Remembering about English Authors:
Geoffrey Chaucer (1340’s-1400):
-
British author & poet
Famous work: The Canterbury Tales (1387-1400)
Has been called “Father of English Literature”
Use Middle English to write his works
Walter Raleigh (1552-1618):
-
British writer, soldier, statesman, explorer
Notable figure of the Elizabethan era
Played a leading part of the English colonization of North America
Famous works: “The Lie” (1592), “The Nymph’s reply to the Shepherd”
(1600)
William Shakespeare (1564-1616):
-
British writer, poet, playwright
Born in Stratford-upon-Avon
Regarded as the greatest writer in English language
Famous works: Romeo & Juliet (1595), Hamlet (1599-1601), Macbeth (1606)
John Donne (1572-1631):
-
English poet, scholar (savant), soldier, secretary (minister)
His style of writing: abrupt openings and various paradoxes, ironies, and
dislocations
Famous works: ‘Holy Sonnets’ (1609)
Thomas Hobbes (1588-1679):
-
British philosopher
Considered as one of the founders of modern political philosophy
Famous works: Leviathan (1651), De Corpore (1655)
John Milton (1608-1674):
-
Author of poetry, pamphlets, political essays, …
Blindness  a large part of his works was dictated
Famous work: Paradise Lost (1667)
Active political role during the English Civil War & during the
Commonwealth
1
Margaret Cavendish (1623-1673):
-
English philosopher, poet, scientist, fiction writer, and playwright
Was very versatile: wrote books about philosophy, science, fiction, sciencefiction
Part of the Aristocracy  strong royalist
She wrote under her own name in a period when women writers remained
anonymous
Famous work: The Blazing World (1666)
Daniel Defoe (1660-1731):
-
English merchant, pamphleteer, novelist, secret agent (for Queen Mary)
He went to prison for his religion, and for political reasons
Famous works: Robinson Crusoe (1719), A Journal of a Plague Year (1722)
He provided the same right for all religion in A Journal of a Plague Year
William Blake (1757-1827):
-
English poet, painter, and printmaker
He wasn’t considered during his lifetime, but more post-mortem
He is part of the Romantic movement
Famous works: Continental Prophecies (1793-95), Milton (1804-10)
Jane Austen (1775-1817):
-
English novelist
Her plots often explore the dependence of women on marriage, in the
pursuit of favorable social standing, and on economic security
Famous works: Sense of Sensibility (1811), Pride and Prejudice (1813),
Emma (1816)
Lord Byron (1788-1824):
-
English poet and peer (member of the British nobility)
One of the leading figures of the Romantic movement
Travelled across Europe and lived in Italy after being forced to flee from
England
Famous works: Childe Harold’s Pilgrimage, Cantos I & II (1812), Don Juan
(1819-1824  not finished by his death)
2
Mary Shelley (1797-1851):
-
English novelist
Famous works: Frankenstein (1818), The Last Man (1826)
She was raised by her father because her mother died after giving birth to
her daughter
Her education was rich: it encouraged her to adhere to her father’s own
anarchist political theories
She married Percy B. Shelley
Until the 1970’s, she was known mainly for her efforts to publish her husband’s works
and for her own novel Frankenstein
Edgar Allan Poe (1809-1849):
-
American writer, poet, editor, and literary critic
He was famous for being the inventor of detective stories
He wrote a lot of horror fictions: inspired by the gothic genre
He completely revolutionizes literature in almost 20 years
Famous works: The Tell-Tale Heart (1843), Eureka: A Prose Poem (1848)
Charles Dickens (1812-1870):
-
English writer and social critic
He created some of the world’s best-known fictional characters
He is regarded by many as the greatest novelist of the Victorian Era
Famous works: Oliver Twist (1837-39), A Christmas Carol (1843)
Charlotte Brontë (1816-1855):
-
English novelist and poet
She teaches her 2 younger sisters Emily and Anne
She first published under the pen name Currer Bell
Famous works: Jane Eyre (1847), The Professor (1857  was the first
published before Jane Eyre, but was rejected by many publishers)
Emily Brontë (1818-1848):
-
English novelist and poet
She first wrote under the pen name Ellis Bell
Genre: fiction and poetry
Famous work: “Come hither child” (1839), Wuthering Heights (1847)
3