northamptonshire. The son of a poor laborer, he was forced to go to work at an early age. The publication in 1820 of his first volume of poetry, Poems, Descriptive of Rural Life and Scenery, brought him fame and a measure of financial security. After the fashion for poetry with rural themes ended, John Clare was again cast into obscurity. He continued to write but had to support his family as a laborer. His later works were less successful; he became impoverished and after 1837 was confined in an insane asylum where he wrote some of his finest works. Because his poems dealt with rustic scenes and village life, he was known as the Northamptonshire Peasant Poet. Among his works are The Village Minstrel and Other Poems (1821), The Shepherd's Calendar (1827), and The Rural Muse (1835). Unlike many other poets from a similar background, Clare never adopted an artificial, mannered diction but continued to write in his own idiosyncratic style.

Arthur C. Clarke

Arthur C. Clarke (1917-2008), British science-fiction writer, best known for writing the story on which the 1968 motion picture 2001: A Space Odyssey was based. Its theme was of a superior extraterrestrial intelligence that prepares humanity for absorption into the cosmic mind. This theme was introduced in his earlier novel Childhood’s End (1953) and remained a central preoccupation of Clarke’s. His novels and stories are notable for their careful attention to scientific detail and deep poetic feeling for space exploration and the further development of human civilization.

Arthur Charles Clarke was born in Minehead, Somerset, England. His interest in science emerged early in life; as a child he mapped the Moon using a homemade telescope. In 1936 Clarke moved to London, where he joined the British Interplanetary Society and worked as a civil servant. After serving as a radar instructor in the Royal Air Force from 1941 to 1946, he studied physics and mathematics at King’s College, London, and graduated with first-class honors in 1948. In a 1945 article, Clarke introduced the idea of satellite communication.

Clarke’s first science-fiction story, “Rescue Party,” appeared in 1946 in the periodical Astounding Science. Several novels followed, including Childhood’s End, The City and the Stars (1956), Rendezvous with Rama (1973), and The Fountains of Paradise (1979). These books typically take an optimistic view of technological progress. Clarke’s short- story collection Expedition to Earth (1953) contained “The Sentinel,” which Clarke later adapted for the motion picture 2001: A Space Odyssey in conjunction with film director Stanley Kubrick. The adaptation earned Clarke an Academy Award nomination for best screenplay. He wrote three sequels to the tale, the novels 2010: Odyssey Two (1982), 2061: Odyssey Three (1988), and 3001: The Final Odyssey (1997).

Clarke also wrote many nonfiction works that discuss space travel, undersea exploration, and the future. In Profiles of the Future (1962) he stated his “three laws,” which include the maxim, “When a distinguished but elderly scientist states that something is possible he is almost certainly right. When he states that something is impossible, he is very probably wrong.” His interest in scuba diving took Clarke to Sri Lanka, where he settled in the 1950s. He received a knighthood in 1989. James Du Maresq Clavell

James Du Maresq Clavell (1924–1994), British writer, scriptwriter, film director, and producer, whose best-selling novels include King Rat (1962), Taipan (1966), Shogun (1975), Noble House (1981), Whirlwind (1986), and Gai-Jin (1993).

Born in Sydney, he was the son of a British commander stationed in Australia to help establish the Royal Australian Navy. When Clavell was nine months old, his family was posted back to England, where he was educated at Portsmouth Grammar School. He left the school at the outbreak of World War II (1939-1945) to join the Royal Artillery as a young captain. In 1941 he was captured by the Japanese in Java and, at the age of 18, was shipped to Changi jail in Singapore, where he remained until the end of the war.

In 1953 he moved to Hollywood, where he embarked on a career as a scriptwriter and, later, producer and director. His successful works as a scriptwriter included the cult sci-fi film The Fly (1958) and the prisoner-of- war drama The Great Escape (1966). Clavell also wrote, produced and directed To Sir With Love (1966). By the time his film The Last Valley (1969), a meditation on men at war starring British actor Michael Caine, appeared, Clavell was already a best-selling novelist.

Tai-Pan, Shogun, and Noble House were made into TV mini-series, which Clavell produced. When Shogun aired in 1980 starring Richard Chamberlain, it became the second highest rated mini-series in history. Shogun the musical followed on Broadway in 1989.

Arthur Hugh Clough

Arthur Hugh Clough (1819-61), English poet, born in Liverpool. His early childhood was spent at Charleston, South Carolina, but in 1828 he returned to England and was educated at Rugby School and the University of Oxford. He was a tutor at Oxford during the period of religious controversy surrounding the Oxford Movement, and he resigned in 1848 because he did not wish to subscribe to the Thirty-nine Articles of Religion. Clough then spent five years traveling and lecturing; in 1852 he visited the American poet and essayist Ralph Waldo Emerson and lectured at Harvard University. The following year Clough became examiner in the Education Office in London, remaining there until poor health forced him to travel again in 1860. He died in Italy.

Much of Clough's verse was experimental, including his first published work, Tober-na-Vuolich (1848), a narrative poem written in hexameters. Today Clough is most often identified with his short poem “Say Not the Struggle Naught Availeth,” published posthumously.

William Cobbett

William Cobbett (1763-1835), English political writer, who wrote under the pseudonym Peter Porcupine, born in Farnham, Surrey. He enlisted in the British army in 1783, and in 1792, shortly after his discharge from the service, he fled to Philadelphia to escape prosecution for his pamphlet on abuses in the army. In Philadelphia in 1797 he established a newspaper, Porcupine's Gazette, in which he violently attacked American democracy. Back in England, he founded Cobbett's Weekly Political Register in 1802. In this journal he became an advocate of radical social and parliamentary reform, and until 1817 he fought for the cause of various oppressed classes of British society. Laws passed to suppress radicalism caused him to go back to the United States in 1817. After his return to England two years later, he championed parliamentary reform and became a member of the first Parliament elected under the Reform Bill of 1832.

Cobbett was noted for the sarcasm, wit, and violence of his polemic style. He wrote nearly 50 prose works, the most important of which are his collection of American writings, Porcupine's Works (12 volumes, 1801), and a description of rural England, Rural Rides (1830).

Samuel Taylor Coleridge

Samuel Taylor Coleridge (1772-1834), English poet, critic, and philosopher, who was a leader of the romantic movement (see Romanticism). The highly imaginative and vivid images of his poems along with their varied rhythms and strange settings evoke the mysterious atmosphere of a fairy tale or nightmare.

Coleridge is often regarded as a tragic genius who fulfilled only a fraction of his enormous potential. He was handicapped by his impulsive and impractical nature, which caused him to leave many projects uncompleted. Nevertheless, he created poetry of unique beauty and power.

Coleridge was born in Ottery Saint Mary in the English county of Devonshire on October 21, 1772. His father was a clergyman and a scholar. From 1791 until 1794 Coleridge studied classics at Jesus College at the University of Cambridge and became interested in the politics of the French Revolution (1789-1799), which was then underway. Through heavy drinking and other self-indulgent behavior he incurred large debts, which he attempted to clear by entering the army for a brief period. His brother paid for his release from the army. At the university Coleridge absorbed political and theological ideas then considered radical, especially those of Unitarianism.

Coleridge left Cambridge without a degree and worked with his university friend the poet Robert Southey on a plan, soon abandoned, to found a utopian society in Pennsylvania. This ideal society, which Coleridge dubbed “Pantisocracy,” was based on the ideas of English political philosopher William Godwin. But the plan evaporated soon after the two friends married sisters, Sara and Edith Fricker, in 1795. Coleridge’s marriage to Sara proved extremely unhappy, and his friendship with Southey cooled as well. Southey departed for Portugal in 1795, but Coleridge remained in England to write and lecture. From his new home in Clevedon, he edited a radical Christian journal, The Watchman. In 1796 he published Poems on Various Subjects, which included “The Eolian Harp” and “Monody on the Death of Chatterton.”

By 1797 Coleridge had met the poet William Wordsworth and his sister Dorothy, and had begun what was to be a lifelong friendship with them. The years 1797 and 1798, during which the friends lived near each other in the county of Somerset, were among the most productive of Coleridge’s life. The two men anonymously published a joint volume of poetry, Lyrical Ballads (1798), which became a landmark in English poetry (see English Literature). It contained the first great works of the romantic school, including the famous “The Rime of the Ancient Mariner.”

In the fall of 1798 Coleridge and Wordsworth left for a trip on the European continent. Coleridge soon went his own way, spending much of his time in Germany. During this period he lost his early sympathy with political radicalism and became interested in German philosophy, especially the 18th-century idealism of Immanuel Kant and the 17th-century mystical writings of Jakob Boehme, and in the literary criticism of the 18th-century dramatist G. E. Lessing. Coleridge studied German and translated into English the dramatic trilogy Wallenstein by the romantic poet Friedrich von Schiller. These studies made Coleridge the most influential English interpreter of German romanticism. By this time Coleridge had become addicted to opium, a drug he used to ease the pain of rheumatism.

In 1800 Coleridge returned to England, and shortly thereafter settled with his family and friends at Keswick in the Lake District of Cumberland. In 1804 he went to the island of Malta as secretary to the governor. Coleridge returned to England in 1806. William Collins

William Collins (1721-59), English poet, one of the finest lyric poets of his age. He was born in Chichester and educated at the University of Oxford. While at Oxford he published a volume of verse, Persian Eclogues (1742). Later, living in London on a small bequest, he published (1746) a volume of odes, but his health began to fail about 1749. He continued to write, without popular success, but winning the acclaim of the critic Samuel Johnson and the poets Oliver Goldsmith and Thomas Gray. Of Collins's relatively few poems, such pieces as “How Sleep the Brave,””Ode to Evening,””Ode to Simplicity,””The Passions” (all pub. between 1746 and 1750), and “Ode on the Popular Superstitions of the Highlands of Scotland” (1750) are outstanding.

Wilkie Collins

Wilkie Collins (1824-89), English writer, often regarded as the originator of detective fiction. He was born in London. Unsuccessful at business and law, he preferred to write. In 1851 he began a close association with Charles Dickens, with whom he collaborated on the novel No Thoroughfare (1867). Collins's mystery thriller The Woman in White (1860) and the detective story The Moonstone (1868), which first appeared in periodicals edited by Dickens, are considered masterpieces of their respective genres. In both, although the greatest emphasis is placed on the construction of a plot designed to baffle the reader, characterization is also important. The vivid portrayal of Sergeant Cuff in The Moonstone is the first study in English fiction of a detective actually at work. Among Collins's other works are travel sketches, the historical romance Antonina, or the Fall of Rome (1850), the series of ghost stories After Dark (1856), and the novels No Name (1862) and Armadale (1866). His later fiction deals with social problems, mixed with elements of mystery and melodrama.

Dame Ivy Compton-Burnett Dame Ivy Compton-Burnett (1884-1969), English author, who analyzed the family life of upper-class Edwardian England in a series of sophisticated, ironic novels in which vice goes unpunished and virtue unrewarded. Born in Pinner, in Middlesex, she graduated from the University of London. Her many novels are written almost completely in terse, polished dialogue and abound in melodramatic devices. They include Brothers and Sisters (1929), Parents and Children (1941), A God and His Gifts (1963), and The Last and the First (1971). In 1967 she was made a Dame of the British Empire.

William Congreve

William Congreve (1670-1729), English dramatist and poet, regarded as the ablest writer of comedy of the Restoration period. He was born in Bardsey, near Leeds, and educated at Trinity College, Dublin. Later he studied law in London but soon abandoned it to pursue a literary career. He published a prose work, Incognita (1692), and a few poems, but did not achieve success until he turned to playwriting. With the production of his comedy The Old Bachelor in 1693, his talent was established. It was followed by The Double Dealer (1693) and Love for Love (1695). These plays were cynical comedies of manners, written with grace and wit but without profundity. They were designed for his close friend, the actor Anne Bracegirdle, who played the leading roles.

At this time Congreve became the manager of Lincoln's Inn, a new theater. He then wrote his only tragedy, The Mourning Bride (1697). When the work of Congreve and his colleagues was attacked by the clergyman Jeremy Collier as licentious, Congreve replied with Amendments of Mr. Collier's False and Imperfect Citations (1698). His last important play, The Way of the World (1700), met with little enthusiasm but is now considered a comic masterpiece. Congreve spent the rest of his life quietly, holding minor civil service posts. He published occasional verse and translations of ancient Roman and Greek poets and enjoyed the friendship of other men of letters, including Alexander Pope, Jonathan Swift, and Voltaire.

Cyril Vernon Connolly Cyril Vernon Connolly (1903-1974), English literary critic, essayist, and novelist, whose criticism is known for its personal and eccentric style, characterized by wit and candor. Born in Coventry, England, Connolly was educated at Eton and then from 1922 to 1925 at Balliol College, Oxford, England.

Connolly wrote for the New Statesman and other periodicals from 1927 to 1974 and was a literary editor of the Observer from 1942 to 1943. From 1951 to 1974 he was a weekly reviewer for the London Sunday Times. In 1939 he founded Horizon magazine with English author Stephen Spender, editing it until it closed in 1950. The magazine published contemporary English writers such as W. H. Auden, Geoffrey Grigson, Laurie Lee, George Orwell, Evelyn Waugh, and Angus Wilson.

Connolly wrote one novel, The Rock Pool (1936), a satire about a young stockbroker on the French Riviera. His essays are gathered in various collections. The most famous of these, Enemies of Promise (1938), sets out the various factors (drink, marriage, early success) that Connolly felt could destroy a promising literary career, and includes an autobiographical section, “A Georgian Boyhood.” Other collections of Connolly's essays include The Condemned Playground (1945), Previous Convictions (1963), and The Evening Colonnade (1973). Connolly was made Commander of the British Empire (CBE), member of an honorary order of knighthood, in 1972.

Joseph Conrad Joseph Conrad (1857-1924), Polish-born English novelist, considered to be among the great modern English writers, whose work explores the vulnerability and moral instability at the heart of human lives. Conrad is best known for his classic story Heart of Darkness (1902), in which a European sailor discovers that the heart of darkness is not Africa, but something within the human soul, and perhaps also something linked to European imperialism. Conrad’s other acclaimed works include Lord Jim (1900), Nostromo (1904), The Secret Agent (1907), Under Western Eyes (1911), and “The Secret Sharer” (1912).

Conrad produced 13 novels, two volumes of memoirs, and 28 short stories, although writing was not easy or painless for him. Perhaps only another writer can fully appreciate his comment regarding the completion of the novel Nostromo (1904), which many critics regard as his masterpiece: “an achievement upon which my friends may congratulate me as upon recovery from a dangerous illness.”

On the basis of the novella Heart of Darkness (1902) and other works, Polish-born English novelist Joseph Conrad gained a reputation as a master stylist of the English language. The question of racism, however, has raised controversy about his works. Some authors, such as Nigerian novelist and poet Chinua Achebe, have accused Conrad of racist views toward Africans in Heart of Darkness and allege that he portrayed Africa as a continent devoid of civilization. Others contend that Heart of Darkness shows Conrad's objections to European colonial practices in Africa. In this selection, Marlow, the narrator, describes the scene at a European trading post at the mouth of the Congo River.

Conrad’s life at sea and in ports abroad furnished the background for much of his writing, giving rise to the impression that he was primarily committed to foreign concerns. In reality, however, his major interest as a writer was the human condition. As in Almayer’s Folly his narrator is often a retired master mariner and obviously Conrad’s alter ego, so that some of his novels can be seen as at least partly autobiographical.

Conrad’s early novels suffered from literary inexperience, although they were considerable achievements from one who had not begun to master English, the language he wrote in, until he was 20. In The Nigger of the Narcissus (1897), a triumph of poetic realism, he portrays the disintegrating effect on the crew of the antics of James Wait, who uses his fatal disease to blackmail his shipmates. Noel Coward

Noel Coward (1899-1973), English playwright, actor, producer, and composer. Noel Pierce Coward was born in Teddington. He was noted particularly as a chronicler of British upper-class life. Coward wrote The Vortex in 1924, produced it in London with himself in the leading role, and in 1925 appeared in it in New York City. From then on his versatility was displayed throughout the English- speaking world.

Among Coward's two-score theatrical works, many of which he produced, directed, and appeared in, are the brilliant plays Private Lives (1930), Design for Living (1932), and Blithe Spirit (1941); the group of one-act plays Tonight at 8:30 (1935); the review Words and Music (1932); and the musical comedy Sail Away (1961). He also appeared in a number of films, including The Scoundrel (1934). His other writings include the autobiographies Present Indicative (1937), Middle East Diary (1945), and Future Indefinite (1954). His writings and music formed the basis of a review staged in 1972, Oh Coward!

Although most of Coward's works are notable for their biting satire and sophisticated wit, they also prove him capable of moving and tender sentiment. His songs, noted for their melodies and clever lyrics, epitomize their era; among the most popular are “I'll See You Again” and “Some Day I'll Find You.” Several of his plays have entered the standard repertory, and Brief Encounter (1945), which he wrote and produced, is regarded as a film classic. Coward was knighted in 1970.

Abraham Cowley

Abraham Cowley (1618-1667), English poet and essayist, born in London and educated at Westminster School and at the University of Cambridge. His Poetical Blossoms (1633) contains five poems, one written at the age of ten. In 1644 Cowley left England for Paris, where he served in the court of Henrietta Maria, queen consort of England during the English Revolution (1640-1660). He returned to England in 1655 as a Royalist spy. After the Restoration he retired to the country. Cowley was highly regarded as a poet during his lifetime. He adapted the style of the ancient Greek lyric poet Pindar to form the English Pindaric ode. He is best known for the cycle of love poems The Mistress (1647) and for Miscellanies (1656), containing “Pindarique Odes,” also love poems, and “Davideis,” an unfinished epic on the biblical king David.

William Cowper

William Cowper (1731-1800), English poet, who wrote about simple pleasures of country life and expressed a deep concern with human cruelty and suffering. He was born in Great Berkhampstead, Hertfordshire. He suffered periods of acute depression. Upon his release from an asylum, he lived with the evangelical cleric Morley Unwin and his wife, Mary. In 1773 Cowper was again seized by a severe despondency, rooted in religious doubts and fears that plagued him all his life. The care of Mrs. Unwin, who encouraged him to compose poetry, helped him to recover. He collaborated with the curate John Newton in writing Olney Hymns (1779). Cowper is best known for the humorous ballad “The Diverting History of John Gilpin” (1783) and the poem praising rural life, The Task (1785), written in a conversational style of blank verse. After the death of Mrs. Unwin, he wrote “The Castaway” (1779), an expression of his spiritual torment.

George Crabbe

George Crabbe (1754-1832), English poet, born at Aldeburgh, Suffolk. He practiced medicine from 1774 to 1780, when he went to London to try to make a living by writing. The statesman Edmund Burke helped him publish his manuscripts and to enter the ministry. Crabbe was ordained in 1781 and became rector of Aldeburgh. Subsequently he was curate at Trowbridge from 1814 until his death. His poetry, which by then was famous, was notable for unsentimental, realistic descriptions of nature and of English village life. It includes The Village (1783), which was admired for its realism and honesty. The poem's dark tone and lack of sentimentality were unconventional. Other works include The Newspaper (1785), The Parish Register (1807), The Borough (1810), and Tales of the Hall (1819). Throughout the romantic movement, Crabbe maintained his realistic style and unflinching observations of rural life.

Richard Crashaw

Richard Crashaw (1613?-49), English poet of the metaphysical school. He was born in London, the son of a Puritan clergyman, and educated at the University of Cambridge. He entered the Roman Catholic church in 1646 and thereafter lived in exile on the Continent. He devoted himself to writing poetry on metaphysical and religious subjects in an ornate, highly emotional style. His most important poetic work is Steps to the Temple (1646). Carmen Deo Nostro (Native Song), published posthumously in 1652, contains many of his early poems as well as previously unpublished work.

Richard Cumberland

Richard Cumberland (1732-1811), English dramatist, born in Cambridge, the son of a bishop, and educated at Westminster School and the University of Cambridge. He held minor government posts while he wrote plays. They include the successful sentimental comedies Summer's Tale (1765), The Brothers (1769), and West Indian (1771) and various tragedies, which failed. Cumberland was famous for his feud with the antisentimentalist Richard Brinsley Sheridan, who caricatured him as Sir Fretful Plagiary in his play The Critic (1779). Cumberland's memoirs were published in 1806 and 1807.

Cynewulf

Cynewulf (flourished AD750), Anglo-Saxon poet, possibly a Northumbrian minstrel. In his poetry, he is revealed as a man of learning familiar with the religious literature of his day. Of the works attributed to him, scholars generally agree that four are unquestionably his. These are religious works in Old English entitled Ascension, The Fates of the Apostles, Juliana, and Elene; the latter two are legends about saints. Other works attributed to Cynewulf include Christ, a three-part work of which Ascension forms the second part, and The Dream of the Rood. With Caedmon, he was one of the earliest English Christian poets.

Isaac D’Israeli

Isaac D’Israeli (1766-1848), English writer, born in Enfield. He was the son of a Sephardic Jewish refugee from Venice who amassed a fortune as a merchant. D'Israeli spent his life in quiet study. He gained popularity as a writer of such books of research and criticism as Curiosities of Literature (6 volumes, 1791-1834), which contains many interesting literary and historical anecdotes. Other works include Calamities of Authors (1812-13), Quarrels of Authors (1814), Genius of Judaism (1833), Amenities of Literature (3 volumes, 1841), and several novels. One of his four sons was Benjamin Disraeli, who became prime minister.

Samuel Daniel

Samuel Daniel (1562-1619), English poet, born near Taunton, Somersetshire, and educated at the University of Oxford. As master of the queen's revels at the court of James I, he wrote many masques. A meticulous writer who frequently revised and republished his works, Daniel achieved a purity of language and style. He believed devoutly in the monarchy, in the duty of a poet to moralize, and in the suitability of the English language for rhymed verse. Among his works are Delia (1592), a book of sonnets; the Defence of Rhyme (1602); a major prose history of England (1612-17); and his famous masque, Hymen's Triumph (1615).

William Davenant

William Davenant (1606-1668), English dramatist and poet, born in Oxford. Davenant (or D'Avenant) claimed to be Shakespeare's son and Shakespeare may have been his godfather. His first play, Albovine, a tragedy, was written in 1628, and his best comedy, The Wits, in 1633. In 1638 he succeeded Ben Jonson as poet laureate. Davenant was an active supporter of Charles I against Parliament, and he was knighted by the king in 1643. He led an expedition to colonize Virginia, but was captured by Commonwealth forces in the English Channel and sentenced to death. He spent two years, from 1650 to 1652, in the Tower of London. His epic poem Gondibert was written during his imprisonment. Despite the Puritan ban on dramatic performances, Davenant produced performances in private houses in London in 1656. These included The Siege of Rhodes, reputedly the first English opera. After the Restoration he formed the Duke of York's Players, which performed his own works and adaptations of the works of Shakespeare, Ben Jonson, and John Fletcher.

C. Day Lewis

C. Day Lewis (1904-1972), English poet and novelist, born in Ballintogher, Ireland. His father, a Church of Ireland clergyman, moved the family to England in 1906. Day Lewis was educated at the University of Oxford and during World War II (1939-1945) served in the Ministry of Information. After the war he taught at the University of Cambridge and wrote poetry and novels. Day Lewis returned to Oxford and until 1956 occupied the chair of poetry. Many of his poems are based on classical myths to which he gave contemporary interpretations. His works include Overture to Death (1938), The Poetic Image (1947), Collected Poems (1954), The Whispering Roots (1970), and the novels The Morning After Death (1966) and The Private Wound (1968), as well as mystery stories written under the pseudonym Nicholas Blake. Day Lewis was poet laureate from 1968 to 1972. He is the father of Academy Award-winning actor Daniel Day Lewis.

Walter de La Mare

Walter de La Mare (1873-1956), English poet, anthologist, and novelist. Walter John De la Mare was born in Charlton, Kent, and educated at Saint Paul's School, London. In 1908 a royal grant enabled him to devote himself entirely to writing. De la Mare's writings have an eerie, fantastic quality, which serves as a means of entry into a world of deeper reality. His perceptions endow his work with charm and candor. Among his writings are the collections of verse Songs of Childhood (1902), The Listeners and Other Poems (1912), and O Lovely England (1953); the long poem The Traveller (1946); the novels The Return (1910) and Memoirs of a Midget (1921); and Collected Tales (1949). De la Mare also compiled Come Hither (1923; reprinted 1957), an anthology of English verse primarily for children. De la Mare is remembered as a poet for adults and children whose work was idiosyncratic, technically accomplished, and possessed of a style uniquely his own.

William Frend De Morgan

William Frend De Morgan (1839–1917), English pottery designer and novelist, who set up his own factory in London in 1888, producing tiles and pottery painted with flora and fauna in a style typical of the Arts and Crafts movement.

De Morgan was born in London and educated at London University. He studied art at the Royal Academy School, where he formed friendships with William Morris, Dante Gabriel Rossetti, Edward Burne-Jones, and others of the Pre-Raphaelite Brotherhood. For 40 years he devoted himself to designing artistic pottery and stained glass, starting out with designs for Morris's Merton Abbey factory. In 1871 he established a pottery business in Chelsea, London. He rediscovered the process of making colored lusters (covering pottery with an iridescent metallic surface) before building his factory in Fulham, London. De Morgan’s work was influenced by Persian and Italian styles, and he spent many months in Italy in later years.

When he retired from the pottery industry, he began writing novels in the style of English novelist Charles Dickens. His Joseph Vance (1906) was a great success. He followed it with six other novels: Alice-for-Short (1907), Somehow Good (1908), It Never Can Happen Again (1909), An Affair of Dishonour (1910), A Likely Story (1911), and When Ghost Meets Ghost (1914).

Thomas De Quincey

Thomas De Quincey (1785-1859), English writer, born in Manchester. At the age of 17 he ran away from school to Wales and from there to London. Later, however, he studied at the University of Oxford. In 1809 he settled in Grasmere, where he joined the literary circle of the poets Samuel Taylor Coleridge, William Wordsworth, and Robert Southey and edited the Westmorland Gazette. Returning to London in 1820, he wrote Confessions of an English Opium-Eater (1821), a vivid description of his own experiences as an opium addict. He lived for 12 years (1828-40) in Edinburgh. In addition to many contributions in Blackwood's, Tait's Magazine, and Hogg's Instructor, his work includes Murder Considered as One of the Fine Arts (1827), Suspiria de Profundis (1845), Joan of Arc (1847), The English Mailcoach (1849), and Autobiographic Sketches (1853).

Daniel Defoe

Daniel Defoe (1660?-1731), English novelist and journalist, whose work reflects his diverse experiences in many countries and in many walks of life. Besides being a brilliant journalist, novelist, and social thinker, Defoe was a prolific author, producing more than 500 books, pamphlets, and tracts.

Defoe was born in London about 1660, the son of a candle merchant named Foe. Daniel added “De” to his name about 1700. He was educated for the Presbyterian ministry but decided in 1685 to go into business. He became a hosiery merchant, and his business gave him frequent opportunities to travel throughout western Europe.

An opponent of the Roman Catholic King James II, in 1685 Defoe took an active part in the unsuccessful rebellion led by the Duke of Monmouth against the king. In 1692 his business went into bankruptcy, but subsequently he acquired control of a tile and brick factory. He obtained a government post in 1695 and the same year wrote An Essay upon Projects, a remarkably keen analysis of matters of public concern, such as the education of women. Especially noteworthy among his writings during the next several years was the satiric poem The True-born Englishman (1701), an attack on beliefs in racial or national superiority, which was directed particularly toward those English people who resented the new king, William III, because he was Dutch.

The following year Defoe anonymously published a tract entitled The Shortest Way with the Dissenters, which satirized religious intolerance by pretending to share the prejudices of the Anglican church against Nonconformists. In 1703, when it was found that Defoe had written the tract, he was arrested and given an indeterminate term in jail. Robert Harley, the speaker of the House of Commons, secured his release in November 1703, probably on the condition that he agree to become a secret agent and public propagandist for the government.

During his imprisonment Defoe's business had been ruined, so he turned to journalism for his livelihood. From 1704 to 1713 he issued a triweekly news journal entitled The Review, for which he did most of the writing. Its opinions and interpretations were often independent, but generally, The Review leaned toward the government in power. Defoe wrote strongly in favor of union with Scotland, and his duties as secret agent may have entailed other activities on behalf of union, which was achieved in 1707. In 1709 he wrote a History of the Union.

Defoe's first and most famous novel, The Life and Strange Surprizing Adventures of Robinson Crusoe, of York, Mariner, appeared in 1719, when he was almost 60 years old. The book is commonly known as Robinson Crusoe. A fictional tale of a shipwrecked sailor, it was based on the adventures of a seaman, Alexander Selkirk, who had been marooned on one of the Juan Fernández Islands off the coast of Chile. The novel, full of detail about Crusoe's ingenious attempts to overcome the hardships of the island, has become one of the classics of children's literature. More novels followed, including Memoirs of a Cavalier (1720), Captain Singleton (1720), and The Fortunes and Misfortunes of Moll Flanders (1722), the adventures of a London prostitute, which is regarded as one of the great English novels. Thomas Dekker

Thomas Dekker (1572?-1632), English dramatist and pamphleteer, born in London. Dekker was exceedingly prolific, but his work was somewhat uneven in quality. Nonetheless, the best of his plays and pamphlets furnish valuable, and often comic, insights into Elizabethan London. He nearly always sympathized with the oppressed members of society. More than 40 of the plays that Dekker wrote alone or in collaboration survive, among them the comedies The Shoemaker's Holiday (1600), an amusing tale of a shoemaker who becomes lord mayor of London; Old Fortunatus (1600); The Honest Whore, or a Converted Courtesan (Part I, 1604, written with Thomas Middleton; Part II, 1630), an acute portrayal of contemporary London morals; If It Be Not Good, the Devil Is in It (1610?); and The Witch of Edmonton (1658), written in 1621 in collaboration with John Ford and William Rowley. The last-named play, which protested the persecution of witches, displays an enlightened viewpoint far in advance of Dekker's time. Among his pamphlets are The Wonderful Year (1603), a satirical but touching account of London life during the plague of that year.

Sir John Denham

Sir John Denham (1615-1669), English poet, born in Dublin, and educated at the University of Oxford. At the outbreak of the English Revolution in 1642, he joined the Royalists and performed secret services for the imprisoned Charles I. Obliged to flee, Denham went to Holland and then to France in 1647, returning to England in 1652. At the Restoration in 1660 he was made knight of the Bath and was appointed surveyor general of the royal buildings. Denham was one of the first English poets to use the heroic couplet. Among his works are the tragedy The Sophy (1641), told in blank verse, and Elegy on Cowley (1667), but he is chiefly remembered for Cooper's Hill (1642). This describes the landscape around Egham and was an early and influential example of what would become the popular genre known as descriptive landscape verse.

Charles Dickens

Charles Dickens (1812-1870), probably the best-known and, to many people, the greatest English novelist of the 19th century. A moralist, satirist, and social reformer, Dickens crafted complex plots and striking characters that capture the panorama of English society.

Dickens’s novels criticize the injustices of his time, especially the brutal treatment of the poor in a society sharply divided by differences of wealth. But he presents this criticism through the lives of characters that seem to live and breathe. Paradoxically, they often do so by being flamboyantly larger than life: The 20th- century poet and critic T. S. Eliot wrote, “Dickens’s characters are real because there is no one like them.” Yet though these characters range through the sentimental, grotesque, and humorous, few authors match Dickens’s psychological realism and depth. Dickens’s novels rank among the funniest and most gripping ever written, among the most passionate and persuasive on the topic of social justice, and among the most psychologically telling and insightful works of fiction. They are also some of the most masterful works in terms of artistic form, including narrative structure, repeated motifs, consistent imagery, juxtaposition of symbols, stylization of characters and settings, and command of language.

Dickens established (and made profitable) the method of first publishing novels in serial installments in monthly magazines. He thereby reached a larger audience including those who could only afford their reading on such an installment plan. This form of publication soon became popular with other writers in Britain and the United States.

Dickens published 15 novels, one of which was left unfinished at his death. These novels are, in order of publication with serialization dates given first: The Posthumous Papers of the Pickwick Club (1836-1837; 1837); The Adventures of Oliver Twist (1837-1839; 1838); The Life and Adventures of Nicholas Nickleby (1838-1839; 1839); The Old Curiosity Shop (1840-1841; 1841); Barnaby Rudge (1841); The Life and Adventures of Martin Chuzzlewit (1843-1844; 1844); Dombey and Son (1846-1848; 1848); The Personal History of David Copperfield (1849- 1850; 1850); Bleak House (1852-1853; 1853); Hard Times (1854); Little Dorrit (1855-1857; 1857); A Tale of Two Cities (1859); Great Expectations (1860-1861; 1861); Our Mutual Friend (1864-1865; 1865); and The Mystery of Edwin Drood (unfinished; 1870).

Through his fiction Dickens did much to highlight the worst abuses of 19th- century society and to prick the public conscience. But running through the main plot of the novels are a host of subplots concerning fascinating and sometime ludicrous minor characters. Much of the humor of the novels derives from Dickens’s descriptions of these characters and from his ability to capture their speech mannerisms and idiosyncratic traits. Benjamin Disraeli

Benjamin Disraeli (1804-1881), British writer and prime minister (1868 and 1874-1880), who for more than three decades exerted a profound influence on British politics and left an enduring stamp on the Conservative Party, known until the 1830s as the Tory Party.

Disraeli was born in London and educated at private schools in Blackheath and Walthamstow. He was Jewish until 1817 when he converted to Christianity after his father had a disagreement with his synagogue. Between the ages of 17 and 20, Disraeli was a law apprentice in a London office. During the same period he speculated in stocks and suffered heavy financial losses. Primarily in order to pay off his debts, he began writing novels, the first of which, Vivien Grey, appeared in 1826 with some success. He continued to write novels and frequented fashionable salons, dressing in an eccentric manner. In 1830 he traveled in Spain, the Balkans, the Ottoman Empire, and the Levant. Upon his return he decided to enter politics; from 1832 to 1835 he ran unsuccessfully for Parliament, first as a Radical and then three times as a Tory, wanting more to be elected than believing in any particular party.

Despite these defeats, he became well known through a series of pamphlets, tracts, and letters to the London Times, in which he set forth the foundation of his conservative philosophy, which supported government reforms to help the working and middle classes, and to preserve traditional institutions such as the monarchy. In the elections of 1837, after Queen Victoria ascended the throne, he finally won a seat in the House of Commons. With his maiden speech, however, he nearly ruined his career because his phraseology and attire provoked derisive laughter from his fellow members. He slowly acquired a reputation in Parliament, but in 1841 he was refused a cabinet post in the Conservative ministry of Sir Robert Peel. Disraeli labored to win support for his policies and to that end championed factory workers against the rich Liberal manufacturers. His novels Coningsby, or the Younger Generation (1844) and Sybil, or the Two Nations (1845) expressed his views on the need for government reform and increased his prestige in Parliament, especially with the so-called Young England group, which opposed Peel's conservatism. John Donne

John Donne (1572-1631), English poet, prose writer, and clergyman, considered the greatest of the metaphysical poets and one of the greatest writers of love poetry.

In 1596, Donne joined the naval expedition that Robert Devereux, 2nd earl of Essex, led against Cádiz, Spain. On his return to England, Donne was appointed private secretary to Sir Thomas Egerton, Keeper of the Great Seal, in 1598. Donne's secret marriage in 1601 to Egerton's niece, Anne More, resulted in his dismissal from this position and in a brief imprisonment. A cousin of his wife offered the couple refuge in Pyrford, Surrey. While there, Donne wrote his longest poem, The Progresse of the Soule (1601), which ironically depicts the transmigration of the soul of Eve's apple.

During the next few years Donne made a meager living as a lawyer, serving chiefly as counsel for Thomas Morton, an anti-Roman Catholic pamphleteer. Donne may have collaborated with Morton in writing pamphlets that appeared under Morton's name from 1604 to 1607. Donne's principal literary accomplishments during this period were Divine Poems (1607) and the prose work Biathanatos (posthumously published 1644). In the latter he argued that suicide is not intrinsically sinful. In 1608 a reconciliation was effected between Donne and his father-in-law, and his wife received a much-needed dowry. His next work, Pseudo-Martyr (1610), is a prose treatise maintaining that English Roman Catholics could, without breach of their religious loyalty, pledge an oath of allegiance to James I, king of England. This work won him the favor of the king. Donne became a priest of the Anglican church in 1615 and was appointed royal chaplain later that year.

Norman Douglas

Norman Douglas (1868-1952), English writer, born in Thüringen, Austria, of Scottish descent. He was educated in Karlsruhe, Germany. From 1894 to 1896 he served at the British Embassy in Saint Petersburg, Russia. His literary reputation was established by his novel South Wind (1917), a tale of the cosmopolitan and unconventional inhabitants of a Mediterranean island similar to Capri, Italy, where Douglas lived. The novel is characterized by his hedonistic philosophy and sharp sense of humor. His writings include the novel They Went (1921); a travel book, Old Calabria (1928); and two autobiographical works, Looking Back (2 volumes, 1933) and Late Harvest (1946).

Sir Arthur Conan Doyle

Sir Arthur Conan Doyle (1859-1930), British physician, novelist, and detective- story writer, best known as the creator of the character of master sleuth Sherlock Holmes.

Arthur Conan Doyle was born on May 22, 1859, in Edinburgh, Scotland, and educated at Stonyhurst College and the University of Edinburgh. From 1882 to 1890 he practiced medicine in Southsea, England. A Study in Scarlet, the first of about 60 stories featuring Sherlock Holmes, appeared in 1887. The characterization of Holmes, particularly his ability of ingenious deductive reasoning, was based on one of Conan Doyle's own university professors. Equally brilliant creations are the characters who play Holmes's foils: his friend Dr. Watson, the good-natured narrator of the stories, and the master criminal Professor Moriarty. Conan Doyle was so successful in his literary career that approximately five years after his first works were published he abandoned his medical practice to devote his entire time to writing.

Some of the best-known works starring Sherlock Holmes include the novel The Hound of the Baskervilles (1902) and three short story collections, The Sign of Four (1890), The Adventures of Sherlock Holmes (1892), and His Last Bow (1917). These made Conan Doyle internationally famous and served to popularize the detective-story genre. The character of Holmes developed a large following, a cultlike devotion that still flourishes in international fan clubs such as the Baker Street Irregulars (Holmes lived on Baker Street in the stories). Conan Doyle's literary versatility brought him almost equal fame, as he also published historical romances such as Micah Clarke (1888), The White Company (1890), Rodney Stone (1896), and Sir Nigel (1906), as well as a play, A Story of Waterloo (1894).

Conan Doyle served in the Boer War (1899-1902) as a physician, and on his return to England wrote the nonfiction books The Great Boer War (1900) and The War in South Africa: Its Causes and Conduct (1902), attempting to justify England's participation in the fighting. For these works he was knighted in 1902. During World War I he wrote History of the British Campaign in France and Flanders (6 volumes, 1916-1920) as a tribute to British bravery.

An advocate of spiritualism beginning in the late 1880s, his lectures and writings on the subject increased markedly after the death of his eldest son in the war. Conan Doyle’s autobiography, Memories and Adventures, was published in 1924. He died in Crowborough, Sussex, England, on July 7, 1930. Michael Drayton Michael Drayton (1563-1631), English poet, born in Hartshill, Warwickshire. His Harmonie of the Church (1591), a rendering of scriptural passages in verse, offended the archbishop of Canterbury and was publicly burned. Soon thereafter Drayton wrote Idea, the Shepherd's Garland (1593), consisting of nine pastoral poems; Idea's Mirror (1594), a collection of love sonnets; and the historical poem Mortimeriados (1596). The ambitious Polyolbion, a patriotic description of England, appeared in 1612 and 1622. His Nymphidia, the Court of Faëry (1627), a poem of imaginative fancy, and his narrative poem “The Ballad of Agincourt” (1605) are considered his finest works. Among his other writings are the historical poems Piers Gaveston (1593), Matilda (1594), and Robert, Duke of Normandy (1596).

