Henry Charles Bukowski was an American poet, novelist and short story writer. His writing was influenced by the social, cultural and economic ambience of his home city of Los Angeles. It is marked by an emphasis on the ordinary lives of poor Americans, the act of writing, alcohol, relationships with women and the drudgery of work. Bukowski wrote thousands of poems, hundreds of short stories and... Read More
“Well, I’m 34 now. If I don’t make it by the time I’m 60, I’m just going to give myself 10 more years,” said Charles Bukowski. Charles Bukowski was born as Heinrich Karl Bukowski in Andernach, Germany, to Heinrich Bukowski and Katharina. Charles' mother was a native German and his father was an American serviceman. Charles' paternal grandfather Leonard had emigrated to America from Germany in t... Read More
Henry Charles Bukowski was of one the greatest American fiction writer of the last half of the 20th century. Through his impressive output of poems, short stories and novels, Charles Bukowski offers an intimate portrait of a lower class America struggling with vices in the face of a crushed American dream. Bukowski's work was subject to controversy throughout his career, and Hugh Fox claimed th... Read More
Often referred to as the ‘godfather of lowlife literature’, Henry Charles Bukowski was certainly familiar with the grittier side of life. The writer was born Heinrich Karl Bukowski on August 16, 1920 in Andernach, Germany to a US army sergeant serving in Germany just after the First World War, and a German girl with whom he had been having an affair. When Bukowski was 24, his short story "After... Read More
Henry Charles Bukowski was an American poet, novelist and short story writer. His writing was influenced by the social, cultural and economic ambience of his home city of Los Angeles. He published over sixty volumes of poetry and prose, and his works have been translated into more than a dozen languages. Bukowski provokes extreme reactions to his work. On the one hand, he is a cult hero, a writ... Read More
Henry Charles Bukowski was an American poet, novelist and short story writer. His writing was influenced by the social, cultural and economic ambience of his home city of Los Angeles. Bukowski published extensively in small literary magazines and with small presses beginning in the early 1940s and continuing on through the early 1990s. His great skill lay in making the writing of great poetry s... Read More
Irwin Allen Ginsberg was an American poet, philosopher and writer. He is considered to be one of the leading figures of both the Beat Generation during the 1950s and the counterculture that soon followed. Listen online to free English audiobook "Reading at the Poetry Center, San Francisco State University” on our website to experience Allen Ginsberg’s poetry. Ginsberg grew up in Paterson, New... Read More
Irwin Allen Ginsberg was born in Newark, New Jersey, to a high school teacher father who published poetry and a Russian-born mother who retained her communist roots. Both her sympathy for the labour class and her gradual mental decay deeply affected Ginsberg in his youth. Intending to study law, Ginsberg enrolled at Columbia University in 1943, but he soon turned to literature, taking classes f... Read More
Irwin Allen Ginsberg was born in Newark, New Jersey, to a high school teacher father who published poetry and a Russian-born mother who retained her communist roots. Ginsberg's willingness to talk about taboo subjects made him a controversial figure during the conservative 1950s and a significant figure in the 1960s. In the mid-1950s, no reputable publishing company would even consider publishi... Read More
Irwin Allen Ginsberg was born in Newark, New Jersey, to a high school teacher father who published poetry and a Russian-born mother who retained her communist roots. Ginsberg’s public breakthrough came in San Francisco, in 1955, when he read the first part of “Howl” before an audience as part of an event that launched the San Francisco Poetry Renaissance. Ginsberg was a practicing Buddhist who... Read More
Ginsberg first came to public attention in 1956 with the publication of Howl and Other Poems. Ginsberg was a Pulitzer Prize finalist in 1995 for his book Cosmopolitan Greetings: Poems 1986–1992. “Howl,” a long-lined poem in the tradition of Walt Whitman, is an outcry of rage and despair against a destructive, abusive society. Ginsberg is strongly identified with the literary and cultural phenom... 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
Lewis Carroll was the pen name of Charles Lutwidge Dodgson, who brought us Alice's Adventures in Wonderland. Carroll came from a family of high church Anglicans and developed a long relationship with Christ Church, Oxford, where he lived for most of his life as a scholar and teacher. Charles's father was an active and highly conservative cleric of the Church of England who later became the Arch... Read More
Richard Gary Brautigan was an American novelist, poet, and short story writer. His work often employs black comedy, parody, and satire. Brautigan grew up in the Pacific Northwest and had an unhappy childhood. His parents separated before he was born, and his family, which relocated often, suffered abject poverty for a time. As a teenager, he was committed to the Oregon State Hospital, where he... Read More
Edgar Allan Poe was born on January 19, 1809, in Boston. At age six, Poe went to England with the Allans and was enrolled in schools there. After he returned with the Allans to the U.S. in 1820, he studied at private schools, then attended the University of Virginia and the U.S. Military Academy, but did not complete studies at either school. The Sleeper is one of many Poe poems focusing on bea... Read More
Edgar Allan Poe was born in Boston, the second child of actors David and Elizabeth "Eliza" Arnold Hopkins Poe. His father abandoned the family in 1810, and his mother died the following year. Thus orphaned, the child was taken in by John and Frances Allan of Richmond, Virginia. They never formally adopted him, but he was with them well into young adulthood. Tension developed later as John Allan... Read More
Edgar Allan Poe’s stature as a major figure in world literature is primarily based on his ingenious and profound short stories, poems, and critical theories, which established a highly influential rationale for the short form in both poetry and fiction. Regarded in literary histories and handbooks as the architect of the modern short story, Poe was also the principal forerunner of the “art for... Read More
Edgar Allan Poe was one of the most important and influential American writers of the 19th century. He was the first author to try to make a professional living as a writer. His poetry alone would ensure his spot in the literary canon. Poe's notable verses range from the early masterpiece “To Helen” to the dark, mysterious “Ulalume.” From “The Raven,” which made him world-famous upon its public... Read More
On January 19, 1809, Edgar Allan Poe was born in Boston, Massachusetts. Poe's father and mother, both professional actors, died before the poet was three years old, and John and Frances Allan raised him as a foster child in Richmond, Virginia. Eldorado, written in 1849, shows the despair that is so common in Poe's work. According to legend, El Dorado is a city of gold and unimaginable wealth, a... Read More
Edgar Allan Poe was an American writer, editor, and literary critic. After his early attempts at poetry, Poe had turned his attention to prose. He placed a few stories with a Philadelphia publication and began work on his only drama Politian. The Baltimore Saturday Visiter awarded him a prize in October 1833 for his short story MS. Found in a Bottle. During his lifetime, Poe was mostly recogniz... Read More