Five Short Biographies of Famous Writers

1. William Shakespere

William Shakespeare was born in Stratford-upon-Avon on 23rd April 1564.

His father William was a successful local businessman and his mother Mary was the daughter of a landowner. Relatively prosperous, it is likely the family paid for Williams education, although there is no evidence he attended university.

In 1582 William, aged only 18, married an older woman named Anne Hathaway. They had three children, Susanna, Hamnet and Juliet. Their only son Hamnet died aged just 11.

After his marriage, information about the life of Shakespeare is sketchy but it seems he spent most of his time in London – writing and acting in his plays.

 

Due to some well timed investments Shakespeare was able to secure a firm financial background, leaving time for writing and acting. The best of these investments was buying some real estate near Stratford in 1605, which soon doubled in value.

It seemed Shakespeare didn’t mind being absent from his family – he only returned home during Lent when all the theatres were closed. It is generally thought that during the 1590s he wrote the majority of his sonnets. This was a time of prolific writing and his plays developed a good deal of interest and controversy. His early plays were mainly comedies (e.g. Much Ado about Nothing, A Midsummer’s Night Dream) and histories (e.g. Henry V)

By the early Seventeenth Century, Shakespeare had begun to write plays in the genre of tragedy. These plays, such as Hamlet, Othello and King Lear, often hinge on some fatal error or flaw in the lead character, and provide fascinating insights into the darker aspects of human nature. These later plays are considered Shakespeare’s finest achievements.

2. Jane Austen (1775 – 1817) 

English author who wrote romantic fiction combined with social realism. Her famous novels include: Sense and Sensibility (1811), Pride and Prejudice (1813), Mansfield Park (1814) and Emma (1816).

Jane Austen was born in Steventon, Hampshire on 16th December 1775. She was the 7th daughter of an 8 child family. Her father, George Austen, was a vicar and lived on a reasonable income of £600 a year. However, although they were middle class, they were not rich; her father would have been unable to give much to help her daughters get married.

 Jane was brought up with her 5 brothers and her elder sister Cassandra. (another brother, Edward, was adopted by a rich, childless couple and went to live with them). Jane was close to her siblings, especially Cassandra, to whom she was devoted. The two sisters shared a long correspondence throughout her life; much of what we know about Jane comes from these letters, although, unfortunately Cassandra burnt a number of these on Jane’s death.

Jane was educated at Oxford and later a boarding school in Reading. In the early 1800s two of Jane’s brother’s joined the navy, leaving to fight in the Napoleonic wars; they would go on to become admirals. The naval connections can be seen in novels like Mansfield Park. After the death of her father in 1805, Jane, with her mother and sister returned to Hampshire. In 1809, her brother, Edward who had been brought up by the Knights, invited the family to the estate he had inherited at Chawton. It was in the country house of Chawton, that Jane was able to produce some of her greatest novels.

3. Charles Dickens 

He was born in Portsmouth on 7 February 1812, to John and Elizabeth Dickens.

As a child, Charles experienced the fickle hands of fate; he was first taught at a private school before being removed because of his family’s financial hardship.

In fact, his father’s debts were so bad, the whole family (apart from the young Charles was sent to the debtor’s prison at Marshallsea (this would later be the setting for one of his novels – Little Dorrit). However, although Charles escaped detention in the debtors prison, he was made to work long, 10 hour days, at a local boot blacking factory. 

The hard and dangerous work left a lasting impression on Charles Dickens, who would later incorporate in his writings a sense of social injustice that was endemic in Victorian Britain.

The Daily News (21st January, 1846)

Charles Dickens has become one of the most popular writers in English. In particular his novels are brimming with the most colourful and eccentric characters which leave a lasting impression. 

He achieved this through his vivid memory of the various people he had met through his life, but also he added a touch of fantasy and exaggeration with his vivid floral style.

There are various themes which run throughout his writings, which often reflect a degree of autobiography. Dickens loved the Rags to Riches stories, exemplified by Oliver Twist and David Copperfield. He frequently highlighted the worst excesses of Victorian society and made a passionate case for a more caring and moral society.

 4. Leo Tolstoy.

Born in 1828, Leo Tolstoy came from an aristocratic Russian family with links to some of the most powerful Russian families. He was the fourth cousin of Alexander Pushkin.

In his early life, he struggled with his studies and drifted through life ending up with large gambling debts. Fed up with his aimless meaningless life he volunteered to serve in the Russian army but his experiences as a soldier led him to become a pacifist in later life. He wrote his battlefield observations in Sevastopol Sketches and this raised his profile as a leading Russian writer, gaining the attention even of the current Tsar. Later looking back on these years (in his Confessions 1882), he bitterly regretted his misspent years.

