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George Wither was a controversial English poet, born in the late 16th century when the country was changing in style and outlook from the perceived excessive glamour of the Elizabethan age to the more austere times under James I. He was one of those who was, on the one hand, nostalgic for the reign of Elizabeth I, but on the other ...
Reading the story of the famous Harry Harbord Morant, often referred to by his nickname of “The Breaker”, it is hard to believe that this man was a poet. He was generally known as a rollicking, womanising, horse-breaking drover and soldier who found his way from England to Australia and then on to the Boer War battlefields of 19th Century South Africa. ...
Born in 1874 in London, Gilbert Keith Chesterton was a writer, critic, lay preacher and poet who was known for his sharp wit and more popularly remembered for his fictional detective creation Father Brown. Over his lifetime, G. K. Chesterton wrote some 80 novels and prose works, 200 short stories and thousands of essays on everything from religion and philosophy ...
Born in 1884 in London, writer Gilbert Frankau was mostly known for his prose work but was also an important contributor to the poetry of the First World War. Although he was born into a Jewish household, Frankau was actually baptized into the Anglican Church when he was thirteen years old. His father was a merchant who had been born in ...
One of the most prolific writers of historical fiction in the 20th Century, author and poet Henry Treece was born in 1911 in Staffordshire. Though he mostly wrote prose fiction he also published five collections of poems including The Haunted Garden in 1947. Together with writer J F Henry he was founder of the New Apocalypse Movement that grew up in ...
Often lost in the shadow of some his more famous compatriots, George Peele was a poet and competent dramatist who was born in Sussex in 1556. His father was reasonably affluent and worked at a local hospital as a clerk, writing two largely forgotten works on book keeping but able to provide a good education for his son. Peele initially attended the ...
Born in New York, in 1910, Hilda Conkling was a remarkable writer because all of her published work was produced at a very early age, between 4 and 14 years, and she had stopped composing verses by the time she reached adulthood. The primary driving force for this early development was undoubtedly her mother, Grace Hazard Conkling, who was herself a ...
The poet, novelist and playwright Franz Werfel was born in the Czech capital of Prague at the end of the 19th century although, of course, at that time, the city was part of the Austro-Hungarian Empire. Although Jewish by birth he also had strong leanings towards the Catholic faith which, not surprisingly, made him unpopular with Jewish friends and readers of his ...
Fulke Greville was an aristocrat who lived during the reigns of Queen Elizabeth I and James I, serving both with distinction in a number of posts including Secretary of State to Wales. He was a thoughtful and often gravely serious poet and also a writer of sonnets and closet dramas. His most famous work is probably the biography of his close friend ...
Genevieve Taggard was an American poet who, even though her life was cut short in her fifties, was responsible for thirteen books of poetry. She also wrote a biography of the poet Emily Dickinson and edited four books, including Circumference: Varieties of Metaphysical Verse, 1459-1928. Throughout her life she was deeply conscious of social injustices, especially for those seriously affected by ...
