Documents for "English Literature, 19th cent.: Biographies":

• A. E. see Russell, George William.

• Allingham, William 1824-89, English poet, b. Donegal, Ireland. He is best known for his short lyrics, most notably "The Fairies," beginning "Up the airy mountain, Down the rushy glen."

• Anstey, F. pseud. of Thomas Anstey Guthrie, 1856-1934, English author. He relinquished his law practice to write humorous fiction. His best and most successful works are marked by an atmosphere of fantasy and...

• Archer, William 1856-1924, English author, critic, and translator, b. Scotland. Throughout his life he worked as drama critic on several London newspapers. He influenced the direction of English and American drama...

• Arnold, Matthew 1822-88, English poet and critic, son of the educator Dr. Thomas Arnold.

• Arnold, Sir Edwin 1832-1904, English author. After serving as principal of the government college in Pune, India, he joined (1861) the staff of the London Daily Telegraph. He won fame for his blank-verse epic The Light of Asia (1879), dealing with the life of Buddha. The poem was attacked for its alleged distortion of Buddhist doctrine and for its tolerant attitude toward a non-Christian religion. Besides other volumes...

• Aubert de Gaspé, Philippe see Gaspé, Philippe Aubert de.

• Austin, Alfred 1835-1913, English author, b. Leeds. Originally trained for a legal career, he eventually turned to writing and politics. From 1883-95 he edited the National Review. Although in 1896 he succeeded Tennyson as poet laureate, his poetry is negligible, and he was the butt of many critics who attacked his snobbishness, tastelessness, and lack of poetic talent. His...

• Aytoun, William Edmonstoune 1813-65, Scottish poet. He was (1845-64) professor of belles-lettres at Edinburgh Univ. The Bon Gaultier Ballads (written with Sir Theodore Martin, 1845) parodied poems by Macaulay, Tennyson, and...

• Barham, Richard Harris pseud. Thomas Ingoldsby , 1788-1845, English humorist, grad. Oxford. Ordained a minister in 1813, he became a minor canon of the Chapel Royal in 1824. In 1837 he began in Bentley's Miscellany, under his pseudonym, a series of parodies of country superstitions, medieval legends, and contemporary foibles. Barham had a lively invention, a gift of creating suspense, and an unusually...

• Barnes, William 1801-86, English poet and philologist. After a career as a schoolmaster, he took holy orders in 1847. He is best known for his poems in Dorset dialect, which began to appear in local newspapers in...

• Barrett, Elizabeth see Browning , Elizabeth Barrett.

• Beddoes, Thomas Lovell 1803-49, English poet and dramatist. After graduating from Oxford, he studied medicine and anatomy at Göttingen. His writings, inclined toward the macabre and grotesque, include The Improvisatore...

• Besant, Sir Walter 1836-1901, English novelist and humanitarian, grad. Christ's College, Cambridge, 1859. He taught at the Royal College of Mauritius from 1861 to 1867. After his return to England he devoted himself...

• Birrell, Augustine 1850-1933, English essayist and public official. As chief secretary for Ireland (1907-16) his failure to end the plotting that resulted in the Easter Rebellion of 1916 led to his retirement from...

• Blackmore, Richard Doddridge 1825-1900, English novelist. Although trained as a lawyer and called to the bar, he abandoned his legal career because of ill health. His reputation rests chiefly on his romantic novel about the...

• Blake, William 1757-1827, English poet and artist, b. London. Although he exerted a great influence on English romanticism , Blake defies characterization by school, movement, or even period. At the same time no poet...

• Blessington, Marguerite, countess of 1789-1849, English author and famous beauty, b. Ireland. At the age of 14 she was forced by her father into marriage with Capt. Maurice St. Leger Farmer, a sadist who abused her. She soon left him...

• Blunt, Wilfrid Scawen 1840-1922, English poet and political writer. After retiring c.1872 from the diplomatic service, he began a career of travel and political crusading. He wrote several works championing Indian,...

• Boldrewood, Rolf see Browne, Thomas Alexander.

• Borrow, George Henry 1803-81, English writer and traveler. He led a nomadic life in England and on the Continent, where he was a translator and agent for the British and Foreign Bible Society. His friendship with the...

• Bowdler, Thomas 1754-1825, English editor. He is best known for his Family Shakespeare (10 vol., 1818), an expurgated edition for family reading that, although attacked for its prudery, was reprinted many times. Bowdler also edited (omitting passages of an irreligious or immoral...

• Bowles, William Lisle 1762-1850, English poet, cleric, and literary critic. In 1804 he became vicar of Bremhill, Wiltshire, in 1818 chaplain to the prince regent, and in 1828 canon residentiary of Salisbury Cathedral...

• Brontë family of English novelists, including Charlotte Brontë, 1816-55, English novelist, Emily Jane Brontë, 1818-48, English novelist and poet, and Anne Brontë, 1820-49, English novelist. ...

