Lucille Clifton was born Thelma Lucille Sayles into a working class New York family in June 1936.  Her father was a steel worker and her mother bore six children.  Graduating from High School Lucille won a scholarship to Howard University and then studied at the State University of New York at Fredonia, quite close to […]

Alan Alexander Milne was the famous writer of the much-loved Winnie the Pooh stories and is more generally known as A. A. Milne.  Born in Kilburn, London in 1882 he spent his formative years living in a small independent school which his father, John Vine Milne ran.  A. A. was fortunate to have visionary novelist […]

Kenneth Adolf Slessor was born in Orange, New South Wales in 1901 to parents of German-Jewish origin.  The family name was originally Schloesser and they moved to Sydney when Kenneth was two years old.  The young boy loved to read and was encouraged by his parents to do so, along with teaching him to love […]

Considered one of the greatest Polish literary figures Czeslaw Milosz was born the 30th June 1911 to a Catholic family in the small village of Szetejnie, which was part of the Grand Duchy of Lithuania. His father Aleksander was a qualified civil engineer, whilst his mother Weronika was of noble descent.  Fluent in Polish, Lithuanian, […]

Oliver Wendell Holmes Sr. was an American doctor, poet, professor and author.  Born 29th August 1809 in Cambridge, in Massachusetts USA he was the firstborn son to Sarah Wendell, who came from a wealthy family  and Abiel Holmes, a Calvinist Church minister.  His son of the same name would go on to be a prominent […]