Thorstein Veblen (1857-1929)

The American political economist, sociologist, and social critic Thorstein Bunde Veblen (1857-1929) wrote about the evolutionary development and mounting internal tensions of modern Western society.

He is remembered in political and moral philosophy for the doctrine of conspicuous consumption, expressed in The Theory of the Leisure Class (1899). He identifies the fundamental need to display financial well-being in what would otherwise seem wasteful display, in order to manifest status and stability, and to distinguish oneself from those slightly less well-off. Veblen argues that the principle is a human universal that explains a large variety of social phenomena. For example, we appreciate a well-trimmed lawn because it is a sign of surplus labour and wealth, or employ a butler because having an able-bodied man doing next to nothing is more meritorious than having someone who could not do much else. See also Mandeville, Smith, vanity.

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Emily Brontë ( 1818 - 1848 )

* Born: 30 July 1818
* Birthplace: Yorkshire, England
* Died: 19 December 1848 (tuberculosis)
* Best Known As: The author of Wuthering Heights

Brontë died at age 30, leaving the now-legendary Wuthering Heights as her only novel. Little is known about Emily's life; she was a member of the famed Brontë clan, which included her sisters Charlotte (author of Jane Eyre) and Anne (author of Agnes Grey). The three published their poetry in the 1846 book Poems by Currer, Ellis and Acton Bell. (The names were pseudonyms for Charlotte, Emily and Anne.) Emily began writing Wuthering Heights in 1845 and it was published late in 1847. The book's troubled lovers, Catherine Earnshaw and the stormy Heathcliff, have become famous figures in literature.

Wuthering Heights has been the basis of nearly a dozen feature films and TV movies. The most famous is the 1939 film starring Laurence Olivier, Merle Oberon and David Niven. A 1992 edition starred Ralph Fiennes as Heathcliff and Juliette Binoche as Catherine... As children the precocious Brontë sisters and their brother Branwell wrote long, intricately detailed stories about imaginary kingdoms they called Gondal and Angria.


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Stephen Hawking ( 1942 )

* Born: 8 January 1942

* Birthplace: Oxford, England

* Best Known As: The author of A Brief History of Time

Stephen Hawking is considered the world's foremost living theoretical physicist. He's an expert on black holes whose stated intention is to unify quantum mechanics with Einstein's general theory of relativity, forming a single theory to explain the origin (and end) of the universe. Hawking, a professor of mathematics at Cambridge University, is the author of the best-selling book A Brief History of Time and something of a celebrity: he has made guest appearances on the TV shows Star Trek and The Simpsons. Hawking has suffered from ALS (amyotrophic lateral sclerosis, also called Lou Gehrig's disease) since he was a young man and is confined to a wheelchair.

In 1979 Hawking took the post of Lucasian Professor of Mathematics at Cambridge. According to Hawking's own site, "The chair was founded in 1663 with money left in the will of the Reverend Henry Lucas, who had been the Member of Parliament for the University. It was first held by Isaac Barrow, and then in 1663 by Isaac Newton."

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Erle Stanley Gardner (1889-1970)

Erle Stanley Gardner (1889-1970) became one of the most successful mystery writers of all time. Most of his reputation stems from Perry Mason and other memorable characters that he created. Gardner's best novels offer abundant evidence of his natural storytelling talent.

Gardner was born in Malden, Massachusetts on July 17, 1889. He spent much of his childhood traveling with his mining-engineer father through the remote regions of California, Oregon, and the Klondike. In his teens he not only boxed for money, but also promoted a number of unlicensed matches. Gardner attended high school in California and graduated from Palo Alto High School 1909. He enrolled at Valparaiso University in Indiana that same year but was soon expelled for striking a professor.

In the practice of law Gardner found the form of combat he seemed born to master. He was admitted to the California bar in 1911 and opened an office in Oxnard, where he practiced law until 1918. As a lawyer he represented the Chinese community and gained a reputation for flamboyant trial tactics. In one case, for instance, he had dozens of Chinese merchants exchange identities so that he could discredit a policeman's identification of a client. Gardner worked as a salesman for the Consolidated Sales Company from 1918 until 1921. He then resumed his legal career in Ventura, California from 1921 until 1933.


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Shmuel Yoseph Agnon (1888–1970)

Israeli writer, b. Buczacz, Galicia, Austria-Hungary (now Buchach, Ukraine), as Samuel Josef Czaczkes. Widely regarded as the greatest 20th-century writer of fiction in Hebrew, he shared (with Nelly Sachs) the 1966 Nobel Prize in Literature.

Agnon settled in Palestine in 1907 and spent most of his life in Jerusalem. His fiction explores Jewish existence from late-18th- and early-19th-century E Europe shtels to the declining Jewish culture of the late 19th cent. to the post–World War I period and the lives of immigrants in Palestine and Israel. Although he initially wrote in both Hebrew and Yiddish, eventually he wrote in Hebrew alone.

His novels, which range in approach from the realistic to the surreal, include Hakhnasat kalah (1919, tr. The Bridal Canopy, 1967), the autobiographical Ore'ah Nata' Lalun (1938, tr. A Guest for the Night, 1968), and 'Tmol shilshom (1945, tr. Only Yesterday, 2000). Agnon is also acclaimed for his short stories, which have been translated into English in Days of Awe (1938, tr. 1948), 21 Stories (1970), and Jaffa, Belle of the Seas (1998).