John Dryden

John Dryden (1631-1700), English poet, dramatist, and critic, who was the leading literary figure of the Restoration.

Dryden was born to a Puritan family in Aldwinkle, Northamptonshire, and was educated at Westminster School and at the University of Cambridge. About 1657 he went to London as clerk to the chamberlain to the Lord Protector Oliver Cromwell. Dryden's first important poem, Heroic Stanzas (1659), was written in memory of Cromwell. After the Restoration, however, Dryden became a Royalist and celebrated the return of King Charles II in two poems, Astraea Redux (1660) and Panegyric on the Coronation (1661). In 1663 he married Lady Elizabeth Howard, sister of his patron, the courtier and playwright Sir Robert Howard.

In 1662 Dryden began to write plays as a source of income. His first attempts, including the comedy The Wild Gallant 1663, failed, but The Rival Ladies, a tragicomedy written in 1664, was a success. During the next 20 years, he became the most prominent dramatist in England. His comedies, including An Evening's Love; or, the Mock Astrologer (1668), Ladies à la Mode (1668), and Marriage à la Mode (1672), are broad and bawdy; one of them, The Kind Keeper; or, Mr. Limberham (1678), was banned as indecent, an unusual penalty during the morally permissive period of Restoration theater. His early heroic plays, written in rhymed couplets, are extravagant and full of pageantry. Among them are the semiopera The Indian Queen (written with Sir Robert Howard in 1664); this work contains some of the most famous music of his contemporary, the English composer Henry Purcell. Other works of this period are The Indian Emperour; or, the Conquest of Mexico by the Spanish (1665) and The Conquest of Granada (1670). One of his later tragedies in blank verse, All for Love; or, the World Well Lost (1678), a version of the story of Antony and Cleopatra, is considered his greatest play and one of the masterpieces of Restoration tragedy.

In his poem Annus Mirabilis (1667), Dryden wrote of the events in the “Wonderful Year”1666, chiefly of the English naval victory over the Dutch in July and of the Great Fire of London in September. In 1668 he wrote his most important prose work, Of Dramatick Poesie, an Essay, the basis for his reputation as the father of English literary criticism (see Criticism, Literary).

Although Dryden had defended his adherence to Protestantism in the poem Religio Laici (1682), he became a Roman Catholic in 1685, presumably because James II, an avowed Roman Catholic, came to the throne in that year. The poet then wrote The Hind and the Panther (1687), a metrical allegory in defense of his new faith. The Glorious Revolution (1688) and the resulting succession of the Protestant King William III did not change Dryden's religious views, but he lost his laureateship and his pension because of them.

Dryden returned to writing for the stage but without much success. He then began a new career as a translator, the most important of his translations being The Works of Virgil (1697). During the same period he wrote one of his greatest odes, “Alexander's Feast” (1697), which, like an earlier ode, “A Song for Saint Cecilia's Day” (1687), was written for a London musical society and set to music by Purcell. In 1699 Dryden wrote the last of his published works, metrical paraphrases of Homer, the Latin poet Ovid, the Italian poet Giovanni Boccaccio, and the English poet Geoffrey Chaucer, under the title Fables Ancient and Modern; its preface is one of his most important essays.

Daphne du Maurier

Daphne du Maurier (1907-1989), British romantic novelist and short-story writer of tales of adventure and mystery, often set against a Cornish background. Born in London and educated at home with her sisters, du Maurier had, by the age of 18, begun writing the short stories that later would be published in 1952 as The Apple Tree. In 1932 she married Major-General Sir Frederick Browning and in 1943 settled at Menabilly house in Cornwall with their three children.

Commercial success came with Jamaica Inn (1936), a melodramatic tale of smuggling along the Cornish coast. In it du Maurier portrayed the uneven relationship that she perceived between the sexes; it was turned into a motion picture directed by Alfred Hitchcock in 1939. However, it was her novel of suspense Rebecca (1938), and the subsequent film of the novel (1940) directed by Hitchcock, that brought both critical and popular acclaim. In it du Maurier described the imbalance of power between the sexes and the innate subservience of women within marriage. It was followed by Frenchman's Creek (1941), a novel of smuggling and romance inspired by a brief love affair.

Although du Maurier's style has been criticized as melodramatic, she nevertheless attracted literary attention because of her gift for telling a gripping tale. Her novel My Cousin Rachel (1951) claimed some popularity and was also filmed (1953). Her short story The Birds (1952) was turned into a horror film (1963) by Hitchcock, and Don't Look Now (1971) was produced as a film in 1973. These stories, along with The Rendezvous (1980), began to show the more unnerving side to du Maurier's ability as a mystery writer, and are attracting increasing literary attention. She also wrote historical fiction, plays, and a biography of her father, the actor-manager Gerald du Maurier. George Louis Palmella Busson du Maurier

George Louis Palmella Busson du Maurier (1834-1896), English artist and writer, born in Paris. In 1858 he began to work as a graphic artist. His caricatures for Punch, Once a Week, and the Cornhill Magazine, in which he satirized the middle and upper classes, are of historical value in portraying the fashionable social life of his time. He illustrated works by the English novelists William Makepeace Thackeray, George Meredith, and Elizabeth Gaskell, as well as the Anglo-American novelist Henry James. He wrote and illustrated the novels Peter Ibbetson (1891) and Trilby (1894), both of which were successfully dramatized; the former was used as a theme for an opera by the 20th-century American composer Deems Taylor.

Lawrence George Durrell

Lawrence George Durrell (1912-1990), British novelist and poet, born in India, and educated in India and England. Durrell began writing poetry and novels in the 1930s. His first major success was the autobiographical novel The Black Book, written in Paris in 1938. His most significant work was derived largely from his experiences and observations gathered during long periods of residence and diplomatic service abroad, especially in Greece, Cyprus, and Egypt. Durrell's greatest success came with the Alexandria Quartet, a series of four novels originally published separately as Justine (1957), Balthazar (1958), Mountolive (1958), and Clea (1960). The quartet, a study of love and political intrigue in Alexandria, Egypt, before and during World War II, tells the same story from the point of view of each of several of its characters; the complex structure and richly elaborate style evoke the exotic atmosphere of the city. Prospero's Cell (1945) and Bitter Lemons (1957)—which some consider his finest book—describe contemporary life on the islands of Corfu (Kérkira) and Cyprus, respectively. Later fiction includes Tunc (1968) and its sequel, Nunquam (1970); Monsieur (1975); and Quinx (1985).

Durrell's poetry, which also evinces his powerfully evocative use of language, was published in Collected Poems, 1931 to 1974 (1980). A collection of his travel essays, Spirit of Place, was published in 1969.

Maria Edgeworth

Maria Edgeworth (1767-1849), English novelist, daughter of the author and inventor Richard Lovell Edgeworth. Born in Blackburton, Oxfordshire, she spent the greater part of her life in Edgeworthstown, Ireland, and while helping her father manage his estates, she acquired a knowledge of the Irish peasantry that was important in her writing. Edgeworth is most noted for her novels of Irish life, which were the first works of fiction to present a careful study of Irish provincial and peasant life and manners. Her first publication was Letters to Literary Ladies (1795), which was a discussion of female authorship and women's conduct. Her first novel, Castle Rackrent (1800), was an immediate success. The Absentee (1812), one of her best works, depicts the evils of the system of absentee landlords. Belinda (1801), also set in Ireland, is a novel of manners like those of Jane Austen. Edgeworth's novels of English life, like her other works, are distinguished by humor, sprightly dialogue, and a clear style. Her admirers were many and included Sir Walter Scott, Jane Austen, and 20th-century feminist literary critics.

George Eliot

George Eliot (1819-1880), pseudonym of Mary Ann or Marian Evans, Victorian English novelist, whose works, with their profound feeling and realistic portrayals of simple lives, give her a place in the first rank of 19th-century English writers. Her fame was international, and her work greatly influenced the development of French naturalism.

George Eliot was born in Chilvers Coton, Warwickshire, the daughter of an estate agent. She was educated at a local school in Nuneaton and later at a boarding school in Coventry. At the age of 17, after the death of her mother and the marriage of her elder sister, she went to live with her father. In addition to the strict religious training she received at the insistence of her father, Eliot read widely on her own, teaching herself philosophy, theology, and foreign languages. In 1841 she began reading rationalist works, which influenced her turn away from dogmatic religion. Although it caused an estrangement from her father, she abandoned her faith and remained a rationalist throughout her life (see Rationalism).

Eliot's first book was a translation of German theologian David Strauss’s The Life of Jesus Critically Examined (1846). After traveling for two years in Europe, she returned to England in 1851 and wrote a book review for the Westminster Review. She subsequently became assistant editor of that publication.

Through her work on the Review Eliot met many of the leading literary figures of the period, including Harriet Martineau, John Stuart Mill, James Froude, Herbert Spencer, and George Lewes. Her meeting with Lewes, a philosopher, scientist, and critic, was one of the most significant events of her life. They fell in love, despite the fact that Lewes was married. Although Lewes did not divorce his wife, Eliot lived openly with him, scandalizing the rigidly conservative society. Nevertheless, Eliot looked upon their long and happy relationship, which lasted until Lewes died in 1878, as a marriage.

During this period Eliot wrote numerous reviews, articles, and translations. In 1855 she wrote Margaret Fuller and Mary Wollstonecraft, an essay on the roles and rights of women. Then, with encouragement from Lewes, she began to write fiction in 1856. Her first story, “The Sad Fortunes of the Reverend Amos Barton,” appeared in Blackwood's Magazine in January 1857. It was followed by two additional stories in the same year, and all three were collected in book form as Scenes from Clerical Life (1858). The author signed herself George Eliot and kept her true identity secret for many years.

Among Eliot's best-known works are Adam Bede (1859), The Mill on the Floss (1860), and Silas Marner (1861). Each of these novels is fundamentally concerned with the relationship between the individual and society. They draw from Eliot’s own experiences living in the Warwickshire countryside, and they reveal her instinctive understanding of human nature.

Extremely popular with Victorian readers, Adam Bede is the story of a love triangle. Adam Bede, a good peasant workman, secretly loves the beautiful but foolish farm girl Hetty Sorrel, who is also pursued by the squire Arthur Donnithorne. Hetty’s unexpected pregnancy leads to dramatic and unexpected consequences.

The heroine of The Mill on the Floss, idealistic, intelligent, passionate Maggie Tulliver, resembles Eliot herself as a young woman. Both experience difficulty expressing themselves in callous social environments and both face painful decisions in love. Marked by humor and sadness, the novel analyzes the full scope of Maggie’s imperfect humanity while presenting a sharp yet understanding view of society. T. S. Eliot

T. S. Eliot (1888-1965), American-born writer, regarded as one of the greatest poets of the 20th century. His best- known poem, The Waste Land (1922), is a devastating analysis of the society of his time. Eliot also wrote drama and literary criticism. In his plays, which use unrhymed verse, he attempted to revive poetic drama for the contemporary audience. His most influential criticism looked at the way the poet should approach the act of writing. Eliot won the Nobel Prize for literature in 1948.

Sir William Empson

Sir William Empson (1906-1984), English poet and major literary critic of the 20th century. Empson was born in Yorkshire, England, and educated at Magdalene College, Cambridge. Initially a brilliant student of mathematics, he was allowed to pursue English as well with leading semanticist I. A. Richards. In 1929 he received a B.A. degree in mathematics and English literature.

In 1930, at 24 years of age, Empson published Seven Types of Ambiguity, an influential text which analyzes in detail the meanings and effects of English poetry. From 1931 to 1934 Empson taught English literature at the University of Tokyo, Japan. He then became a member of the English faculty of Peking National University in China, from which he took leave to work for the British Broadcasting Corporation (BBC) during World War II (1939-1945), as editor in charge of Chinese affairs. He returned to Peking University after the war, remaining there until 1952. In 1953, Empson became professor of English at Sheffield University in South Yorkshire, England.

Empson's poetry displays the same intellectual rigor as his criticism, as well as a sophisticated wit. Poems was published in 1935; a second volume, The Gathering Storm, followed in 1940. The poems in these collections are complex, and their arguments and metaphors are drawn from disciplines such as physics and mathematics. However, there is a humane element in the questions they pose. Although Empson's poetry was not immediately valued, fellow poets such as T. S. Eliot and Philip Larkin admired its elegance and logic. Collected Poems, which appeared in 1955, marked the end of Empson's career as a poet. His other works of literary criticism include Some Versions of Pastoral (1935), Milton's God (1961), and Using Biography (1984), a collection of essays published posthumously. Empson was knighted in 1979.

Sir George Etherege

Sir George Etherege (1635?-1691), English comic dramatist. He is believed to have spent a short time at the University of Cambridge and to have traveled on the Continent. His first comedy, The Comical Revenge, or, Love in a Tub, was produced in 1664 with remarkable success and gained its author the patronage of the court of Charles II. Its comic subplot, in prose, was developed in later works and laid a foundation for the English comedies of manners produced by William Congreve and Oliver Goldsmith. It was followed in 1668 by She Would if She Could and in 1676 by The Man of Mode, or, Sir Fopling Flutter, which is considered his best work. Etherege was one of the most notorious libertines of the time. About 1680 he was knighted. He is considered the inventor of the comedy of social life, with realistic portraits of the fops of his day

John Evelyn

John Evelyn (1620-1706), English writer and government official, born near Dorking, Surrey. A Royalist, Evelyn was in correspondence with Charles II and wrote An Apology for the Royal Party (1659). After the Restoration (1660), Evelyn held many minor posts. He was a founder of the Royal Society and in 1662 was nominated to its directing council. Evelyn wrote more than 30 volumes on a variety of subjects, including art, architecture, gardening, and politics. His Diary, covering the years 1640 to 1706 but first published in 1818, is of historical value as a record of 17th-century England and for its portraits of personalities of the time. His other work of importance is Sylva, or Discourse on Forest Trees (1664), a practical work on arboriculture, which contained a plea for reforestation at a time when English industry was depleting forest reserves.

Henry Fielding Henry Fielding (1707-1754), English novelist, playwright, and barrister, who, with his contemporary Samuel Richardson, established the English novel tradition.

Fielding was born at Sharpham Park, Somerset, and educated at Eton College and in law at the Leiden University. From 1729 to 1737 he was a theatrical manager and playwright in London. Of his 25 plays, the most popular was the farce Tom Thumb (1730). In 1740 he was called to the bar; as justice of the peace for Westminster from 1748 and for Middlesex from 1749, he worked hard to reduce crime in London.

Meanwhile his career as a novelist began. His first published novel, The History of the Adventures of Joseph Andrews and of His Friend Mr. Abraham Adams (1742), was intended as a parody of the sentimental moralism of the popular novel Pamela (1740), written by Samuel Richardson. Fielding had already parodied Pamela in his pseudonymous work, Apology for the Life of Mrs. Shamela Andrews. Fielding's talent for characterization and for depicting a lower-class milieu, however, make Joseph Andrews far more than mere parody; it is a great comedy in its own right. Miscellanies (3 volumes, 1743) contains a long mock-epic treatment of heroism, The History of the Life of the Late Mr. Jonathan Wild the Great, as well as miscellaneous poems, essays, and plays, including A Journey from This World to the Next. The latter is a lively account of a group of disparate spirits on their way to Elysium (from Greek mythology, a place of ideal happiness).

Two volumes of political journalism, The True Patriot (1745) and The Jacobite's Journal (1747), preceded publication of The History of Tom Jones, a Foundling (1749). Tom Jones, regarded by critics as one of the great English novels, is in the picaresque tradition, involving the adventures and misadventures of a roguish hero. It tells in rich, realistic detail the many adventures that befall Tom, an engaging young libertine, in his efforts to gain his rightful inheritance. (It was made into a successful motion picture, Tom Jones, in 1962.) Amelia (1751), a study of justice and the penal system in England, is the most serious of Fielding's fiction and his last novel.

Ronald Firbank

Ronald Firbank (1886-1926), English writer and aesthete, born in London, who devoted his life to travel and novel writing. Firbank achieved some recognition as an innovator in satiric dialogue and narrative techniques. His books reflect his legendary and eccentric life, with their bizarre characters and sophisticated wit. His most famous novel is considered Prancing Nigger (1924; originally published in England as Sorrow in Sunlight).

Edward FitzGerald

Edward FitzGerald (1809-1883), English poet and translator, born near Woodbridge, Suffolk, and educated at the University of Cambridge. FitzGerald is best known for his translation (published anonymously in 1859) of the Rubáiyát by the Persian poet Omar Khayyam. The translation, which involved reworking the original poem into rhymed verse, at first failed to sell. The English poet Dante Gabriel Rossetti discovered it, however, and as a result of his enthusiasm a second edition appeared in 1868. The poem achieved a popularity unmatched by any other translation of secular Asian poetry into English. FitzGerald is also known for his English versions of classical Greek drama.

Ian Fleming

Ian Fleming (1908-1964), British novelist, best known as creator of the popular suspense-fiction character James Bond, British secret service agent 007. Born in London, Fleming was educated at Eton College and at the Royal Military College at Sandhurst, which he left after a year to study languages in Munich, Germany, and Geneva, Switzerland. He served as Moscow correspondent for the Reuters news agency from 1929 to 1933. He was then a banker and stockbroker in London until the outbreak of World War II (1939-1945), when he became personal assistant to the director of British naval intelligence. After the war Fleming worked as foreign manager of The Sunday Times, in London.

The suave, thrill-seeking Commander James Bond is the protagonist of 12 best-selling espionage novels written by Fleming, including Casino Royale (1953), From Russia with Love (1957), Dr. No (1958), Goldfinger (1959), Thunderball (1961), and The Man with the Golden Gun, published posthumously in 1965. Scottish actor Sean Connery and English actor Roger Moore, among others, have played the role of James Bond in several successful motion pictures based on Fleming's novels. John Fletcher

John Fletcher (1579-1625), English poet and playwright. Although he wrote many works alone and with several different dramatists, he is best known for his collaborations with fellow playwright Francis Beaumont. Fletcher was born in Rye, Sussex, England, and may have attended Corpus Christi College at the University of Cambridge.

It is unclear exactly when Fletcher’s career as a dramatist began. His sequel to English playwright William Shakespeare's Taming of the Shrew, titled The Woman's Prize, or The Tamer Tamed, has been dated as early as 1604. The most important of Fletcher’s early plays is his tragicomedy The Faithful Shepherdess (1608-1609). This work, unsuccessful on the stage, was printed in an undated edition containing commendatory verses by leading English dramatist Ben Jonson and by Beaumont. It also included a prefatory statement by Fletcher regarding the nature of tragicomedy. Fletcher wrote of that genre that 'in respect it wants [lacks] deaths, which is enough to make it no tragedy, yet brings some near it, which is enough to make it no comedy.'

Fletcher is often linked with Beaumont in the public mind. Even their contemporaries saw the pair as so inseparable that the title pages of two editions of Fletcher’s solo works and collaborations with other playwrights gave credit to Beaumont and Fletcher jointly. As a result, Beaumont was credited for many plays not actually written until after his death in 1616, and the hand of Philip Massinger—Fletcher's principal collaborator after Beaumont—was largely ignored.

The team of Beaumont and Fletcher probably collaborated on about ten plays. By the time Beaumont retired in 1614, these collaborations had helped establish both men in the ranks of the best dramatists. The production dates of nearly all of these works are uncertain. The two playwrights coauthored popular works such as Philaster (1609?), The Maid’s Tragedy (1610?), and A King and No King (1611). Other collaborations include The Coxcomb (1612), The Captain (1613), and Cupid’s Revenge (1611?).

Ford Madox Ford Ford Madox Ford (1873-1939), English novelist and critic, born in Merton, Devon, and educated in England, Germany, and France. He changed his original surname, Hueffer, in 1919, after having served with the British army in World War I (1914-1918). Ford was a grandson of the English painter Ford Madox Brown. Before the war he had been an associate of the expatriate writers Henry James and Joseph Conrad, and with Conrad wrote the novels The Inheritors (1901) and Romance (1903).

Ford's own novel The Good Soldier (1915) is considered his masterpiece. The story of two married couples, it probes concealed passions with carefully controlled shifts of viewpoint and time. He employed this narrative technique again in a tetralogy of novels about English life before and during the war: Some Do Not (1924), No More Parades (1925), A Man Could Stand Up (1926), and The Last Post (1928); they were republished in one volume, Parade's End, in 1950. His more than 80 works include a collection of poetry, critical studies, and memoirs. As founder of the English Review (1908) and editor of the Transatlantic Review (1924), Ford was responsible for launching and encouraging many gifted contemporaries, including T. S. Eliot, Ezra Pound, D. H. Lawrence, James Joyce, and Ernest Hemingway. From 1927 on Ford lived in the United States and in France.

John Ford

John Ford (1586?-1640?), English dramatist, born in Ilsington, Devonshire, and educated at Exeter College. He began his literary career as a poet, writing Fame's Memorial (1606), an elegy on the death of Charles Blount, earl of Devonshire, as well as several poems commemorating court events. Turning to drama, he collaborated with the dramatist Thomas Dekker in writing The Fairy Knight and The Bristowe Merchant (1634?). Many consider his later plays works of the first rank. Among his dramas are Love's Sacrifice (1630), 'Tis Pity She's a Whore (1633), Perkin Warbeck (1634), The Lady's Trial (1638) and The Witch of Edmonton (1658), which he wrote in collaboration with Dekker and the English actor and dramatist William Rowley.

C. S. Forester

C. S. Forester (1899-1966), English novelist, born in Cairo, Egypt. Forester wrote many novels, most of which were sea stories. Among these are Captain Horatio Hornblower, R.N. (1939), Mr. Midshipman Hornblower (1950), Lieutenant Hornblower (1952), Hornblower in the West Indies (1958), and The Indomitable Hornblower (1963). Historical works include The Age of Fighting Sail (1956) and The Naval War of 1812 (1957).

E. M. Forster

E. M. Forster (1879-1970), English novelist and essayist, whose novels, written in a style notable for its conciseness and fluidity, explore the attitudes that create barriers between people.

Edward Morgan Forster was born in London on January 1, 1879, and educated at King's College, University of Cambridge. After a short residence in Italy, he turned to writing full time. His first novel, Where Angels Fear to Tread (1905), appeared when Forster was 26 years old and displays remarkably mature style. This was followed by The Longest Journey (1907) and A Room with a View (1908). The construction of these three novels was a reaction to lengthy, formally plotted Victorian fiction. Somewhat autobiographical, they also sounded a theme prevalent in Forster's essays: the need to temper middle-class materialism with due consideration of things of the mind and imagination, in order to achieve harmony and understanding. This theme is treated more fully in Forster's masterpieces, Howards End (1910), with its message “Only connect,” and A Passage to India (1924). The latter, the last novel Forster wrote, deals with the conflict of cultures in terms of the ambiguous personal relationship between an English visitor and an Indian during British rule.

Two volumes of short stories were published by Forster during his lifetime, The Celestial Omnibus (1914) and The Eternal Moment (1924). Maurice (1971; written 1913-1914), a novel, and The Life to Come (1972; written throughout his life), a collection of short stories, both primarily on homosexual themes, were not published until after Forster's death.

Forster's convictions and outlook were clearly expressed in his essay collections, Abinger Harvest (1936) and Two Cheers for Democracy (1951), as well as in his travel books, The Hill of Devi (1953), an account of his sojourn in India and the real basis for A Passage to India, and Alexandria: A History and a Guide (1922; revised 1961). The latter was based on Forster's civilian duties there during World War I (1914-1918). A variety of other literary endeavors included editorship, for a brief period after World War I, of the Daily Herald, a Labour Party newspaper; the libretto for the opera Billy Budd (1951), by the English composer Benjamin Britten; and an important piece of literary criticism, Aspects of the Novel, based on lectures he gave at Cambridge in 1927.

Forster, an honorary fellow of King's College, resided there from 1946 until his death in Coventry, England on June 7, 1970. Forster's critical reputation has remained high, and popular interest in his novels has been fueled by the recent films made from his works: A Passage to India (1984); A Room with a View (1985); Maurice (1987); Where Angels Fear to Tread (1991); and Howards End (1992). John Fowles

John Fowles (1926-2005), innovative British novelist, author of The French Lieutenant's Woman (1969) and other allusive, archetypal stories that address the collision between individual psychology and social convention.

John Fowles was born in Leigh-on-Sea, England, a middle-class suburb of London. He attended the Bedford School and the University of Edinburgh, then studied French at New College at Oxford. After serving in the Royal Marines from 1945 to 1946, Fowles taught at schools in London, France, and Greece.

Fowles’s first novel, The Collector (1963), tells the story of a pathological clerk and butterfly collector who kidnaps an attractive young woman. The book, made into a successful film in 1965, is told from both characters’ points of view. His book The Magus (1965; film, 1968) is a novel about a young English teacher lured into a series of sinister, magical illusions on a Greek island. The French Lieutenant's Woman, a love story with a fractured narrative structure, became his most renowned work. The book was also the basis for a hit movie released in 1981, for which British playwright and Nobel laureate Harold Pinter wrote the screenplay.

Fowles earned a reputation as a postmodernist for his use of experimental literary techniques. One constant theme in his work is the issue of free will versus societal constraints, including the conventions placed on traditional literature. In The French Lieutenant's Woman, for example, Fowles supplies two endings, and The Magus also concludes ambiguously. Subsequent novels by Fowles included the loosely autobiographical Daniel Martin (1977), Mantissa (1982), and A Maggot (1985). The author also produced a volume of linked short stories—The Ebony Tower (1974), which shows the influence of medieval romance—and a number of nonfiction works, including a history of the seaside resort of Lyme Regis, England, where he lived for many years. Christopher Fry

Christopher Fry (1907-2005), English dramatist, born in Bristol. His original name was Christopher Harris. Fry’s first major success, The Lady’s Not for Burning (first performed in 1948), a tragicomic fantasy in verse, was enthusiastically received both in London and New York City. In the same genre are Venus Observed (1950) and Ring Round the Moon (1950), a translation of L’invitation au chateau (Invitation to the Castle) by French playwright Jean Anouilh. Among Fry’s other works are the religious drama in verse A Sleep of Prisoners (1951) and the historical drama The Dark Is Light Enough (1954). Tiger at the Gates (1955), Duel of Angels (1960), and Judith (1962) are translations of plays by French dramatist Jean Giraudoux. Fry’s translations of Henrik Ibsen’s Peer Gynt and Edmond Rostand’s Cyrano de Bergerac were performed in the 1970s.

Thomas Fuller

Thomas Fuller (clergyman) (1608-61), English clergyman, author, and wit. In 1634 he became rector of Broadwinsor, Dorsetshire. His first book of sermons, Joseph's Party-Coloured Coat (1640), is distinguished by the conceits and wit characteristic of the sermons of this period. In 1642 Fuller settled in London, where he preached in favor of the signing of articles of peace by both Royalists and Parliamentarians in the Great Rebellion. In 1643 he joined the forces of Charles I, king of England, at Oxford, as chaplain to one of its regiments. During this period he collected the materials for The Church History of Britain from the Birth of Christ Until the Year 1648 (1655) and for The Worthies of England, a valuable source of antiquarian information, published posthumously in 1662.

John Galsworthy

John Galsworthy (1867-1933), English novelist and playwright, who was one of the most popular English novelists and dramatists of the early 20th century. He was born in Kingston Hills, Surrey, and educated at Harrow School and the University of Oxford. He was admitted to the bar in 1890 but soon abandoned law for writing. Galsworthy wrote his early works under the pen name John Sinjohn. His fiction is concerned principally with English upper middle-class life; his dramas frequently find their themes in this stratum of society, but also often deal, sympathetically, with the economically and socially oppressed and with questions of social justice. Most of his novels deal with the history, from Victorian times through the first quarter of the 20th century, of an upper middle-class English family, the Forsytes. The principal member of the family is Soames Forsyte, who exemplifies the drive of his class for the accumulation of material wealth, a drive that often conflicts with human values. The Forsyte series includes The Man of Property (1906), the novelette “Indian Summer of a Forsyte” (pub. in the collection Five Tales,1918), In Chancery (1920), Awakening (1920), and To Let (1921). These five titles were published as The Forsyte Saga (1922). The Forsyte story was continued by Galsworthy in The White Monkey (1924), The Silver Spoon (1926), and Swan Song (1928), which were published together under the title A Modern Comedy (1929). These were followed in turn by Maid in Waiting (1931), Flowering Wilderness (1932), and Over the River (1933), published together posthumously as End of the Chapter (1934). Among the plays by Galsworthy are Strife (1909), Justice (1910), The Pigeon (1912), Old English (1924), and The Roof (1929). Galsworthy was awarded the 1932 Nobel Prize in literature.

George Gascoigne

George Gascoigne (1525?-1577), English poet, whose best-known works are his lyric poems, including “The Arraignment of a Lover” and “A Strange Passion of a Lover.” Born probably in Cardington, Bedfordshire, and educated at the University of Cambridge, Gascoigne studied law and from 1557 to 1559 represented Bedford in Parliament. His play The Supposes, the first English comedy in blank verse, was produced in 1566. It was based on Gli suppositi (The Suppositions, 1509), by the Italian poet Ludovico Ariosto.

Gascoigne is also remembered as an innovator who adapted foreign literary forms to English. An authorized edition of his work, The Posies of George Gascoigne (1575), contains short poems and Jocasta, a blank- verse adaptation of Phoenissae, by the Greek dramatist Euripides. This volume also includes what appears to be the earliest English critical essay on prosody (the study of the metrical structure of verse), “Certain Notes of Instruction Concerning the Making of Verse

Elizabeth Gaskell

Elizabeth Gaskell, (1810-1865), English novelist, known for her thorough research, compassion toward her subjects, and skillful narrative style. She was born Elizabeth Cleghorn Stevenson in London. Her first novel was Mary Barton, a Tale of Manchester Life (pub. anonymously in 1848), an attack on the behavior of factory employers during the 1840s, a time of depression and hardship for the British working class. The book won her the friendship of Charles Dickens, who requested a contribution to his new magazine, Household Words. Between 1851 and 1853 Gaskell contributed the papers later published under the title of Cranford (1853). This book, concerning elegant gentility among women in a country town, has become an English classic.

Gaskell's other works include a biography (1857) of her friend, the novelist Charlotte Brontë; and the novels and stories The Moorland Cottage (1850); Ruth (1853); North and South (1855), another compassionate study of conditions in Manchester; and the posthumously published Wives and Daughters (1866).

John Gay

John Gay (1685-1732), English dramatist and poet, who was one of the outstanding writers of the neoclassical period in English literature. He was born in Barnstaple. His early poetry includes The Shepherd's Week (1714) and Trivia, or the Art of Walking the Streets of London (1716), the latter a studiedly artificial counterpart of Virgil's Georgics.

Gay is famous for his Fables (two series, 1727 and, posthumously, 1738), tales in verse considered the best of their kind in English. His fame as a playwright rests primarily on The Beggar's Opera (1728), a social satire that two centuries later inspired The Threepenny Opera (1928; trans. 1933) by the German dramatist Bertolt Brecht and the German-born American composer Kurt Weill. The Beggar's Opera, in various adaptations, is still popular. A sequel, entitled Polly (1729), was banned from the stage but was published and widely read. Gay composed the lyrics to many songs, including “'Twas When the Seas Were Roaring,” and he wrote many ballads, the most familiar of which is “Sweet William's Farewell to Black- eyed Susan.”

George Robert Gissing

George Robert Gissing (1857-1903), English novelist, born in Wakefield, and educated at Owens College, Manchester. He taught and did free-lance journalism, first in the United States and then in England. By such gestures as marrying a prostitute and rejecting regular employment, Gissing seemed to invite the deprivations of poverty that supplied material for many of his works. His novels deal chiefly with the lives of lower-middle-class Londoners, and his favorite theme is the degrading and brutalizing effect of poverty on human beings. Workers in the Dawn, the first of his 22 novels, appeared in 1880.

Gissing did not receive any recognition until the publication of his fourth novel, Demos (1886), an imaginary account of the effect of socialism upon poverty-stricken people. Among his most famous novels are Born in Exile (1892) and New Grub Street (1891), probably his best-known work, which is a realistic portrayal of the struggles of an unsuccessful writer. Gissing's other writings include novels of contemporary life such as Thyrza (1887), and In the Year of Jubilee (1894); the semiautobiographical The Private Papers of Henry Ryecroft (1903); and Veranilda (posthumously published 1904), a novel of 6th-century Italy.

William Godwin

William Godwin (1756-1836), English political philosopher and novelist, who, as a person and as a writer, exerted a profound influence on the younger authors of his time.

Godwin was born on March 3, 1756, in Wisbech, Cambridgeshire. From 1777 to 1783 Godwin served as a minister of a dissenting religious sect. By 1785, however, he had become an atheist. In 1793 he wrote his best-known work, The Enquiry Concerning Political Justice, and Its Influence on General Virtue and Happiness, which expounded his theories of philosophical anarchism. Convinced of the individual perfection of human beings and their ability to reason, the author found all forms and degrees of control from without intolerable. His contempt for restrictions placed on one person by another or by a government also characterized one of his novels, The Adventures of Caleb Williams (1794).

In 1797 Godwin married the feminist author Mary Wollstonecraft, who died after giving birth to their daughter, also named Mary Wollstonecraft, later the wife of the British poet Percy Bysshe Shelley, and an author in her own right. In 1801 Godwin married the widow Mary Jane Clairmont (died 1841). Establishing himself as a bookseller and publisher, he wrote several works for children and published others, notably Tales from Shakespeare (1807) by the British authors Mary Ann Lamb and her brother Charles Lamb. Godwin's business failed in 1822, at which time he devoted himself to writing The History of the Commonwealth of England (1824). His other writings include two series of essays, The Enquirer, Reflections on Education, Manners, and Literature (1797) and Thoughts on Man, His Nature, Productions, and Discoveries (1831). He died in London on April 7, 1836.

William Golding

William Golding (1911-1993), British novelist, who won the Nobel Prize for literature in 1983. William Gerald Golding was born at Saint Columb Minor in Cornwall and educated at Brasenose College at the University of Oxford, where he studied English literature. Golding spent a short time working in the theater as a writer and actor. He then trained to be a teacher, a profession he left during World War II (1939-1945), when he served in the Royal Navy.

After the war Golding returned to writing. His first novel, The Lord of the Flies (1954; motion picture by English director Peter Brook, 1963), was extremely successful and is considered one of the great works of 20th-century literature. Based on Golding's own wartime experiences, it is the story of a group of schoolboys marooned on a desert island after a plane crash. An allegory of the intrinsic corruption of human nature, it chronicles the boys' descent from a state of relative innocence to one of revengeful barbarism. After Lord of the Flies he wrote several novels with similar themes of good and evil in human nature, including The Inheritors (1955) and Pincher Martin (1956). Much of Golding's writing explores moral dilemmas and human reactions in extreme situations. His trilogy—consisting of Rites of Passage (1980), winner of the Booker Prize, an annual award for outstanding literary achievement in the Commonwealth of Nations; Close Quarters (1987); and Fire Down Below (1989)—reflects Golding's interest in the sea and sailing. His other works include two collections of essays, The Hot Gates (1965) and A Moving Target (1982); and one play, The Brass Butterfly (1958). Golding was knighted in 1988 (see Knight). His last novel, The Double Tongue, was published posthumously in 1995.

Oliver Goldsmith

Oliver Goldsmith (playwright and novelist) (1730-74), Anglo-Irish playwright, novelist, poet, and essayist, best known for his witty comedy She Stoops to Conquer and his novel The Vicar of Wakefield, an early example of the form.

Goldsmith was born November 10, 1730, in Pallas, Ireland, the son of an Anglican curate. He received a general education at Trinity College, Dublin, and studied medicine at the universities of Edinburgh and Leiden. He subsequently wandered through Europe, supporting himself by playing the flute and by begging. Later, in England, he practiced medicine, taught school, and eventually worked for various publishers, producing literary works to order. As a hack writer, he was the author of translations, books for children, and articles for newspapers and magazines. These anonymous potboilers were characterized by humor, picturesque descriptions, and a graceful style. Among them was a series of letters, supposedly written by a Chinese traveler, describing London, later reprinted as A Citizen of the World (1762). Once Goldsmith's authorship of this successful series became known in London literary circles, he made many influential friends, including Samuel Johnson, the foremost literary figure of the day; Sir Joshua Reynolds, the greatest English painter of the time; and the statesman and orator Edmund Burke. In 1763, Goldsmith became one of the original nine members of the celebrated literary society known as The Club, presided over by Johnson.

In 1764, Goldsmith's philosophic poem The Traveller was published and established him as an important writer. The publication of The Vicar of Wakefield (1766) is believed to have been hastily arranged by Johnson in order to save Goldsmith from going to jail for debt. In 1770, Goldsmith published the poem The Deserted Village, distinguished for its pastoral atmosphere and felicity of phrasing; it marked the transition in English literature from neoclassicism to romanticism. Goldsmith also produced dramatic works at this time. His first play, the comedy The Good Natur'd Man (1768), was a failure, but She Stoops to Conquer (1773) was an immediate success; it remains one of the best-known comedies of the British drama. In addition to original works, Goldsmith continued to write popular books to order, including histories of Rome, Greece, and England and books on natural history, all readable but not noted for accuracy. Near the end of his life, Goldsmith made an ample income but, through extravagance and openhandedness toward needy friends, spent far more than he earned. He died April 4, 1774, in London.

Goldsmith was buried in the churchyard of the Church of Saint Mary (known as The Temple), London; subsequently The Club erected a memorial to him in Westminster Abbey. The inscription, written by Johnson, includes the tribute “Nullum quod tetigit non ornavit” (He touched nothing that he did not adorn).

John Gower

John Gower (1330?-1408), English poet, a contemporary of the poet Geoffrey Chaucer. He probably belonged to a prosperous Kentish family and was a landholder in Suffolk and Norfolk. He was a friend of Chaucer, who addressed his Troilus and Criseyde to “moral Gower,” and he was a court poet under Richard II and Henry IV.

Gower's principal works are three long poems written in different languages. Speculum Meditantis or Mirour de l'omme (Mirror of Thought, 1376?), in French, is an allegory treating the nature of human beings, their sins and virtues, and their deliverance from sin. Vox Clamantis (Voice of Complaint, 1382?), written in Latin elegiac verse, describes Tyler's Rebellion of 1381 and deals with the faults of the various classes of society. Confessio Amantis (Confession of a Lover, 1390?), Gower's greatest and best-known work, is a standard of Middle English. Written at the command of Richard II, it is a collection of tales illustrating the vices that may accompany love, told by a lover to a priest of Venus. In turn, the priest initiates the poet in the concept of courtly and Christian love. In addition to the long poems, Gower wrote minor poems in English, French, and Latin.

Kenneth Grahame

Kenneth Grahame (1859-1932), English author, born in Edinburgh, Scotland. In 1879 he joined the staff of the Bank of England, becoming secretary in 1898. He retired after the publication of his most successful work, The Wind in the Willows (1908), a fantasy about Mole, Rat, and other animals in the English countryside that appeals to both adults and children. Other works include The Golden Age (1895) and Dream Days (1898).

Harley Granville-Barker

Harley Granville-Barker (1877-1946), English author, actor, and producer, who was instrumental in bringing 20th-century ideas and concerns, such as social criticism, to the English stage. Born in London and privately educated, he began his career as an actor at the age of 13. After touring for several years, he appeared in London in 1892 and quickly won acclaim. In 1900 he created the part of Marchbanks in Candida, the first of his many roles in the plays of George Bernard Shaw. Also a playwright, Granville-Barker wrote The Marrying of Anne Leete (1901), The Voysey Inheritance (1905), Waste (1907), and The Madras House (1910), among others. These works, like Shaw's, were realistic criticisms of society rather than conventional entertainment.

As manager (1904-7) of London's Court Theatre, Granville-Barker directed and acted in plays—his own, Shaw's, and those of European contemporaries. He staged (1913-14) simple but effective Shakespearean productions at the Savoy Theatre. In 1915 he took a company to New York City. In 1930 he lectured at Cambridge and in 1937 at Oxford. Granville-Barker directed the British Institute of the University of Paris from 1937 to 1939 and taught at Yale (1940) and Harvard (1941-43). During these years he wrote Prefaces to Shakespeare (6 volumes, 1927-46), in which he considered the plays from the viewpoint of a practical stage director.

