attended Tachenioni Rabbinical Seminary. Presently a New Yorker, Singer writes lyrical and visionary fiction that often explores spiritual and religious themes. His works include
Born in North Yarmouth, Maine, Elizabeth Oakes Prince was married in 1823 to journalist and political humorist Seba Smith. After the Panic of 1837, she began contributing to periodicals in an attempt to bolster her family's income, and her poem
Born in New York City, Sontag remains steadfastly an Eastern urbanite. As an undergraduate Sontag attended the University of California at Berkeley and the University of Chicago. She received her M.A. from Harvard University. Trained as a photographer, and maintaining an abiding interest in musical forms, Sontag combines a literary sensibility with extreme visual acuity. Novelist, critic, playwright, screenwriter, and essayist, Sontag is commonly credited with popularizing the sometimes arcane work of Roland Barthes and Walter Benjamin. Her iconoclastic interpretations have occasionally placed her outside of the Academy. Sontag's personal experiences are frequently reflected in her work. Her controversial visit to Vietnam finds expression in
Emma Dorothy Eliza Nevitte was born in Washington, D.C. In 1840 she married Frederick H. Southworth and moved to a Wisconsin farm, but soon Mrs. Southworth, pregnant and with a young son, returned to Washington. There she taught school and in 1847 published
A New Englander by birth, Spofford turned to journalism as a means of financial support. After her marriage she lived briefly in Washington, D.C. Her works detail New England life, most particularly the lives of women; her tone is realistic rather than nostalgic. Her books include
Born in Lake Mills, Iowa, Stegner graduated from the University of Utah in 1930. Engrossed with the West since his youth, and interested in the patterns of expansion and the Mormon frontier experience, Stegner produces novels that deal with the problems of exploration. Since the publication of his first novel,
Though Stein was born in Allegheny, Pennsylvania, she lived in Vienna and Australia; Passy, France; Baltimore, Maryland; Oakland and San Francisco, California; Cambridge, Massachusetts; and London, England, before settling in Paris in 1903. A charismatic expatriate during the heady days surrounding World Wars I and II, Stein and lifelong companion Alice B. Toklas drove for the American Fund for French Wounded during World War I but retired to the quietude of the French countryside during the German occupation of France -810- during World War II. A prodigious author — Stein produced some 571 works during a career spanning forty-three years — Stein was extraordinarily influential as an experimental writer. Among those who frequented her Paris flat for advice and company were such writers as Ernest Hemingway, Djuna Barnes, and Hilda Doolittle. In the mid-1930s, after achieving fame with
John Ernst Steinbeck was born in Salinas, California, and intermittently attended Stanford University, where he majored in marine biology. His first book was a romantic depiction of the career of buccaneer Henry Morgan (
Christened Elizabeth Barstow, Stoddard was born in Mattapoisett, Massachusetts, and was educated at the prestigious Wheaton Female Seminary. She married poet Richard Henry Stoddard. A fiction writer, Elizabeth Stoddard received widespread criticism for the supposed 'immorality' of her work; she sought to reproduce the familiar terrain of New England but the region she perceived was marked by sexual desire and frequent violence. Praised by William Dean Howells, who reprinted some of her works, Stoddard received ac-811- claim late in her life. Her most famous novel is
Stone was born in New York City, where he attended a Catholic high school and was briefly enrolled at New York University. Stone worked as a reporter during the Vietnam conflict, and his war experiences provide the basis for his award-winning
Daughter of clergyman Lyman Beecher and sister of Henry Ward Beecher, Harriet Elizabeth Beecher was born in Litchfield, Connecticut. In 1832. her father was appointed president of Lane Theological Seminary, and Harriet accompanied him to Cincinnati, Ohio, where in 1836 she married Calvin E. Stowe, a professor of biblical literature at the seminary. On a visit to a Kentucky plantation she witnessed the conditions and effects of slavery, but it was not until 1850 (after the Stowes had returned to New England) and the passage of the Fugitive Slave Act that she wrote
