Portal:Literature/Biography archive/2007 archive
This is an archive of biographical article summaries that have appeared in the Biography section of Portal:Literature in 2007. For past archives, see the complete archive page.
J. R. R. Tolkien CBE (3 January 1892 – 2 September 1973) was an English philologist, writer and university professor who is best known as the author of The Hobbit and The Lord of the Rings, as well as many other works. He was an Oxford professor of Anglo-Saxon language (1925 to 1945) and English language and literature (1945 to 1959). He was an orthodox Roman Catholic. Tolkien was a close friend of C. S. Lewis; they were both members of the informal literary discussion group known as the Inklings.
In addition to The Hobbit and The Lord of the Rings, Tolkien's published fiction includes The Silmarillion and other posthumously published books, which taken together is a connected body of tales, fictional histories, invented languages, and literary essays about an imagined world called Arda, and Middle-earth (derived from the Old English word middangeard, the lands inhabitable by humans) in particular, loosely identified as an "alternative" remote past of our own world. Tolkien applied the word legendarium to the totality of these writings.
Ferenc Molnár (originally Ferenc Neumann; b. Budapest, January 12, 1878; d. New York City, April 1, 1952) was one of the greatest Hungarian dramatists and novelists of the 20th century. His Americanized name is Franz Molnar. He emigrated to the United States to escape the Nazi persecution of Hungarian Jews during World War II.
As a novelist, Molnár is remembered principally for The Paul Street Boys which tells the story of two rival gangs of youths in Budapest. The novel is a classic of youth literature, beloved in Hungary and abroad for its treatment of the themes of solidarity and self-sacrifice. Molnár's most popular plays are Liliom (1909, tr. 1921), later adapted into the Rodgers and Hammerstein musical play Carousel (1945); The Guardsman (1910, tr. 1924), which served as the basis of the film of the same name (1931); and "The Swan" (1920, tr. 1922).
Eugène Sue (January 20, 1804–August 3, 1857), French novelist, was born in Paris.
He was the son of a distinguished surgeon in Napoleon's army, and is said to have had the Empress Joséphine for godmother. Sue himself acted as surgeon both in the Spanish campaign undertaken by France in 1823 and at the Battle of Navarino (1828). In 1829 his father's death put him in possession of a considerable fortune, and he settled in Paris.
A street in Paris is named for Eugene Sue, in the 11th Arrondissement: Rue Eugene Sue is located near the Poissonnière Metro station, and is not far from Montmartre and the Basilica of the Sacré Coeur.
Edith Wharton (January 24, 1862 – August 11, 1937) was an American novelist, short story writer, and designer.
Between 1900 and 1937, Wharton wrote many novels; the first to be published was her 1905 masterpiece The House of Mirth, which constitutes the first of many large-scale efforts to expose the oppressive nature and intolerance of her old New York. An admirer of European culture and architecture, Wharton crossed the Atlantic 66 times. From 1907 on, she made her primary residence in France. First, she resided at 58 Rue de Varenne, Paris, in an apartment that belonged to George Washington Vanderbilt II. Then, in 1918, once the chaos of the Great War had subsided, she abandoned her fashionable apartment for the more tranquil Pavillon Colombe, whose erotic history intrigued her immensely, in nearby Saint-Brice-sous-Forêt. And finally, she acquired Sainte-Claire le Château, formerly a convent, in the southern village of Hyères, to which she retreated during the winters and springs.
Her best known work, The Age of Innocence (1920), won the 1921 Pulitzer Prize. She spoke flawless French and many of her books were published in both French and English.
Anton Hansen Tammsaare (30 January 1878 - 1 March 1940), born Anton Hansen, was an Estonian writer whose quintology Tõde ja õigus (Truth and Justice; 1926–1933) is considered one of the major works of Estonian literature and "The Estonian Novel".
In 1918, when Estonia become independent, Tammsaare had moved to Tallinn. It was here that Tammsaare wrote the works which have gained him a permanent place in Estonian literature. Although Tammsaare took his subjects from the history and life of the Estonian people, his novels have deep connections with the ideas of Bergson, Jung and Freud, and such writers as Knut Hamsun and André Gide.