• Brown, George Douglas see Douglas, George.

• Brown, John 1810-82, Scottish essayist. He was a physician. His writing was collected in Horae Subsecivae (3 vol., 1858-82), which included his unique picture of a dog, Rab and His Friends (1859), and a memoir...

• Browning, Elizabeth Barrett 1806-61, English poet, b. Durham. A delicate and precocious child, she spent a great part of her early life in a state of semi-invalidism. She read voraciously—philosophy, history, literature—and...

• Browning, Robert 1812-89, English poet. His remarkably broad and sound education was primarily the work of his artistic and scholarly parents—in particular his father, a London bank clerk of independent means. Pauline, his first poem, was published anonymously in 1833. In 1834 he visited Italy, which eventually became his second homeland. He won some recognition with Paracelsus (1835) and Sordello (1840). In 1837, urged by William Macready, the Shakespearean actor, Browning began writing for the stage. Although not especially successful, he wrote eight verse plays during the next nine years,...

• Bulwer-Lytton, Edward George Earle Lytton, 1st Baron Lytton 1803-73, English novelist. The son of Gen. William Bulwer and Elizabeth Lytton, he assumed the name Bulwer-Lytton in 1843 when he inherited the Lytton estate "Knebworth." He was created Baron Lytton of Knebworth in 1866. His varied and highly derivative novels won wide popularity. Many of his early novels of manners— Falkland (1827), Paul Clifford (1830), and Eugene Aram (1832)—reflect the influence of his friend William Godwin. Bulwer-Lytton, however, is best remembered for his extremely well-researched historical novels, particularly The Last Days of Pompeii (1834) and Rienzi (1835). In 1849, with The Caxtons, he began a series of humorous domestic novels, which had recently become the vogue. His utopian novel, The Coming Race, prefigured the works of Wells and Huxley. A member of Parliament from 1831 to 1841, Bulwer-Lytton was a reformer, but in 1852 he returned to Parliament as a Conservative. In 1858 he was appointed...

• Bulwer-Lytton, Edward Robert, 1st earl of Lytton pseud. Owen Meredith, 1831-91, English diplomat and poet; son of the novelist, Bulwer-Lytton. He was in the diplomatic service from 1850 to 1875, when Disraeli appointed him viceroy of India; for his services in the...

• Butler, Samuel 1835-1902, English author. He was the son and grandson of eminent clergymen. In 1859, refusing to be ordained, he went to New Zealand, where he established a sheep farm and in a few years made a...

• Byron, George Gordon Noel Byron, 6th Baron 1788-1824, English poet and satirist.

• Caine, Hall (Sir Thomas Henry Hall Caine), 1853-1931, English novelist. Secretary to Dante Gabriel Rossetti, he lived with him from 1881 until the poet's death and wrote Recollections of Rossetti (1882). His enormously...

• Calverley, Charles Stuart 1831-84, English poet and translator. Expelled from Oxford for a youthful prank, he earned academic honors at Cambridge. He became famous for the wit and erudition of his light verse, particularly...

• Campbell, Thomas 1777-1844, Scottish poet. He is best known for his war poems "Hohenlinden," "The Battle of the Baltic," and "Ye Mariners of England." Among his other volumes of poetry are The Pleasure of...

• Carleton, William 1794-1869, Irish author. His Traits and Stories of Irish Peasantry (5 vol., 1830-33) realistically depicts his own rural youth. This was followed by Tales of Ireland (1834), Fardorougha the Miser...

• Carlyle, Jane Baillie Welsh 1801-66, English woman of letters; wife of Thomas Carlyle , whom she married in 1826. She possessed a genius for letter writing, manifest in the volumes of her published correspondence (1883, 1924,...

• Carlyle, Thomas 1795-1881, English author, b. Scotland.

• Carpenter, Edward 1844-1929, English author. Although ordained a minister in 1869, he became a Fabian socialist in 1874 and renounced religion. Among his works on social reform are Towards Democracy (1883-1902), a long...

• Carroll, Lewis pseud. of Charles Lutwidge Dodgson, 1832-98, English writer, mathematician, and amateur photographer, b. near Daresbury, Cheshire (now in Halton). Educated at Christ Church College, Oxford, he was nominated to a studentship (life...

• Cary, Henry Francis 1772-1844, English translator. A graduate of Christ Church College, Oxford, he was assistant librarian in the British Museum from 1826 to 1837. He translated several classical writers, including...

• Chambers, Robert 1802-71: see Chambers, William.

• Clare, John 1793-1864, English poet. A romantic poet who wrote shortly after the vogue for such verse, he had a profound and singular gift for capturing nature in exquisitely specific detail. The son of a farm...

