Benjamin Disraeli (1804 – 1881) Benjamin Disraeli was born on December 21, 1804 at Bedford Row, London. He was the eldest son born to Isaac Disraeli and his wife Maria Basevi. He was educated at Miss Roper’s school in Islington and then went to Higham Fall School in Walthamstow between 1817 and 1821. In 1824, he was admitted to Lincoln’s Inn but he withdrew in 1831. After that Disraeli travelled through-out...

Arundhati Roy Born in 1961 in Bengal, Arundhati Roy grew up in Kerala. She was trained as an architect at the Delhi School of Architecture, but became better known for her complex, scathing film scripts. She wrote and starred in In Which Annie Gives it Those Ones, and wrote the script for Pradip Kishen’s Electric Moon. Media attention came when she spoke out in support of Phoolan Devi, who she felt...

Anton Pavlovish Chekhov  (1860 – 1904)   Chekhov was a Russian dramatist and short-story writer, ranked as one of the foremost figures in Russian literature. Chekhov was born on January 29, 1860, in Taganrog, Ukraine, and educated in medicine at Moscow State University. While still at the university he published humorous magazine stories and sketches. He rarely practiced medicine because of his success as a writer and because he had tuberculosis,...

Anthony Gilbert  (1899 1973) Pseudonym for Lucy Beatrice Malleson, Gilbert also wrote as J. Kilmeny Keith and Anne Meredith, prolific British mystery writer, a woman writing under a man’s name, whose most famous creation is lawyer-detective Arthur G. Crook. For many years Gilbert’s identity was kept a secret. She wrote straight fiction -mostly with a Victorian flavour – under the pseudonym of Anne Meredith. Lucy Malleson was born in Upper Norwood,...

Anne Tyler Anne Tyler was an American novelist and short-story writer, whose keen ear for dialogue and life-like characters has won her critical acclaim. Anne Tyler was born in Minneapolis, Minnesota, but grew up in North Carolina, the daughter of an industrial chemist and social worker. The writer Eudora Welty, who depicted the Mississippi of her childhood, influenced Tyler. Several of Tyler’s novels have been set in Baltimore and focus on...

Andrew Marvel (1621 – 1678) Andrew Marvell was born at Winestead-in-Holderness, Yorkshire, on March 31, 1621 to the Rev. Andrew Marvell, and his wife Anne. He was educated at the Hull Grammar School, and in 1633 he matriculated as a Sizar of Trinity College, Cambridge. Two poems by Marvel, one in Greek, one in Latin, were printed in the Musa Cantabrigiensis in 1637. In 1638, Marvell was admitted a Scholar of...

Alfred Tennyson (1809 – 1892) Alfred Tennyson was the English poet often regarded as the chief representative of the Victorian age in poetry. Tennyson succeeded Wordsworth as Poet Laureate in 1850. Lord Tennyson was born on August 5, 1809 in Somersby, Lincolnshire. His father, George Clayton Tennyson, a clergyman and rector, suffered from depression and was notoriously absentminded. Alfred began to write poetry at an early age in the style of...

Alfred Jarry ( 1873 – 1907) Alfred Jarry was born in Laval, Mayenne, into a well-to-do farmer and craftsman family From his mother’s side he received a legacy of eccentrity but also a strain of insanity. He was educated in the schools of Saint-Brieuc and Rennes. At the age of 18 he moved to Paris to live on a small family inheritance, and pursued his studies at the Lycec Henri IV....