Tammsaare's early works are characterized by rural "poetic" realism. Some of his stories also reflect the atmosphere of the revolutionary year of 1905. During what is sometimes classified as his second period, from 1908 to 1919, he wrote several short urban novels and collections of miniatures. In "Poiss ja liblik" (1915, The Boy and the Butterfly), Tammsaare shows the influence of Oscar Wilde. Internationally best known is his last novel, Devil with a False Passport.
Johann Christoph Gottsched (February 2, 1700 – December 12, 1766), was a German author and critic. He was born at Judithenkirch near Königsberg, the son of a Lutheran clergyman. He studied philosophy and history at the University of Königsberg, but immediately on taking the degree of Magister in 1723, he fled to Leipzig in order to avoid being drafted into the Prussian military service. In Leipzig he enjoyed the protection of JB Mencke, who, under the name of "Philander von der Linde," was a well-known poet and president of the Deutschübende poetische Gesellschaft in Leipzig. Of this society Gottsched was elected "Senior" in 1726, and in the next year reorganized it under the title of the Deutsche Gesellschaft. In 1730 he was appointed extraordinary professor of poetry, and, in 1734, ordinary professor of logic and metaphysics in the university. He died at Leipzig.
Georges Simenon (February 13, 1903–September 4, 1989) was a Belgian writer who wrote in French. Simenon was one of the most prolific writers of the twentieth century, capable of writing 60 to 80 pages per day. His oeuvre include nearly 200 novels, over 150 novellas, several autobiographical works, numerous articles, and scores of pulp novels written under more than two dozen pseudonyms. Altogether, about 550 million copies of his works have been printed.
He is best known, however, for his 75 novels and 28 short stories featuring Commissaire Maigret. The first novel in the series, Pietr-le-Letton, appeared in 1931; the last one, Maigret et M. Charles, was published in 1972. The Maigret novels were translated into all major languages and several of them were turned into a film (starting with La nuit du carrefour, adapted for the screen by Jean Renoir as early as 1932).
Wystan Hugh Auden (21 February 1907 – 29 September 1973), who signed his works W. H. Auden (IPA: /ˈwɪstən hjuː ˈɔːdən/; first syllable of Auden rhymes with "law"), was an Anglo-American poet, regarded by many as one of the great writers of the 20th century. His work is noted for its stylistic and technical achievements, its engagement with moral and political issues, and its variety of tone, form, and content.
Throughout his career he was both controversial and influential. After his death, some of his poems, notably "Funeral Blues" ("Stop all the clocks") and "September 1, 1939", became widely known through films, broadcasts, and popular media.
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Henry Wadsworth Longfellow (February 27, 1807 – March 24, 1882) was an American poet among whose works were Paul Revere's Ride, A Psalm of Life, The Song of Hiawatha and Evangeline. He also wrote the first American translation of Dante Alighieri's Divine Comedy and was one of the five members of the group known as the Fireside Poets. Born in Maine, Longfellow lived for most of his life in Cambridge, Massachusetts, in a brick house once occupied during the American Revolution by General George Washington and his staff.
Louisa May Alcott (November 29, 1832 – March 6, 1888) was an American novelist. She is best known for the novel Little Women, which she wrote in 1868. This novel was loosely based on her childhood experiences with her three sisters. Alcott, along with Elizabeth Stoddard, Rebecca Harding Davis, Anne Moncure Crane, and others, was part of a group of female authors during the U.S. Gilded Age to address women’s issues in a modern and candid manner.
Algernon Blackwood, CBE (March 14, 1869 – December 10, 1951) was an English writer of tales of the supernatural. Although Blackwood wrote a number of horror stories, his most typical work seeks less to frighten than to induce a sense of awe. Good examples are the novels The Centaur, which climaxes with a traveller's sight of a herd of the mythical creatures; and Julius LeVallon and its sequel The Bright Messenger, which deal with reincarnation and the possibility of a new, mystical evolution in human consciousness. His best stories, such as those collected in the book Incredible Adventures, are masterpieces of atmosphere, construction and suggestion.
Tobias Smollett (c. 16 March 1721 – 17 September 1771) was a Scottish author, best known for his picaresque novels, such as Roderick Random (1748) and Peregrine Pickle (1753). His first published work was a poem about the Battle of Culloden entitled 'The Tears of Scotland', but it was The Adventures of Roderick Random which made his name. It was modelled on Le Sage's Gil Blas, and was published in 1748. Smollett followed it up by finally getting his tragedy, The Regicide, published, though it was never performed.
