Born in Paris, Maugham was sent to England shortly after being orphaned. After graduating from the King's School, Canterbury, he attended Heidelberg University and went on to study medicine a St. Thomas's Hospital in London. In 1897 he published his first novel, which was to mark the beginning of a long, prolific, and successful career in writing. After a series of well-received plays, Maugham published his most famous novel, Of Human Bondage (1915), followed by The Moon and Sixpence (1919), Cakes and Ale (1930), and The Razor's Edge (1944).
Moore is known for having brought many of the innovations of French realism into the domain of the English novel. His best-known work, Esther Waters (1894), is set among the Irish horse farms of his childhood. Moore's first novel, A Modern Lover (1883), caused much controversy due to its frank depiction of the life of the artistic demimonde. His other novels include A Mummer's Wife (1885), Evelyn Innes (1898), Sister Teresa (1901), The Brook Kerith (1916), and Heloise and Abelard (192 1).
Born in Trinidad into a Brahmin family, Naipaul was educated at Queens Royal College, Port of Spain, and went on a scholarship to University College, Oxford. After marrying an Englishwoman, he settled in London, became a literary journalist, and turned eventually to writing fiction with The Mystic Masseur (1957). Set in the Caribbean and based on his own early years in Trinidad, A House for Mr. Biswas (1961) established Naipaul's reputation as a novelist. His Booker Prize-winning novel In a Free State (1971) began a trend in his fiction and his reportage toward the uncompromising and pessimistic -1006- portrayal of postcolonial culture and politics. Notable for exploring such issues are the novels Guerrillas (1975) and A Bend in the River (1979) and personal narratives such as India: A Wounded Civilization (1977), A Congo Diary (1980), The Return of Eva Peron (1980), and Among the Believers (1982).
Born in Bengal, Orwell was brought to England and educated at St. Cyprian's and Eton. His experience with the Indian Imperial Police in Burma provided the material for his first novel, Burmese Days (1928). After resigning in disgust over the degradations of imperialism, he moved to Paris where he struggled to publish some of his early novels. A trip to northern England in 1936 inspired the impassioned documentary piece The Road to Wigan Pier (1937), and a stint with the Republican fighters in the Spanish civil war resulted in his enduring paean to antifascist struggle, Homage to Catalonia (1939). A fiercely independent democratic socialist, Orwell is perhaps best known for his satirical novels Animal Farm (1945) and Nineteen Eighty-four (1949).
Educated at St. Hilda's College, Oxford, Pym worked at the International African Institute in London. Her novels are satirical and domestic tragedies; they include Excellent Women (1952), Less than Angels (1955),
The wife of William Radcliffe, who managed the English Chronicle, Radcliffe was the most successful author of Gothic fiction of her time. Among her bestknown works are The
Born in Oxfordshire, Reade went to Magdalen College, Oxford, in 1831. His relationship with Oxford was a long one and included many positions from fellow to a variety of administrative posts. After traveling outside England, Reade returned in 1842 and began to study for the bar. Not long after, he began studying medicine in Edinburgh. His literary ambitions took flight with his publication of a stage version of Smollett's,
Born in Ipswich, Reeve published The Champion of Virtue; a Gothic Story in 1777. It was reprinted a year later as The Old English Baron and received much acclaim. The novel's indebtedness to Walpole's Castle of Otranto was the cause of a controversy between Reeve and Walpole. Reeve went on to write several other novels, as well as a critical piece entitled The Progress of Romance (1785).
Born in Dominica in the West Indies, Rhys first came to England in 1907. After attending the Perse School and the Academy of Dramatic Art, she worked as a chorus girl, film extra, and cook. Living in Paris with her husband, she wrote a series of novels in the 1930s that depict the marginal existence of aging and attractive women who have to depend on men. Among her bestknown works, which were rediscovered by feminist readers in the 1970s, are Quartet (1929), After Leaving Mr. Mackenzie (1931), Good Morning, Midnight (1938), and Wide Sargasso Sea (1966).
By his own account, Richardson had an early affinity for storytelling, and by age thirteen he was writing love letters for hire. Apprenticed to a printer, in 1721 he began his own printing business and in that same year he married Martha Wilde. By 1731 his wife and six children had all died, leaving him to suffer periodic nervous breakdowns in his later life. Richardson married Elizabeth Leake in 1733, and they had four daughters. His printing business reached its height of prosperity in 1742 when he obtained the post of Printer of Journals for the House of Commons. Richardson embarked upon a publishing project to produce a volume of model letters 'on such subjects as might be of use to country readers who are unable to indite for themselves,' and that volume seems to have provided the impetus for his epistolary novel
Robinson was an actress, playwright, poet, and novelist, and for a brief time was mistress to the prince of Wales, later George IV. She spent ten months in -1008- debtor's prison with her husband, after which she began publishing poetry. During the 1780s she reached the height of her fame as an actress. In the 1790s she fell in with a circle of radical feminists, including Mary Wollstonecraft, Mary Hays, Charlotte Smith, and William Godwin. Godwin was instrumental in the writing of her most popular novel Walsingham; or,
Born in Bombay, Rushdie attended school in Bombay, in England, and eventually at King's College, Cambridge. After working as an actor in experimental theater and as a copywriter, he published his first novel, Grimus (1975). A five-month trip to Pakistan and India prepared him to write the Booker Prize-winning
The daughter of a missionary, Schreiner was born in Cape Colony. She moved to England in 1881 and became a governess, after already having published her most acclaimed book, The Story of an African Farm (1883), an early feminist novel. She published two other novels with feminist themes, From Man to Man (1927) and Undine (1929), as well as numerous articles on South African politics and a treatise, Women and Labour (1911).
Scott was born in London and went on to hold a commission in the Indian army during World War II. His favorite subject for exploration was the state of Anglo-Indian relations under the Raj, best exemplified in his famous