• Clarke, Charles Cowden 1787-1877, English lecturer and author. He was a close friend of Keats, who was a pupil of Clarke's father. Clarke's lectures on Shakespeare were published as Shakespeare Characters (1863). He and...

• Clarke, Mary Victoria (Novello) Cowden see under Clarke, Charles Cowden.

• Clough, Arthur Hugh 1819-61, English poet. He was educated at Rugby and Balliol College, Oxford, where he became friends with Matthew Arnold. After graduation (1841) he was fellow and tutor of Oriel College until 1848 when he resigned. During the next few years he traveled on the Continent. In 1852, inspired by his friendship with...

• Coleridge, Hartley 1796-1849, English author; eldest son of Samuel Taylor Coleridge. Reared in the household of the poet Southey after the estrangement of his parents, Hartley Coleridge went to Oxford and gained a...

• Coleridge, Samuel Taylor 1772-1834, English poet and man of letters, b. Ottery St. Mary, Devonshire; one of the most brilliant, versatile, and influential figures in the English romantic movement.

• Collier, John Payne 1789-1883, English critic, editor, and forger. The marginal notes and signatures supposedly discovered by him on original documents, especially those concerned with Shakespeare, were later exposed...

• Collins, Wilkie (William Wilkie Collins), 1824-89, English novelist. Although trained as a lawyer, he spent most of his life writing, producing some 30 novels. He is best known for two mystery stories, The Woman in White (1860) and The Moonstone (1868), which are considered the first full-length detective novels in English and among the best of their genre; they helped to define the genre of literary melodrama which would peak at the end...

• Colvin, Sir Sidney 1845-1927, English man of letters. Slade professor of fine arts at Cambridge and keeper of prints at the British Museum, he was a friend of Robert Louis Stevenson, whose works and letters he...

• Combe, William 1741-1823, English satirist and miscellaneous writer, b. Bristol. His writing was mainly hack work, issued anonymously to avoid seizure of the proceeds by his many creditors. He is chiefly...

• Corelli, Marie pseud. of Mary Mackay , 1855-1924, English novelist. Her popular, highly moralistic books, written in flamboyant, pretentious prose, include A Romance of Two Worlds (1886), Thelma (1887), Barabbas...

• Cornwall, Barry pseud. of Bryan Waller Procter, 1787-1874, English author. His sentimental songs were much in vogue during his lifetime. Included among Cornwall's longer works are Dramatic Scenes (1819) and Mirandola (1821), a tragedy. He enjoyed the friendship of many of the notable men of his time, including Charles Lamb, of whom he wrote a biography which appeared in 1866. He was the father of the poet...

• Corvo, Baron see Rolfe, Frederick William.

• Cory, William Johnson 1823-92, English poet and classicist. He was assistant master at Eton from 1845 to 1872. His verse, of which Ionica (1858) is the best known, consists primarily of imitations and translations of the...

• Crabb, George 1778-1851, English writer and philologist. He is known for his Dictionary of English Synonyms (1816) and his History of English Law (1829).

• Crabbe, George 1754-1832, English poet, b. Aldeburgh, Suffolk. After practicing medicine for a short time, he went to London in 1780, hoping to earn money by his writing. He was befriended by Edmund Burke, whose...

• Craik, Dinah Maria Mulock 1826-87, English author. She is best known for the moralistic novel John Halifax, Gentleman (1856) and for the children's classics The Adventures of a Brownie (1872) and The Little Lame Prince...

• Croker, John Wilson 1780-1857, British Tory politician and author, b. Ireland. He was a member of Parliament from 1807 to 1832 and secretary of the admiralty from 1810 to 1830. The most famous of his regular...

• Cunningham, Allan 1784-1842, Scottish author. His collection of The Songs of Scotland, Ancient and Modern (4 vol., 1825) included his own "A Wet Sheet and a Flowing Sea," one of the best-known sea ballads. His six-volume...

• Darley, George 1795-1846, English author and mathematician, b. Ireland. Included among his works are the pastoral drama Sylvia (1827), the poem Nepenthe (1835), a precursor of 20th-century symbolist poetry; and...

• Davidson, John 1857-1909, Scottish poet. After teaching in Scotland he went to London. There, struggling with poverty and illness, he wrote Fleet Street Eclogues (1893; Ser. 2, 1896), Ballads and Songs (1894),...

• De la Ramée, Louise see Ouida.

• De Quincey, Thomas 1785-1859, English essayist. In 1802 he ran away from school and tramped about the country, eventually settling in London. His family soon found him and entered him (1803) in Worcester College,...

• Dickens, Charles 1812-70, English author, b. Portsmouth, one of the world's most popular, prolific, and skilled novelists.

• Digby, Kenelm Henry 1800-1880, English author, b. Ireland. He converted to Roman Catholicism after his graduation from Cambridge. His principal works are The Broadstone of Honour (1822; enl. ed., 4 vol., 1826-27) and...