Robert Frost (March 26, 1874 – January 29, 1963) was an American poet. His work frequently drew inspiration from rural life in New England, using the setting to explore complex social and philosophical themes. A popular and often-quoted poet, Frost was highly honored during his lifetime, receiving four Pulitzer Prizes. Over the course of his career, Frost also became known for poems involving dramas or an interplay of voices, such as Death of the Hired Man. His work was highly popular in his lifetime and remains so. Among his best-known shorter poems are "Stopping by Woods on a Snowy Evening", "Mending Wall", "Nothing Gold Can Stay", "Birches", "Acquainted With the Night", "After Apple-Picking", "The Pasture", "Fire and Ice", "The Road Not Taken", and "Directive".
Washington Irving (April 3, 1783 – November 28, 1859) was an American author of the early 19th century. Best known for his short stories “The Legend of Sleepy Hollow” and “Rip van Winkle” (both of which appear in his book The Sketch Book of Geoffrey Crayon, Gent.), he was also a prolific writer of essays, biographies, and other forms as well. He and James Fenimore Cooper were the first American writers to earn acclaim in Europe, and Irving is said to have mentored authors such as Nathaniel Hawthorne, Henry Wadsworth Longfellow, and Edgar Allan Poe.
Charles Baudelaire (French IPA: [ʃaʀl bod'lɛʀ]) (April 9, 1821 – August 31, 1867) was one of the most influential French poets of the nineteenth century. He was also an important critic and translator.
In 1846 and 1847 he became acquainted with the works of Edgar Allan Poe, in which he found tales and poems which had, he claimed, long existed in his own brain but never taken shape. From this time until 1865, he was largely occupied with his translated versions of Poe's works, which were widely praised. These were published as Histoires extraordinaires ("Extraordinary stories") (1852), Nouvelles histoires extraordinaires ("New extraordinary stories") (1857), Aventures d'Arthur Gordon Pym (see The Narrative of Arthur Gordon Pym), Eureka, and Histoires grotesques et sérieuses ("Grotesque and serious stories") (1865).
Anatole France (April 16, 1844 – October 12, 1924) was the pen name of French author Jacques Anatole François Thibault. He was born in Paris, France, and died in Tours, Indre-et-Loire, France. Anatole France became known after the publication of Le crime de Sylvestre Bonnard (1881) where he looked back at the 18th century as a golden age. Its protagonist, skeptical old scholar Sylvester Bonnard, embodied France's own personality. The novel was praised for its elegant prose and won him a prize from the French Academy. In La rotisserie de la Reine Pedauque (1893) Anatole France ridiculed belief in the occult; and in Les opinions de Jerome Coignard (1893), France captures the atmosphere of the fin de siècle.
Anthony Trollope (April 24, 1815 – December 6, 1882) became one of the most successful, prolific and respected English novelists of the Victorian era. Some of Trollope's best-loved works, known as the Chronicles of Barsetshire, revolve around the imaginary county of Barsetshire; he also wrote penetrating novels on political, social, and gender issues and conflicts of his day.
Juhan Liiv (30 April 1864–1 December 1913) is one of Estonia's most famous poets.
Liiv achieved success in 1894 when his first short story, Vari (The Shadow), was published. Many of Liiv's poems are dominated by a sense of gloom, probably brought on by his mental illnesses, poverty and lack of human friendships. The few poems with a less ominous tone describe nature and Liiv's adoration for his country. The Juhan Liiv Prize for Poetry was founded in 1965. It is awarded by the parish of Alatskivi on 30 April every year. The prize is a leather shepherd's bag hand-made by a local artist.
Sir James Matthew Barrie, 1st Baronet, OM (9 May 1860 – 19 June 1937), more commonly known as J. M. Barrie, was a Scottish novelist and dramatist. He is best remembered for creating Peter Pan, the boy who refused to grow up, whom he based on his friends, the Llewelyn Davies boys.
Born in Kirriemuir, Angus, the second youngest of ten children, Barrie was educated at the Glasgow Academy and the University of Edinburgh. He became a journalist in Nottingham, then London, and turned to writing novels and subsequently plays.
