Samuel Taylor Coleridge (1772 – 1834) Samuel Taylor Coleridge was born in Ottery St. Mary on 21 October 1772 to John Coleridge, a minister, and Ann Bowden Coleridge. His brother Luke died in 1790 and his only sister Ann in 1791, inspiring Col to write Monody, one of his-first poems, in which he likens himself to Thomas Chatterton. Col married Sara Hutchinson in October of 1795. With his marriage, Col tried...

Salman Rushdie Salman Rushdie is a highly acclaimed writer whose books continue to trigger arguments on the nature of free speech and an author’s social responsibility. His book, Midnight’s Children, brought him critical acclaim and the Booker Prize in 1981. He was born in Mumbai, India, on June 19, 1947, almost exactly two months before India gained her independence from Britain. His parents, Anis Ahmed and Negin Rushdie, were devout Muslims,...

Rudyard Kipling  (1865 – 1936) Rudyard Kipling was an English short-story writer, novelist and poet, remembered for his celebration of British imperialism and heroism in India and Burma. Kipling’s glorification of the British Empire and racial prejudices, stated in his poem The White Man’s Burden (1899), has repelled many readers. However he sounded a note of uncharacteristic humility and caution in The Recessional (1897). Kipling was the first Englishman to receive...

Robert Herrick (1591 – 1674) Robert Herrick was an English poet, generally considered the greatest of the Cavalier poets. He was born in Cheapside, Lon-don, in 1591, the seventh child of Nicholas Herrick, a prosperous goldsmith. In November 1592, two days after making a will, Nicholas killed himself by jumping from the fourth-floor window of his house. The Queen’s Almoner had to be paid a £220 fee for not to confiscate...

Robert Frost (1874 – 1963) Robert Frost was one of the finest of rural New England’s 20th century pastoral poets. Frost published his first books in Great Britain in the 1910s, but he soon became in his own country the most read and constantly anthologised poet. Frost was awarded the Pulitzer Prize four times. He was born in San Francisco, California on March 26, 1874. His father, a journalist and local...

Robert Browning (1812 1889) Robert Browning was an English poet, noted for his mastery of dramatic monologue. Browning was long unsuccessful as a poet, but finally became a great Victorian poet. Robert Browning was born in London as the son of Robert Browning, a wealthy clerk in the Bank of England, and Sarah Anna Wiedemann, of German-Scottish origin. He received scant formal education, but had access to his father’s large (6,000...

Richard (Nathaniel) Wright  (1908 – 1960) Wright was an American short story writer and novelist, whose best-known work, Native Son, was published in 1940. The book immediately established Wright as an important author and a spokesman on conditions facing African-Americans. It gained a large multiracial readership and was a Book-of-the-Month Club selection. Richard Wright was born on a plantation near Natchez, Mississippi. He grew up in poverty His grandparents had been...