H. G. Wells was a prolific writer of both fiction and non-fiction. His writing career spanned more than sixty years, and his early science fiction novels earned him the title of "The Father of Science Fiction". Wells’ first, The Time Machine, is a critique of utopian ideas, set in the year 802701. The story reflects Wells's own socialist political views, his view on life and abundance, and the... Read More
The Jungle Book was published in 1894 and is actually a collection of seven short stories. The settings and characterizations are drawn from Kipling’s own experiences during his nineteenth-century travels around the British Empire and include locations like India, Afghanistan and the Bering Sea. The stories all feature talking animals, and though geared toward children, are set with themes that... Read More
The Second Jungle Book is a sequel to The Jungle Book by Rudyard Kipling. First published in 1895, it features five stories about Mowgli and three unrelated stories, all but one set in India, most of which Kipling wrote while living in Vermont. From all accounts, Kipling loved the outdoors, not least of whose marvels in Vermont was the turning of the leaves each fall. He described this moment i... Read More
Joseph Rudyard Kipling was an English journalist, short-story writer, poet, and novelist. In 1907, at the age of 41, he was awarded the Nobel Prize in Literature, making him the first English-language writer to receive the prize and its youngest recipient to date. The size and speed of his success was an event in itself. He enjoyed profound popularity with the English-speaking public through th... Read More
A young woman marries an older man and arrives at his house, only to find that his dead wife is still there… A picture in a tower depicts a dangerous woman… A dead man walks through a house every night because sometimes the dead do come back… Stories about ghosts and suspense. What can be better? Especially when these stories come from Victorian writers and Rudyard Kipling himself. Kipling's bi... 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
William Wilkie Collins was one of the best known, best loved, and, for a time, best paid of Victorian fiction writers. He was a close friend of Charles Dickens from their meeting in March 1851 until Dickens' death in June 1870. Wilkie Collins is best known for The Woman in White, No Name, Armadale and The Moonstone. The last has been called the first modern English detective novel. Collins's wo... 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
Joseph Conrad was a Polish-British writer. He was regarded as one of the greatest novelists to write in the English language. During his lifetime Conrad was admired for the richness of his prose and his renderings of dangerous life at sea and in exotic places. But his initial reputation as a masterful teller of colourful adventures of the sea masked his fascination with the individual when face... Read More
Joseph Conrad wrote numerous full-length novels. His narrative style and anti-heroic characters have influenced numerous authors. A writer of complex skill and striking insight, but above all of an intensely personal vision, he has been increasingly regarded as one of the greatest English novelists. Literary critic Harold Bloom wrote that Heart of Darkness had been analysed more than any other... 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
Robert Louis Stevenson was a Scottish novelist and travel writer, most noted for Treasure Island, Kidnapped, and A Child's Garden of Verses. A celebrity in his lifetime, Stevenson attracted a more negative critical response for much of the 20th century, though his reputation has been largely restored. He is currently ranked as the 26th most translated author in the world. The Strange Case of Dr... Read More
Robert Louis Stevenson was born in Scotland and died in Samoa at the end of a life of travels, during which he produced novels, short stories, literary essays, poetry, drama, and travel writing. Trained in law at Edinburgh University, Stevenson was under pressure to conform to the Edinburgh bourgeois society in which his family had made its name as lighthouse engineers; he preferred a more bohe... 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
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 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 best known as the author of the children’s classic Treasure Island, and the adult horror story, The Strange Case of Dr Jekyll and Hyde. He is currently ranked as the 26th most translated author in the world. Robert Louis Stevenson was a great traveller. He sought adventure through travel but also needed an environment amenable to his recurring ill health. Early trave... Read More
Robert Louis Stevenson was a Scottish novelist and travel writer. Between the years 1880 to 1887, Stevenson searched in vain for a suitable climate to accommodate his poor health. He and Fanny eventually settled in Bournemouth in July 1884 in the house named 'Skerryvore'. Stevenson was very ill throughout the years he lived at Skerryvore and often unable to leave the house. In 1885 he published... Read More
Robert Louis Stevenson was a Scottish novelist and travel writer. A celebrity in his lifetime, Stevenson attracted a more negative critical response for much of the 20th century, though his reputation has been largely restored. He is currently ranked as the 26th most translated author in the world. His first two books were travel accounts. Other non-fiction based on his personal experiences fol... Read More
Harriet Elisabeth Beecher Stowe was an American abolitionist and author. She came from the Beecher family, a famous religious family, and is best known for her novel Uncle Tom's Cabin, which depicts the harsh conditions for enslaved African Americans. Harriet Beecher Stowe was born on June 14, 1811, in Litchfield, Connecticut. Her father, Lyman Beecher, was a leading Congregationalist minister... Read More