Lyman Frank Baum (May 15, 1856–May 6, 1919) was an American author, actor, and independent filmmaker best known as the creator, along with illustrator W. W. Denslow, of one of the most popular books ever written in American children's literature, The Wonderful Wizard of Oz, better known today as simply The Wizard of Oz. He wrote thirteen sequels, nine other fantasy novels, and a plethora of other works, and made numerous attempts to bring his works to the stage and screen.
Ralph Waldo Emerson (May 25, 1803 – April 27, 1882) was an American essayist, poet, and leader of the Transcendentalist movement in the early nineteenth century.
In September 1835, Emerson and other like-minded intellectuals founded the Transcendental Club, which served as a center for the movement, but did not publish its journal The Dial, until July 1840. Emerson anonymously published his first essay, Nature, in September 1836.
Thomas Moore (May 28, 1779 - February 25, 1852) was an Irish poet, singer, songwriter, and entertainer, now best remembered for the lyrics of The Minstrel Boy and the The Last Rose of Summer. His work became immensely popular and included The Harp That Once Through Tara’s Halls, Believe Me If All Those Endearing Young Charms, The Meeting of the Waters and many others. His ballads were published as Moores Irish Melodies (commonly called Moores Melodies) in 1846 and 1852.
Thomas Mann (June 6, 1875 – August 12, 1955) was a German novelist, short story writer, social critic, philanthropist, essayist, and 1929 Nobel Prize laureate, known for his series of highly symbolic and often ironic epic novels and mid-length stories, noted for their insight into the psychology of the artist and intellectual. His analysis and critique of the European and German soul use modernized German and Biblical stories, as well as the ideas of Goethe, Nietzsche, and Schopenhauer.
Djuna Barnes (June 12, 1892 – June 18, 1982) was an American writer who played an important part in the development of 20th century English language modernist writing by women and was one of the key figures in 1920s and 30s bohemian Paris after filling a similar role in the Greenwich Village of the teens. Her novel Nightwood became a cult work of modern fiction, helped by an introduction by T. S. Eliot. It stands out today for its portrayal of lesbian themes and its distinctive writing style. Since Barnes's death, interest in her work has grown and many of her books are back in print.
Henry Rider Haggard KBE (June 22, 1856 – May 14, 1925), born in Norfolk, England, was a Victorian writer of adventure novels set in locations considered exotic by readers in his native England.
Haggard is most famous as the author of the best-selling novel King Solomon's Mines, as well as many others such as She, Ayesha (sequel to She), Allan Quatermain (sequel to King Solomon's Mines), and the epic Viking romance, Eric Brighteyes.
Eric Arthur Blair (25 June 1903 – 21 January 1950), better known by the pen name George Orwell, was an English author and journalist. Noted as a novelist, critic, political and cultural commentator, Orwell is among the most widely admired English-language essayists of the 20th century. He is best known for two novels critical of totalitarianism in general, and Stalinism in particular: Animal Farm and Nineteen Eighty-Four. Both were written and published toward the end of his life.
Nathaniel Hawthorne (born Nathaniel Hathorne; July 4, 1804 - May 19, 1864) was a 19th century American novelist and short story writer. He is seen as a key figure in the development of American literature for his tales of the nation's colonial history.
Hawthorne is best-known today for his many short stories (he called them "tales") and his four major romances written between 1850 and 1860: The Scarlet Letter (1850), The House of the Seven Gables (1851), The Blithedale Romance (1852) and The Marble Faun (1860). Another novel-length romance, Fanshawe was published anonymously in 1828.
Jean de La Fontaine (July 8, 1621 – April 13, 1695) was the most famous French fabulist and probably the most widely read French poet of the 17th century. According to Flaubert, he was the only French poet to understand and master the texture of the French language before Hugo. A set of postage stamps celebrating La Fontaine and the Fables was issued by France in 1995. A film of his life has been released in France in April 2007 (Jean de La Fontaine - le défi starring Laurent Deutsch).
Luis de Góngora (July 11, 1561 – May 24, 1627) was a Spanish Baroque lyric poet.
