B. S. Johnson's suicide in 1973 seems in many ways the fulfillment of his life as a novelist: there are few writers for whom life and art are so inextricably bound. This is not to suggest that one should look to Johnson's novels for the fa...

The younger daughter of Ralph Zane and Genevieve Converse Moore, Natalie Zane Moore Babbitt was born on 28 July 1932, in the midst of the Great Depression, and spent the first eighteen years of her life in various towns and communities in ...

Marian Babson's contributions to the field of mystery and detective fiction lie in both her ten-year service as secretary of the Crime Writers Association from 1976 to 1986 and her steady output of mystery novels, better than a novel per y...

Manuel Cabeza de Baca's regional, historical narrative, Historia de Vicente Silva (1896), came into existence in the context of late-nineteenth-century land grabbing in northern New Mexico (the loss of communal land holdings that were turn...

The Reverend Thomas Bacon, one of colonial Maryland's most prolific authors, is remembered today primarily for his sermons on charity schools and the education of slaves, and for his compilation Laws of Maryland At Large ... (1765). In his...

Abigail Abbot Bailey was an eighteenth-century Congregationalist woman whose memoir describes her religious response to her husband's extended incestuous involvement with one of their teenage daughters. As one of a relatively small number ...

Essayist, novelist, literary critic, and poet, Pierre Baillargeon was part of a group of young writers who set out to change the Quebec literary scene. Often shocking the public and critics with his bold criticism of Quebec, Baillargeon wa...

Irene Baird is an interesting and versatile writer, as her four very different novels testify. She is best known for her novel of social protest Waste Heritage (1939), which has been compared to John Steinbeck's Of Mice and Men and The Gra...

Herschel C. Baker established his reputation as an intellectual historian, editor, biographer, and teacher. His writings range over the spectrum of history and literature from pre-Socratic Greece to nineteenth-century England; and, as was ...

John Balderston was a journalist and playwright before turning to the screen in 1931. In his later years he lamented that so few of his screenplays were his alone. But he was nearly always more successful in collaboration than on his own, ...

Louisa Baldwin's early and sustained connection to the Pre-Raphaelite circle and her role as the mother of Prime Minister Stanley Baldwin and the aunt of Rudyard Kipling ensure Baldwin a position of interest to literary critics and histori...

Nanni Balestrini's poetry is invariably linked with the activities and premises of the "Gruppo '63," the neo-avant-garde circle of poets, writers, and literary critics who added an important chapter to the history of the twentieth-century ...

For more than fifty years Maturin Murray Ballou wrote sensational novels for a growing American middle class that craved popular literature, and he prospered. A century later his prodigious literary efforts are forgotten, and posterity rem...

Between 1677 and 1696 five tragedies by John Banks were staged and printed in London. Two further tragedies were prohibited performance but were printed, in 1684 and 1694 respectively. A revised version of one of the prohibited plays was s...

The poet, literary critic, and translator Stanislaw Baraczak was born on 13 November 1946 in Pozna, Poland, to Jan and Zofia (née Konopinska) Baraczak. As a university freshman he was the literary director of the Theater of the Eigh...

A cultural analyst and political activist, Barbara Ehrenreich is arguably one of the most astute, acerbic and witty critics in the United States. She belongs to the generation of feminists who came to maturity in the 1960s as student dissi...

Barbara Kingsolver renews the Western literary landscape by debunking the myths of individuality and self-determination. Her heroines lead meaningful lives by relying on compromise and community. Kingsolver's work reflects the real West in...

Barbara Willard is best known as the author of the Mantlemass series of historical novels, but in the course of writing more than fifty books for children she successfully explored a rich variety of fiction. She had the ability to create u...

Ralph Henry Barbour was not the first to write about sports and schools, but he was the first writer of quality to focus upon sports and their ability to redeem and alter boys' lives. He wrote not merely about the vigor and fun of sports b...

Fanny Calderón de la Barca's renown rests upon a single book, Life in Mexico during a Residence of Two Years in That Country (1843). It is based on her experiences in Mexico when she accompanied her husband, Angel Calderón de...

In 1946, shortly after her stories began to appear in British periodicals, A.L. Barker was offered (but declined) the British Atlantic Award in Literature. The following year, Innocents, her first collection of short stories, won her the f...

James Nelson Barker, an important early American playwright, was also a prominent political figure in Philadelphia, serving as a mayor of that city and later as comptroller of the U.S. Treasury. His father, John Barker, was influential in ...

William Barker is unfortunately remembered largely as the faithless servant who betrayed his master, Thomas Howard, fourth Duke of Norfolk, following the exposure of the Ridolfi Plot. It is only appropriate, then, that his reputation be re...

Barnabe Barnes is one of the most important minor sonneteers to write during the reign of Elizabeth I. A member of the leisured rich, he moved easily in literary circles and managed to make friends and enemies among the most luminous court...

For many years Barnabe Riche was remembered largely due to William Shakespeare's choice of the second story of Riche His Farewell to Military Profession (1581) as a source for Twelfth Night (1601). Much of the critical interest in Riche ha...