• D'Israeli, Isaac 1766-1848, English critic and historian, b. London; father of Benjamin Disraeli. Born into a wealthy Jewish family, he produced his first poem at the age of 14. His best-known work is Curiosities of Literature (6 vol., 1791-1834), a miscellany of literary and historical anecdotes and original material. D'Israeli's five-volume study of Charles I (1828-31) marked a great advance in methods of historical...

• Dobell, Sydney Thompson 1824-74, English poet. He is best known for the melodramatic, extravagantly emotional poem Balder (1853). In 1855 he published jointly with Alexander Smith (1830-67) some sonnets on the Crimean War....

• Dobson, Austin (Henry Austin Dobson), 1840-1921, English poet and essayist. From 1856 to 1901 he was employed in the Board of Trade. His volumes of light verse include Vignettes in Rhyme (1873), Proverbs in Porcelain...

• Dodgson, Charles Lutwidge see Carroll, Lewis.

• Doughty, Charles Montagu 1843-1926, English author and traveler. He is best known for his Travels in Arabia Deserta (1888), describing his life among the Bedouins. Now considered a masterpiece of travel literature, the book...

• Douglas, George pseud. of George Douglas Brown, 1869-1902, English novelist, b. Scotland. His reputation rests on his single novel, The House with the Green Shutters (1901), a somber story of Scottish life.

• Dowden, Edward 1843-1913, English critic, b. Ireland. He is best known as a Shakespearean scholar and as a biographer of Shelley (1886).

• Dowson, Ernest Christopher 1867-1900, English poet. He attended Queens College, Oxford, but left in 1888 without taking a degree. Dowson's life was tragic. In 1894 his father died, and his mother committed suicide six...

• Doyle, Sir Arthur Conan 1859-1930, British author and creator of Sherlock Holmes, b. Edinburgh. Educated at the Royal Infirmary in Edinburgh, he received a medical degree in 1881. In 1887 the first Sherlock Holmes story, A Study in Scarlet, appeared in Beeton's Christmas Annual. Doyle abandoned his medical practice in 1890 and devoted his time to writing. Other works that involve the sleuthing of the great detective include The Sign of the Four (1890), The Memoirs of Sherlock Holmes (1894), The Hound of the Baskervilles (1902), The Return of Sherlock Holmes (1905), His Last Bow (1917), and The Case Book of Sherlock Holmes (1927). The brilliant and theatrical Holmes solves all his extraordinarily complex cases through ingenious deductive reasoning. His sober, credulous companion, Dr. Watson, narrates most of the...

• Dyce, Alexander 1798-1869, Scottish editor. He is best known for his scholarly editions of the works of Elizabethan and Jacobean dramatists, including those of George Peele, Robert Greene, John Webster,...

• Eden, Emily 1797-1869, English novelist. She went with her brother George, Lord Auckland, to India when he was governor-general (1836-42). Her two novels, The Semi-detached House (1859) and The Semi-attached...

• Edgeworth, Maria 1767-1849, Irish novelist; daughter of Richard Lovell Edgeworth. She lived practically her entire life on her father's estate in Ireland. Letters for Literary Ladies (1795), her first publication,...

• Eliot, George pseud. of Mary Ann or Marian Evans, 1819-80, English novelist, b. Arbury, Warwickshire. One of the great English novelists, she was reared in a strict atmosphere of evangelical Protestantism but eventually rebelled and renounced...

• Evans, Mary Ann see Eliot, George.

• Ferguson, Sir Samuel 1810-86, Irish poet and antiquary. Ogham Inscriptions in Ireland, Wales, and Scotland (1887) is his best-known work on Irish antiquities. His major poetic works, which deal with Irish history, include...

• Field, Michael pseud. used by two English authors, Katherine Harris Bradley, 1846-1914, and her niece Edith Emma Cooper, 1862-1913, who collaborated on numerous literary works, including lyrics and poetic tragedies. Although their work was praised by such contemporaries as Robert Browning and George Moore, it is...

• FitzGerald, Edward 1809-83, English man of letters. A dilettante and scholar, FitzGerald spent most of his life living in seclusion in Suffolk. His masterpiece, a translation of The Rubaiyat of Omar Khayyam, appeared...

• Flecker, James Elroy 1884-1915, English poet and playwright. From 1910-13 he served in the diplomatic corps. A preoccupation with the exotic is revealed in his verse, particularly in The Golden Journey to Samarkand (1913)....

• Forster, John 1812-76, English biographer and critic. He was influential as literary and dramatic critic of the London Examiner. His Lives of the Statesmen of the Commonwealth (5 vol., 1836-39) established his...

• Galt, John 1779-1839, Scottish novelist. He went to Canada as secretary for the Canada Company, founding there in 1827 the town of Guelph and encouraging Canadian immigration. He wrote poems, blank-verse...

