a journalist in the United States and experiencing great poverty and hardship, he returned to England and while sustaining himself as a clerk began to write novels. A small legacy enabled him to complete his first published novel, Workers in the Dawn (1880). For the next twenty years, Gissing published nearly a novel a year, achieving limited commercial success but earning the respect of fellow writers like Henry James and H. G. Wells. Reflecting his years of economic struggle, Gissing's novels such as The Nether World (1889) and Born in Exile (1892) evoke the oppressiveness of nineteenth-century urban life among the English working class. In novels such as Thyrza (1887) and The Odd Women (1893), Gissing explored the problems of women in the modern age, and his best- known work, New Grub Street (1891), dramatizes the plight of the writer in a world indifferent to his art.
Godwin's beliefs proceeded on a course from Dissenting minister to atheist and philosopher of early anarchism. His radical view of reason prescribed the elimination of laws and government institutions. Husband of the famous feminist writer Mary Wollstonecraft, Godwin was also the father of the novelist Mary Shelley. In addition to his famous work Enquiry Concerning Political Justice (1793), Godwin was the author of many novels, among them
Golding was born in Cornwall and was graduated from Brasenose College, Oxford. He has been an actor, theater producer, teacher, and aviator in the Royal Navy. His first novel, Lord of the Flies (1954), has proved popular and lasting. This was followed by Pincher Martin (1956), The Brass Butterfly (a play, 1958), Free Fall (1959), The Spire (1964), The Pyramid (1967), The Scorpion God (1971), Darkness Visible (1979), the winner of the Booker Prize Rites of Passage (1980), and The Paper Men (1984). Golding won the Nobel Prize in 1983.
Goldsmith was reared in Lissoy and educated at Trinity College, Dublin. He continued his studies at Edinburgh and Leyden, and took an extended tour through France, Switzerland, and Italy. Arriving in London in 1756 with no money, Goldsmith struggled to make a living as a physician, usher, and hack writer. He became a well- known and influential contributor to a variety of periodicals, as well as a charter member of Dr. Johnson's literary club. Johnson was instrumental in getting The Vicar of Wakefield (1764) published when Goldsmith was destitute. Goldsmith's most famous poem was The Deserted Village (1770), and his comedy She Stoops to Conquer (1773) was an unmitigated success on stage.
Educated at Balliol College, Oxford, Greene began to write fiction while still at university. After his conversion to Roman Catholicism and a stint as a journalist at the Times, he began to write full time. His first really successful novel, Stamboul Train (1932), was followed by a great amount of writing-novels, short stories, travel books, children's stories, etc. Much of his writing is concerned with danger and risk-taking and with the mystery of Catholic divinity, and his novels amply reflect these themes. Among them are Brighton Rock (1938), The Power and the Glory (1940), The Heart of the Matter (1948), The Quiet American (1955), and Our Man in Havana (1958).
After spending six years of his young adulthood in South Africa, Haggard went on to serve on official commissions dealing with agriculture, emigration, and forestry. Haggard is best known as the author of over thirty adventure novels, set in exotic places like Iceland, Turkey, Egypt, and Mexico. His most successful novels, King Solomon's Mines (1886) and She (1887), are set in Africa.
Born near Dorchester, the son of a stonemason, Hardy went to school until the age of sixteen, when he began an apprenticeship with an architect. When he was twenty-two he went to London to work, and upon returning to work in -1000- Dorchester he began his first novel, The Poor Man and the Lady. During this period as an architect he produced his first published novels: Desperate Remedies (1871), Under the Greenwood Tree (1872), A Pair of Blue Eyes (1873), and Far from the Madding Crowd (1874). In the period between 1874 and 1895, Hardy was extremely productive, writing short stories, poems, and the following novels: The Hand of Ethelberta (1876), The Return of the Native (1878), The Trumpet Major (1880), A Laodicean (1881), Two on a Tower (1882), The Mayor of Casterbridge (1886), The Woodlanders (1887), Wessex Tales (1888), Tess of the D'Urbervilles (1891), A Group of Noble Dames (1891), Life's Little Ironies (1894), and Jude the Obscure (1896). Hardy gave up writing fiction late in life and devoted himself to poetry.
The daughter of Rational Dissenters, Hays was born in Southwark, London. Much of her education came through her correspondence with John Eccles, after whose death she began to write poetry and fiction. In the 1790s she began to find her voice as a feminist, keeping company with Mary Wollstonecraft and William Godwin. With the help of Godwin she published
Both an actress and a prolific writer of novels, Haywood in Memoirs of a Certain Island Adjacent to the Kingdom of Utopia (1725) imitated the scandal chronicles of Delariviere Manley, and achieved considerable fame with a steady stream of amatory fictions in the 1720s, notably Love in Excess (1720). In the wake of Richardson's and Fielding's success, she produced her most accomplished novels, The History of Miss Betsy Thoughtless (1751) and The History of Jenny and Jemmy Jessamy (1753).
Known as the 'Ettrick Shepherd,' Hogg was born in Ettrick Forest and was indeed a shepherd. Sir Walter Scott discovered him after he read Hogg's poems. He made his reputation with the collection of poems The Queen's Wake (1813). His best-known prose works are The Three Perils of Man (1822), The Private Memoirs and Confessions of a Justified Sinner (1824), and The Domestic Manners and Private Life of Sir Walter Scott (1834).
Holcroft went from stableboy to cobbler, to actor and finally to author. An atheist who was heavily influenced by Godwin's radical philosophy, Hol-1001- Hol- was nearly convicted of high treason in 1794. He was the author of several plays, among them The Road to Ruin (1792), and a number of novels, which include Anna St. Ives (1792) and The Adventures of Hugh Trevor (1794).
Though he was nearly blind, Huxley managed to take his degree from Balliol College, Oxford. He soon plunged into a life of writing and published three volumes of poetry by 1919. Huxley's satiric genius was displayed in numerous short stories and novels: Limbo (1920), Crome Yellow (1921), Mortal Coils (1922), Antic Hay (1923), Those Barren Leaves (1925), Point Counter Point (1928), After Many A Summer (1939), and Island (1962). His most enduring and popular work remains Brave New World (1932), while works such as Eyeless in Gaza (1936), The Doors of Perception (1954), and Heaven and Hell (1956) also contributed to his popularity.
Inchbald was a playwright, actress, and novelist. She was a close friend of William Godwin until his marriage to Mary Wollstonecraft. Inchbald's best-known pieces are the primitivist romances A
Isherwood was born in Cheshire and went to Cambridge, where he began writing. Two early novels, All the Conspirators (1928) and The Memorial (1932), were published just before and during a four-year period in Berlin. Mr. Norris Changes Trains (1935) and Goodbye to Berlin (1939) draw heavily on his life in prewar Germany. His post-Berlin novels were intended to be part of a long novel called 'The Lost,' which was never completed. His sketches were published under the title New Writing, one of them, 'Sally Bowles,' was eventually made into the movie Cabaret. After leaving Germany, Isherwood traveled with his lifelong friend W. H. Auden to China and then to America, where he eventually settled and became a citizen. His eccentric works are many: a collaboration with Auden, The Ascent of F6, the autobiographical Lions and Shadows (1938), the novels Down There on a Visit (1962) and A Single Man (1964), and an account of his life as a young homosexual, Christopher and His Kind (1976).