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Iris Murdoch ( 1919 - 1999 )

* Born: 15 July 1919
* Birthplace: Dublin, Ireland
* Died: 8 February 1999
* Best Known As: Alzheimer's stricken author of The Sea, The Sea

Irish-English writer Iris Murdoch's long career as a novelist, playwright, critic and philosophy professor came to an end in the 1990s because of Alzheimer's disease. Murdoch was made a fellow in 1948 of St. Anne's College, Oxford, where she taught philosophy until 1963. Her writing career began in earnest after she made a splash with her 1953 study of the philosophy of Jean-Paul Sartre. The next year she published Under the Net, the first of more than two dozen novels. From the 1950s through the 1980s she earned a reputation as a prolific writer and deep thinker, cranking out essays on the art of fiction ("Against Dryness") and moral issues (collected in 1967's The Sovereignty of Good and Other Concepts), and achieving success with novels such as A Severed Head (1961), The Sea, The Sea (1978) and The Good Apprentice (1985). Her novels are famously chock full of unlikely incidents and complicated storylines, and reveal a belief in the power of art and mythology as a tool to understand something greater than the self. Celebrated especially in England, Murdoch was made a Dame of the British Empire in 1987. In the mid-1990s she began showing symptoms of Alzheimer's disease, a development detailed in Elegy for Iris (1998), a book by her husband, writer John Bayley (the book inspired the 2001 film Iris). Her other novels include The Bell (1958), The Black Prince (1973), The Sacred and Profane Love Machine (1974) and The Green Knight (1994).

The movie Iris (2001) starred both Kate Winslet and Judi Dench as the author.

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Benjamin Spock ( 1903 - 1998 )

* Born: 2 May 1903

* Birthplace: New Haven, Connecticut

* Died: 15 March 1998 (natural causes)

* Best Known As: The author of Baby and Child Care

Dr. Benjamin Spock's book Baby and Child Care was published in 1946, just in time for the post-World War II baby boom, and became a best-selling guide to child rearing. Pediatrician Spock encouraged new parents to use common sense and to treat children with respect. This led some critics to call him the "Father of Permissiveness," in spite of Spock's protests to the contrary. In the 1960s Spock gained new fame as a pacifist and Vietnam War protester.

Spock rowed on Yale's crew team, and with them won a gold medal in the 1924 Olympics... Contrary to popular rumor, Dr. Spock's son did not commit suicide. His grandson Peter did commit suicide in 1983... Spock is occasionally confused with Mr. Spock of the TV show Star Trek.


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Amy Tan (1952)

* Born: 19 February 1952

* Birthplace: Oakland, California

* Best Known As: Author of The Joy Luck Club

Amy Tan is a Chinese-American author from San Francisco who wrote the 1989 best-seller The Joy Luck Club. The daughter of immigrants, Tan spent most of her childhood in central California. In the late 1960s her father and one of her two brothers died of brain tumors and Tan's mother moved the family to Europe. After finishing high school in Switzerland in 1969, Tan returned to the United States and eventually ended up in California again, where she studied literature and linguistics at San Jose State University and earned a masters degree in 1973. She worked as a business writer and then began publishing short stories in 1986. The Joy Luck Club recounted the family tales of four modern Chinese-American women; it was widely hailed for its depiction of the Chinese-American experience of the late 20th century. Tan's other books have also fared well, including two children's books and a non-fiction collection, The Opposite of Fate: A Book of Musings (2003). Her novels include The Kitchen God's Wife (1991), The Hundred Secret Senses (1995) and Saving Fish From Drowning (2005).

Tan has sung with the Rock Bottom Remainders, the informal rock band that includes fellow writers Stephen King and Dave Barry.

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Stephen King (1947)

* Born: 21 September 1947

* Birthplace: Portland, Maine

* Best Known As: The author of scary bestsellers

Since the early 1970s, Stephen King has been America's most famous horror writer. His books are a mainstay of paperback bookracks everywhere, and have spawned a multi-media franchise that includes movies, TV shows, video games and comic books. King is famously fecund, turning out a novel a year and sometimes more. His string of bestsellers began with Carrie (1974), and his early horror novels include Salem's Lot (1975), The Shining (1977) and The Dead Zone (1979), all of which have been adapted for film or television. Since conquering the horror market, King has written novels in other genres and experimented with various publishing methods, including issuing installments of The Green Mile (1996) and beginning the Internet-first publication of The Plant in 2000 (commercially unsuccessful, installments were suspended after five months). King's other books include: The Stand (1978); Firestarter (1980); Cujo (1981); Pet Sematary (1983); Insomnia (1984); Misery (1987); Delores Claiborne (1992); Bag of Bones (1998); and Cell (2006).

King also writes under the pseudonym Richard Bachman... King is one of the members of the Rock Bottom Remainders, a rock band made up of published writers and including Dave Barry and Amy Tan.

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Dave Barry (1947)

* Born: 3 July 1947

* Birthplace: Armonk, New York

* Best Known As: Famously goofy humor columnist for The Miami Herald

David "Dave" Barry (born July 3, 1947) is a bestselling American author and Pulitzer Prize-winning humorist who wrote a nationally syndicated column for the The Miami Herald from 1983 to 2005. He has also written numerous books of humor and parody, as well as comedic novels.

Quotes By: Dave Barry

"Democracy: In which you say what you like and do what you're told."

