Portal:Literature/Selected biography

From Infogalactic: the planetary knowledge core
Jump to: navigation, search


This section is for Featured Article class articles on biographies of authors. Please do not add non-FA articles or articles that are not biographies of authors in this section.

Usage

The template used to configure these sub-pages is

{{Portal:Literature/Selected biography/Layout
  |image=
  |size=
  |caption=
  |text=
  |link=
}}
<noinclude>[[Category:Literature portal|F]]</noinclude>
  1. Add a new Selected picture to the next available sub-page.
  2. Update "max=" to new total for its {{Random portal component}} on the main page.

Purge server cache {{../box-header|Literature/Selected biography 1 | Portal:Literature/Selected biography/1 }} Portal:Literature/Selected biography/1

Chinua Achebe in 2008

Chinua Achebe (born Albert Chinualumogu Achebe; 16 November 1930 – 21 March 2013) was a Nigerian novelist, poet, professor, and critic. He was best known for his first novel and magnum opus, Things Fall Apart (1958), which is the most widely read book in modern African literature.

Raised by his parents in the Igbo town of Ogidi in southeastern Nigeria, Achebe excelled at school and won a scholarship for undergraduate studies. He became fascinated with world religions and traditional African cultures, and began writing stories as a university student. He gained worldwide attention for Things Fall Apart in the late 1950s; his later novels include No Longer at Ease (1960), Arrow of God (1964), A Man of the People (1966), and Anthills of the Savannah (1987).

A titled Igbo chieftain himself, Achebe's novels focus on the traditions of Igbo society, the effect of Christian influences, and the clash of Western and traditional African values during and after the colonial era. His style relies heavily on the Igbo oral tradition, and combines straightforward narration with representations of folk stories, proverbs, and oratory. He also published a number of short stories, children's books, and essay collections. From 2009 until his death, he served as a professor at Brown University in the United States.

More selected figures...

{{../box-footer|}} {{../box-header|Literature/Selected biography 2 | Portal:Literature/Selected biography/2 }} Portal:Literature/Selected biography/2

Mário de Andrade at age 35, in 1928

Mário Raul de Morais Andrade (October 9, 1893 – February 25, 1945) was a Brazilian poet, novelist, musicologist, art historian and critic, and photographer. One of the founders of Brazilian modernism, he virtually created modern Brazilian poetry with the publication of his Paulicéia Desvairada (Hallucinated City) in 1922. He has had an enormous influence on modern Brazilian literature, and as a scholar and essayist—he was a pioneer of the field of ethnomusicology—his influence has reached far beyond Brazil.

Andrade was the central figure in the avant-garde movement of São Paulo for twenty years. Trained as a musician and best known as a poet and novelist, Andrade was personally involved in virtually every discipline that was connected with São Paulo modernism, and became Brazil's national polymath. His photography and essays on a wide variety of subjects, from history to literature and music, were widely published. He was the driving force behind the Week of Modern Art, the 1922 event that reshaped both literature and the visual arts in Brazil. At the end of his life, he became the founding director of São Paulo's Department of Culture, formalizing a role he had long held as the catalyst of the city's—and the nation's—entry into artistic modernity.

More selected figures...

{{../box-footer|}} {{../box-header|Literature/Selected biography 3 | Portal:Literature/Selected biography/3 }} Portal:Literature/Selected biography/3

Modern artist's impression of what Du Fu may have looked like

Du Fu (Chinese: 杜甫; pinyin: Dù Fǔ; 712 – 770) was a prominent Chinese poet of the Tang Dynasty. Along with Li Bai, he is frequently called the greatest of the Chinese poets. His greatest ambition was to serve his country as a successful civil servant, but he proved unable to make the necessary accommodations. His life, like the whole country, was devastated by the An Lushan Rebellion of 755, and his last 15 years were a time of almost constant unrest.

Although initially he was little-known to other writers, his works came to be hugely influential in both Chinese and Japanese literary culture. Of his poetic writing, nearly fifteen hundred poems have been preserved over the ages. He has been called the "Poet-Historian" and the "Poet-Sage" by Chinese critics, while the range of his work has allowed him to be introduced to Western readers as "the Chinese Virgil, Horace, Ovid, Shakespeare, Milton, Burns, Wordsworth, Béranger, Hugo or Baudelaire". In his lifetime and immediately following his death, Du Fu was not greatly appreciated, however according to the Encyclopædia Britannica, today Du Fu's writings are considered by many literary critics to be among the greatest of all time.

More selected figures...

