An influence on such movements as the Harlem Renaissance, Fenton Johnson was a poet and short story writer who was born in Chicago in 1888. His father was a porter for the railways and the Johnsons were considered well-off for an African American family at the time and even owned their house on State Street. Fenton Johnson had no real pretensions ...
Poet Friedrich von Schiller was born in Marbach, Württemberg, Germany, in 1759, and is most notable for his involvement in the later years of his life with the Weimarer Klassic cultural movement along with his friend Johann Wolfgang Goethe. Whilst he was brought up with his mother and four sisters, the family moved to Lorch when Schiller’s father returned from military ...
Often considered as the forefather of the heroic couplet, Edmund Waller was a politician and poet who was born in Buckinghamshire in 1606. After living for a while in Amersham, the Waller family moved to Beaconsfield where the young Edmund was educated by a series of, what he would later describe as, dull tutors. When he was 10 years old, his ...
Daniel Defoe was an influential man whose life spanned the 17th and 18th centuries. He was responsible for a huge output of written work. He wrote poetry, novels and, in his famous travelogue covering the whole of Great Britain, he wrote a masterpiece that captured the essence of the British Isles in great detail. He was also a journalist when such an ...
Boris Vian’s life in 20th century France was short and yet he managed to cram a great deal into his short life. Apart from being a writer of many plays, novels, poems, songs and opera librettos he was a qualified civil engineer and jazz musician. Music was probably his first love as, in truth, his writing did not meet with as much ...