"Although Golf was originally restricted to wealthy Protestants, today its open to anybody who owns hideous clothing."

"There are two distinctive classes of people today, those who have personal computers, and those who have several thousand extra dollars apiece."

"Guys are simple... women are not simple and they always assume that men must be just as complicated as they are, only way more mysterious. The whole point is guys are not thinking much. They are just what they appear to be. Tragically."

"What Women Want: To be loved, to be listened to, to be desired, to be respected, to be needed, to be trusted, and sometimes, just to be held. What Men Want: Tickets for the world series."

"I am not the only person who uses his computer mainly for the purpose of diddling with his computer."


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George Sand (1804-1876)

Born: July 1, 1804

Place of Birth : Paris, France

Died: June 9, 1876

Place of Death : Nohant, France

Known As : French author

The French novelist George Sand was one of the most successful female writers of the nineteenth century.

Every night from midnight until dawn, George Sand covered her daily quota of twenty pages with her large, tranquil writing, never crossing out a line. All her novels are love stories in which her romantic idealism unfolds in a realistic setting.

The early works by George Sand are novels of passion, written to lessen the pain of her first love affairs. Indiana (1832) has as its central theme woman's search for the absolute in love. Valentine (1832) depicts an upper-class woman, unhappily married, who finds that a farmer's son loves her. Lélia (1854) is a lyrical but searching confession of the author's own physical coldness. Lélia is a beautiful woman loved by a young poet, but she can show him only motherly affection.

Le Compagnon du tour de France (1840), Consuelo (1842–1843), and Le Péché de Monsieur Antoine (1847) are typical novels of this period for the author. She sympathized in these novels with the difficult lives of the worker and the farmer. She also wrote a number of novels devoted to country life, most produced during her retreat to Nohant. La Mare au diable (1846), La Petite Fadette (1849), and Les Maîtres sonneurs (1852) are typical novels of this genre.

As George Sand grew older, she spent more and more time at her beloved Nohant and gave herself up to the gentle, peaceful life she created for herself there, the entertainment of friends, the staging of puppet shows, and most of all to her grandchildren. Though she had lost none of her vital energy and enthusiasm, she grew less concerned with politics. Her quest for the absolute in love had led her through years of stormy affairs to reaching a tolerant and universal love—of God, of nature, and of children. She died in Nohant on June 9, 1876.

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Pearl S. Buck ( 1892 – 1973 )

Pearl Sydenstricker Buck (June 26, 1892 – March 6, 1973), most familiarly known as Pearl S. Buck (birth name Pearl Comfort Sydenstricker) , was a prolific American writer and Nobel Prize in Literature winner,with her novel The Good Earth, in 1932.

Born in Hillsboro, West Virginia to Caroline (Stulting) and Absalom Sydenstricker, Buck and her southern Presbyterian missionaries parents went to Zhejiang, China in 1895. She was brought up there and first knew the Chinese language and customs, especially from Mr. Kong, and then was taught English by her mother and her teacher. She was encouraged to write at an early age.

By 1910, she left for America and went to Randolph-Macon Women's College, where she would earn her degree in 1914. She then returned to China, and married an agricultural economist, John Lossing Buck, on May 13, 1917. In 1921, she and John had a daughter with phenylketonuria, Carol. The small family then moved to Nanjing, where Pearl taught English literature at University of Nanking. In 1925, adopted Janice (later surnamed Walsh) and subsequently 8 more adoptees. In 1926, she left China and returned to the United States for a short time in order to earn her Master of Arts degree from Cornell University.

Buck began her writing career in 1930 with her first publication of East Wind:West Wind. In 1931 she wrote her best known novel, The Good Earth, which is considered to be one of the best of her many works. The story of the farmer Wang Lung's life brought her the Pulitzer Prize for Fiction in 1932. Her career would keep flourishing, and she won the William Dean Howells Medal in 1935.

Pearl was forced to flee China in 1934 due to political tensions. She returned to the United States, and obtained a divorce from her husband. She then married Richard J. Walsh, president of the John Day Publishing Company, on June 11, 1935, and adopt six other children. In 1938 she won the Nobel Prize for Literature, after writing biographies of her parents, The Exile, and The Fighting Angel.

In her lifetime, Pearl S. Buck would write over 100 works of literature, her most known being The Good Earth. She wrote novels, short stories, fiction, and children's stories. Many of her life experiences are related to or in her books. She wanted to prove to her readers that universality of mankind can exist if they accept it. She dealt with many topics including women, emotions (in general), Asians, immigration, adoption, and conflicts that many people go through in life. In 1949, she established Welcome House Inc., the first adoption agency dedicated to the placement of bi-racial children, particulary Amerasians.

Pearl S. Buck died on March 6, 1973 in Danby, Vermont and was interred in Green Hills Farm, Perkasie, Pennsylvania.

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Eric Carle

* Born: 25 June 1929

* Birthplace: Syracuse, New York

* Best Known As: Author of The Very Hungry Caterpillar

Eric Carle has written and illustrated dozens of books for young children, the most famous being 1969's The Very Hungry Caterpillar. Born in New York but raised in Germany, Carle returned to the United States in 1952 and began working in graphics arts, first for the New York Times and then at a New York advertising agency. The first book he illustrated, written by Bill Martin, Jr., was Brown Bear, Brown Bear, What Do You See? (1967). Carle then wrote and illustrated 1, 2, 3 To The Zoo (1968), and has been publishing children's books ever since. His distinctive collage-illustration has made his books instantly recognizable, and he has won numerous awards throughout his career. Some of Carle's most popular titles are The Mixed-Up Chameleon (1975), The Very Busy Spider (1984), The Very Quiet Cricket (1990) and The Very Lonely Firefly (1995).