Robert Graves

Robert Graves (1895-1985), English poet, novelist, and classical scholar. Robert von Ranke Graves was born in London and educated at the University of Oxford. Graves, who preferred to be known as a poet, wrote vigorous, witty, and, at times, intellectual verse. His first volume of poetry, Fairies and Fusiliers (1917), recounts his World War I experiences. Early in his career, Graves was considered a Georgian poet (one of a group of early 20th-century poets who wrote conventional lyric poetry and maintained a late-romantic style). As his career developed, he avoided identification with any school or poet and wrote with an intense, clear, and ordered voice. Several collected editions of his poems have appeared including Collected Poems (1959, 1975). In 1968, in collaboration with the Sufi (see Sufism) poet Omar Ali-Shah, Graves produced The Original Rubáiyát of Omar Khayyam, claiming that the 19th-century translation by the English poet Edward FitzGerald was inadequate. Graves's version is unrhymed and uses contemporary diction. As a prose writer Graves produced a wide selection of books, ranging from Good-Bye to All That (1929; revised 1957), a satiric military memoir, to imaginative and historical fiction such as I, Claudius and Claudius the God (both 1934), King Jesus (1946), and Homer's Daughter (1955). His research for The Golden Fleece (1944; United States title, Hercules, My Shipmate) led him to in-depth studies of myths and history on which he elaborated in scholarly works such as The White Goddess (1947), and Greek Myths and Legends (1968). In The White Goddess, Graves traces, in his words, “the variously named Great Goddess” through Welsh poetry and tree symbolism, Greek myth and mystery cults, and the religions of ancient Egypt and Israel. Graves held several university professorships, and after 1929 he resided on the Spanish island of Mallorca.

Thomas Gray

Thomas Gray (1716-1771), English poet, who was a forerunner of the romantic movement. He was born in London and educated at Eton College and the University of Cambridge. In 1750 he finished the poem for which he is best known, “Elegy Written in a Country Churchyard,” and sent it to his friend, the author Horace Walpole, at whose insistence it was published in 1751. Since that time the work has remained a favorite.

Living at Cambridge, Gray wrote The Progress of Poesy (1754). In 1757 he refused an appointment as poet laureate. He became professor of history and modern languages at Cambridge in 1768. Among his poems are “Ode on a Distant Prospect of Eton College” (1742) and “Sonnet on the Death of Richard West” (1775).In the intervals of his scholastic duties he traveled widely throughout Britain in search of picturesque scenery and ancient monuments, recording his impressions in his Journal (1775). Thomas Gray is considered a forerunner of the romantic poets (see Romanticism).

Graham Greene

Graham Greene (1904-1991), English novelist, concerned with spiritual struggle in a deteriorating world. Born in Berkhamsted, Hertfordshire, the son of a headmaster, Greene was educated at the University of Oxford. He worked for the London Times from 1926 to 1929 and then as a free-lance writer. In 1935 he was film critic for the Spectator, a British newspaper, and in 1940 he was named literary editor. From 1942 to 1943 he worked for the British Foreign Office in western Africa and after World War II (1939- 1945) he traveled widely.

Greene's earliest novels were The Man Within (1929), The Name of Action (1930), and Rumour at Nightfall (1931). His popularity came, however, with Stamboul Train (1932), a spy thriller published in the United States as Orient Express. This and subsequent novels such as England Made Me (1935) and The Ministry of Fear (1943), Greene later categorized as “entertainments.”A Gun for Sale (1936), published in the United States as This Gun for Hire, has as a central theme man's conflict between good and evil. It may be considered a precursor to the type of book that Greene specifically labeled as “novels.” These writings are seriously concerned with the moral, social, and religious problems of the time. Greene himself had been converted to Roman Catholicism in 1926. The “novels” include Brighton Rock (1938); The Power and the Glory (1940), first published in the United States as The Labyrinthine Ways, his own favorite work; The Heart of the Matter (1948); and The End of the Affair (1951).

Subsequent major works by Greene include The Quiet American (1955), Our Man in Havana (1958), A Burnt-out Case (1961), The Comedians (1966), The Honorary Consul (1973), The Human Factor (1978), and The Tenth Man (1985). Many of his novels have been adapted for motion pictures; The Third Man (1950), another spy thriller, was written specifically for filming. As an essayist, he compiled Lost Childhood and Other Essays (1952) and Collected Essays (1969), the latter mostly comprising studies of other writers. He also wrote books for children. Among his plays are The Living Room (1953), The Potting Shed (1957), and The Complaisant Lover (1959). A Sort of Life (1971) and its sequel Ways of Escape (1980) are his autobiographies. Robert Greene

Robert Greene (1558?-1592), English dramatist and prose writer, born in Norwich and educated at the universities of Oxford and Cambridge. After traveling in Europe between 1578 and 1583, he settled in London. Greene was a prolific and popular prose writer. Some of his prose romances were Mamillia (1583), written in imitation of Euphues, by John Lyly; The Myrrour of Modestie (1584); Perimedes the Blacke-Smith (1588); and Menaphon (1589), written in imitation of Arcadia, by Sir Philip Sidney. Greene's Pandosto, the Triumph of Time (1588) provided William Shakespeare with a plot source for The Winter's Tale.

Greene also wrote verse and songs, which were incorporated into his drama and prose. He wrote many pamphlets, including a series on the London underworld. The autobiographical Greene's Groatsworth of Wit Bought with a Million of Repentance, which has an alleged allusion to Shakespeare as an “upstart crow,” and The Repentance of Robert Greene, Master of Arts were written in 1592. Greene's dramatic works include The Honorable History of Friar Bacon and Friar Bungay (1592) and The Scottish History of James IV (1592).

Fulke Greville

Fulke Greville (1554-1628), English courtier and poet, born in Beauchamp Court, Warwickshire, and educated at the University of Cambridge. He was a lifelong friend of the writer and courtier Sir Philip Sidney. A prominent figure at the courts of Elizabeth I and James I, Greville was a foreign diplomat, member of Parliament four times, treasurer of the navy, and chancellor of the Exchequer. He was created Baron Brooke in 1621. His works, all published after his death, include Caecilia (1633), a collection of sonnets and songs on love or religion in a realistic style. His Life of the Renowned Sir Philip Sidney (1652) is informative on political figures of his day. He also wrote “Humane Learning” (1633), a philosophical poem questioning the goals of knowledge, and the tragedy Mustapha (1609).

Tyrone Guthrie

Tyrone Guthrie (1900-1971), English stage director and dramatist, a pioneer in the writing and staging of expressionist plays. Born in Tunbridge Wells, Kent, Guthrie was an undergraduate at the University of Oxford when he made his professional debut as an actor and assistant stage manager at the Oxford Playhouse in 1924. Later he worked with the Festival Theatre in Cambridge. Guthrie was particularly noted for his Shakespearean productions (see William Shakespeare), especially those for the Old Vic-Sadler's Wells Company, which he headed from 1939 to 1945 and again from 1951 to 1952. In 1953 Guthrie was named the first director of the Shakespeare Festival Theatre in Stratford, Ontario, Canada, where he remained until 1957. In 1963 he became director of the Guthrie Theater Company, which he helped found in Minneapolis. Guthrie helped design theaters in both Canada and Minnesota, working with British stage designer Tanya Moiseiwitsch to develop the thrust stage, a stage surrounded on three sides by steeply sloping seats to minimize the distance between the farthest spectators and the stage. Guthrie also staged productions in Germany and Israel. He returned to the Old Vic Theatre in 1967. Guthrie wrote several plays, including Follow Me (1931) and Top of the Ladder (1950). His other works include his autobiography, A Life in the Theater (1960), and Tyrone Guthrie on Acting (1971). He was knighted in 1961.

H. Rider Haggard

H. Rider Haggard (1856-1925), English novelist, colonial administrator, and agriculturist. Henry Rider Haggard was born in Norfolk. At the age of 19 he went to South Africa and later served in the Transvaal as a master of the high court. Returning to England in 1881, Haggard devoted most of his time to agriculture, on his estate in Norfolk, and to writing novels. His King Solomon's Mines (1885) was an immediate success; its story, suggested by the ruins at Zimbabwe, dealt with the adventures of an English explorer among remote tribes. The characters who appeared in the book were featured in several others, including She (1887), Allan Quatermain (1887), and Ayesha, or the Return of She (1905). In addition to writing more than 40 novels, Haggard was an adviser to the British government on agriculture.

Radclyffe Hall

Radclyffe Hall (1883-1943), British novelist and poet, best known for her novel The Well of Loneliness (1928), which was banned in England after a judge ruled its subject matter of a lesbian relationship (see Homosexuality) to be obscene. Hall was born in Bournemouth, Hampshire, England, and was educated at King's College, London, and then in Dresden, Germany. She began her career by writing lyric poetry, eventually publishing four volumes of verse. Her first novels, The Forge and The Unlit Lamp, were both published in 1924.

Although her third novel, Adam's Breed (1926), won a prestigious British literary award, the Tait Black Memorial prize for best novel in 1927, Hall only achieved notoriety with The Well of Loneliness. The book describes the life of a woman, Stephen Gordon, brought up as a boy, who learns gradually her difference from others in society and who sacrifices her chance of happiness with another woman in the face of social disapproval. The novel's apparent defense of homosexuality, based on Hall's reading of the pioneer research on sex of British psychologist Havelock Ellis, generated criticism, as did its open treatment of lesbianism. In fact, however, the novel amounted to little more than a plea for tolerance for homosexuals, rather than legal equality. The publisher, Jonathan Cape, submitted a copy to English officials for approval, and was advised to desist from the project. Jonathan Cape then ensured that an identical edition was published in France by the Pegasus Press, and only a month later copies were steadily flowing into England. The book was banned without leave to appeal. A number of British writers, including Virginia Woolf, E. M. Forster, and Arnold Bennett, defended it at the time, and an American judge ruled against the British ban, declaring that the subject of homosexuality was not inherently obscene. Nevertheless, the novel was not published in England until 1949. Hall's other works include Twixt Earth and Stars: Poems (1906); Songs of Three Counties and Other Poems (1913); and The Sixth Beatitude (1936). David Hare

David Hare, born in 1947, British dramatist, director, and screenwriter. Born in Sussex, England, he attended Cambridge University, where he began many years of activity in fringe theater. In 1974 he cofounded the theater company Joint Stock. Hare also served as resident dramatist and literary manager for the Royal Court Theatre in London from 1969 to 1971 and as an associate director of London’s Royal National Theatre from 1984 to 1987.

Hare’s early plays, which satirized the decadence of postwar Britain, include Slag (1970), Teeth 'n' Smiles (1975), Fanshen (1975), Plenty (1978), and Pravda (1985, written with Howard Brenton). A later trilogy of plays by Hare critically examines three establishment institutions in Britain: Racing Demon (1990) critiques the Church of England, Murmuring Judges (1991) looks at the legal system, and The Absence of War (1993) examines the military. The trilogy established Hare as one of Britain’s leading contemporary playwrights, along with Harold Pinter and Tom Stoppard. In the late 1990s Hare turned from the political to the personal in several plays that dealt with relationships, both sexual and familial. These plays include Skylight (1995), The Blue Room (1998), and Amy’s View (1999). The Breath of Life (2002), a play about deceit and the past, starred Maggie Smith and Judi Dench. He returned to the political with Stuff Happens (2004), a play about the political machinations that led to the U.S.-Iraq War in 2003.

Hare also has directed productions of many of his plays. Hare’s film scripts include Wetherby (1985), Plenty (1985), Paris by Night (1988), Damage (1992), The Absence of War (1994), and The Hours (2002). He starred in his one-man play, Via Dolorosa (1998), based on a journey the previous year to Israel and the Palestinian territories on the West Bank and Gaza Strip. Hare’s autobiography, Writing Left- Handed, appeared in 1991. He was knighted in 1998.

William Hazlitt (1778-1830), English essayist and critic, famous for the lucidity and brilliance, in both style and content, of his many essays. Hazlitt Hazlitt was born April 10, 1778, the son of a Unitarian minister, in Maidstone, Kent. He spent a short time at the Unitarian theological seminary at Hackney but soon abandoned the ministry to study painting and philosophy. In 1812 he became drama critic for the London Morning Chronicle and a frequent contributor to several periodicals. His first book, The Round Table (1817), was a collection of essays from his articles in the Examiner, owned by his friend the essayist Leigh Hunt. Two of his most famous collections, Table Talk (1821-22) and The Plain Speaker (1826), cover a variety of subjects ranging from art and philosophy to politics and prizefighting. These works helped to establish Hazlitt's reputation as the most versatile critic of his day. He was close friends with several leading literary figures, including Samuel Taylor Coleridge, William Wordsworth, and Charles Lamb. The Spirit of the Age (1825), a work that is regarded as his critical masterpiece, contains valuable biographical sketches of these writers and of other contemporary intellectual leaders.

Hazlitt lectured extensively on English drama. He collected his lectures and some of his articles in Characters of Shakespeare's Plays (1817), Lectures on the English Poets (1818), Views of the English Stage (1818), Essays on the English Comic Writers (1819), and Dramatic Literature of the Age of Elizabeth (1821). With these works Hazlitt established himself as one of the foremost literary critics of the romantic period and as a master of the informal essay. His admiration for Napoleon led him to write a Life of Napoleon (4 volumes, 1828-30). William Ernest Henley

William Ernest Henley (1849-1903), English writer and editor, born in Gloucester, and educated at the Crypt School, where the headmaster, the poet Thomas Edward Brown, inspired him. Although crippled early in life by osteomyelitis, he was a remarkably courageous, spirited, and prolific writer. His most famous poems are “England, My England” and “Invictus,” which concludes with the well-known lines, “I am the master of my fate;/I am the captain of my soul.”

Henley's books of poetry include A Book of Verses (1888) and In Hospital (1903). Views and Reviews, essays on art and literature, appeared in 1890. Henley collaborated with his friend Robert Louis Stevenson on four plays, and Stevenson modeled the character Long John Silver in Treasure Island after him. Henley collaborated with J. S. Farmer on the Dictionary of Slang and Its Analogues (1894- 1904). He also helped popularize the works of the British writer Rudyard Kipling and the Irish poet W. B. Yeats.

George Herbert

George Herbert (1593-1633), English poet of the metaphysical school. He was born in Wales and educated at the University of Cambridge. He was made a fellow of the university in 1616 and served as public orator from 1619 to 1627. He gave up his secular ambitions, however, and took holy orders in the Church of England in 1630. He spent the rest of his life as rector in Bemerton.

Herbert is best known for his poetry, which was published posthumously under the title The Temple: Sacred Poems and Private Ejaculations (1633). His poems are characterized by a precision of language, a metrical versatility, and an ingenious use of imagery or conceits that was favored by the metaphysical school of poets such as John Donne. Many of Herbert's poems are of a religious nature, often revealing his own spiritual struggles and the solace he found in the priesthood. He also wrote a book of principles for the guidance of rural clergymen, A Priest to the Temple, or the Country Parson (1652). Herbert is the subject of a sympathetic biography by the English essayist Izaak Walton.

Robert Herrick

Robert Herrick (1591-1674), English Cavalier poet, whose work is noted for its diversity of form and for its style, melody, and feeling. He was born in London and educated at the University of Cambridge. In 1629 he became vicar of Dean Prior in Devonshire, but in 1647, during the Great Rebellion, he was deprived of his position because of his Royalist sympathies.

Following the restoration of Charles II, Herrick was reinstated at Dean Prior, where he resided from 1662 until his death. His chief work is Hesperides; or, the Works Both Human and Divine of Robert Herrick, Esq. (1648). Within the same book, but under a separate title page bearing the date 1647, was printed a group of religious poems, His Noble Numbers. The entire collection contains more than 1200 short poems, ranging in form from epistles, eclogues, and epigrams to love poems. The themes are pastoral, dealing mostly with English country life and village customs. Herrick was influenced by classical Roman poetry. Many of his poems, such as “To the Virgins to Make Much of Time,””Corinna's Going a-Maying,” and “Delight in Disorder,” have been anthologized, and several were set to music.

John Heywood

John Heywood (1497?-1580?), English dramatist and epigrammatist, probably born in Hertfordshire. He was a friend of the statesman Sir Thomas More, through whom he was introduced to the courts of the English rulers Edward VI and Mary I. Shortly after the accession of the Protestant Elizabeth I to the English throne (1558), the Roman Catholic Heywood settled in Mechelen, Belgium, where he spent the rest of his life.

Heywood wrote several short dramatic pieces, known as interludes, to be performed at court, including The Four P's (printed 1569), The Play of the Wether (1533), and The Play of Love (1533). These satiric interludes are regarded as the precursors of English comedy. Heywood also wrote Epigrammes (1562), a collection of more than 600 epigrams and proverbs, several ballads, and a long allegorical poem entitled The Spider and the Flie (1556), which represented Roman Catholics as the flies, Protestants as the spiders, and Queen Mary as the maid destroying the spiders.

Thomas Heywood

Thomas Heywood (1574?-1641), English dramatist and writer, born in Lincolnshire and educated at the University of Cambridge. According to his own testimony, he wrote more than 220 plays for the English stage. Although not always tightly constructed and sometimes resorting to cliché, Heywood's plays exhibit a remarkable talent for dramatic and fanciful situations and pleasing an audience.

Heywood's best plays are A Woman Killed with Kindness (performed 1603, printed 1607), The Fair Maid of the West (1631), both of which have been recently revived and performed, and The English Traveller (1633). He also wrote poems, including “Troia Britannica” (England's Troy, 1609) and “The Hierarchy of the Blessed Angel” (1635). His Apology for Actors (1612) is a witty and anecdotal defense of the theater.

Henry Richard Fox Henry Richard Fox (1773-1840), British statesman and writer, grandson of the 1st Baron Holland. Henry Richard Vassall Fox, 3rd Baron Holland, was born in Winterslow House, Wiltshire, England, and educated at the University of Oxford. A Whig supporter, he was admitted to the Privy Council in 1806 and was lord privy seal in 1806-7. After the fall of the Whigs in 1807, he was in the opposition until 1830 and fought for all Whig measures, especially for the reduction of the severity of the penal codes. In 1830 he became chancellor of the duchy of Lancaster. Holland is best known, however, as a writer and patron of literature. His wife, Elizabeth Vassall, presided over a salon at Holland House that became famous in British history for its brilliant gatherings. His works include biographies of the Spanish dramatist Lope de Vega and of his uncle Charles James Fox. His memoirs, among them Foreign Reminiscences (1850), are valuable sources for information concerning the political life of his time.

Thomas Hood

Hood (1799-1845), English poet and humorist, born in London. He served as an editor of London magazine from 1821 until 1823 and during this period became part of the English literary group, including Charles Lamb, Thomas De Quincey, and William Hazlitt, associated with the journal. Hood's first work, Odes and Addresses to Great People (1825), shows the influence of the English poet John Keats, as does his Plea of the Midsummer Fairies (1827).

Hood was known, however, chiefly as a humorous writer, particularly clever in punning. He won this reputation largely through his writings in the Comic Annual between 1830 and 1842, in which he deftly caricatured current events and contemporary figures. His great talent as a serious poet was demonstrated in such later works as “Song of the Shirt,””Bridge of Sighs,” and “Song of the Labourer.” These poems revealed Hood's sympathy with the sufferings of the industrial workers of his time.

Anthony Hope

Anthony Hope, pseudonym of Sir Anthony Hope Hawkins (1863- 1933), English novelist and playwright, born in London, and educated at the University of Cambridge. He practiced law from 1887 to 1894 before turning to writing. Although he published several plays and over 20 novels, Hope's fame rests on his first work, The Prisoner of Zenda (1894), and its sequel, Rupert of Hentzau (1898). These light novels of adventure, intrigue, and romance set in a mythical European kingdom are typical of the literature popular before World War I. The Prisoner of Zenda was staged for the first time in 1891 and was filmed several times. Hawkins was knighted in 1918 for his services in the British ministry of information during World War I.

Gerard Manley Hopkins

Gerard Manley Hopkins (1844-1889), English poet, whose work expresses an intense response to the natural world, and whose innovations in technique produced an intricately woven tapestry of language that embodied this response.

Hopkins was born in Stratford, Essex (near London). He was educated at Balliol College, University of Oxford, where in 1866 he converted to Roman Catholicism. Upon entering the Jesuit order two years later, he destroyed the poetry he had already written. Between 1874 and 1877, as a student of theology in northern Wales, Hopkins learned Welsh; inspired by the language and by its poetry, he began to write again (but only after his superiors in the church encouraged him to do so). One of his initial efforts was “The Wreck of the Deutschland” (1875). This long religious poem, about the martyrdom of a group of shipwrecked German nuns, evinces the first use of techniques perfected by Hopkins in later works such as “The Windhover,””Pied Beauty,””Duns Scotus' Oxford,” and “Henry Purcell.” These lyrics are attempts to capture the uniqueness—or inscape, as Hopkins termed it—of natural objects, by the use of internal rhyme, alliteration, and compound metaphor and by the use of “sprung rhythm.” This verse structure, so named by Hopkins because it seems abrupt in contrast to the running rhythm typical of the poetry of his time, approximates the stresses of natural speech. It differs from the conventional system of a regular number of stressed and unstressed syllables per foot (see Versification).

In 1877 Hopkins was ordained in the Jesuit order and served as a parish priest and teacher in England and Scotland before becoming a professor of Greek at University College, Dublin, Ireland, in 1884. His unhappy years in Ireland, shadowed by overwork and ill health, produced a series of poems known as the “terrible sonnets,” the first of which was “Carrion Comfort” (1885?). They reflect the conflict between his religious vocation and his attraction to the world of the senses. Nick Hornby

Nick Hornby, born in 1957, British writer whose novels and nonfiction works explore masculinity, relationships, and popular culture in a humorous style. Among his best- known books are High Fidelity (1995) and About a Boy (1998).

Hornby was born near London, England. As a boy he attended games of the London professional soccer club Arsenal with his father, an executive with the British railways. Hornby majored in English at Cambridge University and tried teaching and other jobs before becoming a journalist. He wrote columns about sports, music, and literature as well as book reviews for various publications. In 1991 he published his first book, a collection of literary criticism entitled Contemporary American Fiction.

Hornby’s next work, Fever Pitch (1992), is a memoir about his lifelong obsession with Arsenal. The book, which goes beyond sports fandom to examine the male psyche in a conversational style, became a surprise bestseller. The novel served as the basis for a 1997 movie set in England and a 2005 film that changes the story to one man’s fixation with baseball’s Boston Red Sox.

The writer found similar success with his first novel, High Fidelity, about a record shop owner and collector who fixates on popular music while struggling with his romantic relationships. In 2000 High Fidelity was made into a movie starring John Cusack, with the location switched from London to Chicago, Illinois. Hornby’s 1998 novel About a Boy mixes humor and drama in the story of a bachelor whose life becomes entangled with a troubled 12-year-old boy. The movie version, starring Hugh Grant, was released in 2002. In How to Be Good (2001), Hornby uses a female narrator to tell the story of a man (the narrator’s husband) who suddenly changes from cynical to saintly and the effect it has on his family.

In 2003 Hornby published 31 Songs, a book chronicling his favorite pop songs. The Polysyllabic Spree (2004) is a collection of Hornby’s essays. The novel A Long Way Down (2005) chronicles four people who make a pact to prevent each other from committing suicide. Hornby has also edited several collections of stories and essays. A. E. Housman

A. E. Housman (1859-1936), English poet and classical scholar. Alfred Edward Housman was born in Fockbury, Worcestershire, and educated at the University of Oxford. Although a brilliant student, he failed his examinations, shocking his professors and contemporaries, and became a clerk in the patent office in London. After ten years as a civil servant, during which time he published articles on many classical authors, Housman became professor of Latin at University College, London (1892-1911) and at the University of Cambridge (1911-1936). Considered one of the foremost classical scholars of his time, he wrote extensively for classical journals and prepared editions of the works of the Latin poets Juvenal, Lucan, and Manilius.

Housman is best known, however, as the author of a few slim volumes of poetry remarkable for their simple diction, lyric beauty, and gentle, ironic pessimism. Set in the English countryside, the poems express the regrets and frustration of young men, especially soldiers. A favorite theme is fleeting youth, as in the famous poem “When I Was One and Twenty.” In technique the poems combine elements of the classical ode and the English ballad. Housman's first volume of poetry, A Shropshire Lad (1896), was slow in gaining recognition but became hugely popular during World War I (1914- 1918). It is now the work for which Housman is chiefly remembered. By the time his second book, Last Poems (1922), was published, however, the individuality and quality of his work were widely appreciated, and the new volume was an immediate success. More Poems appeared in 1936 and Collected Poems in 1940.

Laurence Housman

Laurence Housman (1865-1959), English author and illustrator, the brother of the poet A. E. Housman. Laurence was born in Bromsgrove, Worcestershire, and studied art in London. He wrote and often illustrated many kinds of books, ranging from fairy tales to biographies. He is best known for his plays, especially Victoria Regina (1934), banned because it dealt with living members of the royal family. His other dramas include Little Plays of St. Francis (1922-35), Palace Plays (1930-33), and Old Testament Plays (1951). Notable among his other works are the novel An Englishwoman's Love Letters (1900), his autobiography, The Unexpected Years (1936), and A.E.H. (1937).

Edmond Hoyle

Edmond Hoyle (1672-1769), British writer on whist and other games. He lived in London for a while, partially supporting himself by giving lessons in whist. He drew up for his pupils A Short Treatise on the Game of Whist, published in 1742, which systematized the rules of the game in a form followed until 1864. Hoyle also organized the rules of backgammon and chess. He wrote a book on games that passed through many editions and continued to be revised long after his death. Books of game rules that bear the name of Hoyle are still published.

W. H. Hudson

W. H. Hudson (1841-1922), English writer and naturalist, born in Quilmes, Argentina, of American parents. Hudson spent his early years on the Argentine Pampas as a naturalist specializing in ornithology. In 1874 he settled in England, and in 1900 became a British subject. His life was passed in poverty and obscurity until 1904, when his best-known work, the novel Green Mansions, was published. This romance of the South American wilderness, regarded as a modern classic, is especially notable for its vivid descriptions of nature, symbolic figure of Rima the bird girl, and sensitive, poetic style. Hudson also wrote The Purple Land that England Lost (1885), Argentine Ornithology (1889), British Birds (1895), Far Away and Long Ago (1918), and The Book of a Naturalist (1919).

Ted Hughes

Ted Hughes (1930-1998), British poet and author, who served as poet laureate of England from 1984 to 1998. He was perhaps best known for his tragic relationship with his first wife, American poet Sylvia Plath.

Edward James Hughes was born in Mytholmroyd, England, and educated at the University of Cambridge. While at Cambridge he met Plath. They married in 1956 and lived in both England and the United States, teaching and writing poetry. Hughes left his wife in 1963, and Plath committed suicide that same year. For the rest of his life, Hughes was heavily criticized by Plath scholars and fans, many of whom blamed him for her death.

Hughes's poetry is physical and sometimes savage in tone. Many of his works emphasize the subconscious. Hughes’s first significant collection was The Hawk in the Rain (1957), which established his style of rugged naturalism and animal imagery. His other works include Lupercal (1960), Wodwo (1967), Crow (1970), Selected Poems: 1957-1967 (1972), Season Songs (1976), and Moortown (1979). Hughes also wrote children's plays, poems, and stories, including the poems Under the North Star (1981) and What is the Truth? (1984). Winter Pollen: Occasional Prose (1995) is a collection of reviews, prefaces, and critical essays. Hughes refused to speak about Plath or publish his writing about her until 1998, when he released Birthday Letters. The book collects 88 poems written by Hughes over 25 years, almost all directed to Plath or focusing on their relationship. The collection was widely praised for its searing honesty.

Thomas Hughes

Thomas Hughes (1822-1896), English lawyer and author, best known for his novel Tom Brown's Schooldays (1857), the story of a boy's experiences at an English boarding school. Hughes was born in Uffington and educated at Rugby School, an independent English secondary boarding school, and then at Oriel College at the University of Oxford. After completing his studies at Oxford, during which time he married, he traveled to Scotland and became a follower of Christian Socialism. Hughes became a lawyer in 1848. In 1854, with his friend Charles Kingsley, a leader of the Christian Socialist movement, Hughes helped found the Working Men's College in London, serving as its principal from 1872 to 1883. He was a member of the English Parliament from 1865 to 1874, and he became a county court judge and settled in Chester, in northwest England, in 1882.

Hughes's book Tom Brown's Schooldays, a fictionalized account of Rugby School under the headmastership of Thomas Arnold, was an immediate popular success. Hughes's other works, including Tom Brown at Oxford (1861), had less success. In 1870 he traveled to the United States for the first time, and in 1875, with friends, he bought land in Tennessee to establish a model boy's rural community to be called Rugby. Hughes soon withdrew from the project, although the area became known as Rugby, Tennessee.

Leigh Hunt

Leigh Hunt (1784-1859), English poet, essayist, and literary critic, who collaborated with many of the leading poets of his time, as well as recognizing them in his own writing. Born in Southgate, Middlesex, he began to write verse and to contribute articles to newspapers soon after he left school. In 1808 he began editing a liberal periodical, the Examiner, owned by his brother. He continued his association with the journal as editor and contributor for 13 years. After leaving the Examiner, Hunt founded a journal, the Liberal, in Italy, collaborating with the English poets Lord Byron and Percy Bysshe Shelley. After 1825, Hunt spent his life in England as an established critic, writing numerous volumes of graceful critical essays that indicate his generous, discerning approach to the work of new poets and writers, typified by his early recognition of the poetic genius by his countrymen John Keats and Alfred, Lord Tennyson. His narrative poem “Story of Rimini” (1816) is regarded by some literary historians as a precursor of English romantic poetry, and his shorter narrative poem “Abou ben Adhem” is one of the most familiar and popular of English poems. Two volumes of his collected poetical works were published (1832, 1844), and he wrote a three-volume Autobiography (1850).

Aldous Huxley

Aldous Huxley (1894-1963), English novelist, essayist, critic, and poet, grandson of Thomas Huxley and brother of Julian Huxley. Aldous Leonard Huxley was born in Godalming, Surrey, and educated at Eton College and the University of Oxford. He worked on various periodicals and published four books of verse before the appearance of his first novel, Crome Yellow (1921). The novels Antic Hay (1923) and Point Counter Point (1928), both of which illustrate the nihilistic temper of the 1920s, and Brave New World (1932), an ironic vision of a future utopia, established Huxley's fame. During the 1920s he lived largely in Italy and France. He immigrated to the United States in 1937. Among his more than 45 books are the volumes of essays Jesting Pilate (1926), Ends and Means (1937), Tomorrow and Tomorrow and Tomorrow (1956), Brave New World Revisited (1958), and Literature and Science (1963). Other novels include Eyeless in Gaza (1936), After Many a Summer Dies the Swan (1939), Ape and Essence (1948), and Island (1962). Huxley also wrote on science, philosophy, and social criticism. Important nonfiction works include The Art of Seeing (1932), The Perennial Philosophy (1946), and The Devils of Loudon (1952). The Doors of Perception (1954) and its sequel Heaven and Hell (1956) deal with Huxley's experiences with hallucinogenic drugs.

Sir Julian Huxley

Sir Julian Huxley (1887-1975), British biologist and author, who achieved renown both as a scientist and for his ability to make scientific concepts clear to the public through his writings.

The grandson of the zoologist Thomas Huxley and brother of the writer Aldous Huxley, Julian Sorell Huxley was born in London and was educated at Balliol College, University of Oxford. As an educator, he was associated with a long list of scientific and academic institutions and societies. In 1947 and 1948 he served as the first director-general of the United Nations Educational, Scientific and Cultural Organization (UNESCO). Huxley was knighted in 1958.

Huxley was one of the most highly visible scientists of the mid-20th century, popular as a radio and television panelist and as a lecturer. Like his grandfather, he was particularly interested in concepts of evolution and growth, dealing with them in the light of the philosophic problems generated by contemporary scientific developments. In his Religion Without Revelation (1927; revised ed. 1957), he suggested that humans could find an outlet for their religious zeal in contemplation of their own destiny, rather than in theistic creeds. In Evolution: The Modern Synthesis (1942), Huxley made important connections between evolution and genetics. His other writings include Essays of a Biologist (1923), Touchstone for Ethics (1947), New Bottles for New Wine (1958), From an Antique Land (1966), The Courtship Habits of the Great Crested Grebe (1968), and Memories (1970).

Kazuo Ishiguro

Kazuo Ishiguro, born in 1954, British writer best known for his third novel, The Remains of the Day (1989), which won Britain's highest literary award, the Booker Prize, in 1989. Ishiguro's writing examines the human capacity for “handling”, exploring the choice to face some regrets and to repress or ignore others.

Born in Nagasaki, Japan, Ishiguro moved to England with his parents at the age of six. He was educated at the University of Kent and received a master's degree in creative writing at the University of East Anglia, a course established and taught by the British writer Malcolm Bradbury. After publishing a number of short stories and articles in magazines in 1980, Ishiguro's first novel, A Pale View of Hills, was published in 1982, winning the Winifred Holtby Prize. His next novel, An Artist of the Floating World (1986), won not only the Whitbread Fiction Prize but also the Whitbread Book of the Year award. It was with The Remains of the Day that Ishiguro achieved widespread recognition. The novel is the first-person narrative of an English butler looking back on his career; beneath the dutiful, restrained, pompous tone of his delivery, it becomes clear how much his life of service has cost him. The conclusion, by its very reservation, is frightening in its evocation of sorrow and loss. Rich in carefully researched historical detail, the book was adapted to film by Ruth Prawer Jhabvala in 1993 and starred Anthony Hopkins.

With its large and virtually plotless account, The Unconsoled (1995) could not be more different than its predecessor. In its nightmarish and surrealistic tone, it resembles the grotesque and disturbing literature of the Austrian (Czech) author Franz Kafka. Set in an unnamed Eastern European country, it concerns a visiting pianist scheduled to perform in a concert he seems doomed not to reach, while fragments of the lives and conversations of the townspeople swirl around him. In When We Were Orphans (2000), the central character, a detective in London, is troubled by flashbacks to his childhood in China. Henry James

Henry James (1843-1916), American expatriate writer, whose masterly fiction juxtaposed American innocence and European experience in a series of intense, psychologically complex works. James’s work is characterized by leisurely pacing and subtle delineation of character rather than by dramatic incidents or complicated plots. His major writings, highly sensitive examples of the objective psychological novel, deal with the world of leisure and sophistication he had grown to know intimately in Europe.

In his early novels and tales, James’s theme was the impact of European culture on Americans traveling or living abroad. For James, America and Europe each had both a positive and a negative side. The positive aspect of the American character was its vitality, reliability, and innocence. The negative side was a tendency to oversimplify life and to mistrust beauty, art, and sensuality. The European character, James felt, was positive in its appreciation of beautiful and pleasurable experience as well as in its sophisticated awareness of the complexities of human nature. Its negative side was its lack of moral standards and its expedience. For example, to get what they want—usually money—James’s European characters deceive their American friends, manipulating, betraying, and even destroying them.

The publication of Daisy Miller (1879), a novella about a naive American girl in conflict with the conventions of European society, brought James favorable critical attention. His novel The Portrait of a Lady (1881) established his reputation as a major literary figure. The Portrait of a Lady concerns a young American woman, Isabel Archer, who comes to England after her father dies. Archer is ardent, vibrant, hungry for experience, and committed to her personal freedom. She forms a friendship with an older woman, Madame Merle, who introduces her to Gilbert Osmond, the man Archer marries. Archer believes Osmond to be a man of impeccable taste with whom she can share an intense but liberated life. P. D. James

P. D. James, born in 1920, British writer, best known for her acclaimed detective fiction, which features complex, imaginative plots, and successful character development. See also Detective Story.

Phyllis Dorothy James was born in Oxford, England, and educated at Cambridge High School for Girls. Lacking the money for higher education, James went to work after secondary school, serving as an assistant stage manager at the Festival Theatre in Cambridge, England, and then as a Red Cross nurse during World War II (1939-1945). James married Ernest Conner Bantry White, a doctor, in 1941. Her husband served during World War II and returned from the war mentally incapacitated. From his return until his death in 1964, he was intermittently in mental institutions.

James’s novelistic understanding of medical matters, as well as her compassion for those suffering from physical and mental disabilities, is attributed in part to her experiences managing her husband’s health and in part to her subsequent career. In order to support their family, James worked full-time as principal administrative assistant for the North West Regional Hospital Board in London from 1949 to 1968 and then as principal administrative assistant for the British Department of Home Affairs in the Police Department and, later, the Criminal Department, both in London, from 1968 to 1979.

James began writing relatively late in life, publishing her first work, Cover Her Face, in 1962. This novel featured Inspector Adam Dalgliesh, her most popular and well-known character, who went on to solve a number of cases in the books A Mind to Murder (1963), Unnatural Causes (1967), Shroud for a Nightingale (1971), The Black Tower (1975), Death of an Expert Witness (1977), and Devices and Desires (1989).

Derek Jarman

Derek Jarman (1942-1994), avant-garde British film director and writer. After studying painting at the Slade School, London, Jarman began his career as a set and costume designer, making his first short films in between. As a director he came to be seen as one of Britain’s premier experimental filmmakers. He also continued to paint and exhibit throughout his life.

Much of Jarman’s early work was on Super-8 and 16-mm film, and he continued to use this medium in such films as The Last of England (1987), a feature-length silent film that depicts modern Britain as an urban wasteland. His first feature film was Sebastiane (1976), a homoerotic vision of the life of the martyred Christian saint. Caravaggio (1986) is probably his most accessible film. A stylized biography of the 16th-century painter Caravaggio, it highlights the eroticism of the painter’s work and the problem of the need for patronage—obtaining funding for his work was a constant problem for Jarman.

Jarman’s belief in a “personal” cinema is highlighted by the fact that many of his films were dedicated to a homoerotic vision of the male body. His work also includes highly experimental and irreverent films on modern culture: Jubilee (1978) is a celebration of London’s punk subculture, and during the 1980s Jarman made several films that were highly critical of Thatcherist ideals and the commercialization of art and film.

Diagnosed as HIV-positive in 1987, Jarman became an outspoken advocate for AIDS causes in addition to his ceaseless painting and directing. During his final years he made several films that dealt directly with his life with AIDS. His work Blue (1993) is his most unconventional. Although Jarman’s sight eventually deteriorated to the point of blindness, his artistic vision remained strong until his death. Blue contains 76 minutes of unaltering blue screen over which the audience hears music and voices, many of which describe Jarman’s illness and its effect on his body. Samuel Johnson

Samuel Johnson (1709-1784), English writer and lexicographer, a major figure in 18th- century literature as an arbiter of taste, renowned for the force and balance of his prose style.

Johnson, usually referred to as Dr. Johnson by his contemporaries and later generations, was born in Lichfield on September 18, 1709, the son of a bookseller. He attended the local school, but his real education was informal, conducted primarily among his father's books as he read and studied the classics, which influenced his style greatly.

In 1728 Johnson entered Pembroke College at the University of Oxford. A brilliant but eccentric young man, he was plagued by a variety of ailments from which he suffered the rest of his life. He left in poverty, without taking a degree and having suffered the first of two emotional breakdowns. During this time of despondency his reading of devotional literature led him to a profound religious faith.

After his father died in 1731, Johnson tried teaching and later organized a school in Lichfield. His educational ventures were not successful, however, although one of his students, David Garrick, later famous as an actor, became a lifelong friend. At the age of 26 Johnson married Elizabeth Jarvis Porter, a widow about 20 years his senior, who brought a measure of calm and self-confidence to his life.