{{../box-footer|}} {{../box-header|Literature/Selected biography 4 | Portal:Literature/Selected biography/4 }} Portal:Literature/Selected biography/4

A photograph of Hamzah, likely taken between 1928 and 1937

Tengku Amir Hamzah (28 February 1911 – 20 March 1946) was an Indonesian poet and National Hero of Indonesia. Amir began writing poetry while still a teenager: though his works are undated, the earliest are thought to have been written when he first travelled to Java. Drawing influences from his own Malay culture and Islam, as well as from Christianity and Eastern literature, Amir wrote 50 poems, 18 pieces of lyrical prose, and numerous other works, including several translations. In 1932 he co-founded the literary magazine Poedjangga Baroe. After his return to Sumatra, he stopped writing. Most of his poems were published in two collections, Nyanyi Sunyi (1937) and Buah Rindu (1941), first in Poedjangga Baroe then as stand-alone books.

Poems by Amir deal with the themes of love and religion, and his poetry often reflects a deep inner conflict. His diction, using both Malay and Javanese words and expanding on traditional structures, was influenced by the need for rhythm and metre, as well as symbolism related to particular terms. His earlier works deal with a sense of longing and both erotic and idealised love, whereas his later works have a deeper religious meaning. Of his two collections, Nyanyi Sunyi is generally considered the more developed. Amir has been called the "King of the Poedjangga Baroe-era Poets".

More selected figures...

{{../box-footer|}} {{../box-header|Literature/Selected biography 5 | Portal:Literature/Selected biography/5 }} Portal:Literature/Selected biography/5

Undated photograph of Marrash

Francis bin Fathallah bin Nasrallah Marrash (June 1836 – 1873) was a Syrian writer and poet of the Nahda movement—the Arabic renaissance—and a physician. Most of his works revolve around science, history and religion, analysed under an epistemological light. He travelled through the Middle East and France in his youth, and after some medical training and a year of practice in his native Aleppo, during which he wrote several works, he enrolled in a medical school in Paris; yet, declining health and growing blindness forced him to return to Aleppo, where he produced more literary works until his early death.

Middle Eastern historian Matti Moosa considered Marrash to be the first truly cosmopolitan Arab intellectual and writer of modern times. Marrash adhered to the principles of the French Revolution and defended them in his own works, implicitly criticising Ottoman rule in the Middle East. He was also influential in introducing French romanticism in the Arab world, especially through his use of poetic prose and prose poetry, of which his writings were the first examples in modern Arabic literature, according to Salma Khadra Jayyusi and Shmuel Moreh. His modes of thinking and feeling, and ways of expressing them, have had a lasting influence on contemporary Arab thought and on the Mahjari poets.

More selected figures...

{{../box-footer|}} {{../box-header|Literature/Selected biography 6 | Portal:Literature/Selected biography/6 }} Portal:Literature/Selected biography/6

Honoré de Balzac on an 1842 daguerreotype

Honoré de Balzac (20 May 1799 – 18 August 1850) was a French novelist and playwright. His magnum opus was a sequence of short stories and novels collectively entitled La Comédie humaine, which presents a panorama of French life in the years after the 1815 fall of Napoleon Bonaparte. Before and during his career as a writer, he attempted to be a publisher, printer, businessman, critic, and politician; he failed in all of these efforts. La Comédie humaine reflects his real-life difficulties, and includes scenes from his own experience.

Due to his keen observation of detail and unfiltered representation of society, Balzac is regarded as one of the founders of realism in European literature. He is renowned for his multifaceted characters, who are morally ambiguous. His writing influenced many subsequent novelists such as Marcel Proust, Émile Zola, Charles Dickens, Edgar Allan Poe, Eça de Queirós, Fyodor Dostoyevsky, Gustave Flaubert, Benito Pérez Galdós, Marie Corelli, Henry James, William Faulkner, Jack Kerouac, and Italo Calvino, and philosophers such as Friedrich Engels and Karl Marx. Many of Balzac's works have been made into or have inspired films, and they are a continuing source of inspiration for writers, filmmakers and critics.

More selected figures...

{{../box-footer|}} {{../box-header|Literature/Selected biography 7 | Portal:Literature/Selected biography/7 }} Portal:Literature/Selected biography/7

An 18th-century woodblock in the ukiyo-e style, depicting Murasaki Shikibu being inspired by the moon

Murasaki Shikibu ( , English: Lady Murasaki) (c. 978 – c. 1014 or 1025) was a Japanese novelist, poet and lady-in-waiting at the Imperial court during the Heian period. Murasaki Shikibu is a nickname; her real name is unknown, but she may have been Fujiwara Takako.

Murasaki wrote The Diary of Lady Murasaki, a volume of poetry, and The Tale of Genji. It is uncertain when she began to write The Tale of Genji, but it was probably while she in her mid to late twenties. In about 1005, Murasaki was invited to serve as a lady-in-waiting to Empress Shōshi at the Imperial court, probably because of her reputation as a writer. She continued to write during her service, adding scenes from court life to her work. Within a decade of its completion, Genji was distributed throughout the provinces; within a century it was recognized as a classic of Japanese literature and had become a subject of scholarly criticism. Early in the 20th century her work was translated; a six-volume English translation was completed in 1933. Scholars continue to recognize the importance of her work, which reflects Heian court society at its peak. Since the 13th century her works have been illustrated by Japanese artists and well-known ukiyo-e woodblock masters.