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Bobby Farrelly ( 1958 )

* Born: Jun 17, 1958

* Occupation: Director, Writer

* Active: '90s-2000s

* Major Genres: Comedy

* Career Highlights: Dumb and Dumber, There's Something About Mary, Kingpin

* First Major Screen Credit: Dumb and Dumber (1994)

Bobby Farrelly (born June 17, 1958) in Cumberland, Rhode Island is an American film director, screenwriter and producer from Cumberland, Rhode Island. He is a graduate of Rensselaer Polytechnic Institute.

Together with his brother, Peter Farrelly, he has written, directed, and produced several comedy films including There's Something About Mary, Dumb and Dumber, Kingpin, Shallow Hal, Me, Myself and Irene and Stuck on You. They also conceived the Seinfeld episode "The Virgin"

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Yasunari Kawabata (1899–1972)

Japanese novelist. His first major work was The Izu Dancer, (1925). He came to be a leader of the school of Japanese writers that propounded a lyrical and impressionistic style, in opposition to the proletarian literature of the 1920s. Kawabata's melancholy novels often treat, in a delicate, oblique fashion, sexual relationships between men and women. For example, Snow Country (tr. 1956), probably his best-known work in the West, depicts the affair of an aging geisha and an insensitive Tokyo businessman. All Kawabata's works are distinguished by a masterful, and frequently arresting, use of imagery. Among his works in English translation are the novels Thousand Cranes (tr. 1959), The Sound of the Mountain (tr. 1970), and The Lake (tr. 1974), and volumes of short stories, The House of the Sleeping Beauties and Other Stories (tr. 1969) and First Snow on Fuji (tr. 1999). In 1968, Kawabata became the first Japanese author to receive the Nobel Prize in Literature. Four years later, in declining health and probably depressed by the suicide of his friend Yukio Mishima, he committed suicide.

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Mohandas Gandhi ( 1869 - 1948 )

Born: 2 October 1869

Birthplace: Porbandar, India

Died: 30 January 1948 (assassination)

Best Known As: Non-violent leader of Indian independence - Also Known as Mohandas Karamchand Gandhi


Revered in India as the "Father of the Nation," Mohandas K. Gandhi is also a worldwide icon of non-violent political resistance. Gandhi was born in India and studied law in England, then spent 20 years defending the rights of immigrants in South Africa. He returned to India in 1914, eventually becoming the leader of the Indian National Congress. At the time, India was part of the British Empire, and Gandhi urged non-violence and civil disobedience as a means to independence.

In India, he is officially accorded the honour of Father of the Nation and October 2nd, his birthday, is commemorated each year as Gandhi Jayanti, a national holiday

His public acts of defiance landed him in jail many times as the struggle continued through World War II. In 1947 he participated in the postwar negotiations with Britain that led to Indian independence. He was shot to death by a Hindu fanatic the next year. An advocate of simple living, Gandhi ate a vegetarian diet and made his own clothes; the spinning wheel became a symbol of his uncluttered lifestyle. His autobiography, The Story of My Experiments With Truth, was published in 1927.

Gandhi is often called Mahatma -- the Hindu term for "great soul"... His middle name was Karamchand... Gandhi wed Kasturba Makhanji in 1883, in an arranged marriage; he was 13 at the time. They had five children and remained married for nearly 61 years, until her death in 1944... Among his many famous quotes is the saying, "An eye for an eye will make the whole world blind"... Gandhi was played by Ben Kingsley in the 1982 film Gandhi. The film won eight Academy Awards, including best film and best actor for Kingsley.

Famous Quotes: By Mahatma Gandhi

"The only tyrant I accept in this world is the still voice within."

"When I despair, I remember that all through history the way of truth and love has always won. There have been tyrants and murderers and for a time they seem invincible but in the end, they always fall -- think of it, ALWAYS."

"Must I do all the evil I can before I learn to shun it? Is it not enough to know the evil to shun it? If not, we should be sincere enough to admit that we love evil too well to give it up."

"Faith must be enforced by reason. When faith becomes blind it dies."

"Non-violence is the article of faith."

"Faith is not something to grasp, it is a state to grow into."


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Samuel Johnson (1709-1784)

Born: 18 September 1709

Birthplace: Lichfield, England

Died: 13 December 1784

Best Known As: Author of 1755's A Dictionary of the English Language

A towering figure of 18th century English literature, Samuel Johnson (also known as Dr. Johnson) gained fame from his conversation and wit as much as from his writings. The son of a bookseller, Johnson moved to London in the 1730s and tried to make a living as a writer. He had modest success writing poems, political essays and plays during the 1740s, but after his publication of A Dictionary of the English Language (1755) he was a national sensation. His social life for many years revolved around Henry and Hester Thrale, who hosted parties where Johnson and others -- including James Boswell -- could engage in intellectual discussions. Boswell's Life of Samuel Johnson (1791) ensured Johnson's place in history. Other works by Johnson include his essays for The Rambler (1750-52) and The Idler (1758-60), an eight-volume edition of the works of William Shakespeare (1765), and The Lives of the Poets (1779-81)
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Sir Arthur Conan Doyle (1859 - 1930)

Born: 22 May 1859
Birthplace: Edinburgh, Scotland
Died: 7 July 1930 (heart attack)
Best Known As: The creator of Sherlock Holmes

Doyle, Sir Arthur Conan (1859-1930), British physician, novelist, and detective-story writer, creator of the unforgettable master sleuth Sherlock Holmes.