In 1737 Johnson, having given up teaching, went to London to try the literary life. Thus began a long period of hack writing for the Gentleman's Magazine. Johnson's long, sonorous poem The Vanity of Human Wishes, based on the tenth satire of the Latin poet Juvenal, appeared in 1749; generally considered Johnson's finest poem, it marked the beginning of a period of great activity. He founded his own periodical, The Rambler, in which he published, between 1750 and 1752, a considerable number of eloquent, insightful essays on literature, criticism, and moral theory.

Ben Jonson

Ben Jonson (1572-1637), English dramatist and poet, whose classical learning, gift for satire, and brilliant style made him one of the great figures of English literature.

Jonson was born in Westminster, probably on June 11, 1572, educated at the Westminster School, and trained in his stepfather's trade of bricklaying. In 1592, after serving briefly with the English army in Flanders, he joined the London theatrical company of Philip Henslowe as an actor and apprentice playwright, revising plays already in the repertory.

Jonson's first original play, Every Man in His Humour, was performed in 1598 by the Lord Chamberlain's Company with William Shakespeare in the cast. Later that year, Jonson killed a man in a duel and narrowly escaped execution. His next play was Every Man Out of His Humour (1599). These two works were in the same vein. Jonson had invented a kind of topical comedy involving eccentric characters, each of whom represented a temperament, or humor, of humanity. During the next four years, Jonson also wrote a number of comedies, such as Cynthia's Revels (1600) and The Poetaster (1601), in which he satirized other writers, especially the English dramatists Thomas Dekker and John Marston. Dekker and Marston retaliated by attacking Jonson in their Satiromastix (1600). The writers patched their public feuding; in 1604 Jonson collaborated with Dekker on The King's Entertainment and with Marston and George Chapman on Eastward Ho in 1605. When Marston and Chapman were imprisoned for some of the views espoused in Eastward Ho, Jonson voluntarily joined them.

After 1603 Jonson began to write masques for the entertainment of the court of King James I, apparently fulfilling the role of poet laureate from 1616. The masques displayed his erudition, wit, and versatility and contained some of his best lyric poetry. These masques, including The Satyr (1603), Masque of Beauty (1608), and Masque of Queens (1609), were usually performed in elaborate Italianate settings designed by the noted English architect Inigo Jones.

James Joyce

James Joyce (1882-1941), Irish author, whose writings feature revolutionary innovations in prose techniques. He was one of the foremost literary figures of the 20th century. Joyce is best known for his epic novel Ulysses (1922), which uses stream of consciousness, a literary technique that attempts to portray the natural and sometimes irrational flow of thoughts and sensations in a person’s mind.

As an undergraduate Joyce published essays on literature. His first book, Chamber Music (1907), consists of 36 love poems that reflect the influence of the lyricists of England’s Elizabethan Age (mid- and late 1500s) and of the English lyric poets of the 1890s.

Joyce’s first prose work, Dubliners (1914), is a book of 15 short stories and sketches that revolve around the sad spirit of the ancient city of Dublin, and crucial episodes in the lives of its inhabitants. The last and most famous story of the collection, “The Dead,” centers on a schoolteacher and his wife, and their lost hopes and dreams.

After Dubliners, Joyce wrote A Portrait of the Artist as a Young Man (1916) and Ulysses (1922), both of which experiment with ways of representing an individual’s interior consciousness while at the same time describing his exterior life. A Portrait of the Artist as a Young Man follows the character Stephen Dedalus as he grows into manhood. Many people consider Stephen to be a semiautobiographical version of Joyce himself, an interpretation supported in part by Stephen’s decision at the end of the book to leave his home and country to become a writer.

Joyce attained international fame with the 1922 publication of Ulysses, which many people consider one of the greatest and most original books ever written. On a literal level, the book describes one day in the life of three people living in Dublin: Stephen Dedalus, an Irish Jewish man named Leopold Bloom, and his wife, Molly. On a symbolic level, Ulysses is loosely based on the content and ten-year time frame of the ancient Greek epic the Odyssey, by the Greek poet Homer. The character of Stephen corresponds with Telemachus, the son of Odysseus, searching for his wandering father; Leopold Bloom corresponds with Odysseus; and Molly corresponds with Odysseus’s wife, Penelope. The 18 chapters of Ulysses parallel episodes from the Odyssey, but there are crucial differences between the two books. For instance, most interpretations of the Odyssey credit Penelope with fidelity during her husband’s lengthy absence, while Molly Bloom is unfaithful to her husband.

As in Portrait, each chapter in Ulysses has a distinct style that reflects both the exterior and installments appeared, but a bookstore owner in Paris, Sylvia Beach, eventually published it in 1922.

Joyce’s other publications include two collections of verse, Pomes Penyeach (1927) and Collected Poems (1936). Stephen Hero, which was not published until 1944, was an early version of A Portrait of the Artist as a Young Man. A volume titled James Joyce’s Letters to Sylvia Beach, 1921-1940 was published in 1987. John Keats

John Keats (1795-1821), major English poet, despite his early death from tuberculosis at the age of 25. Keats’s poetry describes the beauty of the natural world and art as the vehicle for his poetic imagination. His skill with poetic imagery and sound reproduces this sensuous experience for his reader. Keats’s poetry evolves over his brief career from this love of nature and art into a deep compassion for humanity. He gave voice to the spirit of Romanticism in literature when he wrote, “I am certain of nothing but the holiness of the heart’s affections, and the truth of imagination.” Twentieth-century poet T. S. Eliot judged Keats's letters to be 'the most notable and the most important ever written by any English Poet,” for their acute reflections on poetry, poets, and the imagination.

In May 1816 Keats published his first poem, the sonnet 'O Solitude,' marking the beginning of his poetic career. In writing a sonnet, a 14-line poem with a strict rhyme scheme, Keats sought to take his place in the tradition established by great classical, European, and British epic poets. The speaker of this poem first expresses hope that, if he is to be alone, it will be in “Nature’s Observatory”; he then imagines the “highest bliss” to be writing poetry in nature rather than simply observing nature. In another sonnet published the same year, 'On First Looking into Chapman's Homer,' Keats compares reading translations of poetry to awe- inspiring experiences such as an astronomer discovering a new planet or explorers first seeing the Pacific Ocean. In “Sleep and Poetry,” a longer poem from 1816, Keats articulates the purpose of poetry as he sees it: “To soothe the cares, and lift the thoughts of man.” Within a year of his first publications Keats had abandoned medicine, turned exclusively to writing poetry, and entered the mainstream of contemporary English poets. By the end of 1816 he had met poet and journalist Leigh Hunt, editor of the literary magazine that published his poems. He had also met the leading romantic poet, Percy Bysshe Shelley.

Margery Kempe

Margery Kempe (circa 1373-c. 1440), English mystic and religious writer. She was born at Lynn, Norfolk, the daughter of its mayor, John Burnham. In 1393, she married a local official, John Kempe; they had 14 children. For six months after the birth of her first child, she suffered a mental disorder. She claimed to be cured after Christ spoke to her in a vision, and she grew increasingly austere and suspicious of all forms of pleasure.

In 1413 Kempe and her husband took a vow of chastity, and in 1414 she embarked on a series of pilgrimages to the Holy Land, Canterbury, Rome, and throughout Europe. Her religious enthusiasm often expressed itself in sudden fits of loud weeping in church. Descriptions of such incidents, along with details of her travels, mystical experiences, prayers, and meditations, are the substance of her autobiography, The Book of Margery Kempe, which she dictated to two clerks (circa 1432-c. 1436). The manuscript of this work, not discovered complete until 1934, is an important source of information about her time.

Charles Kingsley

Charles Kingsley (1819-1875), English novelist and clergyman, born in Dartmoor, Devonshire, and educated at King's College (later part of the University of London) and the University of Cambridge. In 1842 he became an Anglican priest. From 1860 to 1869 he taught modern history at Cambridge. Liberal in his views, Kingsley was a leader in Christian socialism and Chartism and opposed the strict orthodoxy of the Oxford movement in the Anglican church. Kingsley's personal and theological attacks on the prelate John Henry Newman evoked in 1864 Newman's famous Apologia.

Kingsley's novels Alton Locke (1850) and Yeast (1850) display his sympathy with the economically and politically oppressed classes of the England of his day. He is most widely known, however, for his romantic novels set in foreign lands or in earlier times, such as Hypatia (1853), Westward Ho! (1855), Two Years Ago (1857), and Hereward the Wake (1866). His tales for children include The Water-Babies (1863), a moralistic fairy tale.

Rudyard Kipling

Rudyard Kipling (1865-1936), English writer and Nobel laureate, who wrote novels, poems, and short stories, mostly set in India and Burma (now known as Myanmar) during the time of British rule.

Kipling was born December 30, 1865, in Bombay (now Mumbai), India, and at age six, was sent to be educated in England. From 1882 to 1889 he edited and wrote short stories for the Civil and Military Gazette of Lahore, India. He then published Departmental Ditties (1886), satirical verse dealing with civil and military barracks life in British colonial India, and a collection of his magazine stories called Plain Tales from the Hills (1887). Kipling's literary reputation was established by six stories of English life in India, published in India between 1888 and 1889, that revealed his profound identification with, and appreciation for, the land and people of India. Thereafter he traveled extensively in Asia and the United States, married Caroline Balestier, an American, in 1892, lived briefly in Vermont, and finally settled in England in 1903. He was a prolific writer; most of his work attained wide popularity. He received the 1907 Nobel Prize in literature, the first English author to be so honored. Kipling died January 18, 1936, in London.

Kipling is regarded as one of the greatest English short-story writers. As a poet he is remarkable for rhymed verse written in the slang used by the ordinary British soldier. His writings consistently project three ideas: intense patriotism, the duty of the English to lead lives of strenuous activity, and England's destiny to become a great empire. His insistent imperialism was an echo of the Victorian past of England.

Among Kipling's important short fictional works are Many Inventions (1893), The Jungle Book (1894), and The Second Jungle Book (1895), collections of animal stories, which many consider his finest writing; Just So Stories for Little Children (1902); and Puck of Pook's Hill (1906). The highly popular novels or long narratives include The Light That Failed (1891), about a blind artist; Captains Courageous (1897), a sea story; Stalky & Co. (1899), based on his boyhood experiences at the United Services College; and Kim (1901), a picaresque tale of Indian life that is generally regarded as his best long narrative. Arthur Koestler

Arthur Koestler (1905-1983), English novelist, journalist, and essayist, born in Budapest, Hungary, and educated at Vienna University. During the 1920s and 1930s he was a foreign correspondent for a number of European newspapers. He joined the Communist Party in 1931 but left it in disillusionment in 1937. During World War II (1939-1945) he served in the British army and afterward became a British subject.

His first novel, The Gladiators (1939), uses the theme of a revolution that failed. During the 1930s he was twice imprisoned, in Spain and France, and during the Spanish Civil War (1936-1939) he was condemned to death in Spain but later released. His period under sentence of death inspired Reflections on Hanging (1957). His best known work is Darkness at Noon (1941), a novel based on the Moscow purges and political trials in the 1930s. The book was translated into 30 languages and in 1951 became a successful play. Arrow in the Blue (1952) and The Invisible Writing (1954) are autobiographical works. In The Ghost in the Machine (1967) Koestler hypothesized that humanity's apparent urge for self-destruction may be explained on a physiological basis, especially in the pathology of the brain. The Call Girls (1973) is a tragicomic novel about human survival. A proponent of euthanasia and ill with leukemia and Parkinson disease, Koestler took his own life in 1983.

Hanif Kureishi

Hanif Kureishi, born in 1954, English dramatist, filmmaker, and novelist. Kureishi was born in London to an English mother and Pakistani father, and many of his works concern interracial relationships and racial tensions in contemporary British urban life. He started writing at the age of 12. After studying philosophy at the University of London, he turned to playwriting while working as a typist at Riverside Studios, a performance center in London. Kureishi’s first full-length play, Mother Country, was produced in 1980, and the following year he became writer-in-residence at London’s Royal Court Theatre. His other early plays include Outskirts (1981) and Birds of Passage (1983). The later play Sleep with Me (1999) looked at the fate of two white perpetrators of a savage racial attack in South London.

Kureishi won international attention with his first screenplay, for the motion picture My Beautiful Laundrette (1984) directed by Stephen Frears. It was followed by Sammy and Rosie Get Laid (1987), also directed by Frears, and London Kills Me (1991), which Kureishi directed. In these films Kureishi developed what became his characteristic themes: the difficulty of sustaining enduring relationships in the face of racial and cultural prejudice, the demoralizing effects of inner-city life, and the fleeting possibility of art, in one form or another, providing redemption for these ills.

All of these themes coalesce in Kureishi’s fiction, especially in his semiautobiographical novel The Buddha of Suburbia (1990). Kureishi’s later novels include The Black Album (1995), Intimacy (1999), and Gabriel’s Gift (2001). He has also written two volumes of short stories, Love in a Blue Time (1997) and Midnight All Day (1999). Kureishi turned his attention to issues of aging in the novel The Body (2004) and in the screenplays The Mother (2003) and Venus (2006).

Thomas Kyd

Thomas Kyd (1558-1594), English dramatist, born in London and educated at the Merchant Taylors' School, London. Kyd (or Kid) was one of the most important dramatists of the early Elizabethan period. His Spanish Tragedy (1589?) was one of the most popular plays of his day. His use of shocking and horrifying melodramatic situations was imitated by subsequent English dramatists, such as Shakespeare in his Titus Andronicus. Many experts believe that Shakespeare used a play (now lost) attributed to Kyd as a source for Hamlet; other plays sometimes attributed to Kyd are The Tragedy of Solyman and Perseda (1588?) and The First Part of Jeronimo (1605). Kyd was a close friend of Christopher Marlowe, with whom he was implicated in charges of heresy and atheism. Kyd was imprisoned and released shortly thereafter, but died in disgrace and poverty a year later.

Lake Poets

Lake Poets, term loosely applied to three English poets, Robert Southey, Samuel Taylor Coleridge, and William Wordsworth (and sometimes Thomas De Quincey), who lived in the Lake District of England. The works of these poets had little relationship to one another, although each exemplified romantic principles in poetry

Charles Lamb

Charles Lamb (pen name Elia, 1775-1834), English essayist, famed for his informal, rambling comments on commonplace life with touches of fantastic humor and pathos.

Lamb was born in London and educated at Christ's Hospital. One of his schoolmates was the poet Samuel Taylor Coleridge, with whom he formed a lifelong friendship. From 1792 until his retirement on pension in 1825, Lamb was a clerk in the accounting department of the East India House, London. In 1796 Lamb's sister Mary Ann Lamb, seized by temporary homicidal mania, killed their invalid mother. To prevent his sister from being committed to an insane asylum, Lamb had himself appointed her guardian and, despite his own nervous temperament, cared for her the rest of his life.

Lamb's literary career included the writing of poetry, plays, and literary criticism. The perennially popular Tales Founded on the Plays of Shakespeare, later entitled Tales from Shakespeare, was written in collaboration with his sister and appeared in 1807. Lamb's reputation as a critic was established by his Specimens of English Dramatic Poets who Lived about the Time of Shakespeare (1808). His most important literary work, however, consists of the essays he contributed to the London Magazine between 1820 and 1825; they were published in book form as Essays of Elia (1823) and Last Essays of Elia (1833). Lamb, a brilliant conversationalist, was one of a circle of important contemporary writers that included Coleridge, William Hazlitt, Leigh Hunt, Robert Southey, and William Wordsworth. Lamb's literary criticism was often perceptive and original. He had a particular gift for analyzing character and his sensitivity and perceptiveness made him a valuable critic and friend. Some of his best writings were in letters to his friends.

Walter Savage Landor

Walter Savage Landor (1775-1864), English poet and prose writer, born in Warwick. He lived abroad, chiefly in Italy, for many years. His first published poetic work was Gebir (1798), an epic in blank verse; one graceful example of his shorter lyrical poems is “Rose Aylmer” (1806). Landor's prose, characterized by a romantic drive as well as adherence to classical form, is best represented by Imaginary Conversations of Literary Men and Statesmen (5 volumes, 1824-53). This massive work contains approximately 150 dialogues on philosophical matters among historical persons from the Greeks to Landor's contemporaries. Landor also wrote poetry and prose in both Latin and Italian.

William Langland

William Langland (1330?-1400?), English poet, who was supposedly the author of the religious allegory The Vision of William Concerning Piers the Plowman (written 1360?-1400?), better known as Piers Plowman. His birthplace is uncertain, but was probably in Shropshire, and he was probably educated at the monastery of Great Malvern. Little is actually known of Langland; even the authorship of the various works usually attributed to him is in doubt. Three manuscript versions of Piers Plowman are in existence. Considered one of the greatest English poems of medieval times, this work bitterly satirizes corruption among the clergy and the secular authorities, and upholds the dignity and value of labor, personified by Piers Plowman. It was written in accented alliterative verse and takes the form of a dream vision—a favorite device of medieval poetry—describing a panorama of medieval society. Within the dream are woven recountings of a series of journeys in the search for truth—that is, the love of God. Some scholars maintain that Piers Plowman was the work of five poets; others claim it was written by one person, whose name may have been Langland.

Philip Larkin

Philip Larkin (1922-1985), noted British poet, novelist and critic, born in Coventry, England, and educated at the University of Oxford. He treats the modern English setting in a withdrawn and nonsentimental manner, but often with considerable feeling. His works include The North Ship (1945), a collection of verse in the style of W. B. Yeats; The Less Deceived (1955), which established Larkin as a fine anti-romantic poet of great wit, sophistication, and compassion; and High Windows (1974), in which many poems reflect Larkin's concerns about death. His novels, Jill (1946) and A Girl in Winter (1947), demonstrate Larkin's sensitivity and versatility. Larkin was also a jazz critic; his jazz essays are collected in All What Jazz: A Record Diary 1961-68 (1970). Required Writing (1982) is a volume of miscellaneous essays.

D. H. Lawrence

D. H. Lawrence (1885-1930), English novelist and poet, ranked among the most influential and controversial literary figures of the 20th century. In his more than 40 books he celebrated his vision of the natural, whole human being, opposing the artificiality of modern industrial society with its dehumanization of life and love. His novels were misunderstood, however, and attacked and even suppressed because of their frank treatment of sexual matters.

David Herbert Lawrence was born September 11, 1885, in Eastwood, Nottinghamshire, the son of a coal miner. His mother had been a schoolteacher. The disparity in social status between his parents was a recurrent motif in Lawrence's fiction. A graduate (1908) of University College, Nottingham, Lawrence published his first poems in the English Review in 1909 and his first novel, The White Peacock, in 1911. The most significant of his early fiction, Sons and Lovers (1913), which was in large part autobiographical, deals with life in a mining town.

In 1912 Lawrence eloped to the Continent with Frieda Weekley, his former professor's wife (sister of the German aviator Freiherr Manfred von Richthofen), marrying her two years later, after her divorce. Their intense, stormy life together supplied material for much of his writing. The Rainbow (1915) and Women in Love (1921)—perhaps his best novels—explore with outspoken candor the sexual and psychological relationships of men and women. In this period he also wrote two books of verse, Love Poems and Others (1913) and Look! We Have Come Through (1917).

Lawrence led a harried life in England during World War I because of his wife's German origin and his own opposition to the war. Tuberculosis added to his problems, and in 1919 he began a period of restless wandering to find a more healthful climate. His travels provided the locales of several books: the Abruzzi region of Italy for The Lost Girl (1920), Sardinia for Sea and Sardinia (1921), and Australia for Kangaroo (1923). During stays in Mexico and Taos, New Mexico (1923-25), he wrote The Plumed Serpent (1926), a novel reflecting Lawrence's fascination with Aztec civilization. His most original poetry, published in Birds, Beasts and Flowers (1923), flowed from his experience of nature in the southwestern United States and the Mediterranean region.

From 1926 on Lawrence lived chiefly in Italy, where he wrote and rewrote his most notorious novel, Lady Chatterley's Lover (1928), which deals with the sexually fulfilling love affair between a member of the nobility and her husband's gamekeeper. An expurgated version was published in 1932. Lawrence's third and most sexually explicit version of this work was not published until 1959 in the U.S. and 1960 in England; it had been suppressed in both countries until the courts upheld its publication.

Lawrence died March 2, 1930, in a sanatorium in Vence, France.

T. E. Lawrence

T. E. Lawrence, called Lawrence of Arabia (1888-1935), British adventurer, soldier, and author, who mobilized the Arab revolt against the Ottoman Empire during World War I (1914-1918).

Lawrence was born in Tremadoc, Wales, and educated at the University of Oxford. In 1910 he joined a British Museum archaeological expedition to the ancient Hittite city of Carchemish (now Karkamiş, Turkey), and he subsequently traveled in the Sinai, where he learned Arabic. He described his experiences in The Wilderness of Zin (1915).

At the outbreak of World War I in 1914, Lawrence joined the British Military Intelligence Service in Cairo. From there he was sent with a British relief column to the Arab prince Faisal (later King Faisal I of Iraq) in Al Ḩijāz (the Hejaz), now in Saudi Arabia. Lawrence then worked among the Arabs in revolt against Ottoman rule and, having been accepted as their military adviser, unified their armed forces and led them against the Ottoman Empire. In 1918 Lawrence and Faisal triumphantly entered Damascus before the arrival of the British army. Lawrence participated in the Paris Peace Conference in 1919, but was unsuccessful in his efforts to gain Arab independence. From 1921 to 1922 he was attached to the Middle East division of the British Colonial Office, but then resigned his post and enlisted in the Royal Air Force under the name of J. H. Ross in an attempt to escape the publicity he had been given. In 1923 he adopted the name T. E. Shaw and joined the tank corps. He rejoined the air force in 1925 and served as an enlisted man until 1935. Shortly after his discharge, he was killed in a motorcycle accident in Dorset.

Among Lawrence's books are Seven Pillars of Wisdom (1926), an account of his adventures among the Arabs and considered a literary masterpiece, and a condensed version of the same book, Revolt in the Desert (1927). Layamon

Layamon (flourished 12th century), English poet. That he was a priest at Ernley (now Areley Kings, Worcestershire) is known from the autobiographical account that prefaces his paraphrase of the Roman de Brut (Story of Brutus, 1205) by the Anglo- French chronicler Wace. Layamon's Brut, the earliest long poem known in English, is written in unrhymed, alliterative verse in an English vernacular. It incorporates the story of the semimythical king Arthur and the founding of the Round Table. Two manuscript copies are in the British Museum in London.

John Le Carré

John Le Carré, pseudonym of David John Moore Cornwell (1931- ), British writer of spy novels that realistically portray international espionage. He was born in Poole, England, and educated at the University of Bern in Switzerland and at the University of Oxford. He taught at Eton College from 1956 to 1958 and then worked for the British foreign service.

In the early 1960s Le Carré began writing works about the underworld surrounding the British secret service. His first novel, Call for the Dead (1961), introduced the character of George Smiley, a clever, aging British intelligence agent who also appears in several of Le Carré’s later novels. The critical and popular success of Le Carré's third novel, The Spy Who Came In From the Cold (1963), convinced him to work full time as a writer. Many successful thrillers followed, including the popular trilogy—Tinker, Tailor, Soldier, Spy (1974), The Honourable Schoolboy (1977), and Smiley's People (1980)—in which Smiley struggles against a secret service agent from the Union of Soviet Socialist Republics (USSR). Tinker, Tailor, Soldier, Spy; Smiley’s People; and the later novel A Perfect Spy (1986) were serialized for television. The Little Drummer Girl (1983), about conflict in the Middle East, and The Russia House (1989), inspired by a visit to the Moscow Book Fair, were both made into popular motion pictures. Le Carré's novels are regarded as perceptive depictions of the political climate during the Cold War, the period between the end of World War II (1939-1945) and the early 1990s during which the United States (and its allies) and the USSR (and its allies) regarded each other with mutual suspicion and hostility.

Three later novels—The Secret Pilgrim (1991), The Night Manager (1993), and Our Game (1995)—demonstrated Le Carré’s intention to continue writing about the characters and settings of the world of espionage even after the collapse of Communism and the end of the Cold War. But the following year, with The Tailor of Panama (1996), he switched locales and forms of corruption: The evildoers seek to overturn the Panama Canal treaty. The Constant Gardener (2001) centers on political conflict in Kenya as a middle- aged British diplomat searches for the killers of his murdered young wife, a human rights activist. He returned to the spy novel with Absolute Friends (2004), set in the world of international politics in the post-9/11 period. Le Carré’s 20th novel, The Mission Song (2006), drops a gullible translator into a scheme to plunder Africa.

Edward Lear

Edward Lear (1812-1888), English painter and humorist, born in London. The excellence of his early drawings of birds brought him to the attention of the London Zoological Society, for which he illustrated The Family of the Psittacidae (1832); these illustrations are considered among the most precise and vivid of all ornithological drawings. He traveled (1837-1847) throughout Europe and the Near East, recording his travels in the Illustrated Journals of a Landscape Painter.

Lear's acutely observant travel books have been overshadowed by the popularity of his light verse, such as the famous poem “The Owl and the Pussycat.” Considered among the masters of the limerick, to which he gave the modern formula and metrical cadence, he wrote A Book of Nonsense (1846), Nonsense Songs (1871), and Laughable Lyrics (1877).

Mike Leigh

Mike Leigh, born in 1943, British writer and director of plays and motion pictures, best known for his innovative rehearsal methods and his collaborations with his actors. Leigh’s films and plays, which portray the everyday lives of working-class and middle-class people, have received high praise for the complexity of their characters, their award-winning performances, and their depiction of emotional pain and political anger.

Leigh was born in Salford, England. He attended the Royal Academy of Dramatic Art (1960-1962) and various art schools before studying at the London Film School in the mid-1960s. Leigh began writing and directing plays in the late 1960s. His plays include Abigail’s Party (1977), Goose-Pimples (1981), Smelling a Rat (1989), and Greek Tragedy (1989). In 1971 he began making motion pictures, primarily for British television. Most of these films were well received but disappeared into obscurity after their initial broadcast and have only recently become available on videotape. Of them, Hard Labour (1973), Grown-Ups (1980), and Home Sweet Home (1982) are the best known.

In the mid-1980s Leigh began to concentrate on making films for theatrical release. High Hopes (1988), Life Is Sweet (1990), and Naked (1993) were well received abroad, although critics in England gave the films mixed reviews. Naked won the best director award at the Cannes Film Festival. Leigh’s next film, Secrets and Lies (1996), won the Palme d’Or (Golden Palm, for best picture) at Cannes, bringing him international acclaim. The film also earned five Academy Award nominations, including best picture, best director, and best original screenplay. The following year Leigh won praise for Career Girls (1997), which explores the relationship between two college friends who reunite after six years apart.

Leigh is noted as much for his technique as for his output. His creative process begins where others normally end—with rehearsals rather than with a script. Improvisations and in-depth interviews with the cast precede the writing of the script. Leigh gathers actors, gives them their characters, and tells them only what their characters would know about their situation. Through improvisational rehearsals, Leigh refines plot and characters until he is satisfied. He then writes the script, and the film is shot, or the play is performed, from the script. This intense work with actors has been rewarded, with the best actor award at Cannes going to David Thewlis in Naked and to Brenda Blethyn in Secrets and Lies. Because Leigh begins making his films without a script, his projects have been difficult to finance. Because of their tragicomic, often bleak, and always intense content, some people consider them difficult to watch.

Doris Lessing

Doris Lessing, born in 1919, British novelist and short-story writer, winner of the Nobel Prize for literature in 2007. Lessing’s early fiction criticizes colonial attitudes toward race, politics, and women’s role in society. Her later novels envision a world where science has led to disaster.

Lessing was born Doris May Tayler in Kermānshāh, Persia (now Iran), of British parents. She grew up in Southern Rhodesia, then a white-ruled British colony that became the independent African country of Zimbabwe in 1980. In 1949, after two marriages and the completion of her first novel, The Grass Is Singing (1950), Lessing moved to England and settled in London. Africa provides the setting for The Grass Is Singing; a volume of short stories published as African Stories (1964); and the first volumes of her five-novel sequence Children of Violence (1952-1969), a largely autobiographical account of the fictional central character Martha Quest.

Lessing’s central achievement, Children of Violence, describes the career of Martha Quest from rural central African beginnings to her later years in an England on its way to moral and technological disintegration. Through the five volumes personal and public concerns are skillfully interconnected, as the problems of a heroine seeking to become a “free woman” mirror the problems of those who are racially or politically oppressed. The five volumes in the series are Martha Quest (1952), A Proper Marriage (1954), A Ripple from the Storm (1958), Landlocked (1965), and The Four-Gated City (1969).

Lessing’s best-known novel, The Golden Notebook (1962), makes connections similar to those of Children of Violence while also questioning the value and authority of fiction itself. In this technically innovative novel, the narrative of the main plot—an account of the friendship of two women—is interrupted by excerpts from the notebooks of the main character. These excerpts record her experiences in Africa, her affiliations with the communist movement, her attempt at an autobiographical novel, and her daily activities. The Golden Notebook became a classic of feminist literature because of its experimental style and its explorations of self, creativity, and female identity. George Henry Lewes

George Henry Lewes (1817-1878), English critic, philosopher, and scientist, born in London, and educated in England, France, and Germany. As a literary critic, Lewes edited periodicals but is best known for his Life of Goethe (2 volumes, 1855), one of the finest biographies in English. He also wrote The Spanish Drama (1846) and Actors and Acting (1875), Biographical History of Philosophy (4 volumes, 1845-1846), and a number of works popularizing science, notably the unfinished treatise The Problems of Life and Mind (5 volumes, 1874-1879). He left his wife in 1854 and lived thereafter with the novelist George Eliot (Mary Ann Evans), whose work he influenced greatly

C. S. Lewis

C. S. Lewis (1898-1963), English critic, scholar, and novelist, best known for his books dealing factually or imaginatively with religion. Lewis was one of the most popular and influential modern defenders of the Christian faith. His series of “Narnia” books for children retells the Christian story in fairy-tale form.

Born in Belfast, Ireland, on November 29, 1898, Clive Staples Lewis was the son of a lawyer. He was educated privately and at the University of Oxford. During World War I (1914-1918) he served as a second lieutenant in the British army and was wounded, hospitalized, and finally demobilized in 1918, when he returned to Oxford to complete his degree. He received his bachelor’s degree in 1923 and his master’s degree a few years later. A fellow and tutor at Oxford from 1925 to 1954, he was subsequently professor of medieval and Renaissance English literature at the University of Cambridge.

Lewis’s career as a writer began with two volumes of verse published under the pseudonym of Clive Hamilton: Spirits in Bondage (1919) and Dymer (1926). His first major critical work was Allegory of Love: A Study in Medieval Tradition (1936), which examines the connections between medieval literature and courtly love and established his scholarly reputation. His other major works in literary history are A Preface to Paradise Lost (1942) and English Literature in the Sixteenth Century (a volume in the Oxford History of English Literature, 1955).

Lewis was better known to the general public, however, for books in which he examined and explained moral and religious problems. Reared as an Anglican, he became an atheist in his teens for personal and philosophical reasons and did not return to Christianity until his early 30s. His books and radio broadcasts appealed particularly to people who experienced religious uncertainties or who wished to see familiar beliefs stated in a fresh way. Works examining the beliefs of traditional Christianity, based in part on radio lectures he did for the British Broadcasting Corporation during World War II, included Beyond Personality (1940), Miracles (1947), and Mere Christianity (1952).

Lewis’s most popular book during his lifetime was The Screwtape Letters (1942), in which a senior devil named Screwtape sardonically instructs his apprentice nephew on the best way to tempt and destroy a young Christian convert. Lewis described his own conversion to Christianity in Surprised by Joy (1955). The Great Divorce (1945) is a modern prose equivalent of Dante’s Divine Comedy. Three of his novels—Out of the Silent Planet (1938), Perelandra (1943), and That Hideous Strength (1945)—form a memorable interplanetary trilogy dealing with the cosmic struggle between good and evil. A later novel, Till We Have Faces (1956), is a retelling of the story of Cupid and Psyche. Lewis died in Oxford on November 22, 1963.

One of Lewis’s most notable achievements was a popular series of children’s books known as the Chronicles of Narnia. The seven-volume series began in 1950 with The Lion, the Witch and the Wardrobe. In addition to this volume, the best books of the series are The Magician’s Nephew and The Last Battle. A film version of The Lion, the Witch and the Wardrobe was released in 2005; production of a second Narnia film, Prince Caspian, began soon afterward for release in 2008. Matthew Gregory Lewis

Matthew Gregory Lewis (1775-1818), English novelist, playwright, and poet, born in London, and educated at the University of Oxford. He was nicknamed “Monk” Lewis from his novel The Monk (1796), which is filled with gruesome and supernatural incidents and is a famous example of the Gothic romance. Lewis wrote the musical drama The Castle Spectre (1798), the collection of poetry Tales of Terror (1799), and the ballad Alonzo the Brave and the Fair Imogen, which influenced the poetry of Sir Walter Scott.

Wyndham Lewis

Wyndham Lewis (1882-1957), British painter, novelist, and critic. As an artist, Lewis was one of the most prominent experimentalists in Britain, as well as an excellent portraitist. As a writer, critics have compared him to Irish novelist James Joyce.

Lewis was born on a yacht off the North American coast, and after his parents' separation moved to England with his mother in 1893. He was educated at Rugby University and at the Slade School of Art in London from 1898 to 1901. He then lived in Paris and established a reputation among the avant-garde (1901-1909). In 1913 he helped to found the English abstract painting movement called vorticism, which strove toward abstraction coupled with dynamism. Vorticism had similarities with cubism, but was more directly descended from the Italian art movement known as futurism, which preceded vorticism by just a few years.

In 1914 and 1915 Lewis published two issues of BLAST—the Review of the Great English Vortex together with American writer Ezra Pound. During World War I (1914-1918) Lewis served as a gunner and a war artist.

Lewis's novels (Tarr, 1918; The Human Age trilogy, 1928-1955; The Apes of God, 1930) are savagely mocking. As a critic he attacked such prominent British writers as Virginia Woolf, James Joyce, and D. H. Lawrence, as well as American novelist William Faulkner. In one of the so-called imaginary letters that Lewis wrote to Ezra Pound, published in the Little Review (Chicago, May 1917), Lewis stated “It is more comfortable for me, in the long run, to be rude than polite.” Lewis lived in North America during World War II (1939-1945). Parts of an autobiography of Lewis were published as Blasting and Bombadiering (1937) and Rude Assignment (1950). In 1956 the Tate Gallery in London held a retrospective exhibition of his paintings—Wyndham Lewis and Vorticism—but by then Lewis had been blind for several years. Thomas Littleton

Thomas Littleton (1422-1481), English jurist and writer, born in Frankley Manor House, Worcestershire. He was a well-known counsel at law in 1445 and served as recorder of Coventry in 1450. He became a justice of common pleas in 1466, and in 1475 King Edward IV made him a knight of the Bath. He is the author of the famous work Tenures (1481?), a scientific classification of English land law, which formed an important part of legal education for three centuries. Written in legal French, Tenures was the earliest work on English law ever printed and was one of the first books to be printed in London.

Penelope Lively

Penelope Lively, born in 1933, British writer, whose many books for both adults and children are noted for their fascination with time and the way in which past and present relate to each other. Ghosts or other apparitions are often present in her stories. Lively's novel Moon Tiger (1987), the story of a woman's life told from four people's perspectives, won Britain's highest literary award, the Booker Prize, in 1987.

Born Penelope Margaret Low in Cairo, Egypt, she spent her childhood there. While in Egypt, she was educated at home, but after her parents divorced in 1945, Lively was sent to live with her paternal grandmother in London, England, where she attended a boarding school for girls. In 1951 she entered Saint Anne's College at the University of Oxford, graduating with a degree in modern history in 1956.

Many of Lively's works, both for children and adults, have won literary honors. Both The Road to Lichfield (1977), her first adult novel, and According to Mark (1984) were finalists for the Booker Prize. The Ghost of Thomas Kempe (1973) won the Carnegie Medal, Britain's highest award for children's literature, and A Stitch in Time took the Whitbread Award for 1976. Lively was made a Fellow of the Royal Society of Literature in 1985. Her other works for children include Astercote (1970), The House in Norham Gardens (1974), and The Revenge of Samuel Stokes (1981). Lively's other works for adults include the short-story collection Nothing Missing But the Samovar (1978); the novels Treasures of Time (1979), Passing On (1989), and Spiderweb (1999); and the nonfiction work Oleander, Jacaranda: A Childhood Perceived (1994). Thomas Lodge

Thomas Lodge (1558?-1625), English poet and dramatist, born in Lincolnshire, and educated at the University of Oxford. He was an excellent lyric poet, and his Scillaes Metamorphosis (1589) is the first of many minor epics concerned with love that were popular during the Elizabethan period. He is also one of the lesser-known Elizabethan English dramatists. His best- known work, Rosalynde, Euphues Golden Legacie (1590), written in the course of a freebooting (pirating) expedition to the Canary Islands in 1588, was the basis for Shakespeare's As You Like It.

Richard Lovelace Richard Lovelace (1618-1657?), English writer, one of the Cavalier poets. He was born in Woolwich and educated at the University of Oxford. In 1642 he was imprisoned for presenting to Parliament a petition favoring the restoration of the Anglican bishops who had been excluded from the Long Parliament. He was an ardent Royalist and served with the French army during the Civil War. On his return to England in 1648 he was again imprisoned but was freed in 1649. He spent his large inherited fortune for the Royalist cause and died in poverty and obscurity. Lovelace's verse is uneven in quality. Some poems are strenuously elaborate; the best are characterized by great elegance and grace. He is best known for his lyrics “To Althea, from Prison” and “To Lucasta, Going to the Wars,” both written while he was in prison. The first volume of his poems, Lucasta: Epodes, Odes, Sonnets, Songs, Etc., was published in 1649, and the second volume, Lucasta: Posthume Poems, was published in 1660 after his death.

Malcolm Lowry

Malcolm Lowry (1909-57), English novelist, short-story writer, and poet, born in Birkenhead. He is famous for his quasi-autobiographical novel Under the Volcano (1947). Written in the 1930s, the work recounts, through a grotesque and nightmarish vision, the physical and spiritual breakdown of an English consul in Mexico. Lowry lived for a time in Hollywood, California, working on film scripts, and the narrative technique of the novel is indebted to the art of film. In 1984 it was made into a motion picture directed by John Huston.

John Lydgate

John Lydgate (1370?-1450?), English poet, born in Suffolk and educated at the monastery of Bury Saint Edmunds, where he was ordained a priest in 1397. He may have been a friend and disciple of the poet Geoffrey Chaucer, and the two were equally popular in their time. Some of Lydgate's work shows Chaucer's influence. Although Lydgate was a prolific and influential poet of his day, much of his work is now considered verbose and overly moralistic. His major poems include Troy Book (1412-1420), The Siege of Thebes (1420-1422), and Fall of Princes (1430-1438).

John Lyly

John Lyly (1554?-1606), English dramatist, born in Kent, and educated at the University of Oxford. He was patronized by the English statesman William Cecil, 1st Baron Burghley, who gave him a post in his household. Lyly's most famous work, one of the best examples of 16th-century prose, is in two parts: Euphues, or the Anatomy of Wit (1578) and Euphues and His England (1580). The work is characterized by witty discourses on the subject of love and an affected, ornate style that was thenceforth known as “euphuism.” Among Lyly's plays are the prose comedy Alexander and Campaspe (1584), the allegorical play in prose Endymion, the Man in the Moone (1591), and the comedy The Woman in the Moone (1597).

Louis MacNeice

Louis MacNeice (1907-63), British poet and playwright, born in Belfast, Northern Ireland. He was a member in the 1930s—along with W. H. Auden, Stephen Spender, and C. Day Lewis—of a group of “new” English poets committed to informal and socially relevant verse. MacNeice's poetry volumes include Blind Fireworks (1929), Autumn Journal (1939), and The Burning Perch (1963). With Auden, he produced the prose work Letters from Iceland (1937). He also wrote radio verse plays, notably The Dark Tower (1947) with music by the English composer Benjamin Britten.

