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,...
Category: Biography
Biographical sketches of poets and authors.
William Shakespeare Biography
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...
Lewis Carroll Biography
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...
Amy Lowell Biography
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...
Helen Hunt Jackson Biography
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...
Francis Thompson Biography
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...
John Ruskin Biography
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 Biography
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...
Christopher Marlowe Biography
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 Biography
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 &...
Miguel de Cervantes Biography
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...
Turgenev and Tchaikovsky
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 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 Dostoevsky Biography
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 Pushkin Biography
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...
Ivan Turgenev Tribute by Henry James
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 Chekhov Biography
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...
Ivan Turgenev Biography
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 Biography
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 Biography
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 Biography
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 Biography
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 biography
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 Biography
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....
Herman Melville Biography
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.
Henry James Biography
American author Henry James, a transitional figure between literary realism and modernism, is often numbered among the great English-language novelists.
Daniel Defoe Biography
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.
Washington Irving: A Biography
American writer Washington Irving, best known for “Rip Van Winkle” and “The Legend of Sleepy Hollow,” was an essayist, biographer, historian, and diplomat.
William Wordsworth Biography
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...
Sarah Orne Jewett Biography
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.
