Chaucer Biography
GEOFFREY CHAUCER (? 1340–1400), English poet, is most famous for his great work “The Canterbury Tales.” His own age delighted in stories, and he gave it the stories it demanded invested with a humanity,...
Biographical sketches of poets and authors.
Biography / E4-Resources / Excellence in Literature: The Curriculum
by EILeditor · Published October 23, 2023 · Last modified November 20, 2023
GEOFFREY CHAUCER (? 1340–1400), English poet, is most famous for his great work “The Canterbury Tales.” His own age delighted in stories, and he gave it the stories it demanded invested with a humanity,...
Biography / E4-Resources / Excellence in Literature: The Curriculum
by EILeditor · Published October 16, 2023 · Last modified November 20, 2023
WILLIAM SHAKESPEARE (1564–1616), English poet, player and playwright, was baptized in the parish church of Stratford-upon-Avon in Warwickshire on the 26th of April 1564. The exact date of his birth is not known. Birth...
Biography / E2-Resources / E4-Resources / Excellence in Literature: The Curriculum
by EILeditor · Published October 9, 2023 · Last modified November 20, 2023
Best known by his pseudonym Lewis Carroll, the author and mathematician Charles Lutwidge Dodson (1832–1898), was born at Daresbury, near Warrington, in England on the 27th of January 1832. He was the eldest son...
Biography / E2-Resources / E3-Resources / Excellence in Literature: The Curriculum
by EILeditor · Published October 6, 2023 · Last modified November 20, 2023
Biography of Amy Lowell BY RACHEL JIRKA Amy Lowell was born on February 9, 1874, to a wealthy and influential family in Brookline, Massachusetts. She was the youngest of five children born to Augustus...
by EILeditor · Published September 25, 2023 · Last modified November 20, 2023
Helen Maria Hunt Jackson (1831-1885) was an American poet and novelist and advocate for improved treatment of Native Americans by the United States government. She is best known for Ramona, a novel about the plight...
Biography / E4-Resources / Excellence in Literature: The Curriculum
by EILeditor · Published September 12, 2023 · Last modified November 20, 2023
FRANCIS THOMPSON (1859–1907), poet and prose-writer, was born on 18 Dec. 1859 at 7 Winckley Street, in Preston, England. His father, Charles Thompson (1824–1896), a native of Oakham, Rutland, practiced homoeopathy at Preston and...
Biography / E4-Resources / Excellence in Literature: The Curriculum
by EILeditor · Published September 4, 2023 · Last modified November 20, 2023
John Ruskin (1819 – 1900) was an English writer, philosopher, art critic, and polymath of the Victorian era. He wrote on subjects as varied as architecture, literature, education, myth, ornithology, botany, geology, and political...
WILLIAM CULLEN BRYANT (1794-1878), American poet and journalist, was born at Cummington, a farming village in the Hampshire hills of western Massachusetts, on the 3rd of November 1794. He was the second son of...
Biography / E4-Resources / E5-Resources / Excellence in Literature: The Curriculum
by EILeditor · Published August 18, 2023 · Last modified November 20, 2023
CHRISTOPHER MARLOWE (1564–1593), English dramatist, the father of English tragedy, and [the establisher] of dramatic blank verse, the eldest son of a shoemaker at Canterbury, was born in that city on the 6th of...
John Greenleaf Whittier (1807-1892), America’s “Quaker poet” of freedom, faith and the sentiment of the common people, was born in a Merrimack Valley farmhouse, Haverhill, Massachusetts, on the 17th of December 1807. Family Ancestry &...
Biography / E5-Resources / Resources for Teaching
by Janice Campbell · Published March 22, 2022 · Last modified March 24, 2022
MIGUEL DE CERVANTES SAAVEDRA (1547-1616), Spanish novelist (Don Quixote and others), playwright, and poet was born at Alcalá de Henares in 1547. The attempts of biographers to provide him with an illustrious genealogy are...
