Authors A-H Flashcards
Agatha Christie
1890-1976 English author y playwright from Torquay - Considered best-selling novelist of all time - And Then There Were None (1939); Murder on the Orient Express (1934); Death on the Nile (1937); The A.B.C. Murders (1936) - Her play The Mousetrap (1952) is still in its initial run, y is the longest running in history - Introduced characters Hercule Poirot y Miss Marple
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Ambrose Bierce
1842-1914 American writer - Short story “An Occurrence at Owl Creek Bridge” (or A Dead Man’s Dream - 1890); satirical lexicon The Devil’s Dictionary; collection Tales of Soldiers and Civilians - His motto “Nothing matters” earned nickname “Bitter Bierce” - Disappeared while researching Mexican Revolution
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Bill Bryson
1951- American-British author - Notes from a Small Island (1995); A Short History of Nearly Everything (2003); In a Sunburned Country (2000) - Writes humorous non-fiction about travel, language, y science
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Brontë Sisters
Three sisters from Yorkshire - Published under male pseudonyms - All died young of tuberculosis
- Charlotte (Currer Bell - 1816-55) - Jayne Eyre (1847); Villette (1853)
- Emily (Ellis Bell - 1818-48) - Wuthering Heights (1847)
- Anne (Acton Bell - 1836-49) - The Tenant of Wildfell Hall (1848)
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Chimamanda Ngozi Adichie
1977- Nigerian author - Purple Hibiscus (2003); Half of a Yellow Sun (2006); Americanah (2013) - Awarded a MacArthur Genius Grant in 2008
Daphne du Maurier
1907-89 British author - Rebecca (1938); The Scapegoat (57); The Birds (52); Jamaica Inn
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E(rnst) T(heodor) A(madeus) Hoffmann
1766-1822 Prussian author from Königsberg (present-day Kaliningrad) - The Nutcracker and the Mouse King (1816 - inspired Tchaikovsky’s The Nutcracker [1892]); Kreisleriana (1813 - inspired Schubert’s piano composition [1838]); The Life and Opinions of the Tomcat Murr (1819); Master Flea (1822) - His stories also form the basis of Jacques Offenbach’s opera The Tales of Hoffmann (1881), in which Hoffmann appears (heavily fictionalized) as the hero
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Edgar Rice Burroughs
1875-1950 American author - Tarzan series (starting with Tarzan of the Apes - 1912); Barsoom (John Carter) series (starting with A Princess of Mars - 1917) - City of Tarzana, CA was built on site of his former ranch
Edith Hamilton
1867-1963 American author - Regarded as greatest woman Classicist - Wrote The Greek Way (1930); Mythology (1942); The Roman Way (1932); The Echo of Greece (1957) - Said to have “brought into clear and brilliant focus the Golden Age of Greek life and thought”
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Edna Ferber
1885-1968 American author from Appleton, WI - So Big (1924-Pulitzer); Show Boat (1926 - made into 1927 musical); Cimarron (1929 - made into 1931 Best Picture); Giant (1952 - made into 1956 movie)
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Edward Bulwer-Lytton
1803-1873 English author - Immensely popular in his time, y wrote many bestselling novels - Most known for coining the phrases: “the pen is mightier than the sword” (from 1839 play Richelieu); “pursuit of the almighty dollar” (from 1871 novel The Coming Race); “the great unwashed”; y the opening line “It Was a Dark and Stormy Night” (from 1830 novel Paul Clifford) - Namesake of the Bulwer-Lytton Fiction Contest held anually by San Jose State Uni. to award deliberately bad opening lines
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Edward Gibbon
1737-94 English historian y writer - The History of the Decline and Fall of the Roman Empire (1776–1789 - six volumes) - Member of Parliament (1774-84)
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Elizabeth Bowen
1899-1973 Anglo-Irish author from Dublin - The Last September (1929); The Death of the Heart (1938); The Heat of the Day (1949) - Notable for fiction about life in wartime London
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Eoin Colfer
1965- Irish children’s author - Artemis Fowl series, about a teenage criminal mastermind: Artemis Fowl (2001); The Arctic Incident (02); The Eternity Code (03), y more - Wrote 6th installment of Hitchhiker’s Guide series: And Another Thing… (09)
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Ernest Hemingway
1899-1961 American author from Chicago - The Sun Also Rises (1926); A Farewell to Arms (1929); Death in the Afternoon (1932); Green Hills of Africa (1935); For Whom the Bell Tolls (1940); The Old Man and the Sea (1951-Pulitzer) - Nobel Prize in Literature 1954 - Served in WW1 as an amulance driver, y was seriously wounded - Worked as journalist in Spanish Civil War - Crashed two airplanes while on safari in Africa, y nearly died - Committed suicide at home in Ketchum, ID at age 61
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Geoffrey Chaucer
1343-1400 English poet - Cosnidered the Father of English literature - The Canterbury Tales (1400); The Book of the Duchess (1368); The House of Fame (1380); The Legend of Good Women; Troilus and Criseyde - His work legitimized the literary use of the Middle English vernacular, rather than French or Latin - Served as Clerk of the King’s Work
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Giacomo Casanova
1725-1798 Italian adventurer y author from Venice - Wrote autobiography Histoire de ma vie (1822-“Story of My Life”) - Name is now synonymous with “womanizer,” due to his elaborate affairs with many women - Travelled all over Europe living a lavish lifestyle
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Hermann Hesse
1877-1962 German-born Swiss novelist y poet -
The Glass Bead Game (1943);
Siddhartha (1922); Steppenwolf (1927);
Narcissus and Goldmund (1930); Demian (1919) -
Nobel Prize Lit 1946
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Honoré de Balzac
1799-1850 French author - La Comédie Humaine (1850-The Human Comedy), a collection of stories presenting a panorama of French life in the years after the 1815 Fall of Napoleon Bonaparte
Irene Hunt
1907-2001 American author from IL - Children’s writer known for historical novels - Across Five Aprils (1964-about Civil War); Up a Road Slowly (1966-Newberry Medal); No Promises in the Wind (1970)
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James Agee
1909-55 American author, screenwriter, y film critic from TN - A Death in the Family (unfinished autobiographical novel-1957-posthumous Pulitzer); Let Us Now Praise Famous Men (1941 - Non-ficiton about the Depression); The Morning Watch (1951) - Wrote adapted screenplay for The African Queen (1951)
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James Baldwin
1924-1987 American author from NYC - Giovanni’s Room (1956); Notes of a Native Son (1955); If Beale Street Could Talk (1974); Tell Me How Long the Train’s Been Gone (1968) - Lived in France for most of his life in protest against discrimination in America
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