Curated category
20th-century English novelists
- George OrwellGeorge Orwell did not exist on any birth certificate. The man behind the name was Eric Arthur Blair, born on the 25th of June 1903 in Motihari, in the Bengal…
- J. R. R. TolkienOn the evening of his 21st birthday, John Ronald Reuel Tolkien sat down and wrote a letter to a young woman named Edith Mary Bratt.
- Henry JamesHenry James was born on the 15th of April 1843 at 21 Washington Place in Manhattan, into a family that would produce two other towering figures in American…
- Agatha ChristieAgatha Christie holds a record no living novelist can claim: more than two billion copies of her books sold, making her the best-selling fiction writer of…
- Rudyard KiplingRudyard Kipling was born on the 30th of December 1865 in Bombay, and by the time he died in 1936, he had become something no single label can hold.
- Virginia WoolfVirginia Woolf walked into the River Ouse on the 28th of March 1941, her pockets weighted with stones. She had just finished her last novel, Between the…
- H. G. WellsIn 1898, Joseph Conrad hailed a fellow writer with the phrase "O Realist of the Fantastic!" The man he addressed was Herbert George Wells, born in Bromley…
- Raymond ChandlerRaymond Thornton Chandler was born in Chicago in 1888 and died in 1959, having spent much of the intervening years doing almost everything except what he…
- Joseph ConradJoseph Conrad did not speak English fluently until his twenties, and even then he spoke it with a strong foreign accent for the rest of his life.
- Neil GaimanNeil Richard MacKinnon Gaiman was born on the 10th of November 1960 in Portchester, Hampshire, into a family whose name had been changed from Chaiman to…
- A. A. MilneA. A. Milne taught himself to read at the age of two. That detail feels right for a man who would spend his life in thrall to words, though the books that…
- Graeme Davis (game designer)Graeme Davis began his professional life in banking before switching paths to study archaeology at the University of Durham.
- Arthur C. ClarkeIn February 1945, a young radar officer named Arthur C. Clarke sent a letter to the editor of Wireless World. He suggested that stations placed in…
- Aldous HuxleyAldous Huxley died at 5:20 pm Pacific Standard Time on the 22nd of November 1963 - and almost nobody noticed. His death was overshadowed by the assassination…
- Antony BeevorAntony Beevor was born in Kensington, London, on the 14th of December 1946, into a family with writing in its blood going back generations.
- Sheila Kaye-SmithSheila Kaye-Smith was born on the 4th of February 1887 in St Leonards-on-Sea, near Hastings, in Sussex. She spent most of her life in that county, writing…
- Julie AndrewsJulie Andrews stood on a beer crate to reach the microphone. She was not yet ten years old, performing spontaneously in wartime variety shows alongside her…
- Clive BarkerClive Barker was three years old when he saw a man fall out of the sky. At an air show in Liverpool, the French skydiver Leo Valentin plummeted to the ground…
- Cavan ScottCavan Scott was born on the 18th of April 1973. He began his career writing about rural life rather than space operas or time travel.
- Hilary MantelHilary Mantel stood at the podium at the Guildhall in London in 2009 and told the audience she was "happily flying through the air." She had just won the…
- H. F. M. PrescottHilda Frances Margaret Prescott entered the world on the 22nd of February 1896 in Cheshire. Her father was Rev James Mulleneux Prescott and her mother was…
- Michael MoorcockMichael Moorcock was born on the 18th of December 1939 in Mitcham, Surrey, and before he ever entered primary school he had already read Edgar Rice…
- Diana Wynne JonesDiana Wynne Jones was born on the 16th of August 1934 in London. Her fifth birthday arrived just as World War II began. Shortly after that celebration, she…
- Philippa GregoryPhilippa Gregory was born on the 9th of January 1954 in Nairobi, then the capital city of the Colony and Protectorate of Kenya.
- Richard AldingtonRichard Aldington was born Edward Godfree Aldington in Portsmouth on the 8th of July 1892, into a household where books lined every wall and both parents…
- Colin WilsonColin Henry Wilson spent a winter sleeping rough on Hampstead Heath in a sleeping bag, working by day at the British Museum's Reading Room on a novel he had…
- Penelope GilliattPenelope Gilliatt was born on the 25th of March 1932 in London. Her parents were Cyril Conner and Marie Stephanie Douglass, both hailing from Newcastle upon…
- Alison WeirAlison Weir was fourteen years old when a paperback novel about Catherine of Aragon changed the course of her life. She describes the book, Lozania Prole's…