Sir Thomas Malory

Sir Thomas Malory (?-1471?), English translator and compiler, who is generally held to have been the author of the first great English prose epic, Le morte d'Arthur (The Death of Arthur). It is believed that he was an English knight of Warwickshire, that he saw military service in France, and that he spent many years in prison for political offenses and civic crimes. Le morte d'Arthur (1469-1470) was supposedly composed while the author was in prison. It was published in 1485 by the first English printer, William Caxton. It is a compilation and translation from old French sources (with additions from English sources and the compiler's own composition) of most of the tales about the semilegendary Arthur, king of the Britons, and his knights. One of the outstanding prose works of Middle English, it is divided into 21 books. The work is imbued with compassion for human faults and nostalgia for the bygone days of chivalry. The poetic prose is noted for its color, dignity, simplicity, and melodic quality.

Katherine Mansfield

Katherine Mansfield (1888-1923), pseudonym of KATHLEEN

MANSFIELD BEAUCHAMP, British short-story writer, born in Wellington, New Zealand. She is considered one of the great masters of the short-story form. At the age of 18 she settled in London to study music and to establish herself as a writer. In 1918 she married the English literary critic John Middleton Murry. She spent the last five years of her life seeking a cure for the tuberculosis that afflicted her.

Mansfield's stories are poetic, delicate, and ironic; they are characterized by a subtle sensitivity to mood and emotion, revealing the inner conflicts her characters face and resolve. Her style, much influenced by that of the Russian writer Anton Chekhov, in turn had great influence on later short-story writing. Collections of her short fiction include In a German Pension (1911); Bliss (1920), which contains stories evocative of her homeland; and The Garden Party (1922), her finest work. The Dove's Nest (1923) and Something Childish (1924), both edited by her husband, were published after Mansfield's death, as were collections of her poems, journals, and letters.

Walter Map

Walter Map or Walter Mapes (circa 1140-1210), English writer, born in Wales. A churchman of great learning, Map served also as a courtier to Henry II, king of England. The one authentic work known to have been written by him is De Nugis Curialium (The Triflings of Courtiers), a collection of anecdotes and court gossip (1181- 93).

Christopher Marlowe

Christopher Marlowe (1564-1593), English playwright and poet, considered the first great English dramatist and the most important Elizabethan dramatist before William Shakespeare, although his entire activity as a playwright lasted only six years. Earlier playwrights had concentrated on comedy; Marlowe worked on tragedy and advanced it considerably as a dramatic medium. His masterpiece is The Tragical History of Doctor Faustus.

Born in Canterbury on February 6, 1564, the son of a shoemaker, Marlowe was educated at the University of Cambridge. Going to London, he associated himself with the Admiral's Men, a company of actors for whom he wrote most of his plays. He was reputedly a secret agent for the government and numbered some prominent men, including Sir Walter Raleigh, among his friends, but he led an adventurous and dissolute life and held unorthodox religious views. In 1593 he was denounced as a heretic; before any action could be taken against him, in May of that year he was stabbed to death in a tavern brawl at Deptford over payment of a dinner bill.

By revealing the possibilities for strength and variety of expression in blank verse, Marlowe helped to establish the verse form as the predominant form in English drama. He wrote four principal plays: the heroic dramatic epic Tamburlaine the Great, Part I (1587), about the 14th-century Mongol conqueror; The Tragical History of Doctor Faustus (1588?), one of the earliest dramatizations of the Faust legend; the tragedy The Jew of Malta (1589?); and Edward II (1592?), which was one of the earliest successful English historical dramas and a model for Shakespeare's Richard II and Richard III. In each of these dramas one forceful protagonist with a single overriding passion dominates. Marlowe was also the author of two lesser plays: Tragedy of Dido, Queen of Carthage, completed by the English dramatist Thomas Nashe (1594); and Massacre at Paris (1600). Some authorities believe Marlowe also wrote parts of several of Shakespeare's plays. Each of Marlowe's important plays has as a central character a passionate man doomed to destruction by an inordinate desire for power. The plays are further characterized by beautiful, sonorous language and emotional vitality, which is, however, at times unrestrained to the point of bombast.

As a poet Marlowe is known for “The Passionate Shepherd” (1599), which contains the lyric “Come Live with Me and Be My Love.” Marlowe's mythological love poem, Hero and Leander, was unfinished at his death; it was completed by George Chapman and published in 1598. Marlowe also translated works of the ancient Latin poets Lucan and Ovid. Frederick Marryat

Frederick Marryat, known as Captain Marryat (1792-1848), English novelist and seaman, born in London. He joined the British navy in 1806 and retired as a captain in 1830. He then began to write about adventures at sea. His books include Frank Mildmay (1829), Peter Simple (1834), Mr. Midshipman Easy (1836), Snarleyyow (1837), and Diary in America (1839).

John Marston

John Marston (1576-1634), English dramatist, born in Coventry, and educated at the University of Oxford. His first works, under the pseudonym of W. Kinsayder, were the erotic poem The Metamorphosis of Pigmalion's Image and the collection of 12 bitter satires on the vice of the times, The Scourge of Villanie; both books were published in 1598. Among his other works are the melodrama Antonio's Revenge (1602) and the comedies Dutch Courtezan (1605) and What You Will (1607). Marston's exaggerated situations and bombastic diction were satirized by the playwright Ben Jonson; the literary quarrel was soon resolved and Marston dedicated his comedy The Malcontent (1604) to Jonson. In the comedy Eastward Ho (1605) Marston collaborated with Jonson and George Chapman. About 1609 he became an Anglican clergyman and from 1616 to 1631 was rector of Christchurch, Hampshire.

Harriet Martineau

Harriet Martineau (1802-1876), English writer, whose writings, characterized by advanced views on social, economic, and religious questions, caused considerable controversy in her time. Born in Norwich and privately educated, she first gained public attention with a number of books on economics, including Illustrations of Political Economy (1832-1834), Poor Laws and Paupers (1833), and Illustrations of Taxation (1834). After 1832 she was a literary celebrity, and her friends included the economist Thomas Malthus and the writers George Eliot and Thomas Carlyle. A visit (1834-1836) to the United States made her a fervent abolitionist; British interest in this subject was first aroused by an article of hers in the Westminster Review. Her writings include Society in America (1837), Eastern Life, Present and Past (1848), Letters on the Laws of Man's Nature and Development (1851), and a condensed translation (1853) of Philosophie positive by the French philosopher Auguste Comte. She also wrote novels, tales for children, a history of England, and an autobiography.

Andrew Marvell

Andrew Marvell (1621-1678), English poet and satirist, one of the metaphysical poets. He was born in Winestead, Yorkshire, and educated at the University of Cambridge. While tutor to the daughter of Lord Thomas Fairfax, he wrote the well-known lyric works “The Garden,””To His Coy Mistress,””The Definition of Love,” and “Bermudas.” Marvell's works often weigh conflicting values, such as introspection versus action, or nature versus society. As assistant to John Milton (who was serving as Latin secretary for the Commonwealth) from 1657 to 1659, he wrote many poems in praise of the Lord Protector of England, Oliver Cromwell, notably “Horatian Ode upon Cromwell's Return from Ireland,” considered by some to be one of the great political poems. From 1659 until his death, Marvell served in Parliament; his letters to constituents reveal much about his times.

Marvell's prose satire, little read today, was once considered wittier than his verse. His bitter verses against the corruption of the monarchy include “Last Instructions to a Painter” (1667), “Britannia and Raleigh,” and “Poem on the Statue in the Stocks Market” (1672). In his own day, Marvell was virtually unknown as a lyric poet but renowned as a satirist and patriot. His reputation has grown as critics have discovered Marvell's intellectually rigorous and finely balanced lyric verse.

Philip Massinger

Philip Massinger (1583-1640), English playwright, born in Salisbury, and educated at the University of Oxford. He went to London in 1606 and collaborated successfully with the playwrights Nathaniel Field, Cyril Tourneur, Thomas Dekker, and John Fletcher (see Beaumont and Fletcher); with Fletcher he wrote regularly for the troupe The King's Players. In his works Massinger introduced many of his democratic ideas and often addressed political issues of his time. He also frequently caricatured such well-known people as the Duke of Buckingham. His plays, which include both comedy and tragedy, show skilled plot construction and expressiveness. He was the sole author of 15 plays, including The Duke of Milan (1623); The Emperor of the East (1631); A New Way to Pay Old Debts (1632), which was a mainstay of the late 18th- and 19th-century English stage repertoire, and is still revived, and The Unnatural Combat (1639). Massinger was prolific and successful, having written 40 to 55 plays (only half of which still exist).

Somerset Maugham

Somerset Maugham (1874-1965), English author, whose novels and short stories are characterized by great narrative facility, simplicity of style, and a disillusioned and ironic point of view. William Somerset Maugham was born in Paris and studied medicine at the University of Heidelberg and at Saint Thomas's Hospital, London. His partially autobiographical novel Of Human Bondage (1915) is generally acknowledged as his masterpiece and is one of the best realistic English novels of the early 20th century. The Moon and Sixpence (1919) is a story of the conflict between the artist and conventional society, based on the life of the French painter Paul Gauguin; other novels are The Painted Veil (1925), Cakes and Ale (1930), Christmas Holiday (1939), The Hour Before the Dawn (1942), The Razor's Edge (1944), and Cataline: A Romance (1948). Among the collections of his short stories are The Trembling of a Leaf (1921), which includes “Miss Thompson,” later dramatized as Rain; Ashenden: or The British Agent (1928); First Person Singular (1931); Ah King (1933); and Quartet (1948). He also wrote satiric comedies— The Circle (1921) and Our Betters (1923)—the melodrama East of Suez (1922), essays, and two autobiographies.

George Meredith

George Meredith (1828-1909), English novelist and poet, whose works are highly cerebral, containing character studies of great psychological insight. His works display a sophisticated comic sense and reflect his concern for social problems.

Meredith was born February 12, 1828, in Portsmouth. He was educated at Portsmouth and at the Moravian school in Neuwied, Germany. He began his career as a journalist. His first book of poetry (1851) received the praise of Alfred, Lord Tennyson, but his first major novel, The Ordeal of Richard Feverel (1859), was banned as immoral. His sonnet sequence Modern Love is generally considered his best poetic work. Emilia in England (afterward called Sandra Belloni) was published in 1864 and Rhoda Fleming in 1865.

When war between Austria and Italy broke out in 1866, Meredith went to Italy as a war correspondent. He expressed his sympathy with the cause of Italian independence in his next book, Vittoria (1867), a sequel to Emilia in England. In 1871 he published The Adventures of Harry Richmond, a romantic novel. Beauchamp's Career (1876), largely concerned English politics, and The Egoist (1879) made a pitiless analysis of innate selfishness. The Tragic Comedians, a novel, appeared in 1880 and, in 1883, Poems and Lyrics of the Joy of Earth.

With the publication of Diana of the Crossways (1885) Meredith achieved critical acclaim in Britain and the U.S. In 1905 he received the Order of Merit. Among his other works are the novels Evan Harrington (1860), One of Our Conquerors (1891), Lord Ormont and His Aminta (1894), and The Amazing Marriage (1895) and the volumes of verse A Reading of Earth (1888), A Reading of Life (1901), and Last Poems (1909).

Meredith died at his home near Box Hill, Surrey, on May 18, 1909.

Thomas Middleton

Thomas Middleton (1580?-1627), English dramatist, probably born in London, and educated at the University of Oxford. Middleton began writing for the stage in the early 1600s. The plays that exist today were for the most part written in collaboration with Thomas Dekker, Michael Drayton, John Webster, and William Rowley. In 1604 Middleton contributed to Dekker's The Honest Whore and in 1610 worked with him on The Roaring Girle. Middleton's popular A Trick to Catch the Old One (1608) is a cynical comedy about middle-class life in London. His two most powerful plays, The Changeling (1621), written with Rowley, and Women Beware Women, were tragedies about the corruption of character. These two plays have been revived recently, strengthening critical interest in Middleton's work. T.S. Eliot applauded Middleton's political and tragic dramas in his essay on the playwright in 1927. A Game at Chesse (1624) was closed after nine performances because of its anti-Spanish content. Middleton was city chronologer of London (1620-1625?).

A. A. Milne

A. A. Milne (1882-1956), English author of a series of children's books that have become classics. Alan Alexander Milne, who was born in London, was the author of several whimsical plays popular in the 1920s, including Mr. Pim Passes By (1919) and The Dover Road (1920), as well as a few novels of contemporary life and one detective story, The Red House Mystery (1922). He is best known, however, for the juvenile verses and stories he wrote for his son, Christopher Robin. These delightful books include When We Were Very Young (1924), Winnie-the-Pooh (1926), Now We Are Six (1927), and The House at Pooh Corner (1928). Not only Christopher Robin himself, with his stuffed bear Winnie-the-Pooh and their constant companion Piglet, but also Kanga and Roo, Eeyore the donkey, the kittenish Tigger, Rabbit, and Owl—all the fanciful characters created by Milne—are beloved by both children and adults.

John Milton

John Milton (1608-1674), English poet, whose rich, dense verse was a powerful influence on succeeding English poets, and whose prose was devoted to the defense of civil and religious liberty. Milton is often considered the greatest English poet after Shakespeare. His masterpiece, Paradise Lost, is considered unsurpassed among English epic poems. It is a powerfully imaginative and dramatic work, based in part on the biblical story of the temptation and fall of Adam and Eve in the Garden of Eden.

John Milton’s work is marked by cosmic themes and lofty religious idealism; it reveals an astonishing breadth of learning and command of the Greek, Latin, and Hebrew classics. His blank verse is of remarkable variety and richness, so skillfully modulated and flexible that it has been compared to organ tones.

Milton’s career as a writer may be divided into three periods. The first, from 1625 to 1640, was the period of such early works as the poems written while he was still at Cambridge, the ode “On the Morning of Christ’s Nativity” (1629), the sonnet “On Shakespeare” (1630), “L’Allegro” and “Il Penseroso” (both probably 1631), “On Time” (1632?), “At a Solemn Musick” (1632- 1633?), the masques Arcades (1632-1634?) and Comus (1634), and the elegy Lycidas (1637). “L’Allegro” and “Il Penseroso” are companion poems that contrast the temperaments of the cheerful, active person and the melancholy, reflective person. Comus is a masque, or dramatic entertainment, that deals with the magical powers by which chastity is enabled to withstand temptation. Lycidas is a pastoral elegy written in memory of Milton’s friend Edward King, who died in 1637.

Susanna Moodie

Susanna Moodie (1803-1885), British-born Canadian author and pioneer, best known for her literary account of her settlement experience, Roughing It in the Bush (1852).

She was born Susanna Strickland in Bungay, Suffolk, England, but spent most of her childhood near Southwold, Suffolk, where she was educated at home. Following her father’s death in 1818, Strickland, along with four of her sisters, began to write for publication to help with the family’s financial difficulties. In addition to contributing poetry and prose to annuals and periodicals, she wrote a number of children’s books, coauthored Patriotic Songs (1830) with her sister Agnes, and issued Enthusiasm, and Other Poems (1831). She also transcribed two slave narratives, The History of Mary Prince, a West Indian Slave, Related by Herself (1831) and Negro Slavery Described by a Negro (1831).

In 1831 she married John W. D. Moodie. The next year, in a bid to improve their economic prospects, they set sail for Upper Canada (now Ontario). Moodie’s sister, Catharine Parr Traill, also a writer, immigrated to Upper Canada the same year. Upon their arrival, the Moodies settled on a farm near Cobourg, on Lake Ontario. In 1834 they sold the farm and took up land in the backwoods of Douro township. The family moved to the more settled area of Belleville in 1840 when John Moodie became sheriff of Hastings County.

After moving to Upper Canada, Moodie sought outlets for her writing in North America. The Literary Garland, a journal published in Montréal, proved a major vehicle for her writing through the 1840s and an important source of income. She and her husband also edited and wrote for Victoria Magazine, a periodical aimed at the Canadian working class, from 1847 to 1848.

Some of the Canadian sketches she wrote for the Literary Garland were reworked and collected in Roughing It in the Bush, Moodie’s most enduring work. In that book Moodie blurs the boundary between autobiography and fiction, making her own authorial personality central to her descriptions of local characters and customs. Her book is a cautionary tale that warns against the hardships of Canadian settlement, but it also reveals Moodie’s fascination with her pioneer experience. She followed that work with Life in the Clearings Versus the Bush (1853), a volume of sketches that takes up her story from her settlement in Belleville. In the novel Flora Lyndsay (1854), she turned the events of her arrival in Canada into fiction. In the 1850s she also published several more sensational and romantic novels that were set outside of Canada. After her husband’s death in 1869, Moodie joined her son Robert’s household, living with him first in Seaforth, Ontario, and then Toronto.

Two collections of her letters, Susanna Moodie: Letters of a Lifetime (1985) and Letters of Love and Duty (1993), capture a more private Moodie. A number of Canada’s contemporary writers, including Margaret Atwood, Carol Shields, and Timothy Findley, have offered their own distinct interpretations of this Canadian pioneer by having her figure in their literary works. Hannah More

Hannah More (1745-1833), English writer and philanthropist, born in Stapleton, near Bristol. She wrote a pastoral drama, The Search After Happiness, at the age of 18. More became part of a London circle of eminent literary figures that included the actor David Garrick. He produced her two plays Percy (1777) and The Fatal Falsehood (1779). After Garrick's death in 1779 More's already strong religious and moral interests deepened. She wrote Thoughts on the Importance of Manners of the Great to General Society (1788) and Village Politics (1792). More also wrote moral tracts and established schools for the poor.

John Morley

John Morley (1838-1923), British statesman and author, born in Blackburn, England. Morley began his career as a journalist in London in 1860, and in 1867 he was appointed editor of the Fortnightly Review. An ardent radical and idealist, he was receptive to the ideas of liberalism, and during the 15 years he was its editor, the review was an organ of liberal opinion. Morley was elected to Parliament in 1883, and in 1886 the Liberal Party leader and prime minister William Ewart Gladstone appointed him chief secretary of Ireland. He held this position again from 1892 to 1895, when the Liberal government was defeated. Before returning to public life, Morley completed a biography of the English statesman Oliver Cromwell in 1899 and wrote the Life of Gladstone (1903). As secretary of state for India (1905-1910), he sponsored the Morley-Minto reforms (1909) that allowed some political role for Indians. In 1908 he was made Viscount Morley of Blackburn. Two years later he resigned his cabinet post but remained in the government as lord privy seal. When Great Britain entered World War I in 1914, Morley, protesting intervention, resigned from public life. His writings include On Compromise (1874), Notes on Politics and History (1913), and Recollections (1917).

John Mortimer

John Mortimer, born in 1923, English lawyer, dramatist, and novelist, best known as the creator of the fictional character Horace Rumpole, a grumpy criminal lawyer. Rumpole was featured in a popular series of television programs, Rumpole of the Bailey.

John Clifford Mortimer was born in London and attended Harrow School. In 1940 he entered Brasenose College at the University of Oxford, where he studied law. He began practicing law in 1948, arguing for the defense in several landmark freedom of speech cases. The most notable was an obscenity trial in 1971 against the editors of an underground magazine called Oz. In this and other cases, Mortimer was an advocate against censorship and for civil liberties. Some of the people he defended later showed up in the Rumpole series.

Writing was at first a sideline for Mortimer. His early works include the novel Charade (1947) and the stage plays Dock Brief (1958) and The Wrong Side of the Park (1960). He followed them with English translations of farces by French playwright Georges Feydeau and an autobiographical play, A Voyage Around My Father (1970), about his relationship with his blind father who was a divorce lawyer. A Voyage Around My Father was adapted for television in 1982 and starred Alan Bates and Laurence Olivier.

Cigar-smoking, wine-loving defense counsel Horace Rumpole made his first appearance in a 1975 television play Mortimer wrote for the British Broadcasting Corporation (BBC). Rumpole of the Bailey, played by Australian actor Leo McKern, went on to become a regular series on Britain’s independent television channel (ITV) from 1978 to 1992. Mortimer also published numerous short stories featuring the Rumpole character who must placate his wife, Hilda, to whom he refers as “she who must be obeyed.”

Mortimer also wrote three popular novels that follow the resistible rise and fall of fictional conservative politician Leslie Titmuss. This trilogy on British politics, known as the Rapstone Chronicles, consists of Paradise Postponed (1985), Titmuss Regained (1990), and The Sound of Trumpets (1998). The first two books in the trilogy were turned into television series. Mortimer’s other novels include Summer’s Lease (1988) and Dunster (1992).

Mortimer has written three volumes of autobiography: Clinging to the Wreckage (1982), Murderers and Other Friends (1994), and Summer of a Dormouse (2000). He wrote the highly successful television adaptation of Brideshead Revisited (1981), from the novel by English author Evelyn Waugh, and the screenplay for the motion picture Tea with Mussolini (1999), directed by Franco Zeffirelli. Mortimer’s recent plays include Naked Justice (2001) and Full House (2002). Mortimer was knighted in 1998.

Edwin Muir

Edwin Muir (1887-1959), Scottish poet, translator, and critic. From 1921 to 1925 Muir lived in Europe and, with his wife, Willa Anderson Muir, translated contemporary German literature. Their collaborations introduced the work of the Czech writer Franz Kafka to English-speaking readers. Muir's poetry, from First Poems (1925) to his last verse in Collected Poems (1960), has great strength and a tone of quiet thoughtfulness often mixed with complex mythic imagery. Scottish Journey (1935) is a report on conditions in modern Scotland, its pessimism relieved by compassionate concern for the land and its people. Muir's work was influenced by the discoveries of Austrian psychiatrist Sigmund Freud and Swiss psychologist Carl Jung; Muir underwent psychoanalysis which affected his work. His autobiography of 1954 addresses the significance of his dreams, and his other works emphasize myth, dreams, and childhood memories.

Iris Murdoch

Iris Murdoch (1919-1999), British writer and philosopher, born in Dublin, Ireland, and educated at the University of Oxford. In 1948 she was appointed a fellow and tutor in philosophy at Oxford. Murdoch’s first published book, Sartre, Romantic Rationalist (1953), is a study of French existentialism. Her other nonfiction works include Metaphysics As a Guide to Morals: Philosophical Reflections (1992).

Murdoch began a career as a successful writer of fiction with Under the Net (1954). A decade later, with Murdoch’s adaptation of her own novel A Severed Head (1961; play, written with British writer J. B. Priestley, 1963), she also became a dramatist. Her style is complex, combining naturalism and the macabre, the familiar and the magical. Regarded as a master stylist, she presents in her fiction a cast of characters who struggle with the discovery that they are not truly free but are fettered by themselves, society, and natural forces. Murdoch’s many novels include The Italian Girl (1964; play, written with James Saunders, 1967); A Fairly Honourable Defeat (1970); An Accidental Man (1972); The Sacred and Profane Love Machine (1974); The Sea, the Sea (1978), which won the Booker Prize; The Good Apprentice (1986); The Green Knight (1994), a story incorporating many elements of and references to the 14th-century anonymous romance poem Sir Gawain and the Green Knight; and Jackson’s Dilemma (1996), a story set in 20th-century Britain but loosely based on the play Much Ado about Nothing by English playwright William Shakespeare. Murdoch developed Alzheimer's disease several years before her death. Her husband, literary critic John Bayley, wrote touchingly about his wife's career and her struggle with the disease in Elegy for Iris (1999).

Thomas Nashe

Thomas Nashe (1567-1601), English novelist, satirist, and dramatist, born in Lowestoft, and educated at the University of Cambridge. He was considered a great wit and brilliant personality of his time.

Nashe was employed by the Church of England to answer the attacks made on it by a Puritan writer, or group of writers, known as Martin Marprelate (see Marprelate Controversy). Under the pen name of Pasquil, Nashe responded with satiric pamphlets, which may have included An Almond for a Parrat (1590). He also took part in a violent literary controversy against the poet Gabriel Harvey and his brother Richard Harvey, who had been extremely critical of the writings of Nashe and his friend Robert Greene. This feud came to an end by an order of the Church in 1599. Nashe's prose satire Pierce Penilesse, His Supplication to the Divell (1592) is in part an attack on the Harveys, and also on Nashe's opponents in the Marprelate controversy; it also protests against the public's neglect of worthy writers. Important among Nashe's other writings are the pamphlet Christs Teares over Jerusalem (1593), in which he satirizes the vices of the London of his time, and the satiric masque Summers Last Will and Testament (1600).

Nashe's best-known work, the novel The Unfortunate Traveller, or The Life of Jack Wilton (1594), greatly influenced English literature. It is the earliest example of picaresque fiction in English, predating the realistic adventure novels of Daniel Defoe and Tobias Smollett.

E. Nesbit

E. Nesbit (1858-1924), British writer, who is best known for children's books such as The Story of the Treasure Seekers (1899) and The Railway Children (1906), both of which are stories about sets of brothers and sisters and their adventures. Nesbit was born in London and educated at various schools in England, France, and Germany. Nesbit's family finally settled in England when she was 13 years of age. By the time she was 15 years of age, magazines had begun to accept her poetry for publication.

Nesbit and fellow British writers Hubert Bland (her first husband) and George Bernard Shaw were founding members of the socialist, educational Fabian Society. Nesbit took up writing as a career in order to support an unconventional household, which included her husband's illegitimate children, but despite her prolific publishing, the family's finances were often unstable. Nesbit's literary circle also included British writers H. G. Wells and Laurence Housman, who provided Nesbit with the plot for her children's book The Phoenix and the Carpet (1904). Under the pen names Fabian Bland and E. Bland, Nesbit published poetry and suspense/horror novels for adults, such as The House with No Address (1909). Although she mainly thought of herself as a poet, her poetry and novels have been largely forgotten, as her strength was writing for children.

Many of Nesbit's books for children, which are classics, describe a fantastic dimension, where the protagonists, for example, travel through time, as in The House of Arden (1908), or conduct various experiments with magic talismans, as in Five Children and It (1902) and The Enchanted Castle (1907). Nesbit's interest in socialism is reflected in some of her children's fiction. In The Story of the Amulet (1906), for example, versions of past and future societies are juxtaposed and compared with that of the time the novel was written, implicitly providing critical comment on the shortcomings of the present society. The most memorable feature of Nesbit's writing for children, however, is the humor she achieves as a result of adopting a child's perspective toward adult behavior and the adult world, a technique that is especially apparent in The Story of the Treasure Seekers and its sequels.

John Newbery

John Newbery (1713-1767), English publisher, bookseller, and writer, who greatly influenced the development of children's literature in Britain and the United States. Born in Waltham St. Lawrence, Berkshire, to a farming family, Newbery attended a village school but was mostly self-educated. In 1729 he moved to Reading and became an apprentice to William Carnan, the proprietor of a printing and medicine business. After Carnan died in 1737, Newbery inherited part of the business and soon embarked on a career in the book trade. In 1745 he moved his family and business to St. Paul's Churchyard in London, where he operated his bookshop, called The Bible and Sun. Newbery had a varied career that included printing, publishing books and religious periodicals, founding newspapers and magazines, and writing children's books. He commissioned books by Oliver Goldsmith, Samuel Johnson, and other important writers of his time.

In 1744 Newbery wrote and published his first book for children, A Little Pretty Pocket- Book. The book was the first in what became a popular series of small, finely crafted books intended to instruct and entertain young people. Newbery published numerous other children's books that he wrote, in addition to publishing books written by others. In 1751 he started the first periodical for children, The Lilliputian Magazine. Books written by Newbery include Fables in Verse (1758), under the pseudonym Abraham Aesop, and The Newtonian System of Philosophy (1761), under the pseudonym Tom Telescope. Newbery also is believed to have coauthored Mother Goose's Melody (1760?) and to have written The History of Little Goody Two-Shoes (1765), a classic children's book in which success is equated with education.

American publisher Frederic G. Melcher proposed the creation of an award, to be named after Newbery, honoring the book deemed the most distinguished work of children's literature published each year. In 1921 the American Library Association approved the proposal, and the Newbery Medal has been presented annually since 1922.

Philip J. Noel-Baker

Philip J. Noel-Baker (1889-1982), British pacifist, statesman, and Nobel laureate, noted for promoting international peace and disarmament. He participated in the creation of the League of Nations and the United Nations (UN).

Noel-Baker was born Philip Joseph Baker in London, England (he added his wife’s surname, Noel, in 1923). Baker's parents were Quakers who supported pacifist and humanitarian causes (see Society of Friends). Baker traveled to the United States in 1906 to attend Haverford College, a school in Pennsylvania founded by Quakers. He returned to England in 1908 to finish his undergraduate work at King's College at the University of Cambridge, and in 1913 he earned a master's degree with honors from the institution. An accomplished middle-distance runner, he competed in the 1912, 1920, and 1924 Olympic Games, winning the silver medal in the 1,500- meter race in 1920.

As a Quaker and a pacifist, Baker did not enlist to fight in World War I (1914-1918). Instead, he served by organizing and leading an ambulance unit near the battle lines in France starting in 1914. The following year he transferred to an ambulance unit in Italy, where he served until the end of the war. In 1915 Baker married Irene Noel, a nurse in his unit in France.

After the war, Baker participated in the 1919 Paris Peace Conference and helped author the Covenant of the League of Nations. In the 1920s he served in the league’s secretariat and as a member of the British delegation. In 1924 Noel-Baker, as he was then known, became a professor of international relations at the University of London. During his five years in that post, he published a number of influential works, including The League of Nations at Work (1926) and Disarmament (1926). The latter book established him as an influential voice on international arms control.

Noel-Baker served in the British Parliament as a member of the Labour Party from 1929 to 1931 and from 1936 to 1970, and he held several government posts during his tenure. During World War II (1939-1945) he was appointed spokesman for the Ministry of War Transport in the House of Commons. In 1945 he was named minister of state, and in that role he participated in drafting the United Nations Charter.

Noel-Baker was a member of the British delegation to the UN General Assembly in 1946 and 1947. He was an influential member of two UN bodies, the Food and Agriculture Organization and the Economic and Social Council. His passion, however, continued to be arms control, and in 1958 he surveyed nearly four decades of experience and research in his book The Arms Race: A Program for World Disarmament. Noel-Baker won the Nobel Peace Prize in 1959 (see Nobel Prizes). He maintained a deep interest in athletics throughout his life, and from 1960 to 1982 he served as president of the International Council on Sport and Physical Recreation of UNESCO, a UN agency.

George Orwell

George Orwell, pseudonym of Eric Arthur Blair (1903-1950), British novelist, essayist, and critic, whose brilliant reporting and political conscience fashioned an impassioned picture of his life and times. A writer of remarkable clarity, Orwell claimed that fine prose should be transparent, “like a window-pane.” In his essays “Shooting an Elephant” and “Politics and the English Language,” he asserted that dishonest politics and slipshod language are inseparably connected evils. His essays provide models of what he preached. Orwell felt impelled to write on political themes to counter the totalitarian tendencies that he felt threatened his age. Such concerns prompted the two satirical novels for which he is best known, Animal Farm (1945) and Nineteen Eighty-Four (1949).

Orwell’s early books were highly autobiographical. His experiences as a dishwasher in Paris, a hop-picker in rural England, and a tramp in the English countryside provided the material for his first published book, Down and Out in Paris and London (1933), an account of the sordid conditions of the homeless poor. Burmese Days (1934), an indictment of imperialism, was largely derived from his experiences in Asia. Like the heroine of his novel A Clergyman’s Daughter (1935), he had worked as a master in seedy private schools, and like the hero of Keep the Aspidistra Flying (1936), as a bookseller’s assistant.

In 1936 the socialist Left Book Club sent Orwell to study how the unemployed were living in the working-class districts of northern England. The immediate result of this journey was his harrowing report on the conditions of unemployed coal miners in The Road to Wigan Pier (1937). Orwell lived in northern England for over two months, talking to miners, their families, their neighbors, and labor union officials. He went down the mines and endured the same conditions as the miners to see for himself the hardships of a life quite unlike his own. He was appalled by “the feeling of stagnant meaningless decay, of having got down into some subterranean place where people go creeping round and round, just like blackbeetles, in an endless muddle of slovened jobs and mean grievances.” John Osborne

John Osborne (1929-1994), British playwright and motion picture screenwriter, known for his sharp criticism of modern British life. Osborne's play Look Back in Anger (1956), about rebellion against traditional mores, is regarded as a landmark in post-World War II British drama and made its author famous as the first of “the angry young men” (see English Literature). The Entertainer (1957), which originally featured the British actor Laurence Olivier, presents the decline of Britain's place in the world through the metaphor of the stage. Luther (1961) is a historical drama in which the title character is seen as a true rebel (see Martin Luther). Inadmissible Evidence (1964) resumes Osborne's attack on contemporary values, and West of Suez (1971) is a depiction of Britain's past imperial glories in which he shows sympathy for the colonizer. Osborne's screenplay for the 1963 film Tom Jones won an Academy Award. His autobiography, A Better Class of Person (1981), recalls with bitterness his mother and his lower middle-class origins. Osborne's second volume of autobiography, Almost a Gentleman, was published in 1991. His last play was Dejavu (1992).

Thomas Otway

Thomas Otway (1652-85), English dramatist, born in Trotton, and educated at the University of Oxford. His first play, the tragedy Alcibiades, was produced in 1675, and Don Carlos (1676) established his reputation as a dramatist. Otway's most important works are the tragedies The Orphan (1680) and Venice Preserved (1682). Both plays were immediately successful and were performed regularly for more than 200 years. Otway gave his characters emotional depth and intensity; his intricate plots are skillfully contrived, and his verse is natural and often extremely moving. Although a successful dramatist, he died in poverty.

Ouida

Ouida, pseudonym of MARIE LOUISE DE LA RAMÉE (1839-1908), English novelist, born in Bury Saint Edmunds; her pseudonym is a childhood version of her middle name. She was a prolific, extraordinarily popular writer, who wrote romantic adventures of aristocratic and fashionable heroes and heroines. The extravagance of Ouida's characters was mirrored in her own taste, but she lacked the means of her wealthy personages and died in poverty. Among her best-known novels are Strathmore (1865), Under Two Flags (1867), and Moths (1880). She also wrote the popular children's book A Dog of Flanders (1872).

Wilfred Owen

Wilfred Owen (1893-1918), English poet. From early youth he wrote poetry, much of it at first inspired by religion. He became increasingly disapproving of the role of the church in society, and sympathetic to the plight of the poor. In 1913, he went to France and taught English there until 1915. Owen made the difficult decision to enlist in the army and fight in World War I (1914-1918). He entered the war in January 1917 and fought as an officer in the Battle of the Somme but was hospitalized for shell shock that May. In the hospital he met Siegfried Sassoon, a poet and novelist whose grim antiwar works were in harmony with Owen's concerns. Under Sassoon's care and tutelage, Owen began producing the best work of his short career; his poems are suffused with the horror of battle, and yet finely structured and innovative. Owen's use of half- rhyme (pairing words which do not quite rhyme) gives his poetry a dissonant, disturbing quality that amplifies his themes. He died one year after returning to battle and one week before the war ended in 1918. Owen was awarded the Military Cross for serving in the war with distinction. Full recognition as a highly esteemed poet came after Owen's death.

Owen's considerable body of war poetry, traditional in form, is a passionate expression of outrage at the horrors of war and of pity for the young soldiers sacrificed in it. Nine of these poems form the text for the choral War Requiem (1962) by the English composer Benjamin Britten. Only four of Owen's poems were published during his lifetime; collected editions were issued in 1920, 1931, and 1964. Walter Pater

Walter Pater (1839-1894), English essayist and critic. Walter Horatio Pater was born in London and educated at the University of Oxford, where he spent most of his life. He concentrated on interpreting to his age the art and literature of the Renaissance, through historical novels, stories, and, mainly, essays. His attention to elaborate, exquisite phrasing reveals his preoccupation with perfecting prose style without neglecting depth of subject matter. Pater is remembered primarily as an innovator in aesthetics who celebrated the pleasurable effects of art on the viewer or reader. “Art for art's sake,” a phrase taken from his Studies in the History of the Renaissance (1873), was Peter's credo and became a rallying cry for the aesthetic movement of the 1880s. His hedonist philosophy greatly influenced his younger contemporary, the Irish-born writer Oscar Wilde. Pater is best known for his novel Marius the Epicurean (1885), a study of the “sensations and ideas” of a young 2nd- century Roman confronting Christianity. His other works include Appreciations: with an Essay on Style (1889), which includes discerning essays on the work of such writers as William Wordsworth, Samuel Coleridge, Charles Lamb, and others, helped to define Pater's position as an influential man of letters; and the autobiographical The Child in the House (1894), which contains sketches of Pater's early years.

Thomas Love Peacock

Thomas Love Peacock (1785-1866), English novelist and poet, born in Weymouth. A friend of the English poet Percy Bysshe Shelley, he was Shelley's literary executor. The publication of Headlong Hall (1816) established Peacock's literary reputation. Nightmare Abbey (1818), a humorous satire of the romantic movement in England, is his best-known work. Peacock was an employee of the English East India Company from 1819 to 1856, during which time he published two historical romances, Maid Marian (1822) and The Misfortunes of Elfin (1829), and the satiric novels Melincourt (1817 and Crotchet Castle (1831). Almost 30 years later he published his last novel, Gryll Grange (1860). In most of Peacock's works the characters, many of them caricatures of famous writers of the time, reveal themselves through incidental dialogue at social gatherings.

Samuel Pepys

Samuel Pepys (1633-1703), English diarist and civil servant, who kept one of the most candid, self-revealing diaries known, and who in his official capacity helped to give Britain one of the strongest navies in the world.

The son of a tailor, Pepys was born in London February 23, 1633. After graduation from Magdalene College, University of Cambridge, he worked as a secretary for a relative, Admiral Edward Montagu, 1st Earl of Sandwich. In 1660 Montagu had him appointed a clerk in the navy office. By diligent application he advanced himself rapidly, becoming one of the key people in that office. In 1673 Charles II made Pepys secretary of the admiralty, a post in which he worked effectively to strengthen the navy. In 1679 he became a member of Parliament. That year he was accused of being a Roman Catholic and of passing naval secrets to the French; after being briefly imprisoned in the Tower of London, he was released and the charges dropped.

Pepys was chosen president of the Royal Society in 1684 and was again named secretary of the admiralty. When James II came to the throne in 1685, Pepys continued in his post but retired after James was deposed (1688). Pepys died May 26, 1703, in London.

From 1660 to 1669, when failing eyesight forced him to give it up, Pepys kept a diary in a contemporary form of shorthand; it was deciphered and first published in part in 1825. The Diary of Samuel Pepys, a modern 11-volume edition, which began publication in 1970, was completed in 1983. The informal, frank entries, recording his private as well as his public life, give a vivid picture of Restoration England. They reveal Pepys's thoughts and daily activities, his love of music and the theater, his domestic felicity as well as his casual amours.

Pepys bequeathed his collection of books and manuscripts, including the diary, to Magdalene College, where they are housed in the Pepysian Library. He also compiled letters and documents relevant to his public career in Memoires Relating to the State of the Royal Navy (1690).

Alexander Pope

Alexander Pope (1688-1744), English poet, who, modeling himself after the great poets of classical antiquity, wrote highly polished verse, often in a didactic or satirical vein. In verse translations, moral and critical essays, and satires that made him the foremost poet of his age, he brought the heroic couplet, which had been refined by John Dryden, to ultimate perfection.

Pope was the son of a London cloth merchant. His parents were Roman Catholics, which automatically barred him from England's Protestant universities. Until he was 12 years old, he was educated largely by priests; primarily self-taught afterward, he read widely in English letters, as well as in French, Italian, Latin, and Greek. A devastating illness, probably tuberculosis of the spine, struck him in childhood, leaving him deformed. He never grew taller than 4 ft 6 in and was subject to violent headaches. Perhaps as a result of this condition, he was hypersensitive and exceptionally irritable all his life.

In 1717 Pope moved to a villa in Twickenham, west of London on the Thames River, where he lived for the rest of his life. The most celebrated personages of the day came to visit him there. He was a bitterly quarrelsome man and attacked his literary contemporaries viciously and often without provocation. To some, however, he was warm and affectionate; he had a long and close friendship with the Anglo-Irish writer Jonathan Swift and the English writer John Gay.