More selected figures...

{{../box-footer|}} {{../box-header|Literature/Selected biography 8 | Portal:Literature/Selected biography/8 }} Portal:Literature/Selected biography/8

A painting of Sarah Trimmer by Henry Howard

Sarah Trimmer (née Kirby; 6 January 1741 – 15 December 1810) was a writer and critic of 18th-century British children's literature, as well as an educational reformer. Her periodical, The Guardian of Education, helped to define the emerging genre by seriously reviewing children's literature for the first time; it also provided the first history of children's literature, establishing a canon of the early landmarks of the genre that scholars still use today. Trimmer's most popular children's book, Fabulous Histories, inspired numerous children's animal stories and remained in print for over a century.

Trimmer was also an active philanthropist. She founded several Sunday schools and charity schools in her parish. To further these educational projects, she wrote textbooks and manuals for women interested in starting their own schools. Trimmer's efforts inspired other women, such as Hannah More, to establish Sunday school programs and to write for children and the poor.

Trimmer's works are dedicated to maintaining many aspects of the social and political status quo. As a high church Anglican, she was intent on promoting the established Church of England and on teaching young children and the poor the doctrines of Christianity. Her writings outlined the benefits of social hierarchy, arguing that each class should remain in its God-given position. Yet, while supporting many of the traditional political and social ideologies of her time, Trimmer questioned others, such as those surrounding gender and the family.

More selected figures...

{{../box-footer|}} {{../box-header|Literature/Selected biography 9 | Portal:Literature/Selected biography/9 }} Portal:Literature/Selected biography/9

Tagore in 1915

Rabindranath Tagore (7 May 1861 – 7 August 1941) was a Bengali polymath who reshaped his region's literature and music. Author of Gitanjali and its "profoundly sensitive, fresh and beautiful verse", he became the first non-European to win the Nobel Prize in Literature in 1913. In translation his poetry was viewed as spiritual and mercurial; however, his "elegant prose and magical poetry" remain largely unknown outside Bengal. Tagore introduced new prose and verse forms and the use of colloquial language into Bengali literature, thereby freeing it from traditional models based on classical Sanskrit. He was highly influential in introducing the best of Indian culture to the West and vice versa, and he is generally regarded as the outstanding creative artist of modern South Asia.

Tagore modernised Bengali art by spurning rigid classical forms and resisting linguistic strictures. His novels, stories, songs, dance-dramas, and essays spoke to topics political and personal. Gitanjali (Song Offerings), Gora (Fair-Faced) and Ghare-Baire (The Home and the World) are his best-known works, and his verse, short stories, and novels were acclaimed—or panned—for their lyricism, colloquialism, naturalism, and unnatural contemplation. His compositions were chosen by two nations as national anthems: India's Jana Gana Mana and Bangladesh's Amar Shonar Bangla.

More selected figures...

{{../box-footer|}} {{../box-header|Literature/Selected biography 10 | Portal:Literature/Selected biography/10 }} Portal:Literature/Selected biography/10

Tolkien in military uniform in 1916

John Ronald Reuel Tolkien, CBE (3 January 1892 – 2 September 1973) was an English writer, poet, philologist, and university professor, best known as the author of the classic high fantasy works The Hobbit, The Lord of the Rings, and The Silmarillion.

He served as the Rawlinson and Bosworth Professor of Anglo-Saxon and Fellow of Pembroke College, Oxford, from 1925 to 1945 and Merton Professor of English Language and Literature and Fellow of Merton College, Oxford from 1945 to 1959. Tolkien was appointed a Commander of the Order of the British Empire by Queen Elizabeth II on 28 March 1972.

After his father's death, Tolkien's son Christopher published a series of works based on his father's extensive notes and unpublished manuscripts, including The Silmarillion. These, together with The Hobbit and The Lord of the Rings form a connected body of tales, poems, fictional histories, invented languages, and literary essays about a fantasy world called Arda, and Middle-earth within it. Between 1951 and 1955, Tolkien applied the term legendarium to the larger part of these writings. While many other authors had published works of fantasy before Tolkien, the great success of The Hobbit and The Lord of the Rings led directly to a popular resurgence of the genre. This has caused Tolkien to be popularly identified as the "father" of modern fantasy literature—or, more precisely, of high fantasy.

More selected figures...