Gongora, who is considered by many literary scholars the most important Spanish poet of the modern time, came from a noble family. He was born in Córdoba, where his father, Francisco de Argote, was corregidor, the poet adopted the surname of his mother, Leonor de Góngora, who claimed descent from an ancient family. At the age of 15 he entered as a student of civil law and Canon law at the University of Salamanca, but was content with an ordinary pass degree. He was already known as a poet in 1585 when Miguel de Cervantes praised him in La Galatea; in this same year he took minor orders and shortly afterwards was nominated to a canonry at Córdoba. Around 1605 he was ordained priest, and afterwards lived at Valladolid and Madrid, where, as a contemporary remarks, he "noted and stabbed at everything with his satirical pen."
Alexandre Dumas, père, born Dumas Davy de la Pailleterie (July 24, 1802 – December 5, 1870) was a French writer, best known for his numerous historical novels of high adventure which have made him one of the most widely read French authors in the world. Many of his novels, including The Count of Monte Cristo, The Three Musketeers, and The Man in the Iron Mask were serialized, and he also wrote plays and magazine articles and was a prolific correspondent.
Emily Brontë /bɹɑnti/ (July 30, 1818 – December 19, 1848) was a British novelist and poet, now best remembered for her only novel Wuthering Heights, a classic of English literature. Emily was the second eldest of the three surviving Brontë sisters, being younger than Charlotte and older than Anne. She published under the masculine pen name Ellis Bell.
Tom Perrotta (born August 13, 1961) is an American novelist and screenwriter best known for his novels Election (1998) and Little Children (2004), both of which were made into critically acclaimed, Golden Globe-nominated films. Perrotta co-wrote the screenplay for the 2006 film version of Little Children with Todd Field, for which he received an Academy Award nomination for Best Adapted Screenplay.
Ernest Thayer (August 14, 1863 - August 21, 1940) was an American writer and poet who wrote Casey at the Bat.
Thayer was born in Lawrence, Massachusetts and raised in Worcester. He graduated magna cum laude in philosophy from Harvard in 1885, where he was editor of the Harvard Lampoon. Its business manager, William Randolph Hearst hired Thayer as humour columnist for the San Francisco Examiner 1886-88.
Samuel Richardson (August 19, 1689 – July 4, 1761) was a major English, 18th century writer best known for his three epistolary novels: Pamela: Or, Virtue Rewarded (1740), Clarissa: Or the History of a Young Lady (1748) and Sir Charles Grandison (1753).
Richardson had been an established printer and publisher for most of his life when, at the age of 51, he wrote his first novel — and immediately became one of the most popular and admired writers of his time.
Sheridan Le Fanu (August 28, 1814 – February 7, 1873) was an Irish writer of Gothic tales and mystery novels. He was the premier ghost story writer of the nineteenth century and had a seminal influence on the development of this genre in the Victorian era.
Robert Fergusson (September 5, 1750 - October 16, 1774), Scottish poet, son of William Fergusson, a clerk in the British Linen Company, was born at Edinburgh.
François de La Rochefoucauld (September 15, 1613 – March 17, 1680), was a noted French author of maxims and memoirs, as well as an example of the accomplished 17th-century nobleman. He was born in Paris in the Rue des Petits Champs, at a time when the royal court oscillated between aiding the nobility and threatening it. Until 1650, he bore the title of Prince de Marcillac.
Portal:Literature/Biography archive/2007, Week 38
T. S. Eliot, OM (September 26, 1888 – January 4, 1965), was a poet, dramatist and literary critic. He received the Nobel Prize in Literature in 1948. He wrote the poems "The Love Song of J. Alfred Prufrock", The Waste Land, "The Hollow Men", "Ash Wednesday", and Four Quartets; the plays Murder in the Cathedral and The Cocktail Party; and the essay "Tradition and the Individual Talent". Eliot was born an American, moved to the United Kingdom in 1914 (at the age of 25), and became a British subject in 1927 at the age of 39.
Wallace Stevens (October 2, 1879 – August 2, 1955) was a major American Modernist poet. He was born in Reading, Pennsylvania, and spent most of his adult life working for an insurance company in Connecticut. His most famous poem is "The Emperor of Ice Cream," which has been anthologized numerous times.
