Ernest Miller Hemingway was the outstanding author, journalist, novelist, and short-story writer. His economical and understated style - which he termed the iceberg theory - had a strong influence on 20th-century fiction. Publication of The Sun Also Rises and A Farewell to Arms immediately established him as one of the greatest literary lights of the 20th century. His classic novella The Old Ma... Read More
The Old Man and the Sea is a short novel written by the American author Ernest Hemingway in 1951 in Cuba, and published in 1952. It was the last major work of fiction by Hemingway that was published during his lifetime. The Old Man and the Sea became a Book of the Month Club selection and made Hemingway a celebrity. Published in book form on September 1, 1952, the first edition print run was 50... Read More
Sir William Gerald Golding, a British novelist, playwright, and poet, won a Nobel Prize in Literature and was awarded the Booker Prize for fiction in 1980 for his novel Rites of Passage. But he is best known for his novel Lord of the Flies. In September 1953, after many rejections from other publishers, Golding sent a manuscript to Faber & Faber. Monteith asked for some changes to the text... Read More
Of all the English-language modernists, Samuel Beckett's work represents the most sustained attack on the realist tradition. He opened up the possibility of theatre and fiction that dispense with conventional plot and the unities of time and place in order to focus on essential components of the human condition. Molloy, the first of the three masterpieces which constitute Samuel Beckett’s famou... Read More
Samuel Barclay Beckett was an Irish novelist and playwright, who was awarded the 1969 Nobel Prize in Literature "for his writing, which - in new forms for the novel and drama - in the destitution of modern man acquires its elevation". Also, he was elected Saoi of Aosdána in 1984. During the 15 years following the WWII, Beckett produced four major full-length stage plays: En attendant Godot, Fin... Read More
John Ernst Steinbeck was an American author, who wrote 27 books, including 16 novels, six non-fiction books, and two collections of short stories. He is widely known for the comic novels Tortilla Flat and Cannery Row, and epic East of Eden. In the 1930s and 1940s, Ed Ricketts strongly influenced Steinbeck's writing. Steinbeck frequently took small trips with Ricketts along the California coast... Read More
East of Eden, John Steinbeck’s passionate and exhilarating epic, re-creates the seminal stories of Genesis through the intertwined lives of two American families. Spanning the period between the American Civil War and the end of World War I, the novel highlights the conflicts of two generations of brothers, the first being the kind, gentle Adam Trask and his wild brother Charles. Adam eventuall... Read More
Howl, Ginsberg’s first published book, laments what he believed to have been the destruction by the insanity of the “best minds of the generation.” The inspiration for "Howl" was Ginsberg's friend, Carl Solomon, and "Howl" is dedicated to him. Solomon was a Dada and Surrealism enthusiast who suffered bouts of clinical depression. Solomon wanted to commit suicide, but he thought a form of suicid... Read More
Isaac Bashevis Singer was a Polish-born American writer of novels, short stories, and essays in Yiddish. He was a leading figure in the Yiddish literary movement, writing and publishing only in Yiddish. He was also awarded two U.S. National Book Awards, one in Children's Literature for his memoir A Day Of Pleasure: Stories of a Boy Growing Up in Warsaw and one in Fiction for his collection A Cr... Read More
Ian Lancaster Fleming was an English author, journalist and naval intelligence officer. 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. From Russia With Love by Ian Fleming is a novel centred around the infamous British MI5 spy, James Bond... Read More
Moonraker is the third novel by Ian Fleming to feature his fictional British Secret Service agent James Bond. According to the author Raymond Benson, Moonraker is a deeper and more introspective book than Fleming's previous work, which allows the author to develop the characters further. In Moonraker, Millionaire Hugo Drax cheats at cards, the highest offence in polite English society. Special... Read More
Ian Lancaster Fleming was an English author, journalist and naval intelligence officer who is best known for his James Bond novels. The Bond books were written in post-war Britain when the country was still an imperial power. As the series progressed, the British Empire was in decline; journalist William Cook observed that "Bond pandered to Britain's inflated and increasingly insecure self-imag... Read More
Casino Royale is the first novel by the British author Ian Fleming. Published in 1953, it is the first James Bond book, and it paved the way for a further eleven novels and two short story collections by Fleming, followed by numerous continuation Bond novels by other authors. The first US edition of Ian Fleming’s novel Casino Royale was published with the title ‘You Asked for It’; it took a few... Read More
MacLean was born on 28 April 1922 in Shettleston, Glasgow. His family spoke Gaelic, and MacLean did not learn English until he was seven. Maclean's father and oldest brother both died while MacLean was still at school, shortly before the outbreak of the Second World War. In 1941 the 18-year-old MacLean joined the Royal Navy, where he served on the Arctic convoys. Night Without End was first pub... Read More
Alistair Stuart MacLean was a Scottish novelist who wrote successful thrillers or adventure stories, the best known of which are perhaps The Guns of Navarone and Where Eagles Dare, both having been made into successful films. He also wrote under the pseudonym Ian Stuart. While a university student, MacLean began writing short stories for extra income, winning a competition in 1954 with the mari... Read More
Alistair Stuart MacLean was a Scottish novelist. He joined the Royal Navy in 1941, serving in World War II with the ranks of Ordinary Seaman, Able Seaman, and Leading Torpedo Operator. MacLean effectively translated his own experiences as a torpedo man on a convoy escort into the plot of H.M.S. Ulysses, which takes place on a British destroyer. HMS Ulysses was Alistair MacLean's debut novel. Wh... Read More
Alfred Bester was an American science fiction author, TV and radio scriptwriter, magazine editor and scripter for comic strips and comic books. He was born in Manhattan, New York City, on December 18, 1913. His father, James J. Bester, owned a shoe store and was a first-generation American whose parents were both Austrian. Bester attended the University of Pennsylvania, where he was a member of... Read More
Daphne Du Maurier, also known as ‘Lady Browning’, was a British writer and playwright born on 13th May 1907 in London. She belonged to a creative family where her father and mother both were actors, her uncle was a magazine editor and her grandfather was a writer. This became the base for her literary talent as she started writing when she was very young. As a child, she knew how to stay in the... Read More
Dame Daphne du Maurier, Lady Browning, was an English author and playwright. Although she is classed as a romantic novelist, her stories have been described as "moody and resonant" with overtones of the paranormal. Because her childhood contained many literary and artistic experiences, it was not a surprise that Du Maurier had a very vivid imagination and a profound love for writing and reading... Read More
Daphne du Maurier’s novels are famous for their passion, tension and alarmingly candid psychological takes on men and women, often trapped in unhealthily obsessive relationships. Her writing was noted as being so strongly cinematic that Alfred Hitchcock made three films based on her work: Jamaica Inn, The Birds and Rebecca, while Don’t Look Now, the classic horror film by Nicolas Roeg, was base... Read More