Guy de Maupassant (1850-1893) Guy De Maupassant, French author of the naturalistic school who is generally considered the greatest French short story writer. Guy de Maupassant was probably born at the Château de Miromesniel, Dieppe on August 5, 1850. In 1869 Maupassant started to study law in Paris, but soon, at the age of 20, he volunteered to serve in the army during the Franco-Prussian War. Between the years 1872 and...

George Orwell (1903-1950) George Orwell was born in 1903 in Motihari, Bengal, India. His father, Richard Walmesley Blair was a civil servant for the British government. In 1904 Orwell moved with his mother and sister to England where he remained until 1922. He began to write at an early age, and was even published in college periodicals, but he did not enjoy school. Orwell wrote about his unfavourable prep-school experiences in...

George Eliot (1819 – 1880) George Eliot (1819-1880) is regarded as one of the greatest Victorian novelists, especially noted for her insightful psychological characterisation. Mary Ann Evans (George Eliot) was born in Chilvers Coton, Warwickshire. Her father was a carpenter who rose to be a land agent. She was educated at home and in several schools she developed a strong evangelical piety. However, later Eliot rejected her dogmatic faith. When her...

George Bancroft (1800 – 1891) George Bancroft was born at Worcester, Mass., Oct. 3, 1800. His father, the Rev. Dr. Aaron Bancroft, was a minister of much ability, and a man of fine literary taste. Dr. Bancroft prepared an excellent Lift of Washington, which he published in 1807. Without doubt, the tastes of the father had something to do with the literary tendencies of his son. George Bancroft’s education was ample....

Geoffrey Chaucer Geoffrey Chaucer is remembered as the author of The Canterbury tales, which ranks as one of the greatest epic works of world literature. Chaucer made a crucial contribution to English literature in using English at a time when much court poetry was still written in Anglo-Norman or Latin. Geoffrey Chaucer was born in London. Little is known of his early education, but his works show that he could read...

Bernard Shaw (1856 – 1950) Bernard Shaw was born in 1856 in Dublin, in a lower-middle class family of Scottish-Protestant ancestry His father was a failed corn-merchant, with a drinking problem and a squint; his mother was a professional singer, the sole disciple of Vandeleur Lee, a voice teacher claiming to have a unique and original approach to singing. When Shaw was just short of his sixteenth birthday, his mother left...

Fyodor Mikhaylovich Dostoyevsky (1821 – 1881) Dostoyevsky was a Russian novelist, highly acclaimed as one of the greatest of all novelists, who penetrated the human mind and heart with exceptional insight and whose fiction has had profound influence on the modern intellectual climate. Born in Moscow on November 11, 1821, Dostoyevsky was the son of a former army doctor. At the age of 17, he was sent to the military academy...

Francis Beaumont (1584 – 1616) Francis Beaumont third son of Francis Beaumont, justice of the Court of Common Pleas, was born at Grace-Dieu, Leicestershire, in 1584. He entered Broadgates Hall (now Penibroke College), Oxford in 1597 with his brothers Henry and John, but left with-out taking a degree and entered the Inner Temple to study law in 1600. It seems, however, that he studied little, and there is no evidence of...