Leo Tolstoy

Tolstoy had a deep interest in seeking a greater understanding and justification of life. He travelled widely through Europe but became increasingly disenchanted with the materialism of the European Bourgeoisie. He could be argumentative with those he disagreed with such as Turgenev (widely considered the greatest Russian writer of his generation). He also developed an increasing sympathy with peasants, the poor, and those downtrodden from society. He went out of his way to help and serve them.

In 1862 he married Sofia Andreyevna Behrs, 16 years his younger. This marriage provided a degree of stability out of which Tolstoy wrote his great epics War and Peace and the novel Anna Karenina.
War and Peace is breathtaking in its scope, realism and sense of history. Some characters were real historical people, others were invented. It tells a narrative of the Napoleonic wars against the backdrop of two families. Tolstoy never saw it as a novel but an epic. It suggest the necessity of making the best of life, whatever your situation..”

– Leo Tolstoy from War and Peace

After writing War and Peace and Anna Karenina, Tolstoy underwent a change of religious and philosophical attitude. Influenced by Buddhism and Jesus Christ’s Sermon on the Mount he developed a pacifist / anarchist philosophy; he became supportive of civil disobedience to improve the welfare of the oppressed. He noted his attitudes in ‘The Kingdom of Heaven is within you’ and ‘Confessions’.

“The sole meaning of life is to serve humanity by contributing to the establishment of the kingdom of God, which can only be done by the recognition and profession of the truth by every man.”
Leo Tolstoy from: The Kingdom of Heaven is within You

His philosophy began to attract disciples and idealistic Tolstoy communes. He became ex-communicated from the Orthodox church but his legacy as a writer and unique thinker were enhanced throughout the world. He gained a status as being the world’s leading writer.

In the evening of his life he developed a close relationship with a young Mahatma Gandhi. Gandhi was very impressed with Tolstoy’s belief in non-violent resistance, vegetarianism and brand of ‘anarchist Christianity’.
 

5. Agatha Christie

 

Dame Agatha Christie, (15 September 1890 – 12 January 1976).

Agatha Christie was an English writer of crime and romantic novels. She is best remembered for her detective stories including the two diverse characters of Miss Marple and Hercule Poirot. She is considered to be the best selling writer of all time. Only the Bible is known to have outstripped her collected sales of roughly four billion world wide copies. Her works have been translated into more languages than any other individual writer.

Agatha Christie was born in Torquay, Devon 1890 to Clarissa Margaret Boehmer and a wealthy American stockbroker. She was brought up by both her mother and her sister. In the First World war, she trained and worked as a nurse helping to treat wounded soldiers. She also became educated in the field of pharmacy. She recalled her time as a nurse with great fondness, saying it was one of the most rewarding jobs she ever undertook.

Agatha Christie’s married an aviator in the Royal Flying Corps – Archibald Christie in December 1914. The marriage was somewhat turbulent and ended in divorce in 1928, two years after Archibald had begun an affair. In 1926, Agatha Christie disappeared for 11 days. The circumstances were never really resolved and it created widespread media interest in the disappearance of this famous novelist. She was eventually discovered in a Harrogate hotel eleven days later. Though Agatha Christie never said why, it was probably a combination of shock over her mother’s death and the discovery of her husband’s affair. In 1930, she married her second husband, Max Mallowan. This marriage was happier, though her only child, Rosalind Hicks, came from her first marriage.

Writing Career of Agatha Christie

Agatha Christie began writing in 1920, after the end of the First World War. Her first story was The Mysterious Affair at Styles, (1920). This featured the soon to be famous detective – Hercule Poirot, who at the time was portrayed as a Belgian refugee from the Great War. The book sold well and helped meet the public’s great appetite for detective novels. It was a genre that had been popularised through Arthur Conan Doyle’s Sherlock Holmes stories at the turn of the century.

Agatha Christie went on to write over 40 novels featuring the proud and immaculate Hercule Poirot. Like Conan Doyle, Christie had no great love for her own creation – Poirot seemed to be admired by the public more than the writer herself. Agatha Christie preferred her other great detective – the quiet but effective old lady – Miss Marple. The character of Miss Marple was based on the traditional English country lady – and her own relatives.

The plot of Agatha Christies novels could be described as formulaic. Murders were committed by ingenious methods – often involving poison, which Agatha Christie had great knowledge of. After interrogating all the main suspects, the detective would bring all the participants into some drawing room before explaining who was the murderer. The psychological suspense of the novels, and the fact readers feel they have a good chance of solving the crime undoubtedly added to the popularity of the books.

During the Second World War, Christie worked in the pharmacy of the University College London, which gave her ideas for some of her murder methods. After the war, her books continued to grow in international popularity. In 1952, her play The Mousetrap was debuted at the Ambassador’s Theatre in London, and has been performed without a break ever since. Her success led to her being honoured in the New Year’s honour list. In 1971 she was appointed Dame Commander of the British Empire.

She died in 1976 aged 85.

References :

www.biographyonline.net