Curated playlist
20th-century English novelists
- George OrwellGeorge Orwell was a pen name, chosen from a shortlist in 1932. He was born Eric Arthur Blair in British India.
- J. R. R. TolkienOn his 21st birthday, Tolkien proposed by letter to a woman who was already engaged.
- Henry JamesNovelist Henry James was hissed at when he took a bow on his play's opening night in 1895.
- Agatha ChristieAgatha Christie vanished for 11 days in 1926, and a nationwide manhunt followed. She was found at a Harrogate hotel.
- Rudyard KiplingRudyard Kipling turned down both a knighthood and the Poet Laureateship. He won the 1907 Nobel Prize in Literature.
- Virginia WoolfVirginia Woolf's father let her read whatever she liked in his vast library.
- H. G. WellsH. G. Wells described atomic bombs in a 1914 novel. Physicist León Szilárd later said reading it stayed with him.
- Raymond ChandlerRaymond Chandler sold his first story for $180 after losing his oil job at forty-four.
- Joseph ConradJoseph Conrad spoke English with a strong foreign accent all his life. He still became a great English-language writer.
- Neil GaimanNeil Gaiman is the first author to win both the Carnegie Medal and the Newbery Medal for the same book.
- A. A. MilneA. A. Milne accused his old cricket teammate P. G. Wodehouse of near treason.
- Graeme Davis (game designer)Graeme Davis studied archaeology, then became a game designer. He co-designed Warhammer Fantasy Roleplay in 1986.
- Arthur C. ClarkeArthur C. Clarke never patented his satellite idea. He called a patent "a licence to be sued."
- Aldous HuxleyAldous Huxley died the same day as John F. Kennedy, and almost nobody noticed. C. S. Lewis died that afternoon too.
- Antony BeevorAntony Beevor swapped a troop of tanks for a typewriter. The army officer became a historian of war.
- Sheila Kaye-SmithSheila Kaye-Smith slipped a joke about Cold Comfort Farm into her own 1939 novel.
- Julie AndrewsJulie Andrews sang on a beer crate as a child. She needed it to reach the microphone in wartime variety shows.
- Clive BarkerUnhappy with how others filmed his screenplays, Clive Barker directed Hellraiser himself. It opened in 1987.
- Cavan ScottCavan Scott wrote Skylanders novels under the pen name Onk Beakman. The first was The Machine of Doom in 2012.
- Hilary MantelHilary Mantel became the first woman to win the Booker Prize twice. Her winners were Wolf Hall and its sequel.
- H. F. M. PrescottH. F. M. Prescott wrote a novel about a Tudor uprising that has never gone out of print.
- Michael MoorcockMichael Moorcock created Elric as a reversal of the comfort fantasy that followed Tolkien.
- Diana Wynne JonesDiana Wynne Jones began writing mostly to keep her sanity. Her first book was a farce for adults, not a fantasy.
- MorrisseySteven Patrick Morrissey, known to the world as Morrissey, once led a tour of Manchester for the Oxford Road Show in 1985. Late in that tour he reached the secondary school he had attended. He described it in harsh terms and closed with a…
- Philippa GregoryNovelist Philippa Gregory's charity has dug close to 200 wells in The Gambia.
- Richard AldingtonRichard Aldington replaced banned words in his war novel with asterisks so readers could see the censoring.
- Colin WilsonColin Wilson finished his book The Outsider while sleeping rough on Hampstead Heath.
- Penelope GilliattPenelope Gilliatt was born Penelope Ann Douglass Conner on the 25th of March 1932, and she died on the 9th of May 1993. The English writer worked as a novelist, a short story writer, a screenwriter and a film critic. She held all four…
- Alison WeirPublishers rejected Alison Weir's Henry VIII book for being too long, then her next for being too short.