{{../box-footer|}} {{../box-header|Literature/Selected biography 11 | Portal:Literature/Selected biography/11 }} Portal:Literature/Selected biography/11

An 1840 portrait of Mary Shelley

Mary Shelley (née Mary Wollstonecraft Godwin; 30 August 1797 – 1 February 1851) was an English novelist, short story writer, dramatist, essayist, biographer, and travel writer, best known for her Gothic novel Frankenstein: or, The Modern Prometheus (1818). She also edited and promoted the works of her husband, the Romantic poet and philosopher Percy Bysshe Shelley. Her father was the political philosopher William Godwin, and her mother was the philosopher and feminist Mary Wollstonecraft.

Until the 1970s, Mary Shelley was known mainly for her efforts to publish Percy Shelley's works and for her novel Frankenstein, which remains widely read and has inspired many theatrical and film adaptations. Recent scholarship has yielded a more comprehensive view of Mary Shelley’s achievements. Scholars have shown increasing interest in her literary output, particularly in her novels, which include the historical novels Valperga (1823) and Perkin Warbeck (1830), the apocalyptic novel The Last Man (1826), and her final two novels, Lodore (1835) and Falkner (1837). Studies of her lesser-known works such as the travel book Rambles in Germany and Italy (1844) and the biographical articles for Dionysius Lardner's Cabinet Cyclopaedia (1829–46) support the growing view that Mary Shelley remained a political radical throughout her life.

More selected figures...

{{../box-footer|}} {{../box-header|Literature/Selected biography 12 | Portal:Literature/Selected biography/12 }} Portal:Literature/Selected biography/12

1880s photograph of W. S. Gilbert

Sir William Schwenck Gilbert (18 November 1836 – 29 May 1911) was an English dramatist, librettist, poet and illustrator best known for the fourteen comic operas (known as the Savoy operas) produced in collaboration with the composer Sir Arthur Sullivan. The most famous of these include H.M.S. Pinafore, The Pirates of Penzance, and one of the most frequently performed works in the history of musical theatre, The Mikado. These, as well as several of the other Savoy operas, continue to be frequently performed in the English-speaking world and beyond by opera companies, repertory companies, schools and community theatre groups. Lines from these works have become part of the English language, such as "short, sharp shock", "What, never? Well, hardly ever!", and "Let the punishment fit the crime".

Gilbert also wrote the Bab Ballads, an extensive collection of light verse accompanied by his own comical drawings. His creative output included over 75 plays and libretti, numerous stories, poems, lyrics and various other comic and serious pieces. His plays and realistic style of stage direction inspired other dramatists, including Oscar Wilde and George Bernard Shaw. According to The Cambridge History of English and American Literature, Gilbert's "lyrical facility and his mastery of metre raised the poetical quality of comic opera to a position that it had never reached before and has not reached since".

More selected figures...

{{../box-footer|}} {{../box-header|Literature/Selected biography 13 | Portal:Literature/Selected biography/13 }} Portal:Literature/Selected biography/13

A painting of Rădulescu by Mișu Popp

Ion Heliade Rădulescu (January 6, 1802 – April 27, 1872) was a Wallachian-born Romanian academic, Romantic and Classicist poet, essayist, memoirist, short story writer, newspaper editor and politician. A prolific translator of foreign literature into Romanian, he was also the author of books on linguistics and history. For much of his life, Heliade Rădulescu was a teacher at Saint Sava College in Bucharest, which he helped reopen. He was a founding member and first president of the Romanian Academy.

Heliade Rădulescu is considered one of the foremost champions of Romanian culture from the first half of the 19th century, having first risen to prominence through his association with Gheorghe Lazăr and his support of Lazăr's drive for discontinuing education in Greek. Over the following decades, he had a major role in shaping the modern Romanian language, but caused controversy when he advocated the massive introduction of Italian neologisms into the Romanian lexis. A Romantic nationalist landowner siding with moderate liberals, Heliade was among the leaders of the 1848 Wallachian revolution, after which he was forced to spend several years in exile. Adopting an original form of conservatism, which emphasized the role of the aristocratic boyars in Romanian history, he was rewarded for supporting the Ottoman Empire and clashed with the radical wing of the 1848 revolutionaries.

More selected figures...

{{../box-footer|}} {{../box-header|Literature/Selected biography 14 | Portal:Literature/Selected biography/14 }} Portal:Literature/Selected biography/14

A photograph of Lie from around 1900

Lie Kim Hok (Chinese: 李金福; pinyin: Lǐ Jīnfú; 1 November 1853 – 6 May 1912) was a peranakan Chinese teacher, writer, and social worker active in the Dutch East Indies and styled the "father of Chinese Malay literature". Lie is considered influential to the colony's journalism, linguistics, and literature. However, as a result of the language politics in the Indies and independent Indonesia, his work has become marginalised.

