Classic Author Focus: Herman Melville

Herman Melville Herman Melville was an American author best known for his ambitious and symbolic novel, Moby Dick, which was not a success during his lifetime. Although he began a career as a successful writer, by the time of his death, he was no longer well known until a revival in 1919 around the anniversary …

Classic Author Focus: Magda Szabó

Magda Szabó Magda Szabó was a Hungarian novelist of both children's and adult novels. She also wrote essays, plays, memoirs, and poetry. She is the Hungarian author most translated into other languages. Szabó was born in Debrecen, Austria-Hungary, where her father was an academic. As a child, she spoke four languages with her father and …

Classic Author Focus: Wilkie Collins

Wilkie Collins Wilkie Collins was a 19th century British author of sensation novels and plays who is considered a pioneer of detective fiction. His The Moonstone is considered the first example of police procedural fiction. He was a friend and disciple of Charles Dickens, who accepted his stories for publication in his journals and collaborated …

Classic Author Focus: Nellie Bly

Nellie Bly Nellie Bly, whose real name was Elizabeth Cochran Seaman, was an American journalist who was most famous for her trip around the world (inspired by Verne's book) and her undercover exposé on a mental institution. She more or less created the idea of investigative journalism. Bly was born in Cochran Mills, Pennsylvania. Her …

Classic Author Focus: Mary Wollstonecraft

Mary Wollstonecraft Mary Wollstonecraft was an English philosopher, writer, and strong advocate for women's rights. She is best known for A Vindication of the Rights of Women, which argued that women were deliberately educated to make them frivolous and incapable and that if they were educated like boys, they would be better wives and mothers …

Classic Author Focus: W. H. G. Kingston

W. H. G. Kingston W. H. G. Kingston was a 19th century English writer known for boys' adventure stories. I have a small collection of his books, and I thought he might have had an exciting life, because they are set all over the world (the Amazon, the Rocky Mountains, Panama, Russia, at sea, for …

Classic Author Focus: Doris Lessing

Doris Lessing Although she was born in Iran (then Persia) and lived there until she was six, Doris Lessing is considered a British/Zimbabwean (then South Rhodesia) writer. She is known for epic novels about the human experience in the 20th century and received the Nobel Prize for Literature in 2007. Her father left a job …

Classic Author Focus: Vita Sackville-West

Vita Sackville-West Vita Sackville-West, whose real name was Victoria Mary, Lady Nicolson, was one of the more sensational figures of the early 20th century. She was a successful novelist, poet, and gardener, but today she is best known for her affairs with both men and women and for kissing Virginia Woolf. She was Woolf's model …

Classic Author Focus: Henryk Sienkiewicz

Henryk Sienkiewicz Henryk Sienkiewicz was a Polish writer and Nobel Prize winner best known for epic historical novels. The Nobel Prize page for him states that he was the "most outstanding and prolific Polish writer of the second half of the 19th century." (Just as a side note, I have to say that his With …

Classic Author Focus: Zora Neale Hurston

Zora Neale Hurston Zora Neale Hurston was an American anthropologist and author. Although she is best known for the novel Their Eyes Were Watching God, she wrote more than 50 plays, essays, and short stories. Although Hurston was born in Alabama, her family moved to Eatonville, Florida, when she was three. Eatonville was the first …

Classic Author Focus: Christina Stead

Christina Stead I wasn't sure whether to cover this author in my series, because we don't have any member reviews of her books, although I read The Man Who Loved Children (quite chilling) many years ago. However, maybe this little bio will get other members interested in reading her. You can also find a short …

Classic Author Focus: Alan Paton

Alan Paton Alan Paton was a South African novelist and poet best known for Cry, The Beloved Country. He was also known as an early and important anti-apartheid activist. I found several mentions but was unable to find the attribution of a phrase applied to him as the man who "pulled up barbed wire fences …

Classic Author Focus: Alexandre Dumas

Alexandre Dumas Alexandre Dumas was a French writer who was certainly from an extraordinary family. His father, Thomas-Alexandre Dumas Davy de la Pailleterie, was the son of an African slave and a French nobleman and became a great and popular general of the French Revolution. However, he fell out of favor with Bonaparte and the …

Classic Author Focus: Astrid Lindgren

Astrid Lindgren Astrid Lindgren was a Swedish writer best known for her Pippi Longstocking books. She was also a playwright and wrote more than 30 books for children. She is the fourth most translated children's literature writer. Many of Lindgren's children's books reflect her memories of growing up in Näs, Sweden. After school, Lindgren took …

Classic Author Focus: Charlotte Riddell

Charlotte Riddell Charlotte Riddell was an Irish/English writer who is best known now for stories of the supernatural. During her lifetime, she was very popular and was the author of more than 50 novels and short stories. She was also part owner and editor of St. James Magazine, a prominent London journal of the time. …

Classic Author Focus: Rudyard Kipling

Rudyard Kipling Rudyard Kipling was a British poet, novelist, short-story writer, and journalist. He was born in British India, the location of many of his works. He is not as much in fashion these days, as a lot of his work celebrated British Imperialism, although he also wrote stories about British soldiers in India and …