British author Daphne du Maurier published her first novel in 1931. From that point on, she produced a variety of novels, short stories, and non-fiction books. This lesson will look at her life and works. It will also define Gothic literature. Author Frank Baker believed that du Maurier had plagiarised his novel The Birds in her short story "The Birds. Du Maurier had been working as a reader fo... 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. Her bestselling works were not at first taken seriously by critics, but have since earned an enduring reputation for the narrative craft. She wrote in a variety of genres and styles;... Read More
John Updike, in full John Hoyer Updike, was an American writer of novels, short stories, and poetry, known for his careful craftsmanship and realistic but subtle depiction of “American, Protestant, small-town, middle-class” life. Updike grew up in Shillington, Pennsylvania, and many of his early stories draw on his youthful experiences there. He graduated from Harvard University in 1954. In 195... Read More
American author John Hoyer Updike was born on March 18, 1932, in Shillington, Pennsylvania. His father, Wesley, was a high school mathematics teacher, the model for several sympathetic father figures in Updike's early works. Because Updike's mother, Linda Grace Hoyer Updike, had literary dreams of her own, books were a large part of the boy's early life. Updike began his remarkable career as a... Read More
American author John Updike mirrored his America in poems, short stories, essays, and novels, especially the four-volume "Rabbit" series. At the age of twenty-two, Updike began his writing career when he published his first story "Friends from Philadelphia," in the New Yorker in 1954. Since childhood, Updike had admired the New Yorker and always dreamed of becoming a cartoonist for the magazine... Read More
John Hoyer Updike was an American writer, poet, literary critic and novelist. He was born on 18th March 1932 in Reading, Pennsylvania. Updike was the only child of Wesley Russell Updike, a mathematics teacher and an aspiring writer Linda Grace Hoyer. Updike’s initial desire was to become a cartoonist. To pursue this goal he entered the ‘The Ruskin School of Drawing and Fine Arts’ at the Univers... Read More
Poet, essayist, short-story writer, critic, and novelist John Updike was born in Shillington, Pennsylvania, on March 18, 1932. His father taught high school math, and his mother wrote short stories and novels. Updike received his BA from Harvard University in 1954, the year he began to publish in The New Yorker. Updike is the author of more than fifty books. Among his volumes of poetry are Amer... Read More
Considered one of the greatest American writers of the twentieth century, John Updike was a two-time Pulitzer Prize-winning author and was also the recipient of many prestigious literary awards. A prodigious and prolific writer, most of Updike’s novels centre on religion, sex and the American middle class. Talking about average American people, he once said, "I like middles. It is in middles th... Read More
Salman Rushdie was born in Bombay in 1947. His second novel, the critically acclaimed and award-winning Midnight's Children, was published in 1991. Among its honours, it was pronounced the 'Booker of the Bookers,' which recognized it as the best example of that illustrious prize. Malcolm Bradley in The Modern British Novel pronounced the book "a new start for the late-twentieth-century novel."... Read More
Salman Rushdie is a British-Indian novelist best known for the novels Midnight's Children. He studied in India and England, reading History at King's College, Cambridge. His first novel, Grimus, was published in 1975. Much of his fiction is set on the Indian subcontinent. He combines magical realism with historical fiction; his work is concerned with the many connections, disruptions, and migra... Read More
Iain Banks was a Scottish author. He wrote mainstream fiction under the name Iain Banks and science fiction as Iain M. Banks, including the initial of his adopted middle name Menzies. The Algebraist, like much of Banks's sci-fi, is a dense character-driven epic complete with alien races, warring cultures, interstellar travel, and humour. The novel takes place in 4034. With the assistance of oth... Read More
Iain Banks was born in Fife in 1954 and was educated at Stirling University, where he studied English Literature, Philosophy and Psychology. He came to widespread and controversial public notice with the publication of his first novel, The Wasp Factory, in 1984. His first science fiction novel, Consider Phlebas, was published in 1987. He continued to write both mainstream fiction and science fi... Read More
Iain Menzies Banks was a Scottish author, captured readers’ imaginations with thrilling and dark fiction, notably with his twisted literary debut, The Wasp Factory. Considered by some an atrocity of unparalleled perversity, the controversial yet carefully crafted novel portrays the sadistic indulgences of a disturbed young narrator. William Gibson, the New York Times-bestselling author of Spook... Read More
Paul William Gallico was an American novelist, short story and sports writer. Many of his works were adapted for motion pictures. He is perhaps best remembered for The Snow Goose, his only real critical success, and for the novel The Poseidon Adventure, primarily through the 1972 film adaptation. He went to school in the public schools of New York, and in 1916 went to Columbia University. He gr... Read More
Richard David Bach is an American writer. Bach is widely known as the author of some of the 1970s biggest-sellers, including Jonathan Livingston Seagull and Illusions: The Adventures of a Reluctant Messiah. Bach has written numerous works of fiction, and also non-fiction flight-related titles. Most of Bach's books have been semi-autobiographical, using actual or fictionalized events from his li... Read More
Richard David Bach was born on 23rd of June 1936. He was born in Oak Park in Illinois. He served in the United States Navy and the New Jersey Air National Guards fighter wing. His books are mainly autobiographies inspired from his life events. He also worked as a technical writer for ‘Douglas Aircraft’ and a writer for the magazine ‘Flying’. In Illusions: The Adventures of a Reluctant Messiah,... Read More
In The Apple Tree, the story opens on a splendid spring day, the twenty-fifth anniversary of Frank and Stella Ashurst, who in honour of the occasion have driven out into the Devon countryside not far from where they first met. They stop by a grave at a crossroad on the moor. Stella brings out her colours to paint, but a vague discontent rises in Frank, who regrets his inability to seize and hol... Read More
John Galsworthy, one of the greatest British writers, was a representative of the literary tradition, which has regarded the novel as a lawful instrument of social propaganda. The Forsyte Saga is a history of three generations of the Forsyte family from the eighties of the 19th century up to the twenties of the 20th century. The Man of Property shows two successive generations of a rich upper-m... Read More
Winston Francis Groom is an American novelist and non-fiction writer. He is known for writing Forrest Gump, which was adapted into a film by Robert Zemeckis in 1994. He has also written numerous non-fiction works, on diverse subjects including the American Civil War and World War I. In 1985, Groom moved back to Mobile, Alabama, where he began to work on the novel Forrest Gump. Forrest Gump was... Read More