Conan Doyle was born on May 22, 1859, in Edinburgh and educated at Stonyhurst College and the University of Edinburgh. From 1882 to 1890 he practiced medicine in Southsea, England. A Study in Scarlet, the first of 60 stories featuring Sherlock Holmes, appeared in 1887. The characterization of Holmes, his ability of ingenious deductive reasoning, was based on one of the author's own university professors. Equally brilliant creations are those of Holmes's foils: his friend Dr. Watson, the good-natured if bumbling narrator of the stories, and the master criminal Professor Moriarty. Conan Doyle was so immediately successful in his literary career that approximately five years later he abandoned his medical practice to devote his entire time to writing.

Some of the best known of the Holmes stories are The Sign of the Four (1890), The Adventures of Sherlock Holmes (1892), The Hound of the Baskervilles (1902), and His Last Bow (1917). They made Conan Doyle internationally famous and served to popularize the detective-story genre (Detective Story; Mystery Story). A Holmes cult arose and still flourishes, notably through clubs of devotees such as the Baker Street Irregulars. Conan Doyle's literary versatility brought him almost equal fame for his historical romances such as Micah Clarke (1888), The White Company (1890), Rodney Stone (1896), and Sir Nigel (1906), and for his play A Story of Waterloo (1894).

Conan Doyle served in the Boer War as a physician, and on his return to England wrote The Great Boer War (1900) and The War in South Africa: Its Causes and Conduct (1902), justifying England's participation. For these works he was knighted in 1902. During World War I he wrote History of the British Campaign in France and Flanders (6 volumes, 1916-20) as a tribute to British bravery. An advocate of spiritualism since the late 1880s, his lectures and writings on the subject increased markedly after the death of his eldest son in the war. His autobiography, Memories and Adventures, was published in 1924. Conan Doyle died in Crowborough, Sussex, England, on July 7, 1930.


Sir Arthur Conan Doyle Books

The Mystery of Sasassa Valley 1879
J. Habakuk Jephson's Statement 1883
The Mystery of Cloomber 1889
The Captain of the Polestar 1890
The Firm of Girdlestone 1890
The Doings of Raffles Haw 1891
Beyond The City 1892
Round the Red Lamp 1894
The Parasite 1894
The Stark Munro Letters 1895
Rodney Stone 1896
A Duet 1899
The Great Boer War 1900
The Adventures of Gerard 1903
Through the Magic Door 1907
The New Revelation 1918
The Vital Message 1919
Tales of Terror and Mystery 1923
A Visit to Three Fronts 1916
The Exploits of Brigadier Gerard 1896
The Green Flag 1900
The Last Galley 1911
The Tragedy of The Korosko 1898
The History of Spiritualism Vol I 1926
The History of Spiritualism Vol II 1926

Poems

Songs of Action 1898
Songs of the Road 1911
The Guards Came Through 1919
The Poems of Arthur Conan Doyle. Collected edition 1922
Historical Novels

Micah Clarke 1889
The White Company 1891
The Great Shadow and Other Napoleonic Tales 1892
The Refugees 1893
Uncle Bernac 1896
Sir Nigel 1906

Professor Challenger Books

The Lost World 1912
The Poison Belt 1913
The Land of Mist 1926
The Disintegration Machine 1927
When the World Screamed 1928

Sherlock Holmes Detective Stories - Click Here to Read

Samuel Taylor Coleridge, (1772-1834)

Born: 21 October 1772

Birthplace: Devonshire, England

Died: 25 July 1834 (heart attack)

Best Known As: The author of The Rime of the Ancient Mariner

English poet, critic, and philosopher. Coleridge studied at the University of Cambridge, where he became closely associated with Robert Southey. In his poetry he perfected a sensuous lyricism that was echoed by many later poets. Lyrical Ballads (1798; with William Wordsworth), containing the famous "Rime of the Ancient Mariner" and "Frost at Midnight," heralded the beginning of English Romanticism. Other poems in the "fantastical" style of the "Mariner" include the unfinished "Christabel" and the celebrated "Pleasure Dome of Kubla Khan." While in a bad marriage and addicted to opium, he produced "Dejection: An Ode" (1802), in which he laments the loss of his power to produce poetry. Later, partly restored by his revived Anglican faith, he wrote Biographia Literaria, 2 vol. (1817), the most significant work of general literary criticism of the Romantic period. Imaginative and complex, with a unique intellect, Coleridge led a restless life full of turmoil and unfulfilled possibilities.

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Agatha Christie, (1891-1976)

Born: 15 September 1890

Birthplace: Torquay, Devon, England

Died: 12 January 1976 (Natural causes)

Best Known As: Author of Murder on the Orient Express

Name at birth: Agatha May Clarissa Miller

Agatha Christie was born in 1890 in Torquay in England. Her father was called Frederick Miller so she was born as Agatha Mary Clarissa Miller. She was educated at home and studied singing and piano in Paris. In 1914 she married Archibald Christie, but then World War I had broken out. Agatha worked as a nurse in a Red Cross hospital in Torquay at that time and that experience was useful later on.