In this brief article, scholar, editor, and translator Luis Sundkvist explores the life of noted Russian author Ivan Turgenev and considers ways in which his life and work intersected with the Russian composer, Pyotr Ilyich Tchaikovsky. Biography...
Leo Tolstoy (or Count Lev Nikolayevich Tolstoy), 1828-1910, was a Russian novelist and social reformer, born on the 9th of September (August 28) 1828, in the home of his fathers – Yasnaya Polyana, near Toula...
Fyodor Mikhailovich Dostoevsky (1821–1881), Russian author, born at Moscow, on the 30th of October 1821, was the second son of a retired military surgeon of a decayed noble family. He was educated at Moscow...
Alexander (or Aleksándr) Sergeyvich Pushkin (1799—1837) was a Russian poet born in Moscow, on the 7th of June 1799. He belonged to an ancient family of boyars; his maternal great-grandfather, a favourite negro ennobled by Peter...
WHEN the mortal remains of Ivan Turgenev were about to be transported from Paris for interment in his own country, a short commemorative service was held at the Gare du Nord. Ernest Renan and...
Anton Pavlovich Chekhov (1860–1904), like Pushkin, Lermontov, Bielinski, and Garshin, died young, and although he wrote a goodly number of plays and stories which gave him a high reputation in Russia, he did not...
Russian novelist Ivan Sergeyevich Turgenev (or Turgeniev) (1818 – 1883) was the descendant of an old Russian family, was born at Orel, in the government of the same name, in 1818. His father, the...
Dante (or Durante) Alighieri (1265-1321), the greatest of Italian poets, was born at Florence about the middle of May 1265. He was descended from an ancient family, but from one which at any rate...
Charles Dickens (1812–1870) is one of the best-known authors of Victorian England, and he has created some of the most memorable characters in British Literature. Early Life He was born on the 7th of...
John Milton (1608–1674), author of Paradise Lost and other works, was an English poet. He was born in Bread Street, Cheapside, London, on the 9th of December 1608. Milton’s Parents and Early Life His father,...
SIR WALTER SCOTT, Bart. (1771-1832), Scottish poet and novelist, was born at Edinburgh on the 15th of August 1771. His pedigree, in which he took a pride that strongly influenced the course of his...
Alexandre Dumas, also known as Alexandre Dumas père, was a French author and playwright, best known for his historical adventure fiction. As one of France’s most widely read authors, his works have been translated into dozens...
John Clare CLARE, JOHN (1793–1864), an English poet, was born 13 July 1793, at Helpstone, a village halfway between Peterborough and Stamford. Early Life John Clare had a twin sister who died before him....
In this brief Herman Melville Biography, you will learn about his first job at the age of 12 and how his sea adventures were transformed into literature.
American author Henry James, a transitional figure between literary realism and modernism, is often numbered among the great English-language novelists.
Learn more about the life, character, and career of the 17th-century British author of Robinson Crusoe and other works in this Daniel Defoe biography.
by Janice Campbell · Published November 7, 2018 · Last modified September 4, 2020
American writer Washington Irving, best known for “Rip Van Winkle” and “The Legend of Sleepy Hollow,” was an essayist, biographer, historian, and diplomat.
Biography / Excellence in Literature: The Curriculum
by Janice Campbell · Published August 30, 2017 · Last modified November 14, 2023
William Wordsworth William Wordsworth (1770-1850), an English poet, was born at Cockermouth, on the Derwent, in Cumberland, on the 7th of April 1770. Wordsworth’s family and childhood He was the son of John Wordsworth...
by Janice Campbell · Published June 26, 2017 · Last modified September 3, 2020
Sarah Orne Jewett (1849-1909) was an American regional author best known for short stories and color sketches that reflected her roots in Maine. EIL 1.1.
Here’s the Everyday Educator — our annual newsletter handout. It has book lists and helpful articles about homeschooling topics. We’d rather be sharing it in person, but for now, you can download the Everyday Educator here. I hope you enjoy it!
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