Curated playlist
English male novelists
- Charles DickensAt twelve, Charles Dickens pasted labels on boot blacking pots in a rat-infested warehouse.
- J. R. R. TolkienOn his 21st birthday, Tolkien proposed by letter to a woman who was already engaged.
- Percy Bysshe ShelleyPoet Percy Bysshe Shelley's body was identified partly by a copy of Keats's Lamia in his jacket.
- Rudyard KiplingRudyard Kipling turned down both a knighthood and the Poet Laureateship. He won the 1907 Nobel Prize in Literature.
- Lewis CarrollOn a rowing trip in July 1862, Lewis Carroll invented a story for three sisters.
- Thomas HardyThomas Hardy's heart and ashes were buried in two different places. The Abbey got his ashes, Stinsford his heart.
- Jonathan SwiftJonathan Swift once announced that a living almanac maker had died. Swift wrote as Isaac Bickerstaff in 1708.
- William MorrisWilliam Morris despised industrial capitalism yet decorated the homes of the rich.
- A. A. MilneA. A. Milne accused his old cricket teammate P. G. Wodehouse of near treason.
- Benjamin DisraeliBenjamin Disraeli bought a controlling stake in the Suez Canal within days in 1875.
- James Wood (critic)Harold Bloom praised critic James Wood in 1999, then said in 2008 that Wood simply does not exist.
- Graeme Davis (game designer)Graeme Davis studied archaeology, then became a game designer. He co-designed Warhammer Fantasy Roleplay in 1986.
- Aldous HuxleyAldous Huxley died the same day as John F. Kennedy, and almost nobody noticed. C. S. Lewis died that afternoon too.
- Daniel DefoeDaniel Defoe stood in a pillory in 1703 for a pamphlet. Years later he wrote Robinson Crusoe.
- Thomas MoreThomas More taught his daughters Greek when almost no one did. He also approved burning heretics.
- Samuel Butler (novelist)In 1863, a newspaper called The Press printed a letter signed only with the pen name Cellarius. The author was Samuel Butler, an English novelist and critic, and the letter was titled "Darwin among the Machines". It appeared four years…
- Cavan ScottCavan Scott wrote Skylanders novels under the pen name Onk Beakman. The first was The Machine of Doom in 2012.
- Philip SidneyPhilip Sidney died at 31 from a thigh wound, leaving a romance that stops mid sword fight.
- John Henry NewmanJohn Henry Newman was an English theologian who became a cardinal and, in 2019, a saint. On the 2nd of October 2008, his grave was opened so that his remains could be moved to a tomb inside the Birmingham Oratory. There, visitors could…
- Michael MoorcockMichael Moorcock created Elric as a reversal of the comfort fantasy that followed Tolkien.
- Philip LarkinPhilip Larkin turned down the job of Poet Laureate in 1984. He felt he had long since stopped being a poet.
- Hugh LaurieHugh Laurie recorded the audition tape for his most famous role in the bathroom of a hotel in Namibia. It was the only room where the light was good enough. He was in Africa to film The Flight of the Phoenix, and a man named Jacob Vargas…
- Kevin Crossley-HollandKevin Crossley-Holland failed his first Oxford exams, then found his lifelong passion. It was Anglo-Saxon literature.
- Richard AldingtonRichard Aldington replaced banned words in his war novel with asterisks so readers could see the censoring.
- Colin WilsonColin Wilson finished his book The Outsider while sleeping rough on Hampstead Heath.
- Thomas NasheThomas Nashe co-wrote a play so scandalous that his partner Ben Jonson went to jail.