Her first book was published in 1920, The Mysterious Affair at Styles. There, readers met Hercules Poirot, the eccentric Belgian detective with the funny-looking moustache. But Agatha's books first attracted attention in 1926 when she published The Murder of Roger Ackroyd.

Agatha made news herself when she disappeared for a few days after her husband wanted a divorce. She was soon found to be staying in a hotel under an alias. Her disappearance is still a mystery! She and Archibald divorced in 1928 (he died in 1962). When she was around 40 years old she went on a holiday and visited e.g. Iraq where she met young archaeologist Max Mallowan, who was 14 years younger. They married in 1930 and Agatha Christie became Agatha Christie Mallowan. During World War II Agatha worked in the dispensary of University College Hospital in London. She often assisted her husband on excavations, e.g. in Iraq and Syria.

Agatha Christie wrote nearly seventy novels in her career and more than a hundred short stories. Her most famous characters are Hercules Poirot and Miss Marple, and the latter one was her personal favourite. She also wrote a few books about Tommy and Tuppence Beresford, and in some books there was no particular main character, e.g. in Ten Little Niggers. Agatha Christie also wrote six romantic novels under the name Mary Westmacott. Agatha's plays have also made her famous and her best known play, The Mousetrap, is most likely the best known mystery play in the world.

Agatha was the president of the Detection Club. She became Dame Agatha in 1971.

Agatha Christie died 12 January 1976, and two years later Max Mallowan died.

She is best known for her detective stories, largely centred around two detectives; the elderly Miss Marples and the pompous Poirot. Apart from her plots, today it is the period detail of her books that fascinates; the English village, the spa hotel, the country house and the cruise-ship. She chronicles a vanished pre- WW2 upper middle class Britain which enhances the staginess of her characters and plots.

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Winston Churchill (1874 - 1965)

Born: 30 November 1874

Birthplace: Blenheim Palace, Oxfordshire, England

Died: 24 January 1965

Best Known As: Indefatigable prime minister of Britain during World War II

Soldier, politician and finally prime minister, Winston Churchill was one of Britain's greatest 20th-century heroes. He is particularly remembered for his indomitable spirit while leading Great Britain to victory in World War II. Churchill fought with the British Army in India and Sudan, and as a journalist was captured in South Africa (where his dispatches from the Boer War first brought him to public prominence). He became a member of Parliament in 1900 and remained an MP for over 64 years. His early topsy-turvy political career earned him many enemies, but his stirring speeches, bulldog tenacity and refusal to make peace with Adolf Hitler made him the popular choice to lead England through World War II. When Britain and its allies prevailed in 1945, Churchill's place in history was assured. (Ironically, he lost the prime ministership two months after Germany's surrender, when the opposition Labor Party took majority control of Parliament.) One of the 20th century's most quotable wits, Churchill wrote a plethora of histories, biographies and memoirs, including the landmark four-volume A History of the English-speaking Peoples (1956-58). In 1953 he was awarded the Nobel Prize in Literature; he was knighted the same year.

Churchill served as prime minister from 1940-45 and again from 1951-55... His wartime contemporaries included presidents Franklin Roosevelt and Harry Truman, French resistance leader Charles de Gaulle and Soviet leader Joseph Stalin... More recent British PMs have included Margaret Thatcher and Tony Blair... The famous portrait of a scowling Churchill was taken by Canadian photographer Yousuf Karsh.

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William Wordsworth (1770 - 1850)

Born: 7 April 1770

Birthplace: Cockermouth, England

Died: 23 April 1850

Best Known As: The author of the poem "Tintern Abbey"

One of the great English poets, he was a leader of the romantic movement in England.In 1791 he graduated from Cambridge and traveled abroad. While in France he fell in love with Annette Vallon, who bore him a daughter, Caroline, in 1792. Although he did not marry her, it seems to have been circumstance rather than lack of affection that separated them. Throughout his life he supported Annette and Caroline as best he could, finally settling a sum of money on them in 1835.

The spirit of the French Revolution had strongly influenced Wordsworth, and he returned (1792) to England imbued with the principles of Rousseau and republicanism. In 1793 were published An Evening Walk and Descriptive Sketches, written in the stylized idiom and vocabulary of the 18th cent. The outbreak of the Reign of Terror prevented Wordsworth's return to France, and after receiving several small legacies, he settled with his sister Dorothy in Dorsetshire. Wordsworth was extraordinarily close to his sister. Throughout his life she was his constant and devoted companion, sharing his poetic vision and helping him with his work.

In Dorsetshire Wordsworth became the intimate friend of Samuel Taylor Coleridge and, probably under his influence, a student of David Hartley's empiricist philosophy. Together the two poets wrote Lyrical Ballads (1798), in which they sought to use the language of ordinary people in poetry; it included Wordsworth's poem “Tintern Abbey.” The work introduced romanticism into England and became a manifesto for romantic poets. In 1799 he and his sister moved to the Lake District of England, where they lived the remainder of their lives. A second edition of the Lyrical Ballads (1800), which included a critical essay outlining Wordsworth's poetic principles, in particular his ideas about poetic diction and meter, was unmercifully attacked by critics.

