Hemingway’s prose style was probably the most widely imitated of any in the 20th century. He wished to strip his own use of language of inessentials, ridding it of all traces of verbosity, embellishment, and sentimentality. The short story "Cat in the Rain" was written by Ernest Hemingway in the 1920s. It is about an American couple that spends their holidays in an Italian hotel. It is a rainy... Read More
Wuthering Heights is now a classic of English literature, but back in the Victorian era it was controversial because of its unusually stark depiction of mental and physical cruelty, and it challenged strict Victorian ideals regarding religious hypocrisy, morality, social classes and gender inequality. Emily Brontë's Wuthering Heights was first published in London in 1847 by Thomas Cautley Newby... Read More
Novel-writing was a suspect occupation for women in the early 19th century because it imperilled their social reputation by bringing them publicity, viewed as unfeminine. Therefore, like many other female writers, Austen published anonymously. Sense and Sensibility is a novel by Jane Austen that was published anonymously in three volumes in 1811 and that became a classic. The satirical, comic w... Read More
Before Francis Scott Fitzgerald died at the age 44, he thought he was a failure. His obituaries described him as an obscure writer who never fulfilled his early promise. Twenty years later, Fitzgerald was universally recognized as one of the great literary figures of the century and The Great Gatsby was widely acclaimed as one of the greatest novels of the modern era. Tender Is the Night is the... Read More
John Ernst Steinbeck Jr. was an American author, who won the 1962 Nobel Prize in Literature "for his realistic and imaginative writings, combining as they do sympathetic humour and keen social perception." Most of Steinbeck's work is set in central California, particularly in the Salinas Valley and the California Coast Ranges region. His works frequently explored the themes of fate and injustic... Read More
John Ernst Steinbeck Jr. was an American author. He has been called "a giant of American letters," and many of his works are considered classics of Western literature. A study by the Center for the Learning and Teaching of Literature in the United States found that Of Mice and Men was one of the ten most frequently read books in public high schools. Steinbeck's last novel, The Winter of Our Dis... 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
“The man who said the pen was mightier than the sword ought to have tried reading The Mill on the Floss to Motor Mechanics.” Tom Sharpe was writing what are very possibly the funniest novels in English today. He was born in Holloway, London, and brought up in Croydon. Sharpe's father, the Reverend George Coverdale Sharpe, was a Unitarian minister who was active in far-right politics in the 1930... Read More
Thomas Ridley Sharpe was an English satirical novelist. His father, the Reverend George Coverdale Sharpe, was chairman of the Acton and Ealing branch of The Link, and a member of the Nordic League. He declared that he hated Jews "in the sense that he hated all corruption". Sharpe initially shared some of his father's views but was horrified on seeing films of the liberation of the Bergen-Belsen... Read More
Tom Sharpe was an English satirical author, born in London and educated at Lancing College and at Pembroke College, Cambridge. Wilt on High is the third outing for Henry Wilt, bilious lecturer and Head of Liberal Studies at the Fenland College of Arts and Technology. Same struggles, same problems… But the even tenor of his days is rudely interrupted when the shadow of drug dealing flickers acro... Read More
Tom Sharpe, who has died aged 85, did not start writing comic novels until 1971 when he was 43, but once he got going he gained a large readership. Wilt in Nowhere is the fourth in the series of novels about hapless polytechnic lecturer Henry Wilt, his wife Eva, and their incorrigible four little girls, now aged 14, at convent school and bubbling over with an unhealthy interest in all things se... Read More
Tom Sharpe was an English bestselling novelist whose savagely satirical black comedies attacked the injustice of apartheid and the absurdities of academic life. Sharpe was educated at Bloxham School. He then was accepted to Pembroke College, Cambridge, where he read history and social anthropology. In 1951, Tom Sharpe moved to South Africa, where he worked as a social worker and a teacher, befo... Read More
British writer Doris Lessing felt that “a writer’s job is to provoke questions.” Her first published book, The Grass Is Singing, is about a white farmer and his wife and their African servant in Rhodesia. Among her most substantial works is the series Children of Violence, a five-novel sequence that centres on Martha Quest, who grows up in southern Africa and settles in England. The Golden Note... 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
Colleen Margaretta McCullough was an Australian author known for her novels, her most well-known being The Thorn Birds and The Ladies of Missalonghi. Before her tertiary education, McCullough earned a living as a teacher, librarian and journalist. In her first year of medical studies at the University of Sydney, she suffered dermatitis from surgical soap and was told to abandon her dreams of be... Read More
Joanne Michèle Sylvie Harris is an English author especially known for her award-winning novel Chocolat. Joanne Harris was born in Barnsley in 1964, of a French mother and an English father. She studied Modern and Mediaeval Languages at St Catharine’s College, Cambridge and was a teacher for fifteen years, during which time she published three novels; The Evil Seed, Sleep, Pale Sister and Choco... Read More
Joanne Harris began writing at an early age. She was strongly influenced by Grimms' Fairy Tales and Charles Perrault's work, as well as local folklore and Norse mythology. She was educated at Wakefield Girls' High School, Barnsley Sixth Form College, and St Catharine's College, Cambridge, where she studied modern and medieval languages. In Coastliners, Madeline, “Mado”, coming back from Paris t... Read More
Diane Setterfield is a British author. Before writing, Setterfield studied French Literature at The University of Bristol, earning a bachelor of arts in 1986 and a PhD in 1993. Setterfield taught at numerous schools as well as privately before leaving academia in the late 1990s. First published in 2006, The Thirteenth Tale was the author's first published book and became a New York Times No.1 b... Read More
James Brendan Patterson is an American author and philanthropist. Among his works are the Alex Cross, Michael Bennett, Women's Murder Club, Maximum Ride, Daniel X, NYPD Red, Witch and Wizard, and Private series, as well as many stand-alone thrillers, non-fiction and romance novels. In November 2015, Patterson received the Literarian Award from the National Book Foundation. Against Medical Advic... Read More
James Patterson was born on March 22, 1947, in Newburgh, New York, the son of Isabelle, a homemaker and teacher, and Charles Patterson, an insurance broker. He graduated summa cum laude with both a B.A. in English from Manhattan College and an M.A. in English from Vanderbilt University. Patterson's awards include the Edgar Award, the BCA Mystery Guild's Thriller of the Year, the International T... Read More