• Garnett, Constance (Black) see Garnett, Richard.

• Garnett, David see Garnett, Richard.

• Garnett, Edward see Garnett, Richard.

• Garnett, Richard 1835-1906, English librarian and author. From 1851 until his retirement in 1899 he was connected with the British Museum, which he served with great distinction. Besides writing voluminous essays,...

• Gaskell, Elizabeth Cleghorn (Stevenson) 1810-65, English novelist. When she was still an infant her mother died, and she was brought up by an aunt in Knutsford, Cheshire, the background for several of her novels of provincial life. In...

• Gifford, William 1756-1826, English journalist and critic. He was editor (1797-98) of the Anti-Jacobin and first editor (1809-24) of the archconservative Quarterly Review. Although perceptive, his critical writings...

• Gilbert, Sir William Schwenck 1836-1911, English playwright and poet. He won fame as the librettist of numerous popular operettas, written in collaboration with the composer Sir Arthur Sullivan. While on the staff of the magazine Fun, he first became known as the author of Bab Ballads, amusing but often bitter and cynical poems, published in that magazine and collected in 1869. His first play Dulcamara was produced in 1866. It was followed by several fairly successful comedies, dramas, and burlesques. In 1871, Gilbert began his collaboration with Arthur Sullivan, lasting about 20 years, which...

• Gissing, George 1857-1903, English novelist. His promising future as a scholar was curtailed by his expulsion from Owens College (later the Univ. of Manchester) because of his association with a young prostitute...

• Godwin, William 1756-1836, English author and political philosopher. A minister in his youth, he was, however, plagued by religious doubts and gave up preaching in 1783 for a literary career. His Enquiry Concerning Political Justice (1793) recorded the view that men are ultimately guided by reason and therefore, being rational creatures, could live in harmony without laws and institutions. His views are also reflected in his...

• Grahame, Kenneth 1859-1931, English author. He was a secretary in the Bank of England from 1908 until 1918. His works, noted for their humor and charm, include The Golden Age (1895) and Dream Days (1898), scenes...

• Haggard, Sir Henry Rider 1856-1925, English novelist. From 1875 to 1881 he served in the government of South Africa, which was the scene of many of his highly popular romances. King Solomon's Mines (1885), Allan Quatermain (1887), and She (1887), all in rough but colorful prose, are among his best-known works. He also wrote a study of colonization in South Africa and works on agricultural problems. He was knighted in 1912 for his...

• Hardy, Thomas 1840-1928, English novelist and poet, b. near Dorchester, one of the great English writers of the 19th cent.

• Hawkins, Sir Anthony Hope see Hope, Anthony.

• Hazlitt, William 1778-1830, English essayist. Abandoning the idea of entering the clergy, he took up painting and later journalism. He acted as parliamentary reporter and theatrical critic for the Morning Chronicle...

• Hemans, Felicia Dorothea (Browne) 1793-1835, English poet. She married Capt. Alfred Hemans in 1812, had five children, and separated from him in 1818. Although she wrote much mild and sentimental poetry, today she is known only for...

• Henley, William Ernest 1849-1903, English poet, critic, and editor. Although crippled by tuberculosis of the bone, he led an active, vigorous life. As editor of several reviews successively, he introduced to the public a...

• Henty, George Alfred 1832-1902, English author. Initially a war correspondent, he later wrote boys' adventure tales that were very popular. Henty's books all focused on an ideal of manly virtue. They include The Young Bugler...

• Hogg, James 1770-1835, Scottish poet, called the Ettrick Shepherd. Sir Walter Scott established Hogg's literary reputation by including some of his poems in Border Minstrelsy. Hogg's verse, notable for its earthy...

• Hogg, Thomas Jefferson 1792-1862, friend and biographer of Percy Bysshe Shelley. He was dismissed in 1811 from Oxford for defending Shelley's atheism. Authorized by Mary Shelley to write a life of her husband, Hogg issued (1858) the first two volumes, which were biased,...

• Hone, William 1780-1842, English writer and bookseller. He was tried and acquitted three times in 1817 for publishing parodies on the church and the government. Besides writing political satires (illustrated by...

• Hood, Thomas 1799-1845, English poet. He was an editor of various prominent magazines and periodicals. The greater proportion of his work was written in a humorous vein, and he was celebrated for his use of...

• Hope, Anthony pseud. of Sir Anthony Hope Hawkins, 1863-1933, English novelist. A lawyer, he wrote novels in his spare time. The Prisoner of Zenda (1894), a romantic novel of impersonation set in an imaginary...

• Hopkins, Gerard Manley 1844-89, English poet, educated at Oxford. Entering the Roman Catholic Church in 1866 and the Jesuit novitiate in 1868, he was ordained in 1877. Upon becoming a Jesuit he burned much of his early...

