Important Writers' information

Writers' information 

 William Shakespeare (1564 – 1616) English poet and playwright. Famous plays include Macbeth, Romeo and Juliet, Merchant of Venice and Hamlet. Shakespeare is widely considered the seminal writer of the English language.

 Jonathan Swift (1667 – 1745) Anglo-Irish writer born in Dublin. Swift was a prominent satirist, essayist and author. Notable works include Gulliver’s Travels (1726), A Modest Proposal and A Tale of a Tub.

 Samuel Johnson (1709 – 1784) British author best known for his compilation of the English dictionary. Although not the first attempt at a dictionary, it was widely considered to be the most comprehensive – setting the standard for later dictionaries.

 Johann Wolfgang von Goethe (1749 – 1832) German poet, playwright, and author. Notable works of Goethe include: Faust, Wilhelm Meister’s Apprenticeship and Elective Affinities.

 Jane Austen (1775 – 1817) English author who wrote romantic fiction combined with social realism. Her novels include: Sense and Sensibility (1811), Pride and Prejudice (1813) and Emma (1816).

 Honore de Balzac (1799 –  1850) French novelist and short story writer. Balzac was an influential realist writer who created characters of moral ambiguity – often based on his own real life examples. His greatest work was the collection of short stories La Comédie humaine.

 Alexandre Dumas (1802 – 1870) French author of historical dramas, including – The Count of Monte Cristo (1844), and The Three Musketeers (1844). Also prolific author of magazine articles, pamphlets and travel books.

 Victor Hugo (1802 – 1885) French author and poet. Hugo’s novels include Les Misérables, (1862) and Notre-Dame de Paris (1831).

 Charles Dickens (1812 – 1870) – English writer and social critic. His best-known works include novels such as Oliver Twist, David Copperfield and A Christmas Carol.

 Charlotte Bronte (1816 – 1855) English novelist and poet, from Haworth. Her best known novel is ‘Jane Eyre’ (1847).

 Henry David Thoreau (1817 – 1862) – American poet, writer and leading member of the Transcendentalist movement. Thoreau’s “Walden” (1854) was a unique account of living close to nature.

 Emily Bronte (1818 – 1848) English novelist. Emily Bronte is best known for her novel Wuthering Heights (1847), and her poetry.

 George Eliot (1819 – 1880) Pen name of Mary Ann Evans. Wrote novels, The Mill on the Floss (1860), Silas Marner (1861), Middlemarch (1871–72), and Daniel Deronda (1876)

 Leo Tolstoy (1828 – 1910) Russian novelist and moral philosopher. Famous works include the epic novels – War and Peace (1869) and Anna Karenina (1877). Tolstoy also became an influential philosopher with his brand of Christian pacificism.

 Fyodor Dostoevsky (1821-1881) Russian novelist, journalist and philosopher. Notable works include Notes from Underground, Crime and Punishment and The Idiot

 Lewis Carroll (1832-1898) Oxford mathematician and author. Famous for Alice in Wonderland, Through the Looking Glass, and poems like The Snark.

 Mark Twain (1835 – 1910) American writer and humorist, considered the ‘father of American literature’. Famous works include The Adventures of Tom Sawyer (1876) and Adventures of Huckleberry Finn (1885).

 Thomas Hardy (1840-1928) English novelist and poet. Hardy was a Victorian realist who was influenced by Romanticism. He wrote about problems of Victorian society – in particular, declining rural life. Notable works include: Far from the Madding Crowd (1874), Tess of the d’Urbervilles (1891), and 

Jude the Obscure (1895).

 Oscar Wilde (1854 – 1900) – Irish writer and poet. Wilde wrote humorous, satirical plays, such as ‘The Importance of Being Earnest‘ and ‘The Picture of Dorian Grey’.

 Kenneth Graham (1859 – 1932) Author of the Wind in the Willows (1908), a classic of children’s literature.

 George Bernard Shaw (1856 – 1950) Irish playwright and wit. Famous works include: Pygmalion (1912), Man and Superman (1903) and Back to Methuselah (1921)

 Sir Arthur Conan Doyle (1859 – 1930) British author of historical novels and plays. Most famous for his short sto