Curated category
English male novelists
- Charles DickensCharles Dickens earned six shillings a week pasting labels onto pots of boot blacking in a tumble-down warehouse overrun with rats.
- 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.
- Percy Bysshe ShelleyPercy Bysshe Shelley was drowned in a storm off the Italian coast on the 8th of July 1822, age 29, before most of the world had ever read a word he wrote.
- 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.
- 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…
- Thomas HardyThomas Hardy died at Max Gate on the 11th of January 1928, but not before dictating one final poem to his wife from his deathbed.
- Jonathan SwiftJonathan Swift, dying near 78, asked to be buried under the pillar next to the monument of Primate Narcissus Marsh, a man he had openly disdained in life.
- William MorrisWilliam Morris arrived in the world on the 24th of March 1834, and by the time he died on the 3rd of October 1896, he had left his mark on textiles, poetry…
- 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…
- Benjamin DisraeliBenjamin Disraeli climbed what he called "the top of the greasy pole" to become Prime Minister of the United Kingdom, not once but twice, despite arriving at…
- James Wood (critic)James Douglas Graham Wood was born on the 1st of November 1965 in Durham, England, and by his mid-twenties he had made himself into one of the most…
- Graeme Davis (game designer)Graeme Davis began his professional life in banking before switching paths to study archaeology at the University of Durham.
- 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…
- 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…
- Thomas MoreThomas More climbed the scaffold at Tower Hill on the 6th of July 1535 and, finding the structure so rickety it might collapse, told the waiting official: "I…
- Samuel Butler (novelist)Samuel Butler was born on the 4th of December 1835 at the rectory in Langar, Nottinghamshire. His father Rev Thomas Butler had been a son of Dr Samuel Butler…
- 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.
- Philip SidneyPhilip Sidney died on the 17th of October 1586, at the age of 31, from a wound to the thigh he had received at the Battle of Zutphen.
- 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…
- Philip LarkinPhilip Larkin was offered the post of Poet Laureate in 1984, and he turned it down. The death of Sir John Betjeman had opened the role, the highest poetic…
- 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…
- 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…
- Thomas NasheThomas Nashe was baptised in Lowestoft on the 30th of November 1567, the son of a curate who would eventually be awarded the living at the church of All…