• Horne, Richard Henry or Richard Hengist Horne, 1802-84, English author. His chief work was the allegorical poem Orion (1843). A New Spirit of the Age (1844), written with Elizabeth Barrett (later Elizabeth Barrett Browning) and others, contains social and literary studies. His correspondence with Miss Barrett was published in 1877. Of his plays,...

• Houghton, Richard Monckton Milnes, 1st Baron 1809-85, English author. Throughout much of his life he was an active member of Parliament. He was among the first to recognize the genius of Keats and in 1848 published his Life, Letters, and Literary...

• Hudson, William Henry 1841-1922, English author and naturalist, b. Buenos Aires of American parents. He spent his childhood on the pampas but developed a heart condition and finally emigrated to England in 1870. Hudson...

• Hughes, Thomas 1822-96, English author. A lawyer, Hughes eventually became a judge; he was also a Liberal member of Parliament and worked assiduously for social reforms. His novel of school life, Tom Brown's School...

• Hunt, Leigh (James Henry Leigh Hunt) , 1784-1859, English poet, critic, and journalist. He was a friend of the eminent literary men of his time, and his home was the gathering place for such notable writers as Hazlitt , Lamb , Keats , and Shelley. With his brother John, Hunt established (1808) the Examiner, a liberal weekly to which he contributed political articles. Because of an outspoken article attacking the prince regent, the brothers were imprisoned from 1813 to 1815, but they continued to edit...

• Ingelow, Jean 1820-97, English author. Her poems are characterized by religious introspection and an intimate knowledge of nature. Among her best-known poems are "High Tide on the Coast of Lincolnshire, 1571"...

• Ingoldsby, Thomas see Barham, Richard Harris.

• Ireland, William Henry 1777-1835, English forger of Shakespearean documents and manuscripts. Besides forging deeds and signatures relating to Shakespeare, Ireland fabricated two plays, Vortigern and Rowena (1796) and Henry...

• Jameson, Anna Brownell (Murphy) 1794-1860, English essayist, b. Dublin. The diary of her travels on the Continent as governess to a wealthy family was later published as The Diary of an Ennuyée (1826). Jameson's works—especially...

• Jefferies, Richard 1848-87, English author. A naturalist, he wrote several books about the English countryside. He first achieved recognition with the sketches The Gamekeeper at Home (1878). His novels include Wood...

• Jeffrey, Francis, Lord Jeffrey 1773-1850, Scottish critic and judge. He was a founder and editor of the Edinburgh Review, which printed his critical essays.

• Jerome, Jerome Klapka 1859-1927, English humorist and playwright. His Idle Thoughts of an Idle Fellow (1886) and Three Men in a Boat (1889) gave him his reputation for genial humor. Of his dramatic works, The Passing...

• Jerrold, Douglas William 1803-57, English humorist and playwright. His plays Blackeyed Susan (1829) and Time Works Wonders (1845) were highly successful. Jerrold is best known, however, for his contributions to Punch,...

• Jewsbury, Geraldine Endsor 1812-80, English novelist. She is remembered as much for her friendship with the Carlyles and other literary people as for her novels, which include Zoe (1845) and The Sorrows of Gentility (1856). ...

• Johnson, Lionel Pigot 1867-1902, British poet and critic, b. Broadstairs, Kent, educated at Oxford. He lived an ascetic, scholarly life in London, converting to Roman Catholicism in 1891. His keen interest in the Irish literary...

• Jones, Henry Arthur 1851-1929, English playwright. His reputation was first established with the melodrama The Silver King (with Henry Herman; 1882). Strongly influenced by the great Norwegian playwright Henrik Ibsen, Jones turned to writing dramas of social and moral criticism. He was the author of over 60 plays, of...

• Keats, John 1795-1821, English poet, b. London. He is considered one of the greatest of English poets.

• Keble, John 1792-1866, English clergyman and poet. His career (1807-11) at Corpus Christi College, Oxford, was one of unusual distinction. Made fellow of Oriel College in 1811 and ordained in 1816, he became...

• Kingsley, Charles 1819-75, English author and clergyman. Ordained in 1842, he became vicar of Eversley in Hampshire in 1844. From 1848 to 1852 he published tracts advocating Christian socialism. These views were embodied in his first two novels, Alton Locke (1850) and Yeast (1851), both of which deal with contemporary social problems. In his subsequent novels, including Hypatia (1853), Westward Ho! (1855), and Hereward the Wake (1866), he used historical settings to communicate his ideas. A statement denigrating the Roman Catholic clergy, made by Kingsley in an article, started a controversy with John Henry Newman that resulted in Newman's famous Apologia. In 1859, Kingsley was made chaplain to Queen Victoria. From 1860 to 1869 he was professor of modern history at Cambridge and in 1873 was appointed canon of Westminster. Several collections of his...