In 1802 Wordsworth married Mary Hutchinson, an old school friend; the union was evidently a happy one, and the couple had four children. The Prelude, his long autobiographical poem, was completed in 1805, though it was not published until after his death. His next collection, Poems in Two Volumes (1807), included the well-known “Ode to Duty,” the “Ode: Intimations of Immortality,” and a number of famous sonnets.

Thereafter, Wordsworth's creative powers diminished. Nonetheless, some notable poems were produced after this date, including The Excursion (1814), “Laodamia” (1815), “White Doe of Rylstone” (1815), Memorials of a Tour of the Continent, 1820 (1822), and “Yarrow Revisited” (1835). In 1842 Wordsworth was given a civil list pension, and the following year, having long since put aside radical sympathies, he was named poet laureate.

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Ann Radcliffe (1764 - 1823)

Born July 9, 1764, London, Eng. — died Feb. 7, 1823, London) English gothic novelist. Brought up in a well-to-do family, in 1787 she married a journalist who encouraged her literary pursuits. Her first two novels were published anonymously. She achieved fame with her third novel, The Romance of the Forest (1791). With her fourth, The Mysteries of Udolpho (1794), she became the most popular novelist in England. The Italian (1797), which displays rare psychological insight, reveals her full powers. In her tales, scenes of terror and suspense are infused with an aura of romantic sensibility

Publications include

* The Castles of Athlin and Dunbayne (1 volume), 1789, gothic novel.
* A Sicilian Romance (2 vols.) 1790, gothic novel.
* The Romance of the Forest (3 vols.) 1791, gothic novel.
* The Mysteries of Udolpho (4 vols.) 1794.
* The Italian (3 vols.) 1797
* Gaston de Blondeville (4 vols.) 1826, reprinted in 2006 by Valancourt Books

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T. S. Eliot (1888 - 1965)

Born: 26 September 1888

Birthplace: St. Louis, Missouri

Died: 4 January 1965

Best Known As: Author of The Waste Land

Name at birth: Thomas Stearns Eliot

Eliot's "The Waste Land" is the most famous English poem of the 20th century, a landmark meditation on human unease with the modern world. Born in America, Eliot moved to England in 1914, working as a bank clerk while writing his first collection of poetry, Prufrock and Other Observations (1917, featuring "The Love Song of J. Alfred Prufrock"). He followed that success with The Waste Land (1922), Ash Wednesday (1930) and Four Quartets (1943), among other collections and essays. A highly regarded critic, Eliot was the founder (1922) and longtime editor of the literary magazine Criterion. His plays include Murder in the Cathedral (1935) and The Cocktail Party (1949). Eliot became a British subject and member of the Church of England in 1927. His whimsical volume of children's verse, Old Possum's Book of Practical Cats (1939), was adapted into the long-running hit musical Cats.

He won the Nobel Prize for literature in 1948... Eliot was close friends with poet Ezra Pound... Eliot was married twice, to Vivienne Haigh-Wood (1915) and to his former secretary Valerie Fletcher (1957)... He studied at prestigious universities in three countries: Harvard in the U.S., the Sorbonne in France, and Oxford in England... Eliot is unrelated to the author George Eliot... "The Waste Land" begins with the famous line "April is the cruellest month"... His poem "The Hollow Men" ends with the lines "This is the way the world ends / Not with a bang but a whimper."

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Lewis Carroll (1832-1898)

Born: 27 January 1832

Birthplace: Daresbury, Cheshire, England

Died: 14 January 1898 (Influenza)

Best Known As: Author of Alice's Adventures in Wonderland

Name at birth: Charles Lutwidge Dodgson

pseud. of Charles Lutwidge Dodgson, 1832–98, English writer, mathematician, and amateur photographer, b. near Daresbury, Cheshire (now in Halton). Educated at Christ Church College, Oxford, he was nominated to a studentship (life fellowship) in 1852, and he remained at Oxford for the rest of his life. Although his fellowship was clerical, Carroll never proceeded higher than his ordination as a deacon in 1861. Shy and afflicted with a stammer, he felt himself unsuited to the demanding life of a minister. He did, however, lecture in mathematics at Christ Church from 1855 until 1881. Among his mathematical works, now almost forgotten, is Euclid and His Modern Rivals (1879).

Carroll is chiefly remembered as the author of the famous children's books Alice's Adventures in Wonderland (1865) and its sequel, Through the Looking Glass (1872), both published under his pseudonym and both illustrated by Sir John Tenniel. He developed these stories from tales he told to the children of H. G. Liddell, the dean of Christ Church College, one of whom was named Alice. Many of his characters—the Mad Hatter, the March Hare, the White Rabbit, the Red Queen, and the White Queen—have become familiar figures in literature and conversation. Although numerous satiric and symbolic meanings have been read into Alice's adventures, the works can be read and valued as simple exercises in fantasy. Carroll himself said that in the books he meant only nonsense. He also wrote humorous verses, the most popular of them being The Hunting of the Snark (1876). His later stories for children, Sylvie and Bruno (1889) and Sylvie and Bruno Concluded (1893), though containing interesting experiments in construction, are widely regarded as failures.

Carroll remained a bachelor all his life. Partly because of his stammer he found association with adults difficult and was most at ease in the company of children, especially little girls, with whom he was clearly obsessed. Early in 1856 he took up photography as a hobby; his photographs of children are still considered remarkable.
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Anthony Malcolm Buckeridge (1912 - 2004)

Anthony Malcolm Buckeridge OBE (June 20, 1912 - June 28, 2004) was an English author, best known for his Jennings and Rex Milligan series of children's books, although he also wrote the 1953 children's book A Funny Thing Happened which was serialised more than once on Children's Hour.

