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Curated category

English male essayists

  • Charles DickensCharles Dickens earned six shillings a week pasting labels onto pots of boot blacking in a tumble-down warehouse overrun with rats.
  • George OrwellEric Arthur Blair arrived in the world on the 25th of June 1903 within a house in Motihari, Bengal Presidency. His family belonged to what he called the…
  • Percy Bysshe ShelleyOn a summer day in 1804, Percy Bysshe Shelley stood before the wooden paling fence at Eton College. He held a bag of gunpowder he had stolen from the school…
  • Alexander PopeAlexander Pope was born on the 21st of May 1688 at six forty-five pm in London. His parents were Catholics during a time when England faced revolution.
  • John MiltonJohn Milton was born on the 9th of December 1608 in Bread Street, London. His father, also named John Milton, had moved to London around 1583 after being…
  • Samuel JohnsonOn the 18th of September 1709, a baby named Samuel Johnson did not cry when he was born in Lichfield. His mother Sarah had been forty years old during the…
  • John Stuart MillJohn Stuart Mill was born on the 20th of May 1806 at 13 Rodney Street in Pentonville, London. His father James Mill, a Scottish philosopher and historian…
  • Aldous HuxleyThe year 1894 marked the birth of Aldous Leonard Huxley in Godalming, Surrey. He entered a world already defined by scientific brilliance and literary fame.
  • Daniel DefoeDaniel Defoe was born in Fore Street, London, during the summer or early autumn of 1660. His family name was originally Foe, and he later added the…
  • John DrydenJohn Dryden was born in the village rectory of Aldwincle near Thrapston in Northamptonshire. His father Erasmus Dryden belonged to a landowning gentry family…
  • John RuskinJohn Ruskin was born on the 8th of February 1819 at 54 Hunter Street in Brunswick Square, London. His father John James Ruskin worked as a sherry and wine…
  • Edward GibbonEdward Gibbon was born on the 8th of May 1737 in the town of Putney, Surrey. He entered the world as a sickly infant who described himself later as "a puny…