William Wordsworth was born in Cockermouth, Cumberland, in the Lake District. His father was John Wordsworth, Sir James Lowther’s attorney—the fifth Baronet Lowther was the most feared and hated aristocrat in all of Cumberland and Westmoreland. However, the magnificent landscape deeply affected Wordsworth’s imagination and gave him a love of nature. He lost his mother

There is not much records of Shakespeare´s personal life.William Shakespeare was born in Stratford-upon-Avon, a small country town. Stratford was famous for its malting. The black plague killed in 1564 one out of seven of the town’s 1,500 inhabitants. Shakespeare was the eldest son of Mary Arden, the daughter of a local landowner, and her

Born in Dublin in the year 1865, William Butler Yeats would go on to become universally recognized by his peers as the greatest poet of this century writing in the English language. This recognition would come as early as 1828, a decade before his death with the publication of arguably his finest volume, The Tower.

W. Somerset Maugham was born in Paris as the sixth and youngest son of the solicitor to the British embassy. He learned French as his native tongue. At the age of 10 Maugham was orphaned and sent to England to live with his uncle, the vicar of Whitstable. Educated at King’s School, Canterbury, and Heidelberg

Vladimir Nabokov was born in St. Petersburg into a wealthy, aristocratic family. His father, Vladimir Dimitrievich Nabokov, was a liberal politician, lawyer, and journalist. The household was Anglophile—Nabokov spoke Russian and English, and at the age of five he learned French. Nabokov received his education at the Tenishev, St. Petersburg’s most innovative school. At 16

Vikram Seth is a famous Indian poet, novelist, travel writer, librettist, children’s writer, biographer and memoirist.Vikram Seth was born on June 20, 1952 at Kolkata. His father, Prem, was an employee of the Bata India Limited shoe company who migrated to post-Partition India from West Punjab in Pakistan.Vikram Seth’s childhood was spent in the town

Vidyaniwas Mishra (1926-2005) was a scholar, a noted Hindi-Sanskrit litterateur, and a journalist.Born at Pakardiha in Gorakhpur district of Uttar Pradesh in January, 1926, he had his education at Allahabad University and Gorakhpur University. After his M.A. in Sanskrit he involved himself in the work of compiling the Hindi dictionary under the direction of the

Victor-Marie Hugo was born in Besançon as the son of Joseph-Leopold-Sigisbert Hugo and Sophie Trebuchet. Hugo’s father was an officer in Napoleon’s army, an enthusiastic republican and ruthless professional soldier, who loved dangers and adventures. After the marriage of his parents had collapsed, he was raised by his mother. In 1807 Sophie took her family

Vidiadhar Surajprasad Naipaul was born in a small town in Trinidad into a family of Indian Brahmin origin. His father, Seepersad Naipaul, was a correspondent for the Trinidad Guardian. He also published short stories. When Naipaul was six the family moved to Port of Spain, the capital. Seepersad Naipaul died of a heart attack in

Upamanyu Chatterjee, born in 1959 at Patna, Bihar, is one of the new talented Indian writers of the contemporary generation. After studying English literature at Delhi University, he joined the Indian Administrative Service in 1983. In 1990, he lived as Writer in Residence, at the University of Kent, U.K. In 1998, he was appointed Director

Tulsidas (1532-1623) was a legendary Indian poet and philosopher Tulsidas is the author of the ‘Ramcharitmanas’, one of the greatest epics ever written. His full name was Goswami Tulsidas and he was born in 1532 A.D in Rajpur, in the Banda district of Uttar Pradesh, India, during the reign of Mughal Emperor, Akbar. Tulsidas was