• Kipling, Rudyard 1865-1936, English author, b. Bombay (now Mumbai), India. Educated in England, Kipling returned to India in 1882 and worked as an editor on a Lahore paper. His early poems were collected in Departmental Ditties (1886), Barrack-Room Ballads (1892), and other volumes. His first short stories of Anglo-Indian life appeared in Plain Tales from the Hills (1888) and Soldiers Three (1888). In 1889 he returned to London, where his novel The Light That Failed (1890) appeared. Kipling's masterful stories and poems interpreted India in all its heat, strife, and ennui. His romantic imperialism and his characterization of the true Englishman as brave,...

• Knowles, James Sheridan 1784-1862, Anglo-Irish dramatist; cousin of Richard Brinsley Sheridan. Although he was one of the leading playwrights of his time, his works are seldom produced today. His chief plays, which are noted for their professional, workmanlike construction, include the...

• Lamb, Charles 1775-1834, English essayist, b. London. He went to school at Christ's Hospital, where his lifelong friendship with Coleridge began. Lamb was a clerk at the India House from 1792 to 1825. In 1796...

• Landor, Walter Savage 1775-1864, English poet and essayist, educated at Oxford. After a quarrel with his father, he went to live in Wales, where he wrote the epic poem Gebir (1798). The middle and most productive years of his life were spent in Italy. There he wrote the greater portion of his voluminous prose work Imaginary Conversations (1824-53), consisting of nearly 150 dialogues between notables both ancient and modern. Landor's verse ranges from the epic to the epigrammatic, including many lyrics of great simplicity and...

• Lang, Andrew 1844-1912, English scholar and man of letters, b. Scotland. His poetry, much of it written in the forms of ballades, triolets, and rondeaux, appeared in such volumes as his Ballads in Blue China (2...

• Le Fanu, Joseph Sheridan 1814-73, Irish author. He spent his early career as a journalist. In 1863, he began producing a series of stories noted for their reflections of Irish life and supernatural, mysterious atmosphere...

• Lear, Edward 1812-88, English humorist and artist. At 19 he was employed as a draftsman by the London Zoological Society; the paintings of birds that he produced for The Family of the Psittacidae (1832) were among...

• Lee, Sir Sidney 1859-1926, English editor and author. He was editor (1891-1901) of the Dictionary of National Biography but is best known for his Life of William Shakespeare (1898, rev. ed. 1925), which was an enlargement...

• Lemon, Mark 1809-70, English editor and humorist. He was a founder of Punch in 1841 and one of its first editors. Besides contributing to periodicals, he wrote more than 60 plays, none of them memorable.

• Lever, Charles James 1806-72, Irish novelist. He began his career as a practicing physician. His early novels appeared periodically in the Dublin University Magazine, whose editorship he assumed in 1842. A prolific writer,...

• Lewes, George Henry 1817-78, English critic and author. As editor of the Leader (1850-54) and of the Fortnightly Review (1865-66), Lewes distinguished himself as a critic. Influenced by Comte's positivism , he wrote Biographical History of Philosophy (4 vol., 1845-46), Comte's Philosophy of the Sciences (1853), The Physiology of Common Life (2 vol., 1859-60), and Problems of Life and Mind (5 vol., 1874-79). Lewes's plays and novels are forgotten but his most noted work, the Life of Goethe (1855), had a tremendous success. Few men in English literature have produced as much excellent material in such diverse areas. Having been separated from his wife some years earlier, in 1854 he...

• Lewis, Sir George Cornewall 1806-63, English statesman and man of letters. Entering Parliament as a Liberal in 1847, he served as chancellor of exchequer (1855-58), home secretary (1859-61), and secretary of war (1861-63)...

• Liddell, Henry George 1811-98, English classical scholar. He was headmaster (1846-55) of Westminster School and dean (1855-91) of Christ Church, Oxford. Liddell is famous for his compilation of the Greek-English Lexicon...

• Lockhart, John Gibson 1794-1854, Scottish editor, lawyer, literary critic, and biographer; son-in-law and biographer of Sir Walter Scott. A major contributor to Blackwood's Magazine, he also was editor of and contributor to the Quarterly Review (1825-53). He became known as "The Scorpion" because of the fierceness of his criticism. Among his works are a volume of adaptations (1823) from ancient Spanish ballads, several novels, and a biography of Burns (1828). However, his fame rests...

• Lover, Samuel 1797-1868, Irish painter, novelist, and songwriter. Before turning to literature, Lover was a painter, and in 1828 he became a member of the Royal Hibernian Academy of Art. However, he is best...

• Lytton, Edward George Earle Lytton Bulwer-Lytton, 1st Baron see Bulwer-Lytton.

• Lytton, Edward Robert Bulwer-Lytton, earl of pseud. Owen Meredith: see Bulwer-Lytton.

• Macdonald, George 1824-1905, Scottish author. Ordained a Congregational minister, he eventually abandoned his vocation to become a writer and free-lance preacher. His first published works were several volumes of...