Lie published his first books, including the critically acclaimed syair (poem) Sair Tjerita Siti Akbari and grammar book Malajoe Batawi, in 1884. Over the following two years Lie published numerous books, including Tjhit Liap Seng, considered the first Chinese Malay novel. He also acquired printing rights for Pembrita Betawi, a newspaper based in Batavia (now Jakarta), and moved to the city. After selling his printing press in 1887, the writer spent three years working in various lines of employment until he found stability in 1890 at a rice mill operated by a friend. The following year he married Tan Sioe Nio, with whom he had four children. Lie published two books in the 1890s and, in 1900, became a founding member of the Chinese organisation Tiong Hoa Hwe Koan, which he left in 1904. Lie focused on his translations and social work for the remainder of his life, until his death from typhus at age 58.

More selected figures...

{{../box-footer|}} {{../box-header|Literature/Selected biography 15 | Portal:Literature/Selected biography/15 }} Portal:Literature/Selected biography/15

1934 photograph of Walpole

Sir Hugh Seymour Walpole, CBE (13 March 1884 – 1 June 1941) was a New Zealand–born English novelist. He was the son of an Anglican clergyman, intended for a career in the church but drawn instead to writing. Among those who encouraged him were the authors Henry James and Arnold Bennett. His skill at scene-setting, vivid plots, and high profile as a lecturer brought him a large readership in the United Kingdom and North America. He was a best-selling author in the 1920s and 1930s, but has been largely neglected since his death.

After his first novel, The Wooden Horse, in 1909, Walpole wrote prolifically, producing at least one book every year. He was a spontaneous story-teller, writing quickly to get all his ideas on paper, seldom revising. His first novel to achieve real success was his third, Mr Perrin and Mr Traill, a tragicomic story of a fatal clash between two schoolmasters. Walpole's output was large and varied. Between 1909 and 1941 he wrote thirty-six novels, five volumes of short stories, two original plays and three volumes of memoirs. His range included disturbing studies of the macabre, children's stories and historical fiction, most notably his "Herries Chronicle" series, set in the Lake District.

More selected figures...

{{../box-footer|}} {{../box-header|Literature/Selected biography 16 | Portal:Literature/Selected biography/16 }} Portal:Literature/Selected biography/16 Jorge Mario Pedro Vargas Llosa, 1st Marquis of Vargas Llosa (born March 28, 1936) is a Peruvian-Spanish writer, politician, journalist, essayist, college professor, and recipient of the 2010 Nobel Prize in Literature. Born in Peru, Vargas Llosa is one of Latin America's most significant novelists and essayists, and one of the leading writers of his generation. Some critics consider him to have had a larger international impact and worldwide audience than any other writer of the Latin American Boom Upon announcing the 2010 Nobel Prize in Literature, the Swedish Academy said it had been given to Vargas Llosa "for his cartography of structures of power and his trenchant images of the individual's resistance, revolt, and defeat".

Vargas Llosa rose to fame in the 1960s with novels such as The Time of the Hero (La ciudad y los perros, literally The City and the Dogs, 1963/1966), The Green House (La casa verde, 1965/1968), and the monumental Conversation in the Cathedral (Conversación en la catedral, 1969/1975). He writes prolifically across an array of literary genres, including literary criticism and journalism. His novels include comedies, murder mysteries, historical novels, and political thrillers. Several, such as Captain Pantoja and the Special Service (1973/1978) and Aunt Julia and the Scriptwriter (1977/1982), have been adapted as feature films.

More selected figures...

{{../box-footer|}} {{../box-header|Literature/Selected biography 17 | Portal:Literature/Selected biography/17 }} Portal:Literature/Selected biography/17

1913 photograph of Ezra Pound

Ezra Weston Loomis Pound (30 October 1885 – 1 November 1972) was an expatriate American poet and critic who was a major figure of the early modernist movement. His contribution to poetry began with his development of Imagism, a movement derived from classical Chinese and Japanese poetry, stressing clarity, precision and economy of language. His best-known works include Ripostes (1912), Hugh Selwyn Mauberley (1920) and the unfinished 120-section epic, The Cantos (1917–69).

Outraged by the carnage of World War I, Pound lost faith in England. He moved to Italy in 1924, and throughout the 1930s and 1940s embraced fascism. During World War II the Italian government paid him to make hundreds of radio broadcasts criticizing the United States, Franklin D. Roosevelt, and Jews. As a result, he was arrested by American forces in Italy in 1945 on charges of treason. While in custody he had begun work on sections of The Cantos that became known as The Pisan Cantos (1948), for which he was awarded the Bollingen Prize in 1949 by the Library of Congress, triggering enormous controversy. His political views ensure that his work remains as controversial now as it was during his lifetime; Hemingway nevertheless wrote: "The best of Pound's writing – and it is in the Cantos – will last as long as there is any literature."

More selected figures...