Frank Herbert (October 8, 1920 – February 11, 1986) was a critically acclaimed and commercially successful American science fiction author. He is best known for the novel Dune and its five sequels. The Dune saga, set in the distant future and taking place over millennia, dealt with themes such as human survival and evolution, ecology, and the intersection of religion, politics, and power, and is widely considered to be among the classics in the field of science fiction.
Oscar Wilde (October 16, 1854 – November 30, 1900) was an Irish playwright, novelist, poet, and author of short stories. Known for his barbed wit, he was one of the most successful playwrights of late Victorian London, and one of the greatest celebrities of his day. As the result of a famous trial, he suffered a dramatic downfall and was imprisoned for two years of hard labour after being convicted of the offence of gross indecency.
Michael Crichton (born October 23, 1942) is an American author, film producer, film director, and television producer. His books sold over 150 million copies worlds wide, and among his best-known works are techno-thriller novels, films and television programs. His works are usually based on the action genre and heavily feature technology. Many of his future history novels have medical or scientific underpinnings, reflecting his medical training and science background.
Stephen Crane (November 1, 1871 – June 5, 1900) was an American novelist, poet and journalist, best known for the novel Red Badge of Courage. He died at age 28 in Badenweiler, Baden, Germany.
Robert Musil (November 6, 1880, Klagenfurt, Austria – April 15, 1942, Geneva, Switzerland) was an Austrian writer. His unfinished long novel The Man Without Qualities (in German, Der Mann ohne Eigenschaften) is generally considered to be one of the most important modernist novels. The novel deals with the moral and intellectual decline of the Austro-Hungarian Empire through the eyes of the book's protagonist Ulrich, an ex-mathematician who has failed to engage with the world around him in a manner that would allow him to possess 'qualities'. It is set in Vienna on the eve of World War I. Musil, himself, served as an officer in the Austro-Hungarian army at the front between 1914 - 1918.
Michael Ende (November 12, 1929 - August 28, 1995) was a German writer of fantasy novels and children's books. He was born in Garmisch (Bavaria, Germany), son of the surrealist painter Edgar Ende. He died in Stuttgart (Germany) of stomach cancer.
Elizabeth George Speare (November 21, 1908 – November 15, 1994) was an American children's author who won many awards for her historical fiction novels, including two Newbery Medals. She has been called one of America’s 100 most popular children’s authors and much of her work has become mandatory reading in many schools throughout the nation. Indeed, because her books have sold so well she is also cited as one of the Educational Paperback Association’s top 100 authors.
Fredric Warburg (November 27, 1898 - May 25, 1981) was an English publisher best known for his association with the British author George Orwell. During a career spanning a large part of the 20th Century and ending in 1971, Warburg published Orwell's Animal Farm (1945) as well as Nineteen Eighty-Four (1949), and works by other leading figures such as Thomas Mann and Franz Kafka. Other notable publications include the controversial The Third Eye by Lobsang Rampa in 1956, Pierre Boulle's classic The Bridge over the River Kwai, Adolf Hitler's Mein Kampf, and William Shirer's The Rise and Fall of the Third Reich (1960).
Portal:Literature/Biography archive/2007, Week 49
Melvil Dewey (December 10, 1851–December 26, 1931) was the inventor of the Dewey Decimal Classification system for library classification.
Dewey was born Melville Louis Kossuth Dewey in Adams Center, New York in the United States. He attended Amherst College, where he was a member of Delta Kappa Epsilon. He graduated in 1874 with a bachelor's degree and received a master's degree from Amherst in 1877. It was while working as an assistant librarian at Amherst from 1874 until 1877 that Dewey devised his system of classifying and cataloguing books by decimal numbers.
Albert Payson Terhune (December 21, 1872 – February 18, 1942) was an American author, dog breeder, and journalist. He is best known for his novels relating the adventures of his beloved collies and as a breeder of collies at his Sunnybank Kennels, the lines of which still exist in today's Rough Collies.
Louis Bromfield (December 27, 1896 – March 18, 1956) was an American author and conservationist who gained international recognition winning the Pulitzer Prize and pioneering innovative scientific farming concepts. One of Mansfield, Ohio's most famous natives, his home was Malabar Farm near Lucas, Ohio, from 1939 until his death in 1956. Bromfield was also friends with some of the most celebrated personalities of his era and provided the location for Humphrey Bogart and Lauren Bacall's wedding.