Robert Louis Stevenson was a Scottish novelist and travel writer, most noted for Treasure Island, Kidnapped, Strange Case of Dr Jekyll and Mr Hyde, and A Child's Garden of Verses. Born in 1850, Robert Louis Stevenson grew up in Edinburgh where his father was a well-respected lighthouse engineer. Stevenson almost followed his father’s example, studying engineering at Edinburgh University, but at... Read More
Robert Louis Stevenson is one of Edinburgh’s great writers, with novels including Treasure Island, Kidnapped, and The Strange Case of Dr Jekyll and Mr Hyde. As well as a novelist, Stevenson was a travel writer and essayist and moved around the world extensively. He is now evaluated as a peer of authors such as Joseph Conrad and Henry James, with new scholarly studies and organisations devoted t... Read More
Robert Louis Balfour Stevenson was born in Edinburgh on the 13 November 1850. His father and grandfather were both successful engineers who built many of the lighthouses that dotted the Scottish coast, whilst his mother came from a family of lawyers and church ministers. A sickly boy whose mother was also often unwell, Stevenson spent much of his childhood with the family nurse, Alison Cunningh... Read More
Joseph Conrad was born in Berdyczow, which, at the time of his birth, on December 3, 1857, was a city in Ukraine. Determined to be a sailor, Conrad left home at 16 and moved to Marseilles, France, where he began his apprenticeship, working entry-level positions on several merchant ships. His career floundered, however, when he learned that to continue this line of work he needed the permission... Read More
Ian Lancaster Fleming was an English author, journalist and naval intelligence officer. Born on May 28, 1908, Ian Fleming would go on to create the most enduring literary figure since Sherlock Holmes. Rare book collectors are fascinated with the legacy of Ian Fleming and James Bond. Ian Fleming named James Bond after an ornithologist because it was the ‘dullest name’ he’d ever heard. The origin... Read More
There's nothing like a good spy thriller to get your imagination running wild. And perhaps no one was better able to give his readers such a trip as the legendary Ian Fleming. Indeed, the titular hero of his James Bond series of books started out as an intentionally flat character, someone onto whom readers could project a more complex identity. Fleming said of his work, "while thrillers may no... Read More
Ian Fleming, in full Ian Lancaster Fleming, was a suspense-fiction novelist whose character James Bond, the stylish, high-living British secret service agent 007, who became one of the most successful and widely imitated heroes of 20th-century popular fiction. The son of a Conservative MP and the grandson of a Scottish banker, Fleming was born into a family of wealth and privilege. He was educa... Read More
Ian Lancaster Fleming was an English author, journalist and naval intelligence officer who is best known for his James Bond series of spy novels. He was born on 28 May 1908, at 27 Green Street in the wealthy London district of Mayfair. His mother was Evelyn, and his father was Valentine Fleming, the Member of Parliament for Henley from 1910 to 1917. As an infant, he briefly lived, with his fami... Read More
An English novelist, playwright, and short story writer William Wilkie Collins was born at 11 New Cavendish Street, Marylebone, London, the son of a well-known Royal Academician landscape painter, William Collins and his wife, Harriet Geddes. A skilful manipulator of intricate plots, Collins is remembered as a principal founder of English detective fiction. His novels of intrigue and suspense,... Read More
Dick Francis wrote more than 40 international best-sellers. His first book was his autobiography The Sport of Queens, for which he was offered the aid of a ghostwriter, which he spurned. He set his first thriller, Dead Cert, published in 1962, in the world of horse racing, establishing a specialized niche for his work. His novel Whip Hand is one of only two novels to have received both the Gold... Read More
Jack London wrote an almost incredible number of short stories and novelettes before his premature death at the age of 40, as well as novels, novellas and a considerable number of essays, plays, poems, and articles. The sheer volume of his output and the wide variety of his subjects, ranging from the Klondike, the South Seas and Hawaii, Sailing, Hobos, Political Fiction and Crime Fiction to Sci... Read More
John Griffith London, born John Griffith Chaney, was an American novelist, journalist, and social activist. His most famous works include The Call of the Wild and White Fang, both set in the Klondike Gold Rush, as well as the short stories "To Build a Fire", "An Odyssey of the North", and "Love of Life". Jack London wrote his story The Mexican after visits to Mexico, intrigued by the outbreak o... Read More
Jack London was born in 1876 and began life as a sailor at the tender age of fourteen. He was one of the pioneers of writing professionally for magazine fiction. Jack London wrote many short stories, which were loved by critics and usually devoured by readers. He used his experiences around the world to write about the struggles of humans against the brutalities of nature. He was also a politic... Read More
Jack London was born in 1876 and began life as a sailor at the tender age of fourteen. He cruised most of the world this way and eventually landed back in California in the wave of the gold prospectors. He settled into a home there and began to write about some of the things he'd experienced and learned on his journeys. Jack London wrote many short stories, which were loved by critics and usual... Read More
Jack London was an American fiction writer who was one of the pioneers of writing professionally for magazine fiction. One of his most well-known books is the still-popular Call of the Wild. His writing style is often referred to as a Naturalist style, which means that he provides vivid yet simple descriptions of natural settings and events without colouring them with any opinions or preconceiv... Read More
Jack London was born in San Francisco to Flora Wellman, a young unmarried woman who had run away from her Ohio family. Longing for stability and roots, he seized upon writing as a ticket to secure middle-class identity. At a time when novelists like Henry James were becoming self-conscious about their profession and articulating a privileged culture around their activity, London approached writ... Read More
John Griffith London, born John Griffith Chaney, was an American novelist, journalist, and social activist. During his adolescence, London held a variety of manual jobs, dropped out of high school, shipped out on a sealing vessel, apprenticed himself as an electrician, and became a tramp. While he was on the road, he was imprisoned in the Erie County Penitentiary for vagrancy. The "unspeakable"... Read More
Jack London was born in San Francisco to Flora Wellman, a young unmarried woman who had run away from her Ohio family. His father was probably William Chaney, an itinerant astrologer, who left London's mother when he learned of her pregnancy. London was adopted and raised in Oakland and its environs by the man his mother soon after married, John London. The Londons were never able to establish... Read More
Jack London’s most famous novels are The Call of the Wild and White Fang both set in the wilderness of Alaska, where wolves, sledge dogs, greedy prospectors and loose women represent the different aspects of the fight for survival in the wild. London's "strength of utterance" is at its height in his stories, and they are painstakingly well-constructed. "To Build a Fire" is the best known of all... Read More
Jack London was born on January 12, 1876. He was born near Third and Brannan Streets in San Francisco and was largely self-educated. By age 30, he was internationally famous for Call of the Wild, The Sea Wolf, and other literary and journalistic accomplishments. Though he wrote passionately about the great questions of life and death and the struggle to survive with dignity and integrity, he al... Read More