Curated playlist
Victorian novelists
- Charles DickensAt twelve, Charles Dickens pasted labels on boot blacking pots in a rat-infested warehouse.
- Oscar WildeOscar Wilde was convicted at the height of his fame, with two plays running in London's West End.
- Henry JamesNovelist Henry James was hissed at when he took a bow on his play's opening night in 1895.
- Rudyard KiplingRudyard Kipling turned down both a knighthood and the Poet Laureateship. He won the 1907 Nobel Prize in Literature.
- H. G. WellsH. G. Wells described atomic bombs in a 1914 novel. Physicist León Szilárd later said reading it stayed with him.
- 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.
- George Bernard ShawBernard Shaw accepted the 1925 Nobel Prize but rejected the money. He said his audiences gave him enough.
- Joseph ConradJoseph Conrad spoke English with a strong foreign accent all his life. He still became a great English-language writer.
- Robert Louis StevensonRobert Louis Stevenson was left out of a 2,000-page Oxford anthology in 1973.
- Arthur Conan DoyleArthur Conan Doyle once bowled out the famous cricketer W. G. Grace and wrote a poem about it.
- William MorrisWilliam Morris despised industrial capitalism yet decorated the homes of the rich.
- Benjamin DisraeliBenjamin Disraeli bought a controlling stake in the Suez Canal within days in 1875.
- George EliotGeorge Eliot was a woman who lived openly with a married man. Mary Ann Evans shared a home with him from 1854 to 1878.
- Brontë familyIn July 1848, two nervous young women from the Brontë family took a train to London. They arrived at the offices of the publisher Smith, Elder & Co. They had no proof of who they were except letters addressed to Messrs. Acton, Currer and…
- 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…
- John BuchanJohn Buchan, the Scottish novelist, ended his life as Lord Tweedsmuir, Governor General of Canada. In Montreal in 1937 he stood with a typed speech that reporters already held. By hand, he added the words "and to Canada's King" to a line…
- Harriet MartineauAfter her family's textile business failed in 1829, Harriet Martineau wrote to earn a living.