Pope's literary career began in 1704, when the playwright William Wycherley, pleased by Pope's verse, introduced him into the circle of fashionable London wits and writers, who welcomed him as a prodigy. He first attracted public attention in 1709 with his Pastorals. In 1711 his Essay on Criticism, a brilliant exposition of the canons of taste, was published. His most famous poem, The Rape of the Lock (first published 1712; revised edition published 1714), a fanciful and ingenious mock-heroic work based on a true story, established his reputation securely. In 1713 Pope published Windsor Forest, which endeared him to the Tories by referring to the Peace of Utrecht. In 1714 his work “The Wife of Bath” appeared, which, like his “The Temple of Fame” (1715), was imitative of the works of the same title by the 14th-century English poet Geoffrey Chaucer. In 1717 a collection of Pope's works containing the most noteworthy of his lyrics was published. Pope's translation of Homer's Iliad was published in six volumes from 1715 to 1720; a translation of the Odyssey followed (1725-1726). He also published an edition of Shakespeare's plays (1725).

Pope and his friend Swift had for years written scornful and very successful critical reviews of those whom they considered poor writers; in 1727 they began a series of parodies of the same writers. The adversaries hurled insults at Swift and Pope in return, and in 1728 Pope lampooned them in one of his best-known works, The Dunciad, a satire celebrating dullness. He later enlarged the work to four volumes, the final one appearing in 1743. In 1734 he completed his Essay on Man. Pope's last works, Imitations of Horace (1733-1739), were attacks on political enemies of his friends.

Stephen Poliakoff

Stephen Poliakoff, born in 1952, English playwright, screenwriter, and motion- picture director, who achieved recognition at an early age with Hitting Town (1975) and City Sugar (1976), two plays about disaffected youth in grim, soulless, suburban settings, a subject that recurs throughout his work. Born in London, Poliakoff was educated at the Westminster School and then at King's College at the University of Cambridge, which he left after two years. The first of his plays to be performed was Granny (1969), followed by Lay By (1971) and Pretty Boy (1971). His play Hitting Town, in which a brother and sister enter into an incestuous relationship, supplied parts of the plot for Poliakoff's motion picture Close My Eyes (1991).

Poliakoff's other stage plays include Strawberry Fields (1977), which suggests terrorism and fascism lurking in 1970s Britain; and Shout Across the River (1978), a piece in which a mother and her disturbed daughter negotiate their relationship. In the 1980s Poliakoff turned his attention to Eastern Europe, producing a play on the Russian Revolution (1917), called Breaking the Silence (1984), a play on the entry of a Polish refugee to Britain, Coming Into Land (1987), and the television play Caught on a Train (1980), in which a man becomes involved in a strange alliance with an old woman in his railway carriage as they travel across Europe. Poliakoff also wrote and directed Century (1993), a motion picture about a young medical researcher.

Harold Pinter

Harold Pinter, born in 1930, English playwright, known for his so-called comedies of menace, which humorously and cynically depict people attempting to communicate as they react to an invasion or threat of an invasion of their lives. He is also noted for his unique use of dialogue, which exposes his characters’ alienation from each other and explores the layers of meaning produced by pauses and silence. In 2005 Pinter was awarded the Nobel Prize in literature.

Harold Pinter was born in London. Initially interested in acting, he appeared in school plays as a youth. He studied at the Royal Academy of Dramatic Art in London in 1948 and for the next ten years acted with various repertory companies. Pinter’s first three plays debuted in 1957: The Room, The Dumbwaiter, and The Birthday Party. The Caretaker (1959), his play about two neurotic brothers whose fragile relationship is upset by a vagrant who forces himself into their lives, established Pinter’s reputation as an innovative playwright. This success brought renewed attention to The Birthday Party, which subsequently became one of his most popular plays.

Pinter’s many other plays include The Lover (1962), The Homecoming (1964), The Basement (1966), Landscape (1967), Old Times (1970), No Man’s Land (1974), Betrayal (1978), One for the Road (1984), The New World Order (1988), Moonlight (1993), and Ashes to Ashes (1996). His play Remembrance of Things Past (2000) was adapted from the multivolume novel by French writer Marcel Proust.

Pinter has also written many short plays for television and radio and numerous screenplays, including The Pumpkin Eater (1964), Accident (1967), The Go-Between (1971), The French Lieutenant’s Woman (1981), Betrayal (1983), The Handmaid’s Tale (1990), The Trial (1993), and Sleuth (2007). He has directed many plays, including those by other writers such as Robert Shaw (The Man in the Glass Booth, 1967) and Simon Gray (Butley, 1971). Pinter also directed the movie version of Butley in 1974.

Pinter’s Poems and Prose: 1949-1977 was published in 1978. In 1995 he won Britain’s Olivier Award in recognition of his contributions to theater. The citation announcing his Nobel Prize in 2005 declared that “Pinter restored theatre to its basic elements: an enclosed space and unpredictable dialogue, where people are at the mercy of each other and pretence crumbles.” It also noted that his unique style has resulted in the creation of “an adjective used to describe a particular atmosphere and environment in drama: ‘Pinteresque.’”

As a child in the early 1940s Pinter was forced to evacuate from London during the World War II bombings there. He said later that the experience permanently changed his life, and as an adult he became an outspoken advocate for peace. In 2003, disturbed by the United States and British invasion of Iraq that spring, Pinter published a book of antiwar poems. He has written frequently about peace issues for newspapers and magazines.

Pinter has appeared as an actor, generally in minor roles, in movies for which he wrote the script. Arthur Wing Pinero

Arthur Wing Pinero (1855-1934), British author of popular farces and social dramas, born in London. As a young man he studied law, but at the age of 19 he became an actor; he continued in that profession until 1882. Pinero began his career as dramatist with the farcical comedy £200 a Year (1877); he received wide acclaim with The Money Spinner (1881) and after 1882 devoted himself to writing plays. Pinero was a prolific writer of farces and comedies, but he also wrote melodramas dealing with ethical and social problems; the latter were characteristic of the movement in Victorian England away from plays intended merely to entertain toward those dealing seriously with life. Among Pinero's plays that are still performed are The Second Mrs. Tanqueray (1893), the best known of his plays and the first to win recognition outside England; Trelawney of the “Wells” (1898), about life in a theatrical company; and the farces The Magistrate (1885) and Dandy Dick (1887). Pinero was knighted in 1909.

Thomas Percy

Thomas Percy (1729-1811), English poet, antiquary, and bishop, born in Bridgnorth, and educated at the University of Oxford. In 1769 he became chaplain to George III and in 1782 bishop of Dromore, in Ireland. He became famous as the editor of Reliques of Ancient English Poetry (3 volumes, 1765), a collection of English and Scottish ballads. The Reliques spurred a revival of interest in folk poetry and inspired the romantic poets in England and Germany. As a poet, Percy was best known for “The Hermit of Warkworth” and the ballad “O Nanny, Wilt Thou Gang with Me?” Scholars gave his name to the Percy Society (1840-52) for the publication of old ballads.

J. B. Priestley

J. B. Priestley (1894-1984), English writer, born in Bradford. He served in the infantry during World War I, after which he attended the University of Cambridge. A newspaper essayist and critic, he wrote on a variety of subjects and often revealed his opposition to materialism and mechanization in society. The publication of The Good Companions (1929) and Angel Pavement (1930) established him as a successful popular novelist. Whereas his novels were traditional in form, his plays, beginning with Dangerous Corner (1932), were experimental, particularly in their treatment of time and of past and future events. Priestley's major plays include When We Are Married (1938), An Inspector Calls (1946), and Dragon's Mouth (1952); on the latter, he collaborated with his wife, the English archaeologist and writer Jacquetta Hawkes. Later books include the autobiographical Margin Released (1962), Man and Time (1964), Essays of Two Decades (1968), The Edwardians (1970), and The English (1973). Priestley was director of the influential journal New Statesman and Nation and, after declining a knighthood and a peerage, accepted the Order of Merit from Queen Elizabeth II in 1977.

Anthony Dymoke Powell

Anthony Dymoke Powell (1905-2000), English novelist, born in London, and educated at Eton and the University of Oxford. He worked for a publishing firm, a film company, and as a journalist, and he served in World War II (1939-1945).

Powell's earliest novels, including Afternoon Men (1931) and What's Become of Waring? (1939), deal wittily with the Bohemian life of the Chelsea and Bloomsbury sections of London. His partly autobiographical later works depict the changing nature of the upper class of British society from just before World War II through the postwar period. His major work is A Dance to the Music of Time (1951-1975), a series of 12 novels in which the experiences of the narrator Nicholas Jenkins, a writer, are contrasted with those of a ruthless political opportunist named Kenneth Widmerpool. The tone grows more somber and haunting as they age and society changes. To Keep the Ball Rolling (4 volumes, 1977-1983) is Powell's autobiography. His literary criticism was published in the volumes Miscellaneous Verdicts (1992) and Under Review (1994).

Powell and Pressburger

Powell and Pressburger, British partnership of motion-picture directors, producers, and screenwriters Michael Powell (1905-1990) and Emeric Pressburger (1902- 1988), known for its influential British films produced during and after World War II (1939-1945). The films of Powell and Pressburger are distinguished by their complex moral themes, technical virtuosity, and vivid imagery. Pressburger was generally responsible for the production and editing, while Powell typically wrote the initial screenplays, directed, and provided the visual style.

Pressburger was born in Miskolc, Hungary, and educated at the University of Prague, Czechoslovakia, and at the University of Stuttgart, Germany. He wrote screenplays in Germany and France, before moving to England in 1936. Powell, born near Canterbury, Kent, England, directed low-budget films for independent production companies in England until he was introduced to Pressburger in 1938. Their first collaboration was a political thriller, The Spy in Black (1939), which brought them both to prominence and led to the founding of their production company, Archers, in 1942. Powell and Pressburger made 14 films together between 1942 and 1956, most notably, The Life and Death of Colonel Blimp (1943), Black Narcissus (1946), The Red Shoes (1948), and Tales of Hoffman (1951). In 1956 Powell and Pressburger dissolved the partnership and the two continued to make films independently of each other.

Beatrix Potter

Beatrix Potter (1866-1943), English writer and illustrator of children's books, born in London, and privately educated. During most of her adult life, she lived in a farm cottage in Sawrey, Westmoreland County, where she kept many animals as pets. Unsuccessful in attempts to publish her serious botanical work (watercolor studies of fungi), she wrote (1893) and published privately (1900) for an invalid child The Tale of Peter Rabbit. This story about the first of many animal characters she was to create became a children's classic throughout the world. Other diminutive animal characters created by her include Benjamin Bunny, Jemima Puddle-Duck, and Mrs. Tiggy-Winkle. Inseparable from her whimsical tales are her delicate but exact and detailed watercolor illustrations depicting her characters in domestic scenes. Potter's other works include The Tailor of Gloucester (1902) and The Tale of Tom Kitten (1907). Interested in the preservation of the natural landscape, she bequeathed her property in Sawrey to the National Trust, which also maintains her home as a museum.

Dennis Potter

Dennis Potter (1935-1994), British writer. Potter’s work for television, numbering some 40 plays, includes two milestone miniseries: “Pennies From Heaven” (1978) and “The Singing Detective” (1986).

Potter was born at the Forest of Dean in Gloucestershire, a remote coal-mining area that would figure prominently in his work. Moving to London in his early years, he attended the University of Oxford, edited a magazine, campaigned for the Labour Party, and wrote 'The Glittering Coffin,' a provocative essay on Britain's decline.

During an unsuccessful run for Parliament on the Labour ticket in 1964, Potter developed psoriatic arthropathy, a crippling combination of psoriasis and arthritis. The affliction, which took the form of periodic 'visitations' that wracked his limbs and infested his skin, had a profound effect on Potter's writing. He began to explore themes of sexuality and death, public and personal betrayal, God, and what he called 'the sovereignty of self.” He viewed the latter as being “all that we have and you're bumping up against the very rim of communication in trying to talk about it.'

Cradling his trademark anger in irony, Potter tackled everything from the tribal passions of childhood in “Blue Remembered Hills” (1979), with adult actors playing the children, to the unsettling subject of treason in “Blade on the Feather” (1980). Then, out of a body of remarkably gifted work, there emerged what critics hailed as two television masterpieces. The eight-part “Pennies From Heaven” is about a nondescript man named Arthur, a sheet-music salesman in the Depression era. Arthur shuttles between his frigid wife and a loving girlfriend who teaches children in the Forest of Dean. With characters frequently lip-synching the words to recordings of popular period songs, “Pennies” creates a world as enchanting, terrifying, and magical as a fairy tale.

In “The Singing Detective,” which ran for six hours, Philip Marlowe, a writer of cheap detective fiction, is hospitalized with acute psoriasis. Plagued with fevers, Marlowe drifts between present and past. In an intricate tour de force, once again dotted with popular songs, Potter offers Marlowe as a hospital patient trapped in his diseased skin and railing like a modern-day Job. Layer is placed upon layer until Marlowe emerges whole as a memorable creation. Perhaps one remark best distills Potter's vision: 'All clues, no solutions. That's the way things are.'

Working almost to the day he died, Potter left behind two series, “Karaoke” (1996) and “Cold Lazarus” (1996) both produced posthumously for British television.

Arthur Michell Ransome

Arthur Michell Ransome (1884-1967), British journalist, literary critic, translator, and author of books for children. He is best known for his Swallows and Amazons series, begun in 1930, which became a children's classic for its imagination and for the elegance of its writing.

Ransome was born in Leeds, Yorkshire, England, but spent much of his early life in the English Lake District, a location that was to inspire the setting of many of the stories in the Swallows and Amazons series. In 1901 Ransome left Leeds University after only a few months of study and went to London to work. By 1903 he had decided to try to make his living as a freelance writer, and a book of his essays was published in 1904. His critical study of American writer Edgar Allan Poe was published in 1910. The previous year Ransome had married Ivy Walker, by whom he had one daughter, but the marriage was unhappy from the start. Ransome left alone for Russia in 1913 to learn the language in order to translate fairytales. He published Old Peter's Russian Tales in 1917, and subsequently began his long career as a journalist. In 1915 he became the Russian correspondent for the London Daily News, reporting on World War I (1914-1918) and on the Russian Revolution (1917). During this time he met the secretary to Russian revolutionary Leon Trotsky, Evgenia Shelepin, with whom Ransome went to Estonia in 1919, and whom he married in 1924. After publishing Six Weeks in Russia in 1919, Ransome became the foreign correspondent for the Manchester Guardian, and he traveled in the Middle East and East Asia in this capacity. In 1928-1929 he returned to the writing of books with Swallows and Amazons (1930), an adventure story about a group of children on vacation and the first of the 12 books in the Swallows and Amazons series.

Ransome was awarded the first Library Association Carnegie Medal in 1937 for Pigeon Post (1937), one of the Swallows and Amazons books. The medal became thereafter an annual award for an outstanding children's book written in English and published in the United Kingdom. In 1952 Ransome was granted an honorary doctor of letters degree from the University of Leeds. He was made Commander of the British Empire (CBE), a member of a British order of knighthood, in 1953. Sir Walter Raleigh

Sir Walter Raleigh (1552?-1618), English adventurer and writer, who was prominent at the court of Queen Elizabeth I, and became an explorer of the Americas.

Born at Hayes Barton in Devonshire, Raleigh attended the University of Oxford for a time, served in the French religious wars on the Huguenot side, and later studied law in London, where he became familiar with both court life and the intellectual community.

In 1578 Raleigh sailed to America with his half brother, Sir Humphrey Gilbert, a voyage that may have stimulated his plan to found an English empire there. In 1585, Raleigh sponsored the first English colony in America on Roanoke Island in present-day North Carolina. The colony failed, as did another one in 1587. His explorations in South America fared little better; his search in 1595 in what is now Guyana for El Dorado, the city of gold, achieved no practical success.

Raleigh first came to Queen Elizabeth's attention through his work in Ireland, where he went in 1580 to help suppress a rebellion. He used his Irish experiences to pose as an expert on Irish affairs in London, and became the queen's favorite. He was soon knighted, and became one of the most powerful figures in England.

Raleigh temporarily fell from the queen's favor when she discovered in 1592 that he had secretly married one of her maids of honor. His eventual return to power in the last years of Elizabeth was short-lived; her successor, James I, disliked Raleigh. In 1603 he was accused of plotting against the king and was convicted and sentenced to death. King James, however, commuted the sentence to life imprisonment, and Raleigh was sent to the Tower of London, where he remained for the next 13 years. During his imprisonment he completed the first volume of his History of the World (1614), which, with his other works—several poems, The Last Fight of the Revenge (1591), and The Discovery of Guiana (1596)—gave him an important place among Elizabethan intellectuals. He became a hero to the heir to the throne, Prince Henry, who tried to secure Raleigh's release from prison. Prince Henry's death in 1612 so frustrated Raleigh that he proposed to give King James a fortune in gold if the king would allow him to return to Guiana. James agreed on the condition that no offense be given the Spanish. The expedition in 1616 was a disaster. In Guiana, Raleigh sent his son and an aide to search for El Dorado. They attacked a Spanish settlement, and his son was killed. Raleigh returned to England, where King James invoked the death sentence of 1603; Raleigh was beheaded on October 29, 1618. Ann Radcliffe

Ann Radcliffe, née Ward (1764-1823), English novelist, born in London and privately educated. Radcliffe's tales, characterized by mystery plots, an atmosphere of terror, and poetically intense landscapes, helped to establish the vogue for the so-called Gothic novel. For a time she was the most popular novelist in England. The group of romantic novels for which she became most famous includes The Romance of the Forest (3 volumes, 1791), The Mysteries of Udolpho (4 volumes, 1794), and The Italian (3 volumes, 1797). The Mysteries of Udolpho is her most popular work; Jane Austen satirized the work in her novel Northanger Abbey and contrasted the frivolous mystery of the gothic novel with the reality of human foibles.

Sir V. S. Pritchett

Sir V. S. Pritchett (1900-1997), British writer best known for his witty, exciting stories, the first collection of which was The Spanish Virgin and Other Stories (1930). Pritchett's writing is noted for its gentle irony and its successful portrayal of the spectrum of human nature.

Victor Sawdon Pritchett was born in Ipswich, England, and educated at Alleyn's School, in Dulwich, England. After leaving school, he spent four years working in the leather trade. Pritchett then worked as a commercial traveler and as a photographer's assistant in Paris. Between 1921 and 1928 he was correspondent for the Christian Science Monitor in France, the United States, Ireland, and Spain. Returning to London, Pritchett became a freelance reviewer. From 1922 to 1965 he wrote regularly for the New Statesman, and he also became one of the directors of the periodical. Beginning in the early 1950's, Pritchett taught widely in the United States.

Pritchett's first book was Marching Spain (1928), a travelogue. His first novel, Clare Drummer (1929), was followed by Nothing Like Leather in 1937. Dead Man Leading, an exotic tale of adventure set in Brazil, was also published in 1937; although Pritchett had never actually set foot in Brazil, the book has become a classic. Mr. Beluncle (1951), the comic story of a man whose fantasy takes over his life, is considered by many to be Pritchett's best novel. The Complete Stories, which amount to considerable body of work, was published in 1990. Pritchett has also been a successful essayist, and literary critic with Lasting Impressions (1990) and The Complete Essays (1991). His other works include You Make Your Own Life (1938); In My Good Books (1953); When My Girl Comes Home (1961); numerous literary biographies; and a two-part autobiography, A Cab at the Door (1967), which covers his early years, and Midnight Oil (1971).

Matthew Prior

Matthew Prior (1664-1721), English poet and diplomat, born in Wimborne, Dorset, and educated at the University of Cambridge. In 1687 he collaborated with the English statesman and poet Charles Montagu in writing a highly successful parody of the allegorical poem The Hind and the Panther by the English poet John Dryden. The work made Prior famous. He entered diplomatic service in 1690, sat in Parliament in 1701, returned to diplomacy in 1710. After the fall of the Tory Party in 1714 he was impeached as a result of political dissatisfaction over diplomatic negotiations with France. During two years of semi-imprisonment he continued his writing. Prior is known for the elegance and wit of his light, amorous verse. A humorous long poem, “Alma; or, The Progress of the Mind,” was written during his imprisonment and published in 1718, together with a serious work, “Solomon on the Vanity of the World,” which had been written some time earlier.

Terence Rattigan

Terence Rattigan (1911-77), English playwright. Terence Mervyn Rattigan was born in London and educated at Harrow School and the University of Oxford. After 1936, when he achieved his first London success as a playwright with French Without Tears, Rattigan had a new play produced virtually every season for 20 years. Rattigan's urbane, literate plays are deftly conceived. The Winslow Boy (1947) won the New York Drama Critics' Circle Award for best foreign play of the year. Other dramas include The Browning Version (1949), Separate Tables (1956), and Ross (1961). Rattigan also wrote many screenplays, among them The Yellow Rolls Royce (1964). His Collected Plays was published in 1954. He was knighted in 1971.

Charles Reade

Charles Reade (1814-84), English novelist and playwright, born in Ipsden, Oxfordshire. In 1852 his play Masks and Faces, written with the English dramatist Tom Taylor, was produced. Reade used the play as the basis for the novel Peg Woffington (1853). In 1856 he wrote It Is Never Too Late to Mend, the first of a series of novels of social criticism, exposing the cruelty of prison discipline. Other novels in the same vein include Hard Cash (1863), dealing with conditions in insane asylums; Griffith Gaunt (1866), on jealousy in marriage; and Put Yourself in His Place (1870), on the terrorism of trade unions.

Reade customarily accumulated an immense bulk of documentary material on which he based his books. His masterpiece, The Cloister and the Hearth (1861), is a historical romance based on the life of the father of the Dutch humanist Desiderius Erasmus.

Jean Rhys

Jean Rhys, pseudonym of Ellen Gwendolen Rees Williams (1890?- 1979), British novelist, born in Roseau, Dominica, West Indies. She emigrated to England at age 16 and worked as an actor, then in 1920 moved to Paris, where she began to write. Her first short story was published in 1924, her first novel (Postures, later retitled Quartet) in 1928. Rhys's fiction generally reflected her pessimistic view of the world and her sympathy for the underdog, especially women caught in lives they are powerless to change. She published three more novels— After Leaving Mr. Mackenzie (1930), Voyage in the Dark (1934), and Good Morning, Midnight (1939)—before withdrawing from the literary world. Rhys's next and final novel, Wide Sargasso Sea (1966), revived critical and popular interest in her work. Drawing on her West Indian background, the novelist reconstructed the early life of Antoinette Cosway, Mr. Rochester's insane first wife in Charlotte Brontë's Jane Eyre. Rhys's unfinished autobiography, Smile Please, was published posthumously in 1979.

Samuel Richardson

Samuel Richardson (1689-1761), English novelist, born in Derbyshire. He was apprenticed to a printer in his youth and later set up his own printing shop in London. Richardson became known as a gifted letter writer, and in 1739 he began to write a volume of model letters for the use of the country reader that appeared as Familiar Letters (1741). While engaged in writing the form letters he also wrote and published the celebrated novel Pamela; or Virtue Rewarded (2 volumes, 1740), telling, in the form of letters, the story of a young maid-servant's defense of her honor. Clarissa; or the History of a Young Lady (7 volumes, 1747-1748), which explores and reexplores the same events from the points of view of several of the characters, is considered his best work. Like Pamela, it was praised for its lofty moral tone, sentimentality, and understanding of emotions and the feminine mind. His last important work was The History of Sir Charles Grandison (7 volumes, 1753- 1754), in which he presented his ideal of a true Christian gentleman.

All of Richardson's novels are in epistolary form (a series of letters)—a structure that he refined and developed. For this reason, Richardson is considered a founder of the English modern novel. Henry Fielding parodied Pamela in An apology for the life of Mrs. Shamela Andrews (1741) and The Adventures of Joseph Andrews and his Friend, Mr. Abraham Adams (1742).

Wilmot, John, 2nd Earl of Rochester Wilmot, John, 2nd Earl of Rochester (1647-1680), English poet and courtier. Rochester is known for his satirical wit and his libertine behavior. He was repeatedly banished from the court of Charles II for his political satires, and imprisoned for his misconduct, but repeatedly pardoned. One of Rochester's most outrageous deeds was to abduct heiress Elizabeth Malet, for which he was imprisoned in the Tower of London. He redeemed himself by fighting gallantly for England in the naval wars against the Dutch from 1665 to 1667. This led him back to the fold of the court, and to the good graces of Elizabeth Malet who married him in 1667. Rochester claimed to have stayed drunk continually for five years and was a notoriously skilled seducer. Just before he died, Rochester became repentant and accepted Chistian doctrine.

Rochester's most important literary works are “A Satire Against Mankind” (1675), which in polished verse scathingly describes human follies, and his love poetry, which is both amorous and witty, elegant and robust and often shockingly frank. A dramatic work, Valentinian, was published posthumously (1685).

Known for his biting wit and versatility as a writer, Rochester produced powerful satire, passionate love poems, lyrics, and masterful correspondence. Rochester's debauched life and his acidic humor influenced both his contemporaries and later writers, including Jonathan Swift.

Christina Rossetti

Christina Rossetti (1830-1894), English lyric poet. Christina Georgina Rossetti was born in London. Although some of her earliest verse was published in the Germ (1850), a Pre-Raphaelite journal, and she sat as a model for a number of paintings by her brother Dante Gabriel Rossetti and other Pre-Raphaelites, she was not a member of the movement.

Much of Rossetti's work was religious in nature; the themes of renunciation of earthly love and concern with death shadow such favorite poems as “When I am dead, my dearest” and “Up-Hill.” Other poems, such as “A Birthday,” are earthy, romantic, and sensuous. Rossetti's work encompasses a wide range of styles and forms. Her ballads, sonnets, love lyrics, and nonsense rhymes are all clearly products of an accomplished mind.

A devout Anglican, Rossetti spent the last 15 years of her life as a recluse. At the same time, however, Rossetti wrote delightful verse for children, such as the charming lyrics in Sing-Song: A Nursery Rhyme Book (1872). The most important collections of her work are Goblin Market and Other Poems (1862), considered her finest poetry, and The Prince's Progress and Other Poems (1866).

J. K. Rowling

J. K. Rowling, born in 1965, British author, who writes about the magical adventures of a boy wizard named Harry Potter. The Harry Potter book series dominated bestseller lists beginning in the late 1990s, attracting millions of fans worldwide among children and adults alike.

Rowling’s finished manuscript was rejected by a number of publishers before its publication as Harry Potter and the Philosopher's Stone in Britain in 1997. The book, about a young boy who learns of his magic abilities at age 11 and then attends the Hogwarts School of Witchcraft and Wizardry, appeared in the United States as Harry Potter and the Sorcerer's Stone the following year.

From the beginning Rowling planned the Harry Potter series as a seven-book sequence, one book for each year of Harry’s secondary school career at Hogwarts. The second book, Harry Potter and the Chamber of Secrets, was published in Britain in 1998 and a year later in the United States. A third volume, Harry Potter and the Prisoner of Azkaban, appeared in both countries in 1999. By then, the Harry Potter books had been translated into nearly 30 languages.

A fourth volume, Harry Potter and the Goblet of Fire, reached bestseller lists weeks before its publication in July 2000. A fifth volume, Harry Potter and the Order of the Phoenix, appeared in 2003. It broke publishing records by selling 5 million copies on June 21, the date of its publication. The previous Harry Potter book had set the earlier record in 2000, with 3 million copies sold upon publication. The sixth installment, Harry Potter and the Half-Blood Prince, was released in July 2005. A seventh—and what Rowling said would be the final—installment, Harry Potter and the Deathly Hallows, was published in July 2007.

The Harry Potter books combine two powerful genres—the school story and magical fantasy—but Rowling’s treatment of these is almost entirely original. She does not avoid serious issues, such as self-sacrifice and death, and the series has successfully crossed the boundary between adults’ and children’s books. Salman Rushdie

Salman Rushdie, born in 1947, British novelist of Indian descent. His second book, Midnight’s Children (1981), won Britain’s prestigious Booker Prize and in 1993 was voted the best novel to win that prize in 25 years. However, his novel The Satanic Verses (1988) was condemned by many Muslims for blasphemy and banned in several Islamic countries. After Iranian leader Ayatollah Ruhollah Khomeini issued a fatwa (judgment) sentencing Rushdie to death, Rushdie went into hiding for several years and remained under constant police protection. In 2007 Rushdie was awarded a knighthood, an honor that drew protests from the governments of Iran and Pakistan.

Rushdie wrote a report on his travels in Nicaragua, The Jaguar Smile (1987). The children’s book Haroun and the Sea of Stories (1990) is a fable about artistic creativity in which a storyteller loses his skill and seeks the source of inspiration. Imaginary Homelands (1991) is a collection of essays and book reviews dealing mainly with the theme of cultural displacement and resettlement.

In 1995 Rushdie’s collection of short stories East, West appeared. The Moor’s Last Sigh, also published in 1995, is a lyrical, cautionary tale about a multiethnic Indian family that traces its lineage to the last Moorish sultan of Granada, Spain. The family’s political, religious, and cultural differences mirror those of modern India. Rushdie followed it with two novels largely set in the United States, The Ground Beneath Her Feet (1999) and Fury (2001). The Ground Beneath Her Feet draws on the Greek myth of Orpheus and Eurydice in a story about the love affair between two musicians in the mid- and late 20th century. In Fury, a doll maker, fearing that the fury within him might lead him to harm his wife and child, deserts his family to seek a new life in New York City. Critics considered the U.S. novels less successful than his earlier works, and Rushdie returned to the subcontinent with his next novel, Shalimar the Clown (2005). A love story set largely in Kashmir, the novel is steeped in the violence of the region and the world.

John Ruskin

John Ruskin (1819-1900), English writer, art critic, and reformer, a dominant tastemaker among intellectuals of the Victorian period. Ruskin is best known for his monumental studies of architecture and its social and historical implications described in The Seven Lamps of Architecture and its sequel, The Stones of Venice.

Ruskin was born February 8, 1819, in London and educated at the University of Oxford. His youthful passions for art, literature, and travel were encouraged by his father, a wealthy merchant. The story of his early years was told by Ruskin himself in his last work, an unfinished autobiography, Praeterita (1885-1889). His main theme, the relationship between art and morality, was first set forth, and his influence as aesthete and art critic established, with the publication in 1843 of the first volume of his Modern Painters. This work was in part a defense of the then-controversial painter J. M. W. Turner. The two books that followed, The Seven Lamps of Architecture (1849) and The Stones of Venice (1851-1853), were studies in the religious, moral, economic, and political significance of domestic architecture. Ruskin, renowned for his style, was also an effective lecturer. Rebelling against the aesthetically numbing and socially debasing effects of the Industrial Revolution, he put forth the theory that art, which is essentially spiritual, reached its zenith in the Gothic art of the late Middle Ages, which was inspired by religious and moral zeal.

Ruskin became the first Slade Professor of Art at Oxford in 1869, remaining in the post until 1879.

Ken Russell Ken Russell, born in 1927, British motion-picture director and screenwriter, known for his vivid and controversial films. Born in Southampton, Russell studied photography in Walthamstow, England, at what is now Waltham Forest College and achieved national prominence with a series of highly original and often scandalous documentaries on classical-music composers for British television (1959-1962).

Russell's first two feature-length films, French Dressing (1964) and Billion Dollar Brain (1967), were only moderately successful. He became internationally known as a bold and flamboyant director with his next film, Women in Love (1969), based on the novel by British writer D.H. Lawrence. Russell was celebrated for his respectful adaptation of the novel, and was nominated for an Academy Award for best director in 1970. He developed a reputation for self-indulgence and vulgar excess with his subsequent films. These include The Music Lovers (1971), a sensationalistic biography of Russian composer Peter Ilyich Tchaikovsky; The Devils (1971), a wild depiction of atrocities committed in a 17th-century French convent; and Listzomania (1975), an extravagant biography of Hungarian composer Franz Liszt with rock- music star Roger Daltrey in the lead role. Other notable films by Russell include Altered States (1980), Gothic (1986), and Lair of the White Worm (1988).

Thomas Sackville

Thomas Sackville, 1st Earl of Dorset (1536-1608), English poet and diplomat, born at Buckhurst Park, Sussex. After attending the Inner Temple in London, he became a barrister in 1558. From 1558 to 1567 he was a member of Parliament. Sackville carried out several diplomatic missions for Elizabeth I, became lord high treasurer for life in 1599, and in 1604 was created earl of Dorset.

Sackville's first important poems, the “Induction” and the “Complaint of Henry, Duke of Buckingham,” appeared in the 1563 edition of A Mirror for Magistrates, a collection of poems by various writers that takes the form of lamentations by the ghosts of famous men who were ruined by ambition. Sackville's “Induction” describes the poet's journey to the infernal regions, where he encounters figures representing forms of suffering and terror. The poem is noted for the power of its allegory and for its somber stateliness of tone. Sackville's other important work, written in collaboration with the English poet Thomas Norton, is Gorboduc (1565), the first English drama in blank verse. The play deals with the consequences of political rivalry.

Victoria Mary Sackville-West

Victoria Mary Sackville-West (1892-1962), English poet and novelist, member of the ancient and aristocratic Sackville family, proprietors of Knole, an estate in Kent dating from the Tudor period. Vita Sackville-West (as she was generally known) wrote several novels, among them The Edwardians (1930); All Passion Spent (1931), a novel of marriage, widowhood, and aging; and Pepita (1937), a fictionalized biography of her grandmother. Her poetry includes The Land (1926), minutely describing the rural year in Kent. A notable gardener, she developed the famous gardens at her home, Sissinghurst Castle, which now belongs to the National Trust. In 1913 Sackville-West married the English diplomat and man of letters Sir Harold Nicolson. Their son, Nigel Nicholson, wrote Portrait of a Marriage (1973), which describes their unconventional relationship. Both Harold Nicholson and Sackville-West pursued homosexual relationships while maintaining their marriage. The relationship between Sackville-West and the novelist Virginia Woolf was a powerful influence on the life and art of both women. Their relationship has been the subject of much critical reevaluation. Elements of Sackville-West's biography and of her family history are interwoven in Woolf's witty Orlando (1928).

Saki

Saki (author), pseudonym of HECTOR HUGH MUNRO (1870-1916), British writer, born in Burma (now known as Myanmar), and educated in England. In 1894 he joined the editorial staff of the London newspaper Westminster Gazette for which he wrote a series of lightly satirical political sketches reminiscent of the writings of the English author Lewis Carroll. The highly popular articles were collected as The Westminster Alice (1902). He enlisted in the British army at the outbreak of World War I and was killed in action in France. Saki is best known as a writer of short stories, many of which have fantastic settings and characters. They are distinguished by an urbane wit and delicate, often biting irony. A collected edition, the Short Stories of Saki, was posthumously published in 1930. Among his other published works are the novels The Unbearable Bassington (1912) and When William Came (1913).

Siegfried Sassoon

Siegfried Sassoon (1886-1967), English poet and novelist. His earlier poetry, based on his experiences as an officer in World War I, is an expression of his reactions to the brutalities and waste of war. Volumes such as The Old Huntsman (1917) and Counter-Attack and Other Poems (1918) make pointed contrasts between the possibility of life and the reality of senseless death. For many years after the war, a series of semiautobiographical novels, three of which were collectively published as The Complete Memoirs of George Sherston (1937), continued this theme. Siegfried's Journey, 1916-20 (1945) completes the record of his growing awareness of war's futility. Sassoon's Collected Poems 1908-1956 (1961) contains his later verse, much of it religious in nature.

Dorothy L. Sayers

Dorothy L. Sayers (1893-1957), British writer. A student of medieval literature, she was one of the first women to receive a degree from the University of Oxford. After working in a London advertising agency, the setting for her later novel Murder Must Advertise (1933), she began to write detective stories, beginning with Whose Body? (1923). It featured the dashing, witty aristocrat- detective Lord Peter Wimsey, who solved the crimes in her ten subsequent books. Works such as The Nine Tailors (1934), which involves disquisitions on the art of ringing church bells, and Gaudy Night (1935), set in a woman's college at Oxford, are examples of Sayers's erudite, complexly plotted approach. Her other works include theological studies and works on Dante and translations of his Divine Comedy (1949 and 1955).

Sir Walter Scott Sir Walter Scott (1771-1832), Scottish novelist and poet, whose work as a translator, editor, biographer, and critic, together with his novels and poems, made him one of the most prominent figures in English romanticism. He was born in Edinburgh, August 15, 1771. Trained as a lawyer, he became a legal official, an occupation that allowed him to write.

A love of ballads and legends helped direct Scott's literary activity. His translations of German Gothic romances in 1796 gained him some note, but he first achieved eminence with his edition of ballads, The Minstrelsy of the Scottish Border, in 1802-1803. His first narrative poem, The Lay of the Last Minstrel (1805), brought him huge popularity. Following this success, he wrote a series of romantic narrative poems, which included Marmion (1808), The Lady of the Lake (1810), The Bridal of Triermain (1813), and The Lord of the Isles (1815). In 1813, he was offered the poet laureateship of England, and declined, recommending Robert Southey for the post. He also published editions of the writings of the English poet John Dryden in 1808 and of the English satirist Jonathan Swift in 1814.

Scott's declining popularity as a poet, in part caused by the competition of Lord Byron, led him to turn to the novel. Waverley (1814) began a new series of triumphs. More than 20 novels followed in rapid succession, including Guy Mannering (1815), Old Mortality (1816), The Heart of Midlothian (1818), Rob Roy (1818), The Bride of Lammermoor (1819), Ivanhoe (1819), Kenilworth (1821), Quentin Durward (1823), and The Fair Maid of Perth (1828). Although he published this fiction anonymously, his identity became an open secret. Scott used his enormous profits to construct a baronial mansion called Abbotsford. In 1820 he was made a baronet.

Scott was entangled with the printing firm of James Ballantyne and the publishing house of Archibald Constable, which both failed in the economic crisis of 1826. Refusing the easy recourse of bankruptcy, Scott strove for the rest of his life to repay a debt of more than £120,000. He completed the Life of Napoleon Buonaparte (1827) and wrote several new novels. After a series of strokes, he died at Abbotsford on September 21, 1832. By the sale of copyrights, all of Scott's debts were settled by 1847. Thomas Shadwell

Thomas Shadwell (1642?-1692), English dramatist and poet, born in Norfolk, and educated at the University of Cambridge. He practiced law until the successful production of his comedy The Sullen Lovers (1668), after which he devoted himself entirely to writing. Shadwell produced mainly comedies in which he criticized the manners of the period. Best known are Epsom Wells (1672) and The Squire of Alsatia (1688). Late in his life, Shadwell openly acknowledged his literary feud with the English poet John Dryden. His satire The Medal of John Bayes (1682) contains his strongest attack against Dryden, who counteracted with Mac Flecknoe, or a Satire on the True Blue Protestant Poet, T.S. (1682). Shadwell succeeded Dryden as poet laureate in 1688.

Peter Shaffer

Peter Shaffer, born in 1926, British playwright, best known for psychological plays that often focus on relationships between people of seemingly opposite natures with some shared bond. Peter Levin Shaffer was born in Liverpool, England, and educated at Saint Paul's School in London, graduating in 1944. From 1944 to 1947 he worked as a coal miner, and then attended Trinity College at the University of Cambridge, where he received his B.A. degree in 1950. Shaffer subsequently lived in New York City, working at various jobs until he returned to London in 1954. From 1956 to 1957 he was literary critic for the British journal Truth, and then music critic for another British journal, Time and Tide, from 1961 to 1962.

