Curated category
English children's writers
- 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.
- 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.
- Mary ShelleyMary Wollstonecraft Shelley was born on the 30th of August 1797 in Somers Town, London, and she died on the 1st of February 1851 at Chester Square.
- Lewis CarrollCharles Lutwidge Dodgson was born on the 27th of January 1832 at All Saints' Vicarage in Daresbury, Cheshire, the third oldest of 11 children, and the world…
- 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…
- Daniel DefoeDaniel Defoe died on the 24th of April 1731 in Ropemakers Alley, probably hiding from creditors, not far from where he had been born roughly seven decades…
- 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…
- Stephen HawkingStephen Hawking spent his final years communicating at roughly one word per minute, twitching a single cheek muscle to select letters from a screen.
- Cavan ScottCavan Scott was born on the 18th of April 1973, and by any measure his career defies easy categorisation. He has written for Doctor Who and Star Wars.
- John RuskinJohn Ruskin was born on the 8th of February 1819 at 54 Hunter Street, Brunswick Square, London, into a household where a wine importer father read Byron…
- Diana Wynne JonesDiana Wynne Jones was born in London on the 16th of August 1934, and by the time she died on the 26th of March 2011, she had written some of the most…
- Kevin Crossley-HollandKevin Crossley-Holland has translated a passage from Beowulf in which Grendel storms out of the mist toward the mead hall: "Then, under night's shroud…