• Macleod, Fiona see Sharp, William.

• Maginn, William 1793-1842, Irish writer. Some of his best stories and essays appeared in Blackwood's Magazine. His short story "Bob Burke's Duel with Ensign Brady" is considered one of the most humorous Irish...

• Mahony, Francis Sylvester pseud. Father Prout , 1804-66, Irish humorist. He was dismissed from the Jesuit order in 1830 for a minor offense. In 1832 he became a parish priest but lived most of his life as a man of letters. His witty essays and...

• Mangan, James Clarence 1803-49, Irish poet. He spent most of his life as a clerk, eventually slipping into alcoholism and opium addiction. His reputation rests on his English renderings of Gaelic poems, such as the...

• Marryat, Frederick 1792-1848, English novelist. He is famous for his thrilling tales of sea adventure. His 24 years of service in the British navy in various parts of the world provided background for his stories...

• Marston, John Westland 1819-90, English author. Although his poetic dramas, including The Patrician's Daughter (1842) and The Favourite of Fortune (1866), were popular, he is more noteworthy for his literary criticism,...

• Martineau, Harriet 1802-76, English author. A journalist rather than a writer of literature, she was an enormously popular author. Her success is the more remarkable since she was deaf from childhood and the victim...

• Maturin, Charles Robert 1782-1824, Irish author. A minister by vocation, he wrote novels in the manner of the Gothic horror tale of Ann Ward Radcliffe. They include The Fatal Revenge (1807), The Milesian Chief (1812),...

• Meredith, George 1828-1909, English novelist and poet. One of the great English novelists, Meredith wrote complex, often comic yet highly cerebral works that contain striking psychological character studies. As a...

• Meredith, Owen see Bulwer-Lytton, Edward Robert.

• Meynell, Alice (Thompson) 1847-1922, English poet and essayist. She spent most of her youth in Italy. Converted to Roman Catholicism in 1872, she wrote much on religious subjects. In 1877 she married Wilfrid Meynell...

• Milnes, Richard Monckton see Houghton, Richard Monckton Milnes, 1st Baron.

• Mitford, Mary Russell 1787-1855, English author. Her first volume of poetry (1810) sold well despite adverse criticism. Later she turned to playwriting, writing one notable success, Rienzi (1828). Our Village (5 vol.,...

• Monckton Milnes, Richard see Houghton, Richard Monckton Milnes, 1st Baron.

• Moore, Thomas 1779-1852, Irish poet, b. Dublin. He achieved prominence in his day not only for his poetry but also for his love of Ireland and personal charm. A lawyer, he was for a time registrar of the...

• More, Hannah 1745-1833, English author and social reformer. She was educated, and later taught, at her sisters' school for girls in Bristol. At the age of 22 she became engaged to William Turner, a wealthy...

• Morley, Henry 1822-94, English man of letters. In 1850 he closed his successful school to assist Dickens in editing Household Words. After that he combined an editorial with an academic career, teaching English literature at several universities. Author of several biographies and critical studies, he wrote English Writers (1887-95), an unfinished 11-volume history of English literature. As editor of Morley's University Library, Cassell's National Library, and other series, he produced low-priced editions of literary...

• Mulock, Dinah Maria see Craik, Dinah Maria Mulock.

• Myers, Frederic William Henry 1843-1901, English essayist and poet. His works include the poem St. Paul (1867) and Essays, Classical and Modern (1883). He is well known for his investigations of psychic phenomena in connection...

• Norton, Caroline Elizabeth Sarah (Sheridan) 1808-77, English author; granddaughter of Richard Brinsley Sheridan. She gained more renown for her eventful life than for her writings. Her husband George Norton's divorce suit, with Lord...

• O'Grady, Standish 1846-1928, Irish author and historian. A leader in the Irish literary renaissance , he followed his History of Ireland (1878-80) with English versions of the heroic legends of Ireland. The best are...

• Oliphant, Laurence 1829-88, British author, b. Capetown, South Africa. Although he wrote some valuable travel books, he is probably best remembered for his fascinating life. The son of a judge, he became a lawyer...

• Oliphant, Margaret Oliphant (Wilson) 1828-97, Scottish author. She was widowed at the age of 31 and subsequently supported her own three children and her brother and his family. Astonishingly prolific, she wrote many novels, including...

• O'Shaughnessy, Arthur William Edgar 1844-81, English poet and naturalist. He was a member of the zoological department of the British Museum. He wrote four volumes of poetry— Epic of Women (1870), Lays of France (1872), Music...

• Ouida pseud. of Louise de la Ramée , 1839-1908, English novelist. She was a prolific writer of flamboyant, romantic tales, the best of which are Under Two Flags (1867), Moths (1880), and In...

• Palgrave, Francis Turner