Shaffer began writing novels with his twin brother Anthony when they were in their mid- twenties, but it was Shaffer's play Five Finger Exercise (1958) that first brought him critical acclaim, in the form of the Evening Standard Drama Award (sponsored annually by that British newspaper) and the New York Drama Critics' Circle Award for best foreign play. The Royal Hunt of the Sun (1964), about the Spanish destruction of the Inca civilization of Peru, premiered at the British National Theatre in London, moved to New York, and was made into a motion picture in 1969. Equus (1973), the story of a psychoanalyst's attempt to understand the mysterious faith of a troubled young stable- boy, won the New York Drama Critics' Circle and Antoinette Perry (Tony) awards, and was filmed in 1979. Another critical success followed in 1979 with Amadeus, about the 18th-century rivalry between Austrian composer Wolfgang Amadeus Mozart and Italian composer Antonio Salieri. In 1984 the motion-picture adaptation won a Golden Globe Award and eight Academy Awards, including best film. Other major dramatic works by Shaffer that have enjoyed critical acclaim and successful runs in London's West End theater district are Lettice and Lovage (1987), winner of the Evening Standard Award for best comedy, and The Gift of the Gorgon (1992). Shaffer has also written plays for television and radio, including The Salt Land (1955), Balance of Terror (1957), and Whom Do I Have the Honour of Addressing? (1989).

William Shakespeare

William Shakespeare (1564-1616), English playwright and poet, recognized in much of the world as the greatest of all dramatists. Hundreds of editions of his plays have been published, including translations in all major languages. Scholars have written thousands of books and articles about his plots, characters, themes, and language. He is the most widely quoted author in history, and his plays have probably been performed more times than those of any other dramatist.

Shakespeare’s reputation today is, however, based primarily on the 38 plays that he wrote, modified, or collaborated on. Records of Shakespeare’s plays begin to appear in 1594, when the theaters reopened with the passing of the plague that had closed them for 21 months. In December of 1594 his play The Comedy of Errors was performed in London during the Christmas revels at Gray’s Inn, one of the London law schools. In March of the following year he received payment for two plays that had been performed during the Christmas holidays at the court of Queen Elizabeth I by his theatrical company, known as the Lord Chamberlain’s Men. The receipt for payment, which he signed along with two fellow actors, reveals that he had by this time achieved a prominent place in the company. He was already probably a so-called sharer, a position entitling him to a percentage of the company’s profits rather than merely a salary as an actor and a playwright. In time the profits of this company and its two theaters, the Globe Theatre, which opened in 1599, and the Blackfriars, which the company took over in 1608, enabled Shakespeare to become a wealthy man.

It is worth noting that Shakespeare’s share in the acting company made him wealthy, not any commissions or royalties from writing his plays. Playwriting was generally poorly paid work, which involved providing scripts for the successful theater business. His plays would have belonged to the acting company, and when they did reach print they then belonged to the publisher. No system of royalties existed at that time.

George Bernard Shaw

George Bernard Shaw (1856-1950), Irish-born writer, considered the most significant British dramatist since William Shakespeare. His plays are essentially brilliant dialogues on such topics as religion, politics, money, science, marriage, and art. Although regarded as comedies, the plays represent a serious effort to influence the ideas and attitudes of the audience. Often, conventional ideas are inverted or twisted to shock the public into a fresh awareness. Despite his emphasis on ideas, Shaw created probably the most memorable collection of dramatic characters since the 17th century.

In addition to being a prolific playwright (he wrote 50 stage plays), Shaw is regarded as the most readable music critic and best theater critic of his generation. He was also one of literature’s great letter writers.

Mary Shelley

Mary Shelley (1797-1851), English novelist. Daughter of the British philosopher William Godwin and the British author and feminist Mary Wollstonecraft Godwin, she was born in London, and privately educated. She met the young poet Percy Bysshe Shelley in May 1814, and two months later left England with him. When Shelley's first wife died in December 1816, he married Mary. In 1818 her first and most important work, the novel Frankenstein, was published. A remarkable accomplishment for a 20-year-old, the work was an immediate critical and popular success. Repeatedly dramatized for both the theater and motion pictures, this tale of Frankenstein, a student of the occult, and the subhuman monster he assembles from parts of human corpses added a new word to the English language: A “Frankenstein” is any creation that ultimately destroys its creator. No other work by Mary Shelley achieved the popularity or excellence of this first work, although she wrote four other novels, books of travel sketches, and miscellaneous tales and verse. One of her novels, The Last Man (1826), reveals her liberal social outlook; another of her books, Lodore (1835), is a novelized autobiography.

Percy Bysshe Shelley

Percy Bysshe Shelley (1792-1822), English poet, considered by many to be among the greatest, and one of the most influential leaders of the romantic movement. Throughout his life, Shelley lived by a radically nonconformist moral code. His beliefs concerning love, marriage, revolution, and politics caused him to be considered a dangerous immoralist by some.

He was born on August 4, 1792, at Field Place, near Horsham, Sussex, educated at Eton College and, until his expulsion at the end of one year, the University of Oxford. With another student, Thomas Jefferson Hogg, Shelley had written and circulated a pamphlet, The Necessity of Atheism (1811), of which the university authorities disapproved. He had also published a pamphlet of burlesque verse, Posthumous Fragments of Margaret Nicholson (1810).

Shortly after his expulsion, the 19-year-old Shelley married his first wife, Harriet Westbrook, and moved to the Lake District of England to study and write. Two years later, he published his first long serious work, Queen Mab: A Philosophical Poem (1813). The poem was one result of Shelley's friendship with the British philosopher William Godwin, expressing Godwin's freethinking Socialist philosophy. Another result of their friendship was Shelley's relationship with Godwin's daughter, Mary Wollstonecraft. In 1814, after separating from his wife, Shelley briefly toured Europe with Mary.

Returning to England, he produced the verse allegory Alastor, or The Spirit of Solitude (1816), which anticipated his later important work. During another brief visit to the Continent in the summer of 1816, Shelley and Mary met the British poet Lord Byron. At this time, Shelley wrote two short poems, “Hymn to Intellectual Beauty” and “Mont Blanc.” In December 1816, three weeks after the body of his wife, an apparent suicide, was recovered from a lake in a London park, Shelley and Mary were married.

In 1817, Shelley produced Laon and Cythna, a long narrative poem that tells a symbolic tale of revolution. It was later reissued as The Revolt of Islam (1818). At this time, he also wrote revolutionary political tracts signed “The Hermit of Marlow.” Then, early in 1818, he and his new wife left England for the last time.

During the remaining four years of his life, Shelley produced all his major works. Traveling and living in various Italian cities, the Shelleys were friendly with the British poet Leigh Hunt and his family as well as with Byron. Shortly before his 30th birthday, Shelley was drowned (July 8, 1822) in a storm while attempting to sail from Livorno to Le Spezia, Italy. Ten days later, his body was washed ashore.

Richard Brinsley Sheridan

Richard Brinsley Sheridan (1751-1816), British dramatist and politician, whose work is considered the finest development of the comedy of manners in 18th-century England.

Sheridan was born in Dublin, Ireland and educated at the University of Oxford. In 1775 three of his comic works; a drama, The Rivals; a farce, St. Patrick's Day; and an opera, The Duenna, were produced with great success at Covent Garden, London. The score for the opera was written by his father-in-law, the composer Thomas Linley, with whom Sheridan purchased the Drury Lane Theatre in London. From 1776, Sheridan served as manager of the theater and produced there several of his other witty satires on fashionable society, quite different from the sentimental comedies then popular. Among his works are The School for Scandal (1777) and The Critic (1779). The School for Scandal is considered his masterpiece: a series of gossipy but polished, fast-paced scenes exposing contemporary foibles through the actions of the vigorously drawn characters. The Critic, an afterpiece designed to be presented after a full-length play, is the work of a writer thoroughly familiar with the theater world; it is a broad satire on contemporary playwrights and their critics. Sheridan's two major trademarks are his incisively exaggerated characters and amusing twists of plot. From the name of Mrs. Malaprop, a humorous character in the early play The Rivals, derives the widely used term malapropism, meaning the absurd misapplication of a long word.

Sheridan became a member of Parliament in 1780, undersecretary for foreign affairs in 1782, secretary to the treasury in 1783, and treasurer of the navy and a member of the Privy Council in 1806. He later became a leader of society and a close adviser to the Prince of Wales, later George IV. The playwright's parliamentary career was notable for his eloquent speeches made in opposition to the British war against the American colonies, in support of the new French Republic, and in denunciation of the British colonial administrator Warren Hastings.

Sheridan died in London on July 7, 1816, his last years having been shadowed by financial ruin after the burning of the Drury Lane Theatre in 1809.

James Shirley

James Shirley (1596-1666), English dramatist, born in London and educated at the University of Cambridge. He was a schoolmaster from 1623 until the success of his first play Love Tricks, or the School of Compliment in 1625. His output until 1642, when the Puritan suppression of the theater ended his career, came to about 40 plays. They are considered a link between Renaissance drama and Restoration drama. Shirley's best works are his comedies, which are noted for their fantasy and clever satire. They include The Witty Fair One (1628) and The Lady of Pleasure (1635). He also wrote The Cardinal (1641), a tragedy; and The Triumph of Peace (1634), a masque, which was performed at the Inns of Court with scenery by Inigo Jones and music by William Lawes.

Algernon Sidney

Algernon Sidney (1622-83), English statesman and writer, a leader of the Whig opposition to King Charles II. Sidney was born at Penshurst, Kent, the son of Robert Sidney, earl of Leicester. He was active on the Parliamentary side during the English Revolution, serving on the council of state in 1652, but retiring from public affairs in 1653 in protest against the usurpation of power by the Lord Protector, Oliver Cromwell. In 1659 Sidney was again placed on the council of state, and he carried out a number of diplomatic missions. After Charles II was restored to the throne in 1660, Sidney lived in exile on the Continent. Returning to England in 1677, he intrigued with the French ambassador for the establishment of an English republic. He then joined a group of Whig leaders who allegedly planned to overthrow Charles, and he was accused of complicity in the so-called Rye House Plot. Convicted of treason on the basis of doubtful evidence, he was executed on December 7, 1683. Sidney's writings, especially his posthumously published Discourses Concerning Government (1698), form an important part of the literature on the lawfulness of resistance to tyranny.

Sir Philip Sidney

Sir Philip Sidney (1554-1586), English poet, courtier, and soldier, who in life was a model of the ideal Renaissance gentleman, and whose devotion to poetry served as an inspiration for the future of English verse.

Sidney was born in Penshurst, Kent, and was educated at Christ Church College, Oxford. A favorite of Elizabeth I, he was sent on several diplomatic missions. He retired from court for a time after incurring the queen's displeasure, but in 1583 was restored to favor and knighted. In 1585 he was appointed governor of Vlissingen in the Netherlands, and in 1586 he joined an expedition sent to aid the Netherlands against Spain. Sidney died of wounds received in a raid on a Spanish convoy at Zutphen in the Netherlands.

None of Sidney's works was published during his lifetime; many of them, however, circulated in manuscript. The best known are Astrophel and Stella (1591), a sequence of 108 sonnets celebrating a hopeless love affair, and Arcadia (1590), a pastoral romance in verse linked by prose passages; the first considerable work in English in this form, it became a model for later pastoral poetry. Sidney's Defence of Poesie (1595; known in a slightly different version as An Apologie for Poetrie, also 1595) was a prose essay that described the nature of poetry and defended it against Puritan objections to imaginative literature.

Alan Sillitoe

Alan Sillitoe, born in 1928, British novelist and poet, best known for his first novel, Saturday Night and Sunday Morning (1958; motion picture, 1960), which is the story of a young factory worker in post-World War II Britain. Born in Nottingham, Sillitoe left school to work in a bicycle factory at the age of 14. He served in the British Royal Air Force from 1946 to 1949 as a radio operator. Sillitoe then returned to England and was diagnosed with tuberculosis, spending several months in a hospital. During this time he read and wrote extensively. In 1950 Sillitoe met American poet Ruth Fainlight, whom he married in 1952 and with whom he traveled and lived for six years in France and Spain. During this time Sillitoe wrote most of the poems later published in The Rats and Other Poems (1960). Sillitoe's poetry is informed by the same angry spirit as his successful first novel, Saturday Night and Sunday Morning. Its hero, Arthur Seaton, is impatient with society and disaffected with middle-class values. The same feeling motivates the working-class characters who feel outcast from the larger society in Sillitoe's acclaimed volume of stories, The Loneliness of the Long-Distance Runner (1959; motion picture of title story, 1962). Other novels include Key to the Door (1961), in which the characters search for a way out of disaffection, and The Lost Flying Boat (1983) and Last Loves (1990), both of which involve ex-servicemen returning to their theater of operation many years later. Sillitoe's other works include Collected Poems (1993) and The Far Side of the Street (1988), a collection of short stories.

Edith Sitwell

Edith Sitwell (1887-1964), English poet, critic, and biographer, who was most successful as a writer of satirical verse or burlesque. Sitwell was born in Scarborough, Yorkshire, and educated privately. She and her brothers Osbert and Sacheverell were probably the most famous literary family of their time.

By her writing and her eccentric behavior, and dramatic Elizabethan dress, Sitwell both shocked and amused people. An example of her acclaimed art is her well-known poem Façade (1922), which she recited to the music of Sir William Walton, an amazing performance. Her poetry is notable for its avoidance of outmoded metaphor and imagery, its technical dexterity, especially in the use of dance rhythms, and its ability to communicate sensation and emotion. During World War II (1939-1945), Sitwell wrote poems about the blitz and other war issues, such as “Still Falls the Rain,” which describes a London air raid. In 1954 she was made a Dame Commander of the Order of the British Empire. Among her volumes of poetry are The Mother and Other Poems (1915), Gold Coast Customs (1929), and Music and Ceremonies (1963). Her other books include the biographies Alexander Pope (1930), The English Eccentrics (1933), and Fanfare for Elizabeth (1946); and a critical work, Aspects of Modern Poetry (1934). Taken Care Of, an autobiography, was published posthumously in 1965.

Sir Osbert Sitwell

Sir Osbert Sitwell (1892-1969), English writer, the brother of the poets Sacheverell and Edith. Francis Osbert Sacheverell Sitwell was born in London and educated at Eton College. He was a captain during World War I. A writer of poems, essays, novels, and short stories, he had a rich and intricate style. He is best known for five books of family memoirs collectively titled Left Hand, Right Hand (1944-1950). Although much of his writing is characterized by biting satire, these memoirs paint a nostalgic portrait of the Edwardian age. Other works include Tales My Father Taught Me (1962) and Pound Wise (1963), a collection of essays.

Sacheverell Sitwell

Sacheverell Sitwell (1897-1988), English writer, brother of writers Edith and Osbert, born in Scarborough, Yorkshire, and educated at Eton College. With profound scholarship, but avoiding a scholarly style, he wrote highly imaginative and entertaining biographies, travel books, and art criticism, including Southern Baroque Art (1924), The Gothick North (1929), The Hunters and the Hunted (1948), Golden Wall and Mirador (1961), and Southern Baroque Revisited (1968). He also wrote autobiographical essays, found in For Want of the Golden City (1973) and poetry collected in Selected Poems (1948) and other volumes.

Robert Southey

Robert Southey (1774-1843), English poet, generally considered a member of the romantic movement (see Romanticism) and one of the Lake Poets. He was born in Bristol and educated at the University of Oxford. He was a good friend of the poet Samuel Taylor Coleridge, with whom he made plans, which never materialized, to found a utopian community on the Susquehanna River in the United States. Partly in preparation for this scheme, Southey and Coleridge married sisters. Southey and Edith Fricker wed in 1795; Coleridge and Sara Fricker courted and wed at the same time. Southey traveled in Portugal in 1800, where he gathered material for a Portuguese history and completed his long poem Thalaba the Destroyer (12 volumes, 1801). In 1803 he settled with the Coleridge family at Greta Hall, Keswick. Southey became a political conservative and was appointed poet laureate in 1813. He wrote voluminously to support the household, including narrative poems such as The Curse of Kehama (1810) and a fine Life of Nelson (1813). In 1821 Southey published A Vision of Judgement, a long poem written in honor of British King George III. In the preface to this poem, Southey vigorously attacked the works of Lord Byron, who retaliated with a parody of A Vision of Judgement, in 1822. His prose is now regarded more highly than his poetry. Southey wrote essays on moral issues, edited works of Sir Thomas Malory and produced volumes of history.

C. P. Snow

C. P. Snow (1905-80), English novelist, critic, and scientist. Charles Percy Snow was born in Leicester and educated as a chemist and physicist at the universities of Leicester and Cambridge. He did scientific work in the 1930s and during World War II was chief of scientific personnel for the ministry of labor. He was named a Commander of the British Empire in 1943, knighted in 1957, and created life peer as Baron Snow of Leicester in 1964. He was parliamentary secretary to the minister of technology from 1964 until 1966.

Snow is best known for a series of interrelated novels that examines English life between 1920 and 1950. The series is named after the first of these novels, Strangers and Brothers, which appeared in 1940. Others in the series of 11 novels include Time of Hope (1949), The Masters (1951), The New Men (1954), The Affair (1959), Corridors of Power (1964), Last Things (1970), and In Their Wisdom (1974). His novels usually involve scientists, university people, public servants, and politicians. In The Two Cultures and the Scientific Revolution, originally given as lectures and later (1959) published in book form, Snow urged a mutual understanding between scientists and men of letters.

Sydney Smith

Sydney Smith (1771-1845), English writer and Anglican clergyman, born in Essex. In 1798 Smith went to Edinburgh, where he helped to found the literary journal the Edinburgh Review. Subsequently he gained a considerable reputation in London as a preacher, lecturer on moral philosophy, and wit. In 1831 Smith was appointed a canon of Saint Paul's Cathedral, London, where he remained until his death. His works include the witty Peter Plymley's Letters (1807-08), written to protest restrictions against Roman Catholics and a series of articles, printed between 1802 and 1827 in the Edinburgh Review, that were republished in 1839.

Stevie Smith

Stevie Smith, pseudonym of Florence Margaret Smith (1902-1971), British writer who is best remembered for her short, simple, yet pointed poetry. Smith was born in Hull, England, but when she was three years old her family moved to the northern London suburb of Palmers Green, where she lived for the rest of her life. She attended the North London Collegiate School for Girls. Her first and only job was with Newnes-Pearson, British magazine publishers, where she became private secretary to Sir George Newnes and Sir Neville Pearson. She submitted her first volume of poems to British publisher Jonathan Cape when she was 32 years old, but was asked to write a novel instead. Her first book, Novel on Yellow Paper (1936), was an amusing, largely autobiographical monologue. Two other novels in a similar style followed—Over the Frontier (1938) and The Holiday (1949), the story of a failed love affair.

Smith's poetic reputation—for amusing, barbed, but often mournful short verses—was established by A Good Time Was Had By All (1937). She achieved fame with Not Waving But Drowning (1957), which has a central concept of loneliness but still retains an underlying comic manner. Four years after her death, The Collected Poems of Stevie Smith (1975), illustrated with Smith's own sketches, was published. In 1977 Stevie, a stageplay based on her life by British playwright Hugh Whitemore, was produced, with British actress Glenda Jackson in the lead role. The play was made into a successful motion picture in 1978. Me Again: Uncollected Writings of Stevie Smith, Illustrated by Herself, a collection of Smith's reviews, articles, letters, and previously uncollected poetry, was published in 1981. John Skelton

John Skelton (1460?-1529), English poet and satirist, born probably in Diss, Norfolk, and educated at the University of Cambridge. He was a tutor to Prince Henry, later Henry VIII. The Bowge of Court (1498) was a satire of court politics that Skelton wrote just before stepping out of court life and becoming a clergyman. He did not stay out of court long, however, returning to serve in various capacities. Skelton was ordained a priest in 1498 and became rector of Diss about 1502. He was also adviser to Henry VIII. He is best known for his satirical poems attacking the court and the corruption of the clergy. Skelton's verse is written in a unique style known as Skeltonics: short, alliterative lines with a persistent repetition of the same rhyme that maintain a vernacular tone, the repetitive rhymes giving the lines a “breathless” rhythm. His poems include Collyn Clout (1522) and Why Come Ye Not to Court? (1522), both attacks on Thomas Cardinal Wolsey, and corruption in the church. Skelton was admired by W. H. Auden and Robert Graves for his unique voice and innovative meter.

Leslie Stephen

Leslie Stephen (1832-1904), English biographer, critic, and philosopher, born in London, and educated at King's College and at the University of Cambridge. He was ordained a priest in the Anglican church and remained at Cambridge as a tutor. In 1864 he returned to London and began to write critical essays for leading periodicals. These essays were subsequently collected under the title Hours in a Library (3 volumes, 1874, 1876, 1879). From 1871 to 1882 he was editor of the Cornhill Magazine. Stephen's outstanding achievement was his editorship, begun in 1882, of the first 26 volumes of Dictionary of National Biography, to which he contributed nearly 400 biographies. During this period his readings in philosophy and ethics led him to a position of extreme skepticism. He repudiated his ordination in 1875 and stated his theological opinions in An Agnostic's Apology, which appeared in the magazine Fortnightly in 1876 and as a book in 1893. He subsequently devoted much of his time to philosophical writings such as The History of English Thought in the Eighteenth Century (1876) and The English Utilitarians (3 volumes, 1900), both of which were strongly influenced by the work of the 18th-century philosopher David Hume and the 19th- century utilitarians Jeremy Bentham and James and John Stuart Mill. As a philosopher Stephen was especially preoccupied with ethics. His Science of Ethics (1882) was widely adopted as a textbook. Virginia Woolf, novelist and literary critic, was his youngest daughter.

Richard Steele

Richard Steele (1672-1729), English essayist, playwright, and statesman, who founded and contributed frequently to the influential 18th-century journal the Spectator.

Steele was born in March 1672 in Dublin and educated at the University of Oxford. He entered the army in 1694 and during his term of military service wrote three witty comic dramas, The Funeral (1701), The Lying Lover (1703), and The Tender Husband (1705). In 1707 Steele was appointed by the English statesman Robert Harley, 1st earl of Oxford, to edit the London Gazette, an official government publication.

On April 12, 1709, Steele brought out, under the pseudonym of Isaac Bickerstaff, the first issue of the Tatler, a triweekly journal featuring essays and brief sketches on politics and society. In addition to his own essays, Steele published in the Tatler a number of papers by the English essayist Joseph Addison, whom he had met during his school days and who became an important colleague and friend. This publication was succeeded on March 1, 1711, by the more famous Spectator with both Steele and Addison as contributors. Many of the ideas for articles were Steele's, with Addison filling in the details and polishing the prose. Perhaps the best-known portion of the Spectator comprises a series of essays known as the Sir Roger de Coverley papers, which, in the person of a kindly and eccentric old country gentleman, present an idealized portrait of the 18th-century English squire. This character was conceived by Steele and named for an old English dance. When the last issue of the Spectator appeared on December 6, 1712, Steele had contributed 236 papers and Addison 274. Steele's next journalistic venture, the Guardian, started in 1713, lasted for 176 issues, and was succeeded by several periodicals, notably the Englishman (1713).

In these later undertakings, Steele, an ardent Whig, involved himself in violent controversy with the Tories, who then controlled the government. He entered Parliament as a Whig but was expelled in 1714 on the charge of having committed seditious libel in his pamphlet The Crisis, in which he advocated the succession to the British throne of the pro-Whig elector of Hannover, later King George I. Political disagreements tore apart the friendship of Addison and Steele in 1718. Edmund Spenser

Edmund Spenser (1552?-1599), great English poet, who bridged the medieval and Elizabethan periods, and who is most famous for his long allegorical romance, The Faerie Queene.

Spenser was born in London, where he attended the Merchant Tailor's School. He then went on to Pembroke College, University of Cambridge, where he took a degree in 1576. In 1579 he entered the service of the English courtier Robert Dudley, earl of Leicester, and met the English poet Sir Philip Sidney, to whom he dedicated his first major poem, The Shepheardes Calendar (1579). This work demonstrates the great poetic flexibility of the English language. It is a series of 12 pastoral poems written in a variety of meters and employing a vocabulary of obsolete words and coined expressions to give a suggestion of antiquity.

While residing with the earl of Leicester in London, Spenser began to write The Faerie Queene, and in 1580 he was appointed secretary to Arthur Grey, 14th Baron Grey de Wilton, the new lord deputy of Ireland. Thereafter, Spenser lived mostly in Ireland, near Cork, where he completed his great allegory. In 1589 he was visited by the English poet, courtier, and explorer Sir Walter Raleigh, who recognized the merit of the poem and brought Spenser to England to publish it and to make the poet known to Queen Elizabeth I. Spenser received an enthusiastic reception, and his poem was hailed on the publication of its first three books in 1590. Unable to secure further patronage, however, he remained in England for about a year and published a collection of short poems entitled Complaints (1591) before returning to Ireland. On his return, in the same year, he wrote Colin Clouts Come Home Againe. This work, published in 1595, was dedicated to Raleigh; in the pastoral mode, it recounts Spenser's experiences at the English court and concludes with praises of the simple country life. In 1594 Spenser married and celebrated the event in his “Epithalamion,” a wedding song, considered the most beautiful example of this genre in English literature. It was printed in 1595 in the same volume as a group of love sonnets, the Amoretti.

In 1596 Spenser took three more books of The Faerie Queene to London for publication. While in England he completed a prose work, Veue of the Present State of Ireland, which was not issued until long after his death in 1633. He did publish at this time Fowre Hymnes (1596), poems in honor of love and beauty. For a double wedding of two daughters of the nobility in 1596, Spenser composed the “Prothalamion,” one of his loveliest shorter lyrical poems. Again disappointed of royal patronage, he returned to Ireland. In October 1598 his castle was sacked and burned by Irish rebels, and Spenser fled to London, where he died on January 13, 1599. Stephen Spender

Stephen Spender (1909-1995), English poet, literary critic, and editor. Sir Stephen Harold Spender was born in London and educated at the University of Oxford, where he first became associated with such other outspoken British literary figures as W. H. Auden, Christopher Isherwood, C. Day Lewis, and Louis MacNeice. His book The Thirties and After (1979) recalls these figures and others prominent in the arts and politics, and his Journals 1939-1983, published in 1986, are a detailed account of his times and contemporaries. With his early works, notably Poems (1933), Spender attracted attention as an eloquent champion of the radical labor movement. His convictions found further expression in Vienna (1934), a long poem in praise of the 1934 uprising of Viennese socialists, and in Trial of a Judge (1938), an anti-Fascist drama in verse. After the 1939 pact between Germany and the Soviet Union, Spender developed more conservative views. His other works include World Within World (1951), an autobiography; The Making of a Poem (1962), a critical study; Collected Poems 1928-1985 (1986); and Love-Hate Relations: English and American Sensibilities (1974), about literary exchanges between Britain and the United States. He edited Horizon magazine from 1939 to 1941 and Encounter magazine from 1953 to 1967. Spender taught at various U.S. institutions, accepting the Elliston Chair of Poetry at Cincinnati University in 1953. In 1983 he was knighted. Spender's lyric verse treats technological aspects of the modern world.

Muriel Spark

Muriel Spark (1918-2006), British writer of novels, short stories, poetry, and criticism. Her novels are wry commentaries on modern life observed in various locales, and are colored by her Roman Catholic faith (she converted to Catholicism in 1954).

Spark’s incisive satires of social pettiness and vanity speak to the mystery and terror of life, death, and eternity—universals that the literate and cultured characters of her books are forever in danger of forgetting. In the novel Memento Mori (1959), for example, a group of aged intellectuals carry on their bickering and rivalries even as they are successively dying, each one warned by a mysterious phone call, “Remember you must die.” In The Girls of Slender Means (1963), a group of men and women engage in vicious personal competition, which is interrupted when their lives are shattered by the absurd explosion of a bomb that had failed to detonate during the London Blitz of the early 1940s.

Spark was born Muriel Sarah Camberg in Edinburgh, Scotland. In 1937 she married S. O. Spark and moved to Africa, where she spent several years in Southern Rhodesia (now Zimbabwe). The marriage was dissolved and Muriel Spark returned to England in 1944, during World War II, and found work in the Foreign Office on anti-Nazi propaganda. She relocated to Italy in 1967 and lived there for the rest of her life.

Spark’s best known novel is The Prime of Miss Jean Brodie (1961), the story of an eccentric Edinburgh schoolteacher seen through the eyes of an admiring (but later disenchanted) pupil. It was later successfully adapted for the Broadway stage and as a motion picture (see The Prime of Miss Jean Brodie). Other works by Spark include The Comforters (1957), The Ballad of Peckham Rye (1960), The Mandelbaum Gate (1965), The Hothouse by the East River (1973), and Territorial Rights (1979). Her novels of the 1980s include Loitering with Intent (1981), a discussion of good, evil, and the writer as creator; The Only Problem (1984), a witty meditation on the Old Testament Book of Job; and A Far Cry from Kensington (1988), a tale of good and evil set in the publishing world of the 1950s. Laurence Sterne

Laurence Sterne (1713-1768), English novelist and humorist, who wrote The Life and Opinions of Tristram Shandy, Gentleman, one of the great 18th-century masterpieces of English fiction.

Sterne was born on November 24, 1713, in Clonmel, Ireland. The son of an English army officer, he was educated at the University of Cambridge and was ordained a priest in the Church of England in 1738. He spent the next 21 years as a vicar in Yorkshire, preaching eccentric sermons, reading the 16th-century French satirist François Rabelais and old romances, and spending his time and attentions on women other than his wife.

In 1760 Sterne settled in London, where, despite suffering from tuberculosis, he lived a social, dissolute life. His Sermons of Mr. Yorick (1760-1769) was well received. The first two volumes of his major work, the droll, rambling, and slyly indecorous novel The Life and Opinions of Tristram Shandy, Gentleman (1759- 1767), caused a literary sensation. They are important more for revealing the thoughts and feelings of the author than for describing external events. Tristram Shandy was a highly original and innovative work; it exploded the budding conventions of the novel and confounded the expectations of its readers. Sterne had unique ideas about perception, meaning, and time that made Tristram Shandy a precursor to the modern novel and stream of consciousness. Seven more volumes appeared between 1761 and 1767. Sterne also published Journal to Eliza (1767), written to Mrs. Eliza Draper, one of his many women friends. For health reasons, from 1762 to 1764 Sterne lived in Toulouse, France, with his wife, who was mentally ill, and their daughter. In 1765 he made a lengthy tour of France and Italy. A Sentimental Journey Through France and Italy (1768) records his appreciation of the social customs he encountered in France.

Bram Stoker

Bram Stoker, full name ABRAHAM STOKER (1847-1912), British writer, born in Dublin, Ireland, and educated at the University of Dublin. After ten years as a civil servant and a literary and dramatic critic, he left Ireland in 1876 to become secretary and business manager for English actor Sir Henry Irving, joining him in the management of the Lyceum Theatre, London. He remained associated with Irving until the actor's death in 1905. Stoker wrote many books, including Personal Reminiscences of Henry Irving (1906). His classic novel of horror, Dracula (1897), introduced the character of the vampire Count Dracula of Transylvania. Dracula has inspired numerous films, sequels, and retellings.

Tom Stoppard

Tom Stoppard, born in 1937, English playwright, noted for his ingenious use of language and ironic political metaphors. Stoppard was associated with the continental European theater of the absurd, a movement that lamented the senselessness of the human condition. He fused the English tradition of the “comedy of manners” (a play that satirizes the customs of the upper classes) with contemporary social concerns by concentrating on the intricate and comical duplicities of everyday conversation within a wider, and often menacing, historical perspective.

Born Tomas Straussler in Zlín, Czechoslovakia (now in the Czech Republic), the son of a physician who was later killed by the Nazis (see National Socialism), Stoppard was educated in India and England. He worked as a journalist and as a writer for radio and television before coming into prominence with the production of his play Rosencrantz and Guildenstern Are Dead at the Edinburgh Fringe Festival in 1966. Conceived as a satirical meditation on Hamlet, by English playwright William Shakespeare, Stoppard's play focuses on the sadly existential but frivolous meanderings of two of Hamlet's marginal characters, a pair of quarrelsome courtiers.

Although sometimes criticized for the limited character development in his work, Stoppard used inventive linguistic displays and plot inversions to fuel the texts for his plays The Real Inspector Hound (1968), Jumpers (1972), Travesties (1974), Every Good Boy Deserves Favor (1977, with music by American pianist and composer André Previn), The Real Thing (1982), and Hapgood (1988). In addition, Stoppard adapted several foreign-language plays, and he wrote many radio scripts and motion-picture and television screenplays, including the motion-picture adaptation of Rosencrantz and Guildenstern Are Dead (1990), which he also directed. His film script for Shakespeare in Love (1998) won an Academy Award for best original screenplay. He adapted the script for Enigma (2001) from a novel about the cracking of Germany’s Enigma code during World War II (1939-1945).

Stoppard’s interest in language and use of intellectual concepts remained apparent in his later plays. Arcadia (1993) uses modern concepts of randomness and complexity to examine the consequences for the present day of actions taken at a house party in 1809. Indian Ink (1995) looks at anglophilia among Americans and Indians amid discussions about the nature of art. The Invention of Love (1997) uses the vocabulary of textual analysis to imagine the inner life of English poet and classical scholar A. E. Housman. His ambitious trilogy, The Coast of Utopia (2002), chronicles the struggles of radicals in mid-19th century tsarist Russia. Rock 'n' Roll (2006) covers the years from 1968 to 1990 from two perspectives: anti- Communists in Prague, Czechoslovakia, and Marxists in Cambridge, England. In 1997 Stoppard received a knighthood. Lytton Strachey

Lytton Strachey (1880-1932), British biographer and literary critic, who helped sweep away the ponderous, solemn Victorian approach to the writing of biography, replacing it with a witty and impressionistic style that was widely imitated.

Born in London, Strachey studied at the University of Cambridge, where he associated with other intellectuals, including Clive Bell, E. M. Forster, and John Maynard Keynes, who later became leading figures in the Bloomsbury Group. Making his home in London, Strachey wrote literary criticism for the Spectator. A great admirer of the French classics, particularly for their wit and urbanity, he did much to bring them to the attention of the English, especially in his Landmarks in French Literature (1912). His Eminent Victorians (1918)—short biographies of Florence Nightingale, Henry Edward Manning, and others—won him widespread recognition. In this work, instead of using the conventional method of detailed chronological narration, he carefully selected his facts to present highly personal portraits of his subjects. His aim, he declared in the preface, was to cast “a sudden revealing searchlight into obscure recesses, hitherto undivined.” In the process he occasionally sacrificed truth, but the result—polished, malicious, and lively—brought him many readers. Strachey employed the same approach in his Queen Victoria (1921), Elizabeth and Essex (1928), and Portraits in Miniature (1931). His critical articles were collected in Books and Characters (1922) and in the posthumous Characters and Commentaries (1933).

Sir John Suckling

Sir John Suckling (1609-1642), English poet, who was one of the Cavalier poets. He was born in Whitton (now in Greater London) and educated at the University of Cambridge. On the death of his father, a court official, he became heir to large estates. He was knighted in 1630 and joined the court of Charles I, where he was famed for his lyric poetry and wit and equally notorious as a profligate and gambler. In 1641 Suckling took part in an abortive plot to rescue the pro-Royalist Earl of Strafford from the Tower of London, where he had been imprisoned at the time of the Scottish rebellion. As a result, Suckling was forced to flee to the Continent. Impoverished and in despair, he is said to have poisoned himself in Paris in the summer of 1642. Many of his writings were collected after his death under the title Fragmenta Aurea (Golden Fragments, 1646). The volume contains plays, a theological tract, and miscellaneous poems. Suckling's literary fame depends entirely upon his lyrics, which are distinguished for their grace and irony and show the influence of John Donne.

Algernon Charles Swinburne

Algernon Charles Swinburne (1837-1909), English poet noted for libertarian themes and stylistic virtuosity.

Swinburne was born in London and educated at the University of Oxford. In 1860 he published the two verse dramas The Queen Mother and Rosamond. Settling in London, he began a long association with the poet and painter Dante Gabriel Rossetti and also formed friendships with the writers William Morris and George Meredith. Swinburne's choral verse drama Atalanta in Calydon (1865) gained him immediate fame. This poem was an ambitious attempt to reproduce the form and spirit of Greek tragedy, and it demonstrated the poet's extraordinary gift for sustained verbal melody.

Poems and Ballads (1866) created one of the most famous literary scandals of the Victorian period. Swinburne attempted to celebrate physical love and the life of the senses in the spirit of the ancient Greek lyric poets and certain French contemporaries. Some of the poems demonstrate his tendency to shock.

The political poems contained in Songs Before Sunrise (1871) were inspired in part by Swinburne's admiration for the Italian patriot Giuseppe Mazzini. They range from a lofty tribute to democracy to a vague and excited approval of revolution. One of his last major poetic works, Poems and Ballads (1878), contains the moving elegy “Ave Atque Vale,” written in praise of the French poet Charles Baudelaire. Swinburne wrote many elegies, including one for Robert Browning.

By 1879 Swinburne's pleasure-seeking lifestyle had caused his health to decline seriously, and he moved into the Putney home of his friend the critic and poet Walter Theodore Watts-Dunton. Swinburne recovered and lived the rest of his life under Watts-Dunton's care. In the latter part of his career, criticism as well as verse occupied his energies. He wrote detailed and imaginative studies of Elizabethan drama in the Study of Shakespeare (1880) and The Age of Shakespeare (1909). His other notable works include the series of tragic verse dramas Chastelard (1865), Bothwell (1874), and Mary Stuart (1881).

Swinburne's reputation as a great poet rests upon a number of poems, such as Atalanta in Calydon,”Dolores” (1866), “Laus Veneris” (1866), and Tristram of Lyonesse (1882). Arthur William Symons

Arthur William Symons (1865-1945), English literary critic and poet, born in Wales, and educated privately. He was an admirer of the French symbolist poets, and he expounded their ideas in critical works such as The Symbolist Movement in Literature (1899) and in biographies, including Charles Baudelaire (1920). In his own poetry, which included the volumes Days and Nights (1889) and Silhouettes (1892), he emulated the subjective, emotional symbolist style. Among his other works are The Romantic Movement in English Poetry (1909), Studies in the Elizabethan Drama (1920), and the autobiographical Confessions (1930).

Julian Gustave Symons

Julian Gustave Symons (1912–1995), British author, best known for his crime novels, who also worked as a critic, editor, poet, essayist, biographer, and historian.

Symons became deeply involved in anarchist and literary circles in London, writing poetry and editing the influential poetry magazine The Twentieth Century. His first detective novel, The Immaterial Murder Case (1945), was a spoof in which he introduced many literary figures of the period. By the time he wrote his second, The Thirty First of February (1950), he had begun to use his writing to investigate the psychology of relationships and to comment upon the structure of society. His novels include The End of Solomon Grundy (1964), The Man Who Lost His Wife (1970), and The Blackheath Poisonings (1978), one of several works with a Victorian setting. Some of his best crime- novel writing is contained in Bloody Murder (1972).

Among his many other works are biographies of Edgar Allan Poe, Charles Dickens, Thomas Carlyle, and Dashiell Hammett (a favorite author). He also wrote social histories, such as The General Strike (1957) and The Thirties (1960), and a brief autobiography, Notes from Another Country (1972). As a critic and editor, he encouraged several generations of young writers.

Sir William Temple Sir William Temple (1628-99), English statesman and writer, born in London, and educated at the University of Cambridge. In 1655 he married Dorothy Osborne, daughter of the governor of Guernsey; the letters she wrote to him during their courtship were posthumously published in 1888 and are regarded as among the finest in English literature. After his marriage Temple moved to Ireland, where he was a member of the Irish Parliament from 1661 to 1663. He then returned to England and embarked upon a diplomatic career. In 1666 he became a baronet.

Temple's most important diplomatic accomplishment was the negotiation, in 1668, that led to the second Triple Alliance, by which England, the Netherlands, and Sweden united against France. In the same year Temple was appointed ambassador to The Hague. In 1677 he helped to bring about the marriage of the prince of Orange, later William III, king of England, to Princess Mary of England, later Queen Mary II. In his later years Temple devoted himself to political writings and essays. For a time his secretary was the Anglo-Irish writer Jonathan Swift, who edited The Works of Sir William Temple, posthumously published in 1720 and 1731.

Alfred, Lord Tennyson

Alfred, Lord Tennyson (1809-1892), English poet, one of the great representative figures of the Victorian Age. His writing encompasses many poetic styles and includes some of the finest idyllic poetry in the language.

