Curated category
Mythopoeic writers
- 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.
- C. S. LewisC. S. Lewis collapsed in his bedroom at 5:30 pm on the 22nd of November 1963, and died a few minutes later at age 64. That same afternoon, approximately 55…
- H. P. LovecraftH. P. Lovecraft died on the 15th of March 1937 in Providence, Rhode Island, virtually unknown to the reading public. He was 46 years old, hospitalized with…
- George LucasGeorge Lucas was nearly killed before he ever made a film. On the 12th of June 1962, a few days before his high school graduation in Modesto, California…
- Agatha ChristieAgatha Christie holds a record no living novelist can claim: more than two billion copies of her books sold, making her the best-selling fiction writer of…
- Jules VerneJules Verne has been the second most-translated author in the world since 1979, ranking below Agatha Christie and above William Shakespeare.
- 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.
- Johann Wolfgang von GoetheOn the 13th of October 1806, Napoleon's army poured into Weimar, and the least disciplined of the French soldiers, the so-called spoon guards, broke into the…
- Robert Louis StevensonRobert Louis Stevenson was born at 8 Howard Place in Edinburgh on the 13th of November 1850, into a dynasty of lighthouse engineers, and died at the age of…
- James CameronOn the 26th of March 2012, James Cameron sat alone inside the Deepsea Challenger and dropped to the deepest point on Earth.
- Nikolai GogolNikolai Vasilyevich Gogol once described a planned masterpiece as a Russian answer to Dante's Divine Comedy. He never finished it.
- Victor HugoVictor Hugo died on the 22nd of May 1885, at 50 Avenue Victor Hugo in Paris. He was 83 years old, and he died of pneumonia.
- Alfred, Lord TennysonAlfred Tennyson was born on the 6th of August 1809 in Somersby, a small village in Lincolnshire, and by the time he died on the 6th of October 1892, lines…
- Arthur Conan DoyleArthur Conan Doyle arrived in Portsmouth in June 1882 with less than ten pounds to his name and no patients waiting for him.
- Alexandre DumasAlexandre Dumas once silenced a man who had insulted his ancestry with a single retort. "My father was a mulatto, my grandfather was a Negro, and my…
- John MiltonJohn Milton sold the rights to one of the greatest poems in the English language for five pounds. On the 27th of April 1667, he handed Paradise Lost to the…
- William BlakeWilliam Blake spent one of his last shillings on a pencil so he could keep sketching. He was near death, working feverishly on illustrations for Dante's…
- 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…
- Henry Wadsworth LongfellowHenry Wadsworth Longfellow published his first poem at age 13 in the Portland Gazette on the 17th of November, 1820. It was a patriotic four-stanza piece…
- Edgar Rice BurroughsEdgar Rice Burroughs was born on the 1st of September, 1875, in Chicago, Illinois, the fourth son of Major George Tyler Burroughs, a Civil War veteran and…
- Hideaki AnnoHideaki Anno was born in Ube, Yamaguchi, the son of Fumiko and Takuya Anno, and the world of Japanese animation would eventually pivot on decisions he made…
- 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…
- Clive BarkerClive Barker was three years old when he saw a man fall out of the sky. At an air show in Liverpool, the French skydiver Leo Valentin plummeted to the ground…
- Murasaki ShikibuMurasaki Shikibu is the woman who wrote what many call one of the world's first novels, and almost nothing about her name is certain.
- Michael CrichtonMichael Crichton stood 6 feet 9 inches tall, and he spent much of his life feeling out of place because of it. That restlessness never left him.
- Kentaro MiuraKentaro Miura was ten years old when he created his first manga, a series he called Miuranger, photocopied and handed out to his classmates in a school…
- Robert E. HowardRobert E. Howard died on the morning of the 11th of June 1936 at age thirty, having first asked a nurse whether his mother would ever wake from her coma.
- Elias LönnrotElias Lönnrot was born on the 9th of April 1802 in Sammatti, a small village in the province of Uusimaa, in what was then the Swedish-controlled territory of…