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...

Francis Bacon (1561-1626) Francis Bacon was the son of Nicolas Bacon, the Lord Keeper of the Seal of Elizabeth I. He entered Trinity College Cambridge at age 12. Bacon later described his tutors as “Men of sharp wits, shut up in their cells of a few authors, chiefly Aristotle, their Dictator.” His father died when he was 18. He turned to the law and at 23 he was already in the...

Emily Dickinson (1830 – 1886) Emily Dickinson was an American lyrical poet, and an obsessively private writer — only seven of her some 1800 poems were published during her lifetime. Dickinson was born in Amherst, Massachusetts, to a family well-known for educational and political activity. Her father, an orthodox Calvinist, was a lawyer and treasurer of Amherst College, and also served in Congress. She was educated at Amherst Academy (1834-47) and...

Edward Herbert (1582 – 1648)   Edward Herbert was born at Eyton, Shropshire, on March 3, 1582. He was the eldest son of Richard Herbert (c.1554-96), Sheriff of Montgomeryshire and an MP, and Magdalen Herbert (later Lady Danvers), the patron of John Donne and other literary figures. He was largely educated at home, but as a boy he came under the tutelage of the Welsh autodidact Edward Thelwall, who apparently taught...

Edmund Wailer (1606 – 1687) Edmund Waller was a celebrated poet and wit in his lifetime, and many of his poems had long circulated in manuscript before the 1645 publication of his Poems. The first fully authorised edition was that of 1664. Edmund Waller was born on March 3, 1606 in Coleshill, Hertfordshire (now in Buckinghamshire), the eldest son of a wealthy landowner. He was educated at Eton and King’s College,...

Edgar Allen Poe (1809 – 1849) Edgar Allen Poe was born in Boston, January 19, 1809. His father, the son of a distinguished officer in the Revolutionary army, was educated for the law, but having married the beautiful English actress, Elizabeth Arnold, he abandoned law, and in company with his wife, led a wandering life on the stage. The two died within a short time of each other, leaving three children...

E.M. Forster (1879 – 1970) Edward Morgan Forster was a noted English author and critic and a member of the Bloomsbury group. He was born in London on January 1, 1871 as the son of an architect, who died before his only child was two years old. Forster attended King’s College, Cambridge (1897-1901), where he met members of the later formed Bloomsbury group. After graduating he travelled in Italy and Greece...