Tennyson's first long poem after gaining literary recognition was The Princess (1847), a romantic treatment in musical blank verse of the question of women's rights. In 1850 appeared one of his greatest poems, In Memoriam, a tribute to the memory of Arthur Hallam. Although the loose organization of this series of lyrics, written over a period of 17 years, and the intensely personal character of the poem perplexed many of the readers of Tennyson's day, In Memoriam has since taken its place as one of the great elegies in English literature.

In 1850 Tennyson married Emily Sarah Sellwood, whom he had been waiting to marry since 1836. Enormously popular, he was appointed poet laureate of Britain the same year, succeeding William Wordsworth in this honor. He settled with his bride at Twickenham near London, three years later moving to his estate, Farringford, near Freshwater on the Isle of Wight. There he resided for at least a part of each year for the remainder of his life. In 1854 “The Charge of the Light Brigade” appeared; it was written, as one of the duties of his laureateship, to celebrate a memorable action by a British cavalry unit in the Crimean War. In the following year Maud, and Other Poems was published.

With the composition of Idylls of the King (begun in 1859 and completed in 1885) Tennyson returned to the subject of the Arthurian cycle. He dealt with the ancient legends in an episodic rather than a continuous narrative structure, the result being a loosely strung series of metrical romances. Rich in medieval pageantry and vivid, noble characterization, the poems contain some of Tennyson's best writing.

Among the poet's other works are the moving narrative of love and self-sacrifice Enoch Arden (1864); the historical dramas Queen Mary (1875), Harold (1876), and Becket (1884); Ballads and Other Poems (1880); Tiresias and Other Poems (1885); Demeter and Other Poems (1889); and The Death of Oenone and Other Poems (published posthumously, 1892). Tennyson was made a peer in 1884, taking his seat in the House of Lords as 1st Baron Tennyson of Freshwater and Aldworth. He died at Aldworth House, Hazlemere, Surrey, on October 6, 1892.

William Makepeace Thackeray

William Makepeace Thackeray (1811-63), English novelist and humorist, one of the foremost exponents of the 19th-century realistic novel, exemplified by his two most famous works, Vanity Fair and Henry Esmond.

Thackeray was born July 18, 1811, in Calcutta (now Kolkata), India, into a wealthy English merchant family. In 1829 Thackeray entered the University of Cambridge. Leaving the university without taking his degree, he attempted to develop his literary and artistic abilities, first as the editor of a short-lived journal and subsequently as an art student in Paris. In 1840, despite a series of financial reverses and the mental illness of his wife, Thackeray produced The Paris Sketchbook, a series of reprints of his contributions to various literary journals. Comic Tales and Sketches (1841) contained the Yellowplush Papers, Major Gahagan, and the Bedford Row Conspiracy. After joining the staff of the humorous journal Punch in 1842, he published the Irish Sketchbook in 1843 and Cornhill to Cairo in 1847.

Thackeray began the serial publication of his great satirical novel Vanity Fair early in 1847, quickly establishing a reputation as one of the major literary figures of his time. In such subsequent novels as Pendennis (1848), Henry Esmond (1852), The Newcomes (1853), and The Virginians (1857), he broadened his observation of social situations to various eras and locales. These widely acclaimed works brought Thackeray new recognition. He became a principal competitor of his great contemporary, Charles Dickens, with whom he frequently disagreed on the nature of the novel as a vehicle for social commentary.

After lecturing in the U.S., Thackeray edited the Cornhill Magazine (1860-62). He contributed two of his lesser novels, Lovel the Widower and The Adventures of Philip, to the journal, and his work with the magazine suggested ideas for his humorous essays, The Roundabout Papers. In 1862 he gave up his editorship because he was unwilling to refuse manuscripts, but he continued to work for the magazine, beginning his last novel, Denis Duval, shortly before his death on December 24, 1863, in London.

Thackeray is particularly noted for his exquisitely humorous and ironic portrayals of the middle and upper classes of his time. His narrative skill and vivid characterizations are strikingly evident in his masterpiece Vanity Fair, an elaborate study of social relationships in early 19th-century England. The character of Becky Sharp, a scheming adventuress, is drawn with consummate skill, serving as a model for the heroines of many later novels. Dylan Thomas

Dylan Thomas (1914-1953), Welsh poet, short-story writer, and playwright, renowned for the unique brilliance of his verbal imagery and for his celebration of natural beauty.

Thomas was born in Swansea, Wales, on October 27, 1914. After grammar school he moved to London where, in 1934, his first book of poetry, Eighteen Poems, was published. At this early age, he revealed unusual power in the use of poetic diction and imagery; the volume won him immediate critical acclaim. Thematically, these poems and virtually all that followed seem obscure because they contain elements of surrealism and personal fantasy. But the freshness and vitality of Thomas's language draw the reader into the poems and reveal the universality of the experiences with which they are concerned. This introspective tendency is less apparent in Deaths and Entrances (1946) and In Country Sleep (1951), which are generally regarded as containing his finest writing. Thomas's other works include Twenty-five Poems (1936) and The Map of Love (1939), containing both poetry and prose. A Portrait of the Artist as a Young Dog (1940) is a group of autobiographical sketches, and Adventures in the Skin Trade (published posthumously, 1954) contains an unfinished novel and other prose pieces. During World War II (1939-1945) Thomas wrote scripts for documentary motion pictures.

After the war Thomas was a literary commentator for BBC radio. Under Milk Wood (published posthumously, 1954), a play for voices, was originally written for radiobroadcast; when Thomas read it for its first public performance in Cambridge, Massachusetts, in 1953, it was still unfinished. The work became his most famous piece; it evokes the lives of the inhabitants of Llareggub, a small, Welsh seaside town. Noted for his readings of his own verse, Thomas became legendary in the United States, where he gave many lecture tours and gained a wide following.

Francis Thompson

Francis Thompson (1859-1907), English poet, born in Preston. His first volume of poems (1893) included his best-known work, “The Hound of Heaven,” a profoundly moving, mystical Roman Catholic ode. This volume was followed by Sister Songs (1895) and New Poems (1897). Thompson also wrote literary criticism, and several prose works were published after his early death from tuberculosis: Life of St. Ignatius Loyola (1909), Shelley (2nd ed., 1909), and A Renegade Poet, and Other Essays (1910). A three-volume edition of his Works, prefaced by a biography, appeared in 1913.

Hester Lynch Thrale

Hester Lynch Thrale (1741-1821), English writer, remembered for her association with Samuel Johnson. In 1765 Thrale, the wife of a wealthy brewer, met the English author and lexicographer; the following year she offered Johnson her home while he recuperated from a long illness. For the next 16 years he spent much time at the Thrale estate, and Thrale gave her famous dinner parties for Johnson and his friends. After becoming a widow, Thrale married her daughter's music teacher, Gabriel Piozzi, despite Johnson's disapproval. This caused a rupture in their friendship. After Johnson's death in 1784 she composed a series of anecdotes about her late illustrious friend, and a few years later published Anecdotes of Johnson (1786) and Letters to and from Johnson (1788). Her diaries, poems, anecdotes, and other miscellaneous writings were published in a collection, Thraliana (1942).

J. R. R. Tolkien

J. R. R. Tolkien (1892-1973), South African-born British writer, medieval scholar, and philologist (language scholar). Tolkien is best known for his fantasy novels The Hobbit (1937) and The Lord of the Rings (1954-1955). He published these and his other books under the name J. R. R. Tolkien.

John Ronald Reuel Tolkien was born in Bloemfontein, South Africa, to English parents. His father died when Tolkien was very young, and his mother returned to England with her two sons. She died when Tolkien was 12, and he and his brother were taken in and raised by a local priest.

Young Tolkien showed early promise as a linguist, inventing his own alphabets and languages. He won a scholarship to Oxford University, where he studied Old and Middle English and Old Norse. He also invented two languages he referred to as “elvish.” Soon after graduating in 1915, Tolkien enlisted in the British army to fight in World War I. After four months in the trenches he developed an infection known as trench fever and was sent home for a lengthy recuperation. War, he later said, deepened and sobered his imagination and stimulated his love of fantasy.

While hospitalized in 1917 Tolkien began to write, inventing a fantasy world that featured its own unique peoples, languages, and history. These early writings, which were published after the author’s death under the title The Silmarillion, present the mythological beginnings of what would eventually be dubbed Middle-earth. All of Tolkien’s fantasy works were set in this world.

Tolkien continued his scholarly work while writing fantasies. From 1920 to 1925 he taught at the University of Leeds, and in 1925 he became professor of Anglo-Saxon at Oxford University. He taught at Oxford for more than three decades, retiring in 1959.

As a scholar, Tolkien theorized about the meaning of fantasy and argued for the importance of such medieval fantasies as Beowulf and the Arthurian legend Sir Gawain and the Green Knight. He also translated or edited editions of these works. In the essays “Beowulf: The Monsters and the Critics” (1936) and “On Fairy-Stories” (1939), Tolkien claimed that the mythological imagination, which invents fantasy realms and beings, enriches the spirit and touches on basic truths in a manner akin to religion.

Thomas Traherne

Thomas Traherne (1637-1674), English poet and clergyman. Traherne was the son of a shoemaker. He was educated at the University of Oxford and ordained in 1660. Roman Forgeries (1673) was the only one of his works to be published in Traherne's lifetime. Traherne's verse style is characterized by a musical quality and strikingly original imagery. His most important prose works are Christian Ethicks (published posthumously, 1675) and the visionary Centuries of Meditations (first published 1908). A number of his manuscripts were discovered by chance in a London bookstall in 1896 and were published for the first time in 1903. Traherne's poetry is marked by a sense of rejoicing and it celebrates childlike wonder, which he valued.

Anthony Trollope Anthony Trollope (1815-1882), English novelist, who presented a sharply observed picture of the upper layers of Victorian society, notably in his two six-novel series, the chronicles of Barsetshire and the Palliser novels. Trollope’s long literary career began in 1847 with the publication of The Macdermots of Ballycloran. Over the course of that career he produced 47 novels and 16 other works of short fiction and travel writing. However, it was not until his fourth novel, The Warden (1855), that he developed the style for which he is best known. In his fiction Trollope typically focuses on characterization rather than on narrative structure. He assembles large groups of characters, usually from the professional and landed classes, some of whom appear in several novels. Many of his works are monumentally long, but their improvisational, digressive quality allows Trollope to demonstrate his talent for social observation and his excellent ear for dialogue. The Warden was the first of Trollope’s six chronicles of Barsetshire, which describe domestic and public intrigues among the clerics of the fictional county of Barsetshire in west-central England. Barchester, the county seat, is a cathedral town with a full set of clerical and professional characters. The other novels in the series are Barchester Towers (1857), Doctor Thorne (1858), Framley Parsonage (1861), The Small House at Allington (1864), and The Last Chronicle of Barset (1867). Each of the six novels is complete in itself and, except for the first two, they are not strictly sequels. However, chronology is observed and many of the same characters reappear throughout the series. The Warden is a social comedy of controversy surrounding the position of the warden of Hiram’s Hospital in Barchester. The love story, without which no Victorian novel could hold readers, involves the warden’s daughter and a local surgeon and reformer who believes the warden’s sinecure (paid job without duties) violates the public trust. The second novel in the chronicles of Barsetshire, Barchester Towers (1857), has long been the most popular in the series. It records the attempts of the scheming and hypocritical Obadiah Slope to gain power in the diocese. He meets his match in his struggle for control of the diocese in Mrs. Proudie, the domineering wife of the weak, indecisive bishop. Although The Warden and Barchester Towers sold few copies at the time of their initial publication, they have since become the most popular novels in the series. Some critics, however, think the other Barsetshire novels are better. Doctor Thorne is notable for fine character studies of the kindly country physician and his psychotic patient. Framley Parsonage, a clerical love story, was the novel that brought Trollope fame. The Small House at Allington contains a favorite heroine, Lily Dale. Trollope pronounced The Last Chronicle of Barset “the best novel I have written,” a claim the work amply justifies.

Frances Trollope

Frances Trollope, néeMILTON (1780-1863), English novelist and travel writer, who was the mother of the novelist Anthony Trollope. She was born in Stapleton, near Bristol, moved to London, and married the barrister Thomas Anthony Trollope in 1805. Her husband failed at law and at farming, and in 1827 the family moved to the United States, settling in Cincinnati, Ohio, where he opened a notions shop. It, too, proved unprofitable, and in 1831 the family returned to England. The following year, at age 52, Frances Trollope published her first book, Domestic Manners of the Americans (1832), a caustic report on what she had seen in the former British colonies. The candor of the book infuriated Americans, but it was highly successful in England. Following the success of this popular exposé, Trollope produced more travel books, including Paris and the Parisians (1836), Vienna and the Austrians (1838), and A Visit to Italy (1842). Trollope supported her family during the next 20 years by producing more than 40 books, most of them light novels of contemporary manners. The best known is The Widow Barnaby (1838), depicting the travails of a coarse, grasping woman.

Peter Ustinov

Peter Ustinov (1921-2004), British actor, writer, producer, director, and two-time Academy Award winner. Of mixed European descent, Peter Alexander Ustinov had a special flair for accents and mimicry. Born and trained in London, he made his acting debut there, in sketches he had written, in 1939. The Love of Four Colonels (1951) was the first of his witty and satiric plays to achieve international success. His play Romanoff and Juliet (1956) was filmed in 1961, with Ustinov serving as producer, director, and actor. In 1962 he produced, directed, and acted in the film Billy Budd. He adapted the script from a novella by American writer Herman Melville. In 1967 two of his plays, The Unknown Soldier and His Wife and Halfway Up the Tree, ran simultaneously in New York City.

Ustinov received an Academy Award as best supporting actor for his roles in the films Spartacus (1960) and Topkapi (1964). He also performed many television roles and won three Emmy Awards for best television actor of the year. He wrote novels and short stories, more than a score of plays, and two autobiographies, Dear Me (1977) and My Russia (1983). Ustinov was knighted in 1990.

Henry Vaughan

Henry Vaughan (1622-1695), Welsh metaphysical poet and mystic, born in Llansantffraed. Vaughan was educated at the University of Oxford and began the practice of law in London. In 1642 he returned to Breconshire, when civil war broke out in England. Before 1650, Vaughan's poetry was mostly secular; he translated Ovid and other ancient writers and wrote fashionable love poetry. After 1650 Vaughan's poetry turned toward spiritual issues and he became known as a mystical writer. The most important of his works (several bearing Latin titles although they were written in English) was Silex Scintillans (The Glittering Flint, 1650 and 1655), a collection of religious poems. His secular works include Olor Iscanus (The Swan of Usk, 1651), which contains rhapsodic passages about natural beauty. Thalia Rediviva (Thalia Revived, 1678) has both secular and sacred lyrics. Vaughan's fame as a poet rests on his imaginative and often fresh and witty perceptions of almost worn-out religious images and subjects. His idealization of the past is balanced by his reverence for living nature. His poems are the reflections of a devout and joyous man. Vaughan became interested in medicine; in addition to writing and translating works on the subject, he practiced as a physician. William Wordsworth may have been influenced by Vaughan; both poets had a celebratory and awed view of nature.

Edmund Waller

Edmund Waller (1606-1687), English poet, born in Coleshill near Amersham, Buckinghamshire, and educated at the University of Cambridge. He was a member of Parliament, and during the reign of King Charles I he was first a supporter and then an opponent of the Parliamentarians in the struggles leading to the civil war. In 1643 he was involved in a Royalist conspiracy against Parliament known as Waller's Plot. He was arrested, fined, and banished from England, but was permitted to return in 1651. He continued to serve in Parliament until his retirement in 1677. Waller is important in the history of English poetry for his original use of the heroic couplet (see Versification). The clarity and flowing pace of his style were highly praised by the English poets John Dryden and Alexander Pope. His famous poem “St. James' Park” was published in 1661, and his collected works appeared in 1664.

Horace Walpole

Horace Walpole (1717-1797), English novelist and letter writer, born in London. After an education at Eton College and the University of Cambridge, he traveled in France and Italy with his friend the English poet Thomas Gray. Walpole entered Parliament in 1741 and remained a member until his retirement in 1768. His political career was limited to minor government posts, which he received primarily through the influence of his father, the prime minister Sir Robert Walpole. In 1748 Walpole purchased the villa of Strawberry Hill, in Twickenham, a suburb to the west of London. The estate became a showplace because of its pseudo-Gothic architecture, its fine library, and its collections of art and curios. He established a printing press there in 1757, and the fine books he produced influenced the development of English printing and bookmaking. Walpole dabbled in all the literary arts and made a real contribution to art history with his four-volume study Anecdotes of Painting in England (1762-1771). He is better known, however, for his novel The Castle of Otranto (1764); pervaded by elements of the supernatural, it is one of the first works of the genre known as the Gothic romance (see Gothic Novel). Walpole's literary reputation also rests firmly on his correspondence, which provides witty and incisive commentaries on his time; Yale University Press began publishing this enormous collection of nearly 7000 letters in 1937; in 1983 the final 6 volumes were published, for a total of 48.

Hugh Walpole

Hugh Walpole (1884-1941), English novelist. Hugh Seymour Walpole was born in Auckland, New Zealand. He taught school before turning to a career in writing. His earliest successful novel was Fortitude (1913). During World War I he served with the Red Cross in Russia. He was knighted in 1937. Among Walpole's works are the adventure novels known as the Herries series (1930-33); the novels of social interest beginning with The Duchess of Wrexe (1914); and the tale of suspense, Portrait of a Man with Red Hair (1925). Walpole's enormous literary production varies considerably in quality; his best novels are characterized by skillful narration and colorful description and are sparked by a pervasive sense of humor.

Izaak Walton Izaak Walton (1593-1683), English man of letters, who wrote what became one of the most famous books in the English language, The Compleat Angler, or the Contemplative Man's Recreation. Walton was born in the parish of Saint Mary, Staffordshire. In 1624 he settled in London as a linen draper or an ironmonger; he retired from business about 20 years later. Walton lived much of his later life at Winchester. The first edition of The Compleat Angler, or the Contemplative Man's Recreation, which Walton wrote when he was 60, appeared in 1653. Walton's charming discourse on every aspect of fishing as a form of recreation is interspersed with dialogue, verses, songs, and idyllic glimpses of pastoral life. A fifth edition, expanded from 13 chapters to 21, appeared in 1676. It included a supplement on fly fishing, written by the English poet Charles Cotton, which then formed the second part of the work. Walton also wrote biographies, including those of the poets John Donne and George Herbert, published in 1640 and 1670, respectively. His verses frequently appeared in prefaces to works written by his friends.

Sylvia Townsend Warner

Sylvia Townsend Warner (1893-1978), English novelist, short-story writer, and poet, whose work combines fantasy and realism in a distinctive style. Born in Harrow, the daughter of a housemaster at Harrow School, she was a student of early music. During World War I (1914-1918), Warner worked in an ammunition factory. After the war she became an editor of Tudor Church Music (10 volumes, 1923-1929).

Warner's first book of poems, The Espalier, was published in 1925, and her first novel—Lolly Willowes, about a middle-class London woman who finds her vocation as a witch in a rural village—was published the following year. Warner's other novels include Mr. Fortune's Maggot (1927), about a bank clerk who becomes a South Seas missionary, and The Corner That Held Them (1948), which describes life in a 14th-century convent and is considered by many critics to be her masterpiece.

In 1927 Warner became guest critic of the New York Herald- Tribune and published a short story in The New Yorker, the first of more than 140 of her short stories that would appear in the magazine. During the Spanish Civil War (1936-1939), Warner worked for the Red Cross alongside her longtime partner, Valentine Ackland. In her last book, Kingdoms of Elfin (1977), Warner used fairy tales (see Fairy and Fairy Tale) as vehicles of social criticism. Evelyn Waugh

Evelyn Waugh (1903-66), English author of satirical novels. Evelyn Arthur St. John Waugh was born in London and educated at the University of Oxford. Between 1928 and 1938 he published five novels notable for their wit and pure satire on such aspects of upper-class British life as colonialism, public schools, and the manners and morals of high society. These novels are Decline and Fall (1928), Vile Bodies (1930), Black Mischief (1932), A Handful of Dust (1934), and Scoop (1938). Put Out More Flags (1942) is a novel about the British effort during World War II.

Waugh's later writing was affected by his conversion to Roman Catholicism in 1930. Brideshead Revisited (1945), a serious novel probing the souls and fortunes of the Marchmains, a declining aristocratic family of Roman Catholics, is considered by many critics his finest work; it was made into a television series in 1981. In The Loved One (1948), Waugh returned to scathing satire, as he described funeral practices for humans and pets in Hollywood, California.

Waugh's experiences during World War II as a commando in the Mediterranean led to a satirical trilogy: Men at Arms (1952), Officers and Gentlemen (1955), and Unconditional Surrender (1962). He also wrote travel books, biographies, and the autobiographical A Little Learning (1964). His brother Alec Waugh wrote novels, travel books, and short stories.

John Webster

John Webster (1580?-1632?), English playwright. Shortly after 1600 he worked as one of a group of dramatists writing plays for the London theater manager Philip Henslowe. The group included many gifted playwrights, among them Thomas Dekker, John Marston, and Thomas Heywood, with each of whom Webster collaborated occasionally. Webster's genius as a writer was first fully revealed in his great tragedies The White Devil, produced in 1612, and The Duchess of Malfi, staged about 1614. Both plays depict a world of extravagant passions, dark intrigue, and fratricidal violence. Both plays ensured Webster's long-lasting critical acclaim and both are still produced. Despite their melodramatic themes, Webster's plays are redeemed by his soaring poetic dialogue and his grasp of human psychology.

Fay Weldon

Fay Weldon, born in 1933, English writer, best known for her novel The Life and Loves of a She-Devil (1983), the story of a rejected woman who takes her revenge. The novel, which was made into a motion picture in 1989 starring American actors Meryl Streep and Roseanne, addresses relationships between women and the nature of female sexuality in a male-dominated world, concerns that recur throughout Weldon’s work.

Weldon was born Fay Birkinshaw in Alvechurch, Worcestershire. After her parents’ divorce in 1937, she went to live with her mother, grandmother, and sister in Christchurch, New Zealand. Weldon later returned to Britain and entered the University of Saint Andrews, in Scotland, where she studied economics and psychology. In 1960 she began work as an advertising copywriter and married antiques dealer Ronald Weldon. In 1966 she turned to writing television, stage, and radio plays.

Weldon’s first novel was The Fat Woman's Joke (1967). There followed a series of novels on women’s themes, which use black humor and elements of the supernatural. Weldon’s works include Down Among the Women (1971), the story of three generations of women in a family; Female Friends (1975); Puffball (1980), about pregnancy; The Cloning of Joanna May (1989), about genetic engineering; and Big Girls Don’t Cry (1998), which follows the development of feminism and the friendship of four women from the 1970s to the 1990s. The Bulgari Connection (2001) was a novel commissioned— somewhat controversially—by the Italian firm Bulgari to promote its jewelry.

H. G. Wells (1866-1946), English author and political philosopher, most famous for his science- fantasy novels with their prophetic depictions of the triumphs of technology as well as the horrors of 20th-century warfare. Herbert George Wells

Herbert George Wells was born September 21, 1866, in Bromley, Kent, and educated at the Normal School of Science in London, to which he won a scholarship. He worked as a draper's apprentice, bookkeeper, tutor, and journalist until 1895, when he became a full-time writer. Wells's 10-year relationship with Rebecca West produced a son, Anthony West, in 1914. In the next 50 years he produced more than 80 books. His novel The Time Machine (1895) mingled science, adventure, and political comment. Later works in this genre are The Invisible Man (1897), The War of the Worlds (1898), and The Shape of Things to Come (1933); each of these fantasies was made into a motion picture.

Wells also wrote novels devoted to character delineation. Among these are Kipps (1905) and The History of Mr. Polly (1910), which depict members of the lower middle class and their aspirations. Both recall the world of Wells's youth; the first tells the story of a struggling teacher, the second portrays a draper's assistant. Many of Wells's other books can be categorized as thesis novels. Among these are Ann Veronica (1909), promoting women's rights; Tono-Bungay (1909), attacking irresponsible capitalists; and Mr. Britling Sees It Through (1916), depicting the average Englishman's reaction to war. After World War I (1914-1918) Wells wrote an immensely popular historical work, The Outline of History (2 volumes, 1920).

Throughout his long life Wells was deeply concerned with and wrote voluminously about the survival of contemporary society. For a time he was a member of the Fabian Society. He envisioned a utopia in which the vast and frightening material forces available to modern men and women would be rationally controlled for progress and for the equal good of all. His later works were increasingly pessimistic. '42 to '44 (1944) castigated most world leaders of the period; Mind at the End of Its Tether (1945) expressed the author's doubts about the ability of humankind to survive. He also wrote An Experiment in Autobiography (1934). Wells died August 13, 1946, in London. Rebecca West

Rebecca West, adopted name of Cicily Isabel Fairfield Andrews (1892-1983), English novelist, critic, and journalist, born in county Kerry, Ireland, and educated in Edinburgh, Scotland. At 19 she began calling herself Rebecca West after the feminist heroine of Henrik Ibsen's play Rosmersholm. An ardent feminist and a Fabian socialist (see Fabian Society), she turned to writing and while in her 20s won recognition as a novelist, literary critic, and political analyst.

West's first novel was Return of the Soldier (1918), which described the homecoming of a shell-shocked soldier but also expressed West's opinions concerning marriage. The Judge (1922) also expressed West's feminist concerns, including her views on the issues of unwed motherhood, stigma, and rape. Contrary to the conventions of her time, West maintained a 10-year relationship with English author H.G. Wells and had a son, Anthony West, with him in 1914. Her major nonfiction work, Black Lamb and Grey Falcon (1941), is a perceptive study of Yugoslavia and an indictment of Nazism. West has been praised as a journalist because of her psychological understanding and analytical skills. Her reports on the treason trials of Britons after World War II (1939-1945) for The New Yorker magazine were republished in The Meaning of Treason (1947). Collections of her nonfiction writings include A Train of Powder (1955) and The New Meaning of Treason (1964). Intelligence, wit, and beautifully detailed settings and characterizations mark her novels, including The Strange Necessity (1928), Harriet Hume (1929), The Thinking Reed (1936), The Fountain Overflows (1956), and The Birds Fall Down (1966). She was created Dame Commander of the British Empire in 1959.

T. H. White

T. H. White (1906-1964), English writer, best known for his witty retellings of Arthurian legend in a series of books entitled The Once and Future King. Many of his other writings also reflect his strong interest in the Middle Ages (5th century to 15th century).

Terence Hanbury White was born in Bombay, India, and educated in England at Cheltenham College and the University of Cambridge. The five books in his Arthurian series are The Sword in the Stone (1938), The Witch in the Wood (1939), The Ill-Made Knight (1940), The Candle in the Wind (1958), and The Book of Merlyn (published posthumously, 1977). The series was the basis for the popular 1960 musical Camelot, which in turn was adapted as a motion picture in 1967. White’s other works include The Goshawk (1951), an account of his experiences with the popular medieval activity of falconry, and The Book of Beasts (1954), a translation of a medieval bestiary.

Edward Whymper

Edward Whymper (1840-1911), British mountain climber, writer, and illustrator, born in London. His interest in climbing began when he was commissioned in 1860 by a British publisher to sketch scenes in the French Alps. In 1861, he scaled Mont Pelvoux (3953 m/12,970 ft) and in 1864 Les Écrins (4103 m/13,462 ft), the second highest and highest peaks in the French Dauphiné Alps. In 1865, after six unsuccessful attempts to climb the southwestern face of the Matterhorn in Switzerland, he attempted the climb on the eastern face, which then was considered impossible. He and his party succeeded and were the first ever to complete the ascent of the Matterhorn. In 1880, he became the first climber to reach the summit of Chimborazo (6,310 m/20,702 ft), the highest peak in Ecuador, located in the Cordillera Oriental range of the Andes.

Whymper's expeditions are recounted in Scrambles Amongst the Alps in the Years 1860-69 (1871, illustrated by himself) and Travels Amongst the Great Andes of the Equator (1892). His findings and observations contributed greatly to Arctic exploration, the study of mountain sickness, and the improvement of the aneroid barometer.

Jeanette Winterson

Jeanette Winterson, born in 1959, British novelist, best known for the experimental and sometimes controversial ways in which her fiction explores such issues as gender roles and sexual orientation. Winterson was born in Manchester, England, and adopted by religious parents who prepared her to become a preacher. A lesbian affair at the age of 15, however, estranged her from her family, and she left home. Working in various jobs, she continued her education, eventually studying English at Saint Catharine's College at the University of Oxford from 1978 until 1981, when she received her M.A. degree. She then worked at the Roundhouse Theatre in London, and thereafter in publishing until 1987, when she became a full-time writer.

Winterson's first novel, Oranges Are Not the Only Fruit (1985), was mainly autobiographical, chronicling the struggles of a young lesbian girl against a domineering mother and the strictures of conditioning for evangelical service. It won Britain's Whitbread Award for a first novel in 1985, and a successful television serialization was broadcast in 1990. Boating for Beginners (1985) is a satirical retelling of the biblical Noah's Ark story, and The Passion (1987) juxtaposes the tale of a French peasant who is chef to Napoleon I with that of a girl from a fishing community in Venice, Italy. Sexing the Cherry (1989) sets two 17th-century characters against modern counterparts, and marks a decisive shift in Winterson's style toward a fractured and incantatory rhetoric. Her next book, Written on the Body (1992), charts a love triangle, in which the gender of the main character is not specified. Art & Lies (1994) portrays a gathering between characters called Handel, Sappho, and Picasso, with no plot and little sense of time or place. Winterson’s first collection of short stories, The World and Other Places, was published in 1999. Mary Wollstonecraft

Mary Wollstonecraft (1759-1797), English author and feminist, born probably in London. Soon after 1780 she left home to earn her living, running a school for two years with her sisters and subsequently serving for a year as a governess in Ireland. The moderate success of her first novel, Mary, a Fiction (1788), convinced her to settle in London, where she was employed as a reader and translator. She became a member of an intellectual group that included the English poet and artist William Blake, the Anglo-American political philosopher Thomas Paine, the English chemist Joseph Priestley, and the Anglo-Swiss painter and author Henry Fuseli. Her best-known work, A Vindication of the Rights of Woman (1792), asserts that intellectual companionship is the ideal of marriage and pleads for equality of education and opportunity between the sexes. During the French Revolution Wollstonecraft went to Paris where she fell in love with the American author and adventurer Captain Gilbert Imlay and gave birth to their daughter in 1794. They lived for a while in England, where Imlay subsequently deserted her, and she attempted suicide. In 1797 she married the English political philosopher William Godwin. She died later that year, shortly after the birth of their daughter, Mary Wollstonecraft, who later became the wife of Percy Bysshe Shelley and a writer on her own. Wollstonecraft was also the author of Original Stories from Real Life (1791) and A Vindication of the Rights of Man (1793). Her letters were published in Memoirs of the Author of the Rights of Woman (1798) by William Godwin.

Virginia Woolf

Virginia Woolf (1882-1941), British novelist, essayist, and critic, who helped create the modern novel. Her writing often explores the concepts of time, memory, and people’s inner consciousness, and is remarkable for its humanity and depth of perception.

Woolf's early novels—The Voyage Out (1915), Night and Day (1919), and Jacob's Room (1922)—offer increasing evidence of her determination to expand the scope of the novel beyond mere storytelling. Her fourth novel, Mrs. Dalloway, is considered by many to be her first great novel, revealing a mastery of the form and technique for which she would become known. The novel centers on the separate worlds and interior thought processes of two characters: Clarissa Dalloway, a gracious London hostess in her 50s whose husband is an uninspired politician, and Septimus Warren Smith, a young ex-soldier suffering a mental illness triggered by a friend’s death in battle during World War I (1914-1918). The two do not know each other and never meet, but their minds have curious parallels. Although Septimus is considered mentally ill by society and Clarissa is considered sane, both experience dizzying alternations in feeling: joy over the tiny leaves of spring, dread of onrushing time, terror over impending extinction, and guilt over the what they feel is the crime of being human. The story takes place on one June day in London after the war, and it explores the idea of time by including past memories and future hopes of the characters. The novel ends with a party given by Clarissa, at which Septimus’s cold but distinguished doctor tells Clarissa of Septimus’s suicide. 'Here is death, in the middle of my party,' she thinks. Instinctively she feels she understands her symbolic double, Septimus—his sensitivity, despair, and defiance. Some critics maintain that Clarissa and Septimus represent two aspects of the same personality, and that both are semiautobiographical representations of Woolf.

The power of Woolf’s fifth novel, To the Lighthouse, lies in its brilliant visual imagery, extensive use of symbolism, and use of the characters’ stream of consciousness to evoke feeling and demonstrate the progression of both time and emotion. Behind the backdrop of ordinary domestic events, the novel’s real concern is with the impact of the radiant Mrs. Ramsay— representing the female sensibility—on the lives and feelings of the other characters, even long after her death.

The story draws on Woolf’s childhood experiences at a summer home by the sea. The novel investigates the contrasts in the behavior and thinking of Mr. and Mrs. Ramsay, the father and mother of the household. The couple are often considered loose portraits of Woolf’s own parents. To the Lighthouse is split into three distinct parts. The first section, 'The Window,' covers a September day, before World War I, in the lives of the Ramsays, their eight children, and their four houseguests, who include Lily Briscoe, a young painter, and Augustus Carmichael, an older poet. In this section Woolf explores the impressions each character has throughout the day. The Ramsays' six-year-old son, James, talks about his most cherished dream, which is to go to the nearby lighthouse, whose beacon flashes at night. Mr. Ramsay, however, says the weather will not permit such a trip. As the day passes the friends chat and dream; Lily starts a painting of Mrs. Ramsay and James sitting at a window; meals are eaten; the children go to bed; and the Ramsays read.

The second part of To The Lighthouse, 'Time Passes,' starts as the night of that first day, but is then fused with another night, ten years later. In the course of those ten years, Mrs. Ramsay has died; the Ramsay’s eldest son, Andrew, has died in World War I; and their daughter Prue has died in childbirth. Lily and Augustus return to visit Mr. Ramsay and James, who is now 16 years old, at the house. Dorothy Wordsworth

Dorothy Wordsworth (1771-1855), English diarist born in Cockermouth, Cumberland. From 1795 on she kept house for her brother, the poet William Wordsworth, at Racedown, Alfoxton Park, and Grasmere. Her Journals, begun in 1798, describe the Wordsworth's household, their friends, (including the poet Samuel Taylor Coleridge), and their travels. These accounts are valuable source material on William, frequently offering illuminating insights into the themes and inspirations of his early poetry. The Journals are also first-rate literature in their own right, as perceptive descriptions of nature and people written in a sensitive, poetic style. In 1829 Dorothy Wordsworth began to suffer progressive mental illness, from which she never recovered.

William Wordsworth

William Wordsworth (1770-1850), English poet, one of the most accomplished and influential of England's romantic poets, whose theories and style created a new tradition in poetry.

Wordsworth was born on April 7, 1770, in Cockermouth, Cumberland, and educated at Saint John's College, University of Cambridge. He developed a keen love of nature as a youth, and during school vacation periods he frequently visited places noted for their scenic beauty. In the summer of 1790 he took a walking tour through France and Switzerland. After receiving his degree in 1791 he returned to France, where he became an enthusiastic convert to the ideals of the French Revolution (1789-1799). His lover Annette Vallon of Orleans bore him a daughter in December 1792, shortly before his return to England. Disheartened by the outbreak of hostilities between France and Great Britain in 1793, Wordsworth nevertheless remained sympathetic to the French cause.

Although Wordsworth had begun to write poetry while still a schoolboy, none of his poems was published until 1793, when An Evening Walk and Descriptive Sketches appeared. These works, although fresh and original in content, reflect the influence of the formal style of 18th-century English poetry. The poems received little notice, and few copies were sold.

Wordsworth's income from his writings amounted to little, but his financial problems were alleviated for a time when in 1795 he received a bequest of £900 from a close friend. Thereupon he and his sister, Dorothy Wordsworth, went to live in Racedown, Dorsetshire. The two had always enjoyed a warmly sympathetic relationship, and Wordsworth relied greatly on Dorothy, his devoted confidante, for encouragement in his literary endeavors. Her mental breakdown in later years was to cause him great sorrow, as did the death of his brother John. William had met the poet Samuel Taylor Coleridge, an enthusiastic admirer of his early poetic efforts, and in 1797 he and Dorothy moved to Alfoxden, Somersetshire, near Coleridge's home in Nether Stowey. The move marked the beginning of a close and enduring friendship between the poets. In the ensuing period they collaborated on a book of poems entitled Lyrical Ballads, first published in 1798. Sir Thomas Wyatt

Sir Thomas Wyatt (1503-1542), English poet and diplomat, best- remembered for his individualistic poems that deal candidly in everyday speech with the trials of romantic love. He was born at Allington, near Maidstone, and educated at the University of Cambridge, graduating in 1518. In 1524 he was engaged by Henry VIII to fulfill various offices at home and abroad. Wyatt was in and out of jail—and the king's favor—in 1536, either for consorting with Anne Boleyn or for quarreling with the duke of Suffolk, and in 1541, on charges of treason. Wyatt (or Wyat) was knighted in 1537 and served from 1537 to 1539 as ambassador to the court of Holy Roman Emperor Charles V. Wyatt, and his contemporary Henry Howard, earl of Surrey, are credited with introducing the sonnet into English poetry; he translated ten of Petrarch's sonnets, composed original sonnets, and worked in other poetic forms, such as the lyric, song, and rondeau. He also wrote three highly regarded satires in terza rima. In 1549 his metrical translation of the penitential psalms was published as Certayne Psalmes; his poetry first appeared in an anthology, The Book of Songes and Sonnettes (1557). Wyatt's meter was often irregular, a feature that his critics found crude, but 20th- century critics laud Wyatt's rhythms for their vigor and expressiveness.

William Wycherley

William Wycherley (1640-1716), English dramatist, known as a master of Restoration comedy. He was born in Clive, Shropshire. After early schooling in France, he studied briefly at the University of Oxford and at the Inner Temple, London, where his interests were more literary than legal. His first comedy, Love in a Wood (1671), won him the patronage of the duchess of Cleveland, mistress of Charles II. He then wrote three more scandalous comedies: The Gentleman Dancing-Master (1672), The Country Wife (1675), and The Plain Dealer (1676). All his plays reflect the ruthless mores of a profligate age and are characterized by exuberant, often bawdy, humor, witty dialogue, and solid construction. The earlier plays are stylized, somewhat artificial portraits of foppish London gallants and ladies of fashion; The Plain Dealer introduces a serious, satirical view of London society that verges on puritanism. Wycherley lost court patronage in 1680 when he married a rich Puritan widow. Ruined by litigation over her estate after her death, he spent seven years in debtors' prison. He was released and pensioned by James II.

Edward Young

Edward Young (1683-1765), English poet, born in Upham, Hampshire, and educated at the University of Oxford. He wrote The Universal Passion (1725-1728), a collection of verse satires, which was highly acclaimed. From 1730 until his death Young served as rector at Welwyn, Hertfordshire. There he wrote his masterpiece, The Complaint, or Night Thoughts on Life, Death, and Immortality (1742-1745), a long meditative essay in blank verse. Abounding in macabre imagery, Night Thoughts was the fountainhead of the so- called graveyard school of poetry.

Israel Zangwill

Israel Zangwill (1864-1926), English writer, born in London of Russian parents, and educated at the Jews' Free School in London. He established a reputation as a novelist in 1892, with Children of the Ghetto, which concerned life among poor London Jews. This work was followed by Ghetto Tragedies (1893), The King of Schnorrers (1894), Ghetto Comedies (1907), and other novels about Jewish life, as well as by stories, plays, essays, and poems. His best-known play is The Melting Pot (1908). Other plays include Plaster Saints (1914) and We Moderns (1924). He is especially noted for portraying modern Jewish life with sympathy and humor, neither stereotyping nor idealizing it. Zangwill was an early leader of modern Zionism. In 1905 he founded the Jewish Territorial Organization, which sought unsuccessfully for land where Jews might be able to make an autonomous settlement.