Biographies

A.A. Milne (1882-1956) worked as an essayist, a playwright, a poet, and an adult novelist, in addition to his important contribution as an author of juvenile books. Although he attempted to excel in all literary genres, he was master of Ch...

Alfred Bertram Guthrie, Jr., is best known for his writing about the American West. His three most famous novels--sometimes referred to together as a trilogy--cover the eventful decades between 1830 and 1890, vividly depicting the lives of...

The legacy of leading Australian poet A. D. Hope to world literature is unquestionable, comprising eleven books of poetry, seven collections of critical essays, and two plays. His writing, compelling in its originality and passion, and rig...

Alfred Edward Housman was the greatest English classical scholar of his time and a poet of great ability and mastery within the limitations of his chosen themes and form. A Shropshire Lad, published in 1896 at the author's expense, became ...

A. E. W. Mason was one of the best and most popular storytellers in the first half of the twentieth century. He was remembered by his contemporaries for his genial and companionable nature and his hearty laugh and also for his enthusiasm f...

A. J. Cronin was a novelist, dramatist, and nonfiction writer whose works examine moral conflicts between the individual and society as his idealistic heroes pursue justice for the common man. His moralistic novels are known by the public ...

Abraham Johannes Muste (1885-1967), American pacifist, led the movement for world peace and pioneered in developing nonviolent resistance as a means of securing social change. On Jan. 8, 1885, A. J. Muste was born in Zierikzee, the Netherl...

Known for his scholarship in history, his insight into literature, and his own literary creativity, A. L. Rowse is also respected as one of the foremost British biographers of the twentieth century. Focusing on but not limiting himself to ...

A. N. Wilson's novels have enjoyed immediate critical success in Britain, and he has worked rapidly to consolidate his reputation with a series of books which combine high comedy with increasingly serious and complex interpretations of Bri...

The American labor and civil rights leader A. Philip Randolph (1889-1979), considered the most prominent of all African American trade unionists, was one of the major figures in the struggle for civil rights. The son of an itinerant minist...

Although thus far she has written only three novels, A. S. Byatt has nonetheless achieved a distinguished place as a person of letters in the last two decades. As novelist, critic, reviewer, editor, and lecturer, Byatt offers in her work a...

Abbott Joseph Liebling's Between Meals (1962) is a singular reminiscence about his year as a student in Paris during the twenties. Born in New York City, Liebling paid his first visits to Paris as a child on European tours with his family,...

Aaron Hill is usually recognized because of others' achievements, not his own. He is probably better known as one of Alexander Pope's targets in the Dunciad than for his own poetry. So, too, his role in the development of the periodical or...

Lee K. Abbott is best known as a short-story writer who addresses the themes of lost love and family grief with an inventive voice and a deeply felt compassion for his naive, self-destructive characters. Abbott's stories tend to be comic, ...

American First Lady Abigail Adams (1744-1818), an early proponent of humane treatment and equal education for women, is considered a remarkable woman for her times. Perhaps best known for her prolific letter writing, she is credited with h...

Abraham à Sancta Clara is probably the most remarkable preacher in the history of the German language; he was certainly one of the most popular satiric writers in the late seventeenth century. In May 1680, at the height of his activ...

The English writer Abraham Cowley (1618-1667) was among the first to use the Pindaric ode form in English poetry. He contributed importantly to the development of the familiar essay in English. The posthumous son of a merchant, Abraham Cow...

Abraham Polonsky's importance as a screenwriter rests both on his body of work--one of the strongest, continuously radical political statements in commercial American film--and on his role as symbol of the oppressed Hollywood writer, drive...

Nun Abutsu stands as one of the major literary figures of the mid Kamakura period, and she is without a doubt one of its most dynamic women, at least within the terms afforded by her times. Robert Brower and Earl Miner claim that “[Fu...

Due in part to the controversy which seems to spring forth in his wake and in part to the chaotic and at times incomprehensible nature of his literary production, Herbert Achternbusch is considered by many to be Bavaria's, and perhaps even...

Ada Cambridge was one of Australia's best-known women writers of the late nineteenth and early twentieth centuries. Her literary career began during her early womanhood when she published two collections of hymns and three exemplary tales ...

One of the few eighteenth-century Indian traders who was both a careful observer of native societies and a man of some education, James Adair was able to write a remarkably comprehensive account of the Southeastern tribes which has become ...

Adam Oehlenschläger is typically numbered among Denmark's most appreciated and revered writers. Although not as famous internationally as his contemporaries Søren Kierkegaard and Hans Christian Andersen, he retains a continuing...

Adam Lindsay Gordon was once the most honored among Australian poets. He alone of Australasian writers has the distinction of a place in the Poets' Corner of Westminster Abbey, where his bust was unveiled 11 May 1934. He also was revered b...

Adam Olearius was dubbed by his contemporaries "der Holsteinische Plinius" (The Pliny of Holstein) and "der Gottorper Odysseus" (the Odysseus of Gottorf). These epithets capture the wide range of interests and achievements of this erudite ...