Most famous for her passionate novel Jane Eyre, Charlotte Brontë also published poems and three other novels. She was the third of six children of Patrick Brontë, an Irish crofter’s son who rose via a Cambridge education to become, in 1820, a perpetual curate at Haworth, in Yorkshire. Jane Eyre first published in 1847 as Jane Eyre: An Autobiography, with Currer Bell listed as the editor. It is... Read More
The three Brontë sisters, Charlotte, Emily and Anne each published works during the Victorian era. Villette uses the biographical structure commonly seen in traditional Victorian literature but deviates somewhat due to its autobiographical nature. Many of the events that happen to the protagonist of the story mirror the events in the author's life. Like Lucy, Charlotte Brontë experienced family... 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
Thomas Hardy was an English novelist and poet. During his long life of 88 years, he wrote fifteen novels and one thousand poems. Considered a Victorian realist, Hardy examines the social constraints on the lives of those living in Victorian England, and criticises those beliefs, especially those relating to marriage, education and religion, that limited people's lives and caused unhappiness. Ha... Read More
Charles John Huffam Dickens was an English writer and social critic. He created some of the world's best-known fictional characters. Dickens was regarded as the literary colossus of his age. His 1843 novella, A Christmas Carol, remains popular and continues to inspire adaptations in every artistic genre. Oliver Twist and Great Expectations are also frequently adapted, and, like many of his nove... Read More
Charles John Huffam Dickens, an English writer and social critic, edited a weekly journal for 20 years, wrote 15 novels, five novellas, hundreds of short stories and non-fiction articles, lectured and performed readings extensively, was an indefatigable letter writer, and campaigned vigorously for children's rights, education, and other social reforms. A Christmas Carol, probably the most popul... Read More
Charles Dickens enjoyed popularity during his lifetime than had any previous author. Much in his work could appeal to the simple and the sophisticated, to the poor and to the queen. He edited a weekly journal for 20 years, wrote 15 novels, five novellas, hundreds of short stories and non-fiction articles, lectured and performed readings extensively, was an indefatigable letter writer, and campa... Read More
Sir Walter Scott was born on 15 August 1771. He was the ninth child of Walter Scott, a Writer to the Signet, and Anne Rutherford. His father was a member of a cadet branch of the Scotts Clan, and his mother descended from the Haliburton family, the descent from whom granted Walter's family the hereditary right of burial in Dryburgh Abbey. As a boy, youth, and young man, Scott was fascinated by... Read More
Walter Scott noted Austen's "resistance to the trashy sensationalism of much of modern fiction - 'the ephemeral productions which supply the regular demand of watering places and circulating libraries'". Yet her rejection of these genres is complex, as evidenced by Northanger Abbey and Emma. Northanger Abbey was the first of Jane Austen's novels to be completed for publication, in 1803. However... Read More
H.G. Wells was a famous science fiction writer. The science fiction historian John Clute describes Wells as "the most important writer the genre has yet seen", and notes his work has been central to both British and American science fiction. Science fiction author and critic Algis Budrys said Wells "remains the outstanding expositor of both the hope, and the despair, which are embodied in the t... Read More
William Faulkner, who came from an old southern family, grew up in Oxford, Mississippi. He joined the Canadian, and later the British, Royal Air Force during the First World War, studied for a while at the University of Mississippi. Except for some trips to Europe and Asia, and a few brief stays in Hollywood as a scriptwriter, he worked on his novels and short stories on a farm in Oxford. Faulk... Read More
William Faulkner, in full William Cuthbert Faulkner, original surname Falkner, was an American novelist and short-story writer who was awarded the 1949 Nobel Prize for Literature. Two of his works, A Fable and his last novel The Reivers, won the Pulitzer Prize for Fiction. In 1998, the Modern Library ranked his 1929 novel The Sound and the Fury sixth on its list of the 100 best English-language... Read More
The Noble Prize winner American Writer, William Faulkner has written many critically acclaimed short stories, plays, screenplays, essays and novels. He is considered to be one of the most important writers of the American southern literature and ranked shoulder to shoulder with other significant writers such as Robert Penn, Harper Lee, Truman Capote and Tennessee Williams of the same genre. Sur... Read More
William Cuthbert Faulkner was an American writer and Nobel Prize laureate from Oxford, Mississippi. Though his work was published as early as 1919, and largely during the 1920s and 1930s, Faulkner was not widely known until receiving the 1949 Nobel Prize in Literature "for his powerful and artistically unique contribution to the modern American novel”, for which he became the only Mississippi-b... 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
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
Joanne Harris is the author of the Whitbread-shortlisted Chocolat, The Testament of Loki and many other bestselling novels, plus the novella The Blue Salt Road, short stories, screenplays and cookbooks. Her books are published in more than 50 countries and have won numerous awards. The Evil Seed, Sleep, Pale Sister and Chocolat were published before she retired from teaching to become an author... 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
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 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