{{../box-footer|}} {{../box-header|Literature/Selected biography 18 | Portal:Literature/Selected biography/18 }} Portal:Literature/Selected biography/18

A 1797 painting of Mary Wollstonecraft by John Opie

Mary Wollstonecraft (27 April 1759 – 10 September 1797) was an eighteenth-century English writer, philosopher, and advocate of women's rights. During her brief career, she wrote novels, treatises, a travel narrative, a history of the French Revolution, a conduct book, and a children's book. Wollstonecraft is best known for A Vindication of the Rights of Woman (1792), in which she argues that women are not naturally inferior to men, but appear to be only because they lack education. She suggests that both men and women should be treated as rational beings and imagines a social order founded on reason.

Until the late 20th century, Wollstonecraft's life, which encompassed several unconventional personal relationships, received more attention than her writing. After two ill-fated affairs, with Henry Fuseli and Gilbert Imlay (by whom she had a daughter, Fanny Imlay), Wollstonecraft married the philosopher William Godwin, one of the forefathers of the anarchist movement. After Wollstonecraft's death, her widower published a Memoir (1798) of her life, revealing her unorthodox lifestyle, which inadvertently destroyed her reputation for almost a century. However, with the emergence of the feminist movement at the turn of the twentieth century, Wollstonecraft's advocacy of women's equality and critiques of conventional femininity became increasingly important. Today Wollstonecraft is regarded as one of the founding feminist philosophers, and feminists often cite both her life and work as important influences.

More selected figures...

{{../box-footer|}} {{../box-header|Literature/Selected biography 19 | Portal:Literature/Selected biography/19 }} Portal:Literature/Selected biography/19 Maya Angelou (born Marguerite Ann Johnson; April 4, 1928) is an American author and poet. She has published seven autobiographies, three books of essays, and several books of poetry, and is credited with a list of plays, movies, and television shows spanning more than fifty years. She has received dozens of awards and over thirty honorary doctoral degrees. Angelou is best known for her series of seven autobiographies, which focus on her childhood and early adult experiences.

With the publication of critically acclaimed I Know Why the Caged Bird Sings (1969), Angelou publicly discussed aspects of her personal life. She is respected as a spokesperson of black people and women, and her works have been considered a defense of black culture. Although attempts have been made to ban her books from some US libraries, her works are widely used in schools and universities worldwide. Angelou's major works have been labeled as autobiographical fiction, but many critics have characterized them as autobiographies. She has made a deliberate attempt to challenge the common structure of the autobiography by critiquing, changing, and expanding the genre. Her books center on themes such as racism, identity, family, and travel. Angelou is best known for her autobiographies, but she is also an established poet, although her poems have received mixed reviews.

More selected figures...

{{../box-footer|}} {{../box-header|Literature/Selected biography 20 | Portal:Literature/Selected biography/20 }} Portal:Literature/Selected biography/20

The "Chandos portrait", believed to depict William Shakespeare

William Shakespeare (26 April 1564 (baptised) – 23 April 1616) was an English poet, playwright, and actor, widely regarded as the greatest writer in the English language and the world's pre-eminent dramatist. He is often called England's national poet and the "Bard of Avon". His extant works, including some collaborations, consist of about 38 plays, 154 sonnets, two long narrative poems, and a few other verses, the authorship of some of which is uncertain. His plays have been translated into every major living language and are performed more often than those of any other playwright.

Shakespeare produced most of his known work between 1589 and 1613. His early plays were mainly comedies and histories, genres he raised to the peak of sophistication and artistry by the end of the 16th century. He then wrote mainly tragedies until about 1608, including Hamlet, King Lear, Othello, and Macbeth, considered some of the finest works in the English language. In his last phase, he wrote tragicomedies, also known as romances, and collaborated with other playwrights.

Shakespeare was a respected poet and playwright in his own day, but his reputation did not rise to its present heights until the 19th century. The Romantics, in particular, acclaimed Shakespeare's genius, and the Victorians worshipped Shakespeare with a reverence that George Bernard Shaw called "bardolatry".

More selected figures...

{{../box-footer|}} {{../box-header|Literature/Selected biography 21 | Portal:Literature/Selected biography/21 }} Portal:Literature/Selected biography/21

A 1846 or 1847 daguerreotype of Dickinson

Emily Elizabeth Dickinson (December 10, 1830 – May 15, 1886) was an American poet. While Dickinson was a prolific private poet, fewer than a dozen of her nearly eighteen hundred poems were published during her lifetime. The work that was published during her lifetime was usually altered significantly by the publishers to fit the conventional poetic rules of the time. Dickinson's poems are unique for the era in which she wrote; they contain short lines, typically lack titles, and often use slant rhyme as well as unconventional capitalization and punctuation. Many of her poems deal with themes of death and immortality, two recurring topics in letters to her friends.