Buckeridge was born in London but following the death of his banker father in the First World War he moved with his mother to Ross-on-Wye to live with his grandparents. Following the end of the war they returned to London where the young Buckeridge developed a taste for theatre and writing. A scholarship from the Bank Clerks' Orphanage fund permitted his mother to send him to Seaford College boarding school in Sussex. His experiences as a schoolboy there were instrumental in his later work.

Following the death of Buckeridge's grandfather, the family moved to Welwyn Garden City where his mother worked in promoting the new suburban utopia to Londoners. In 1930 Buckeridge began work at his late father's bank but soon tired of it. Instead he took to acting including an uncredited part in Anthony Asquith's 1931 film Tell England.

After marrying his first wife, Sylvia Brown, he enrolled at University College London where he involved himself in Socialist and anti-war groups (he later became an active member of CND) but did not take a degree after failing Latin. With a young family to support, Buckeridge found himself teaching in Suffolk and Northamptonshire which provided further experiences to inform his later work. During the Second World War, Buckeridge was called up as a fireman and wrote several plays for the stage before returning to teaching in Ramsgate.

He used to tell his pupils stories about the fictional Jennings (based however on an old schoolfellow Diarmid Jennings), a prep schoolboy boarding at Linbury Court Preparatory School, headmaster Mr Pemberton-Oakes.

After World War II, Buckeridge wrote a series of radio plays for the BBC's Children's Hour chronicling the exploits of Jennings and his rather more staid friend, Darbishire; the first, Jennings Learns the Ropes, was first broadcast on October 16,1948. In 1950, the first of more than twenty novels, Jennings goes to School, appeared. The tales make liberal use of Buckeridge's inventive schoolboy slang ("fossilised fish hooks!", "crystallised cheesecakes!", and others). These books, as well known as Frank Richards' Billy Bunter books in their day, were translated into a number of other languages. The stories of middle class English schoolboys were especially popular in Norway where several were filmed. However the Norwegian books and films were rewritten completely for a Norwegian setting with Norwegian names so "Jennings" is an unknown name in Norway. Most Norwegians are, however, familiar with "Stompa", as Jennings is called in the Norwegian books, and often assume that the books were originally written in Norwegian.

In 1962 he met his second wife, Eileen Selby, whom he felt was the true love of his life. They settled near Lewes where Buckeridge continued to write and also appeared in small (non-singing) roles at Glyndebourne.

Buckeridge made no small contribution to postwar British humour, a fact acknowledged by such comedians as Stephen Fry. The deftly worded farce and delightful understatement of his narratives has been compared to the work of P. G. Wodehouse, Ben Hecht and Ben Travers.

Buckeridge wrote an autobiography, While I Remember (ISBN 0-9521482-1-8). He was awarded the OBE in 2003.

Buckeridge died on June 28, 2004 after a spell of ill health. He is survived by his second wife Eileen and three children, two from his first marriage.


Works By Anthony Malcolm Buckeridge

* Jennings Goes to School (1950)
* Jennings Follows a Clue (1951)
* Jennings' Little Hut (1951)
* Jennings and Darbishire (1952)
* Jennings' Diary (1953)
* According to Jennings (1954)
* Our Friend Jennings (1955)
* Thanks to Jennings (1957)
* Take Jennings, for Instance (1958)
* Jennings, as Usual (1959)
* The Trouble With Jennings (1960)
* Just Like Jennings (1961)
* Leave it to Jennings (1963)
* Jennings, Of Course! (1964)
* Especially Jennings! (1965)
* Jennings Abounding (1967) (this was later reissued as Jennings Unlimited to avoid confusion with Samuels French's stage play of the same name)
* Jennings in Particular (1968)
* Trust Jennings! (1969)
* The Jennings Report (1970)
* Typically Jennings! (1971)
* Speaking of Jennings! (1973)
* Jennings at Large (1977)
* Jennings Again! (1991)
* That's Jennings (1994)

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Douglas Adams (1952-2001)

Born: 11 March 1952

Birthplace: Cambridge, England

Died: 11 May 2001 (heart attack)

Best Known As: Author of The Hitchhiker's Guide to the Galaxy

Career Highlights: The Hitchhiker's Guide to the Galaxy, Monty Python's Flying Circus: Party Political Broadcast, The Hitchhiker's Guide to the Galaxy

First Major Screen Credit: Monty Python's Flying Circus: Party Political Broadcast (1974)

Douglas Adams was the creator of the The Hitchhiker's Guide to the Galaxy, a whimsical science fiction novel published in 1979. The Hitchhiker's Guide was originally a BBC radio program first broadcast in 1978; later the book and its sequels became cult favorites with college students and sci-fi fans around the world. The book's popular characters included Arthur Dent, Ford Prefect and Zaphod Beeblebrox; sequels included Restaurant at the End of the Universe (1980) and So Long, and Thanks For All the Fish (1984). Adams also wrote Dirk Gently's Holistic Detective Agency (1987). Adams died in 2001 after suffering a heart attack at a gym in Santa Monica, California.

Because Adams's middle name was Noel, he is often referred to as "DNA" by fans.

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