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Curated playlist

Writers of historical fiction set in the early modern period

  • Charles DickensAt twelve, Charles Dickens pasted labels on boot blacking pots in a rat-infested warehouse.
  • Walter ScottWalter Scott owed £130,000 and refused any help. The novelist wrote his way out of ruin instead.
  • Jules VerneJules Verne has been the second most-translated author in the world since 1979. Only Agatha Christie ranks higher.
  • Virginia WoolfVirginia Woolf's father let her read whatever she liked in his vast library.
  • Thomas HardyThomas Hardy's heart and ashes were buried in two different places. The Abbey got his ashes, Stinsford his heart.
  • Robert Louis StevensonRobert Louis Stevenson was left out of a 2,000-page Oxford anthology in 1973.
  • Victor HugoVictor Hugo asked for a pauper's funeral and got the largest in French history.
  • Alexandre DumasIn 2002, France moved Alexandre Dumas's ashes to the Pantheon, with guards dressed as the four Musketeers.
  • Arthur MillerArthur Miller wrote Death of a Salesman in less than six weeks. He finished the first act in less than a day.
  • John JakesJohn Jakes wrote fiction at night while working as an advertising copywriter. His Kent series sold 55 million copies.
  • Hilary MantelHilary Mantel became the first woman to win the Booker Prize twice. Her winners were Wolf Hall and its sequel.
  • H. F. M. PrescottH. F. M. Prescott wrote a novel about a Tudor uprising that has never gone out of print.
  • 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…
  • Philippa GregoryNovelist Philippa Gregory's charity has dug close to 200 wells in The Gambia.
  • Naomi MitchisonNaomi Mitchison listed her Who's Who hobby as "burning rubbish." She also wrote more than 90 books and lived to 101.
  • Tim SeverinTim Severin built a boat from ox hides to test a medieval legend. In 1976 he sailed it from Ireland toward Newfoundland.

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