Although most of her acquaintances were probably aware of Dickinson's writing, it was not until after her death in 1886—when Lavinia, Dickinson's younger sister, discovered her cache of poems—that the breadth of Dickinson's work became apparent. Her first collection of poetry was published in 1890 by personal acquaintances Thomas Wentworth Higginson and Mabel Loomis Todd, both of whom heavily edited the content. A complete and mostly unaltered collection of her poetry became available for the first time in 1955 when The Poems of Emily Dickinson was published by scholar Thomas H. Johnson. Despite some unfavorable reviews and some skepticism during the late 19th and early 20th century as to Dickinson's literary prowess, she is now almost universally considered to be one of the most important American poets.

More selected figures...

{{../box-footer|}} {{../box-header|Literature/Selected biography 22 | Portal:Literature/Selected biography/22 }} Portal:Literature/Selected biography/22

1898 painting of Chekhov

Anton Pavlovich Chekhov (29 January 1860 – 15 July 1904) was a Russian physician, dramaturge and author who is considered to be among the greatest writers of short stories in history. His career as a dramatist produced four classics and his best short stories are held in high esteem by writers and critics. Chekhov practised as a medical doctor throughout most of his literary career: "Medicine is my lawful wife", he once said, "and literature is my mistress."

Chekhov renounced the theatre after the disastrous reception of The Seagull in 1896, but the play was revived to acclaim in 1898 by Constantin Stanislavski's Moscow Art Theatre, which subsequently also produced Chekhov's Uncle Vanya and premiered his last two plays, Three Sisters and The Cherry Orchard.

Chekhov had at first written stories only for financial gain, but as his artistic ambition grew, he made formal innovations which have influenced the evolution of the modern short story. His originality consists in an early use of the stream-of-consciousness technique, later adopted by James Joyce and other modernists, combined with a disavowal of the moral finality of traditional story structure. He made no apologies for the difficulties this posed to readers, insisting that the role of an artist was to ask questions, not to answer them.

More selected figures...

{{../box-footer|}} {{../box-header|Literature/Selected biography 23 | Portal:Literature/Selected biography/23 }} Portal:Literature/Selected biography/23

1849 daguerreotype of Poe

Edgar Allan Poe (born Edgar Poe; January 19, 1809 – October 7, 1849) was an American author, poet, editor, and literary critic, considered part of the American Romantic Movement. Best known for his tales of mystery and the macabre, Poe was one of the earliest American practitioners of the short story, and is generally considered the inventor of the detective fiction genre. He is further credited with contributing to the emerging genre of science fiction.He was the first well-known American writer to try to earn a living through writing alone, resulting in a financially difficult life and career.

His publishing career began with an anonymous collection of poems, Tamerlane and Other Poems (1827), credited only to "a Bostonian". Poe switched his focus to prose and spent the next several years working for literary journals and periodicals, becoming known for his own style of literary criticism. His work forced him to move among several cities, including Baltimore, Philadelphia, and New York City. In Baltimore in 1835, he married Virginia Clemm, his 13-year-old cousin. In January 1845 Poe published his poem, "The Raven", to instant success. His wife died of tuberculosis two years after its publication. For years, he had been planning to produce his own journal, The Penn (later renamed The Stylus), though he died before it could be produced.

More selected figures...

{{../box-footer|}} {{../box-header|Literature/Selected biography 24 | Portal:Literature/Selected biography/24 }} Portal:Literature/Selected biography/24

1983 photograph of Ann Bannon

Ann Bannon (pseudonym of Ann Weldy, born September 15, 1932) is an American author who, from 1957 to 1962, wrote six lesbian pulp fiction novels known as The Beebo Brinker Chronicles. The books' enduring popularity and impact on lesbian identity has earned her the title "Queen of Lesbian Pulp Fiction". Bannon was a young housewife trying to address her own issues of sexuality when she was inspired to write her first novel. Her subsequent books featured four characters who reappeared throughout the series, including her eponymous heroine, Beebo Brinker, who came to embody the archetype of a butch lesbian.

Her books shaped lesbian identity for lesbians and heterosexuals alike, but Bannon was mostly unaware of their impact. She stopped writing in 1962. Later, she earned a doctorate in linguistics and became an academic. She endured a difficult marriage for 27 years and, as she separated from her husband in the 1980s, her books were republished; she was stunned to learn of their influence on society. They are taught in Women's and LGBT studies courses, and Bannon has received numerous awards for pioneering lesbian and gay literature. She has been described as "the premier fictional representation of US lesbian life in the fifties and sixties", and it has been said that her books "rest on the bookshelf of nearly every even faintly literate Lesbian".

More selected figures...

