Born: April 22, 1766, Paris, FranceDied: July 14, 1817, ParisGermaine de Staël was a French writer and intellectual, famed for her international salon. Her full name was Anne Louise Germaine, Baronne de Staël-Holstein. Born in Paris and generally known as Madame de Staël, she was the daughter of the French financier and statesman Jacques Necker. […]
Born: Aug 30, 1797, London, EnglandDied: Feb 1, 1851, London Mary Wollstonecraft Shelley was a English novelist. Daughter of the British philosopher William Godwin and the British author and feminist Mary Wollstonecraft Godwin, she was born in London, and privately educated. She met the young poet Percy Bysshe Shelley in May 1814, and two months
Born: c. 966, JapanDied: c. 1025, JapanSei Shonagon was a diarist and poet, a witty, learned lady of the court, whose Pillow Book (Makura no soshi), apart from its brilliant and original Japanese prose style, is the best modern-day source of information on Japanese court life in the Heian period (784-1185). Sei Shonagon was the
Born: c. 610, Lesbos [now part of Greece]Died: c. 570 BC Sappho was Greek poeters, whose poetry was so renowned that Greek philosopher Plato referred to her two centuries after her death as the tenth muse. Sappho was born on the island of Lesbos (now Lésvos), probably in the city of Mytilini. Although the details
Born: July 1, 1804, ParisDied: June 8, 1876, Nohant, France George Sand, pseudonym of Amandine Aurore Lucile, Baronne Dudevant, was a French novelist of the romantic movement, whose irregular life and many love-affairs shocked Parisian society.Sand was born in Paris on July 1, 1804, the daughter of a French army officer named Dupin who was
Born: July 31, 1965, Chipping Sodbury,near Bristol, England J. K. Rowling is a British author, who writes about the magical adventures of a boy wizard named Harry Potter. The Harry Potter books dominated bestseller lists in the late 1990s and early 2000s, attracting fans worldwide among children and adults alike.Joanne Kathleen Rowling was born in
Born: July 28, 1866, South Kensington, Middlesex[now in Greater London], EnglandDied: Dec 22, 1943, Sawrey, Lancashire [now in Cumbria] Beatrix Potter was English writer and illustrator of children’s books, born in London, and privately educated. During most of her adult life, she lived in a farm cottage in Sawrey, Westmoreland County, where she kept many
Born: Oct. 27, 1872 or Oct 3, 1873, Baltimore, Md., U.S.Died: Sep 25, 1960, New York Emily post was an American authority on social behaviour who crafted her advice by applying good sense and thoughtfulness to basic human interactions.Emily Post was educated in private schools in New York City. A popular debutante, she married Edwin
Born: June 16, 1938, Lockport, New York, U.S.Joyce Carol Oates is an American author, known for the descriptive violence in her portrayals of American life. Born in Lockport, New York, Oates was educated at Syracuse University, the University of Wisconsin, and Rice University. She taught at the University of Detroit from 1961 to 1967 and
Born: July 15, 1919, Dublin, IrelandDied: February 8, 1999, Oxford, Oxfordshire, EnglandIris (Jean) Murdoch was a British writer and philosopher, born in Dublin, Ireland, and educated at the University of Oxford. In 1948 she was appointed a fellow and tutor in philosophy at Oxford. Murdoch’s first published book, Sartre, Romantic Rationalist (1953), is a study
Born: c. 978, Kyoto, JapanDied: c. 1014, KyotoMurasaki Shikibu was a Japanese novelist, one of her country’s greatest writers, and the author of what is generally considered the world’s first novel, The Tale of Genji (first trans. by Arthur Waley in 6 volumes, 1925-32). Little is known about the author (including her real name), except
Born: July 10, 1931, Wingham, Ontario, Canada Alice Munro is a Canadian writer, known for stories focusing on the emotional lives of the inhabitants of rural Canada. Her tales, often set in southwestern Ontario, where she spent her childhood, are characteristically written from the point of view of a young or adolescent girl and address
Born: February 18, 1931, Lorain, Ohio, U.S. Toni Morrison is an American writer, whose works deal with the black experience and celebrate the black community. Morrison’s work features mythic elements, sharp observation, compassion, and poetic language and is often concerned with the relationship between the individual and society. In 1993 she won the Nobel Prize
Born: 1904, Nihalpur, IndiaDied: 1948Subhadra Kumari Chauhan was a prominent poetess in India, whose writings used to be very emotionally charged. She was born in 1904 at the Nihalpur village in Allahabad district. But after her wedding to Thakur Laxman Singh of Khandwa, Chauhan shifted to Jabalpur in the year 1919. Here, Subhadra Kumari Chauhan
Born: April 7, 1889, Vicuña, ChileDied: January 10, 1957, Hempstead, New York, U.S.Gabriela Mistral, pseudonym of Lucila Godoy de Alcayaga was a Chilean poet and stateswoman, who in 1945 became the first Latin American and the first female poet to win the Nobel Prize for literature. Born in Vicuña, Mistral became a noted educator. She