Curated playlist
English children's writers
- J. R. R. TolkienOn his 21st birthday, Tolkien proposed by letter to a woman who was already engaged.
- Rudyard KiplingRudyard Kipling turned down both a knighthood and the Poet Laureateship. He won the 1907 Nobel Prize in Literature.
- Mary ShelleyMary Shelley conceived Frankenstein in a waking dream after Lord Byron proposed a ghost story contest.
- Lewis CarrollOn a rowing trip in July 1862, Lewis Carroll invented a story for three sisters.
- 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.
- Daniel DefoeDaniel Defoe stood in a pillory in 1703 for a pamphlet. Years later he wrote Robinson Crusoe.
- Julie AndrewsJulie Andrews sang on a beer crate as a child. She needed it to reach the microphone in wartime variety shows.
- Stephen HawkingDoctors gave Stephen Hawking two years to live at age 21, but he died at 76.
- Cavan ScottCavan Scott wrote Skylanders novels under the pen name Onk Beakman. The first was The Machine of Doom in 2012.
- John RuskinA jury awarded painter Whistler one farthing in his libel suit against critic John Ruskin.
- Diana Wynne JonesDiana Wynne Jones began writing mostly to keep her sanity. Her first book was a farce for adults, not a fantasy.
- Kevin Crossley-HollandKevin Crossley-Holland failed his first Oxford exams, then found his lifelong passion. It was Anglo-Saxon literature.