{{../box-footer|}} {{../box-header|Literature/Selected biography 25 | Portal:Literature/Selected biography/25 }} Portal:Literature/Selected biography/25 Portal:Literature/Selected biography/25 {{../box-footer|}} {{../box-header|Literature/Selected biography 26 | Portal:Literature/Selected biography/26 }} Portal:Literature/Selected biography/26 Portal:Literature/Selected biography/26 {{../box-footer|}} {{../box-header|Literature/Selected biography 27 | Portal:Literature/Selected biography/27 }} Portal:Literature/Selected biography/27 Portal:Literature/Selected biography/27 {{../box-footer|}} {{../box-header|Literature/Selected biography 28 | Portal:Literature/Selected biography/28 }} Portal:Literature/Selected biography/28 Portal:Literature/Selected biography/28 {{../box-footer|}} {{../box-header|Literature/Selected biography 29 | Portal:Literature/Selected biography/29 }} Portal:Literature/Selected biography/29 Portal:Literature/Selected biography/29 {{../box-footer|}} {{../box-header|Literature/Selected biography 30 | Portal:Literature/Selected biography/30 }} Portal:Literature/Selected biography/30 Portal:Literature/Selected biography/30 {{../box-footer|}} {{../box-header|Literature/Selected biography 31 | Portal:Literature/Selected biography/31 }} Portal:Literature/Selected biography/31 Portal:Literature/Selected biography/31 {{../box-footer|}} {{../box-header|Literature/Selected biography 32 | Portal:Literature/Selected biography/32 }} Portal:Literature/Selected biography/32 Portal:Literature/Selected biography/32 {{../box-footer|}} {{../box-header|Literature/Selected biography 33 | Portal:Literature/Selected biography/33 }} Portal:Literature/Selected biography/33 Portal:Literature/Selected biography/33 {{../box-footer|}} {{../box-header|Literature/Selected biography 34 | Portal:Literature/Selected biography/34 }} Portal:Literature/Selected biography/34 Portal:Literature/Selected biography/34 {{../box-footer|}} {{../box-header|Literature/Selected biography 35 | Portal:Literature/Selected biography/35 }} Portal:Literature/Selected biography/35 Portal:Literature/Selected biography/35 {{../box-footer|}} {{../box-header|Literature/Selected biography 36 | Portal:Literature/Selected biography/36 }} Portal:Literature/Selected biography/36 Portal:Literature/Selected biography/36 {{../box-footer|}} {{../box-header|Literature/Selected biography 37 | Portal:Literature/Selected biography/37 }} Portal:Literature/Selected biography/37 Portal:Literature/Selected biography/37 {{../box-footer|}} {{../box-header|Literature/Selected biography 38 | Portal:Literature/Selected biography/38 }} Portal:Literature/Selected biography/38 Portal:Literature/Selected biography/38 {{../box-footer|}} {{../box-header|Literature/Selected biography 39 | Portal:Literature/Selected biography/39 }} Portal:Literature/Selected biography/39 Portal:Literature/Selected biography/39 {{../box-footer|}} {{../box-header|Literature/Selected biography 40 | Portal:Literature/Selected biography/40 }} Portal:Literature/Selected biography/40 Portal:Literature/Selected biography/40 {{../box-footer|}} {{../box-header|Literature/Selected biography 41 | Portal:Literature/Selected biography/41 }} Portal:Literature/Selected biography/41 Portal:Literature/Selected biography/41 {{../box-footer|}} {{../box-header|Literature/Selected biography 42 | Portal:Literature/Selected biography/42 }} Portal:Literature/Selected biography/42 Portal:Literature/Selected biography/42 {{../box-footer|}} {{../box-header|Literature/Selected biography 43 | Portal:Literature/Selected biography/43 }} Portal:Literature/Selected biography/43 Portal:Literature/Selected biography/43 {{../box-footer|}} {{../box-header|Literature/Selected biography 44 | Portal:Literature/Selected biography/44 }} Portal:Literature/Selected biography/44 Portal:Literature/Selected biography/44 {{../box-footer|}} {{../box-header|Literature/Selected biography 45 | Portal:Literature/Selected biography/45 }} Portal:Literature/Selected biography/45 Portal:Literature/Selected biography/45 {{../box-footer|}} {{../box-header|Literature/Selected biography 46 | Portal:Literature/Selected biography/46 }} Portal:Literature/Selected biography/46 Portal:Literature/Selected biography/46 {{../box-footer|}} {{../box-header|Literature/Selected biography 47 | Portal:Literature/Selected biography/47 }} Portal:Literature/Selected biography/47 Portal:Literature/Selected biography/47 {{../box-footer|}} {{../box-header|Literature/Selected biography 48 | Portal:Literature/Selected biography/48 }} Portal:Literature/Selected biography/48 Portal:Literature/Selected biography/48 {{../box-footer|}} {{../box-header|Literature/Selected biography 49 | Portal:Literature/Selected biography/49 }} Portal:Literature/Selected biography/49 Portal:Literature/Selected biography/49 {{../box-footer|}} {{../box-header|Literature/Selected biography 50 | Portal:Literature/Selected biography/50 }} Portal:Literature/Selected biography/50 Portal:Literature/Selected biography/50 {{../box-footer|}}


Purge server cache