Curated playlist
19th-century English novelists
- Charles DickensAt twelve, Charles Dickens pasted labels on boot blacking pots in a rat-infested warehouse.
- Percy Bysshe ShelleyPoet Percy Bysshe Shelley's body was identified partly by a copy of Keats's Lamia in his jacket.
- Mary ShelleyMary Shelley conceived Frankenstein in a waking dream after Lord Byron proposed a ghost story contest.
- Rudyard KiplingRudyard Kipling turned down both a knighthood and the Poet Laureateship. He won the 1907 Nobel Prize in Literature.
- Jane AustenJane Austen died in 1817 without her name on any of her novels. Her first book said only "By a Lady."
- Lewis CarrollOn a rowing trip in July 1862, Lewis Carroll invented a story for three sisters.
- Thomas HardyThomas Hardy's heart and ashes were buried in two different places. The Abbey got his ashes, Stinsford his heart.
- Benjamin DisraeliBenjamin Disraeli bought a controlling stake in the Suez Canal within days in 1875.
- George EliotGeorge Eliot was a woman who lived openly with a married man. Mary Ann Evans shared a home with him from 1854 to 1878.
- John Russell, 1st Earl RussellLord John Russell was barely five feet five, and cartoonists mocked him for it. He still reshaped British democracy.
- Samuel Butler (novelist)In 1863, a newspaper called The Press printed a letter signed only with the pen name Cellarius. The author was Samuel Butler, an English novelist and critic, and the letter was titled "Darwin among the Machines". It appeared four years…
- John Henry NewmanJohn Henry Newman was an English theologian who became a cardinal and, in 2019, a saint. On the 2nd of October 2008, his grave was opened so that his remains could be moved to a tomb inside the Birmingham Oratory. There, visitors could…
- Harriet MartineauAfter her family's textile business failed in 1829, Harriet Martineau wrote to earn a living.