Curated playlist
English male short story writers
- 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.
- 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.
- Neil GaimanNeil Gaiman is the first author to win both the Carnegie Medal and the Newbery Medal for the same book.
- William MorrisWilliam Morris despised industrial capitalism yet decorated the homes of the rich.
- Aldous HuxleyAldous Huxley died the same day as John F. Kennedy, and almost nobody noticed. C. S. Lewis died that afternoon too.
- Clive BarkerUnhappy with how others filmed his screenplays, Clive Barker directed Hellraiser himself. It opened in 1987.
- Cavan ScottCavan Scott wrote Skylanders novels under the pen name Onk Beakman. The first was The Machine of Doom in 2012.