This Chilean poet, and diplomat, was awarded the Nobel Prize for Literature in 1971. His original name was Neftali Ricardo Reyes Basoalto, but he used the pen name Pablo Neruda for over 20 years before adopting it legally in 1946. Neruda is the most widely read of the Spanish American poets. From the 1940s on, […]
Oscar Fingal O’Flahertie Wills Wilde was born in Dublin to unconventional parents. His mother, Lady Jane Francesca Wilde (1820-96), was a poet and journalist. Her pen name was Sperenza. Wilde’s father was Sir William Wilde, an Irish antiquarian, gifted writer, and specialist in diseases of the eye and ear, who founded a hospital in Dublin
Mexican poet, writer, and diplomat, who received the Nobel Prize for Literature in 1990. With Pablo Neruda and Cesar Vallejo, Paz is one of the several Latin American poets whose work has had wide international impact. Although many of Paz’s poems are developed within the discipline of regular meter and rhyme, he has also experimented
O. Henry was born William Sydney Porter in Greenboro, North Carolina. His father, Algernon Sidney Porter, was a physician. When William was three, his mother died, and he was raised by his parental grandmother and paternal aunt. William was an avid reader, but at the age of fifteen he left school, and then worked in
Baidyanath Mishra was born in Mithila (Bihar) in Satlakha, his mother’s village. His native village, Tarauni, is not far away from Satlakha. He was brought up in his native village. As per the tradition of those days, the child was admitted to a Sanskrit pathshala (school). Thereafter, he studied Sanskrit at Kashi and Calcutta and
Munshi Premchand was born on 31July 1880 in a small village, Lamhi, near Varanasi. His parents named him Dhanpat Rai. He started writing at a young age. Initially, he wrote in Urdu. Later, he wrote only in Hindi.Munshi Premchand was the son of a postal clerk. He lost his mother when he was very young.
Mulk Raj Anand was born in Peshawar as the son of Lal Chand, a coppersmith and soldier, and Ishwar Kaur. He attended Khalsa College, Amritsar, and entered the University of Punjab in 1921, graduating with honours in 1924. Thereafter Anand did his additional studies at Cambridge and at London University, receiving his Ph.D. in 1929.
Mohan Rakesh was one of the pioneers of the Nai Kahani (literally new story) movement of the Hindi literature in the 1950s and made considerable contribution to novel, travelogue, criticism, memoirs, short story, and drama. Mohan Rakesh was born on 8th January 1925 in Amritsar. He did his masters in Hindi and English from Punjab
Mirza Ghalib was a famous Urdu and Persian poet of the Indian subcontinent in the 19th century. His original name was Mirza Asadullah Baig Khan. Ghalib was his pen name.He was born on December 27, 1796. Mirza Ghalib was of Turkish descent. His father and uncle died when he was young. He migrated to Delhi.According
Mirabai (1498-1547) is a mystical poetess, singer and saint of the sixteenth century. Her compositions are popular allover India. She was a disciple of Shri Guru Ravidas and composed between 200 to 1300 devotional songs called bhajans. Her bhajans are in the bhakti tradition, and passionately praised Lord Krishna.Mirabai was born in an aristocratic family
Michael Madhusudan Dutt, the pioneer or Bengali literature, was the popular and important poet and playwright of his times. Bengali literature flourished with his innovations and experimentations of blank verses, sonnet forms and western literary elements in Bengali poetry. He wrote the first epic in Bengali literature.Born in the year 1824, in an aristocratic family,
Samuel Langhorne Clemens (Mark Twain) was born in Florida, Missouri, of a Virginian family. The family soon moved to Hannibal, Missouri, where Twain was brought up. At school, accroding to his own words, he “excelled only in spelling”. After his father’s death in 1847, Twain was apprenticed to a printer. Her also started his career
Maithili Sharan Gupt, an eminent Hindi poet, was popularly known as Rashtrakavi. Author of the great epic ‘Saket’, Maithili Sharan Gupt started writing in the beginning of the present century under the spiring guidance of the doyen of Hindi literature, Pandit Mahavir Prasad Dwivedi. His great contribution to Hindi literature was that he moulded the
Mahasweta Devi was born in 1926 in the city of Dacca in East Bengal (modern day Bangladesh). As an adolescent, she and her family moved to West Bengal in India. Born into a literary family, Mahasweta Devi was also influenced by her early association with Gananatya, a group who attempted to bring social and political
Mahadevi Verma was born in Farrukhabad, Uttar Pradesh in a family of lawyers. She was educated at Jabalpur, Madhya Pradesh. She was the eldest child and had two brothers and one sister. She was married in 1914 with Dr. Swarup Narain Verma in Indore at a tender age of 9. She stayed with her parents