Authors I-P Flashcards
Alan Moore
1953- English comic book y graphic-novel writer - Watchmen (1987); V for Vendetta (1985); From Hell (1996); Batman: The Killing Joke (1988); The League of Extraordinary Gentlemen (1999); Swamp Thing (1987) - Known as an occultist, ceremonial magician, y anarchist; works often feature these themes
Alice Munro
1931- Canadian short-story author from Ontario - Dance of the Happy Shades (1968); Lives of Girls and Women (1971); The Moons of Jupiter (1982); The Love of a Good Woman (1998) - Nobel Prize in Literature 2013, y Man Booker Intl. Prize 2009
Anaïs Nin
1903-77 French-born Cuban-American diarist y author - The Diary of Anaïs Nin (1966-started at age 11); Henry and June (1986-about relationship with author Henry Miller); House of Incest (1936); Winter of Artifice (1939); Cities of the Interior (1959) - Diary writings detailed her sexually abusive y incestuous relationship with her father, Cuban composer Joaquin Nin
Boris Pasternak
1890-1960 Soviet Russian author y poet - Doctor Zhivago (1957); Second Birth (1932); My Sister, Life (1917-poems) - Awarded the Nobel Prize in Lit in 1958, but forced to decline by the Soviet government
Carson McCullers
1917-67 female American author from GA - The Heart is a Lonely Hunter (1940); The Member of the Wedding (46); The Ballad of the Sad Cafe (51) - Southern Gothic style
C(live) S(taples) Lewis
1898-1963 British author y Christian apologist - The Chronicles of Narnia series (7 books 1950-56: The Lion the Witch and the Wardrobe; Prince Caspian; The Silver Chair, etc.); Mere Christianity (1952); The Screwtape Letters (1942); Till We Have Faces; The Space Trilogy (1938: Out of the Silent Planet, etc.) - Worked at Oxford y was friends with Tolkien
D(avid) H(erbert) Lawrence
1885-1930 English writer - Lady Chatterly’s Lover (1928); Sons and Lovers (1913); The Rainbow (1915); Women in Love (1920) - Endured official persecution y censorship of his work through the 2nd half of his life, much of which he spent in a voluntary exile he called his “savage pilgrimage”
Doris Lessing
1919-2013 British author - The Grass is Singing (1950); Children of Violence series (1952-69); The Golden Notebook (1962); The Good Terrorist (1985) - Nobel in Literature 2007 at age 88 (oldest ever in Lit)
Edgar Allan Poe
1809-1849 American writer - Cask of Amontillado (46); Tell-Tale Heart (43); Murders in the Rue Morgue (1841-1st detective story y feat. C Auguste Dupin); Pit and the Pendulum (42); Narrative of Arthur Gordon Pym of Nantucket (38) - Poems: The Bells (49); The Raven (45) - Died mysteriously in a delirious state
Elmore Leonard
1925-2013 American author from New Orleans - Get Shorty (1990); Rum Punch (1992-adapted into Jackie Brown); Swag (1976); Out of Sight (1996); Three-Ten to Yuma (1953-short story)
(Mary) Flannery O’Conner
1925-1964 American author - Noted Catholic writer of Southern Gothic fiction from Savannah, GA - Wrote short story collections: A Good Man Is Hard to Find (1955); Everything That Rises Must Converge (1965) - Novels: Wise Blood (1952); The Violent Bear It Away (1960)
Franz Kafka
1883-1924 German-speaking Bohemian author from Prague - The Metamorphosis (1915); The Trial (1915); The Castle (pub. 1926) - Works often feature isolated protagonists facing bizarre or surrealistic predicaments y incomprehensible socio-bureaucratic powers - Few works published during lifetime - Died at age 40 of tuberculosis
Gabriel Garcia Marquez
1927-2014 Colombian writer - Aka “Gabo” - One Hundred Years of Solitude (1967); The Autumn of the Patriarch (1975); Love in the Time of Cholera (1985) - Magical-realism style - Nobel Prize in Lit 1982
George Orwell (Eric Arthur Blair)
1903-1950 English writer - Animal Farm: A Fairy Story (1945-aka :A Contemporary Satire); Nineteen Eighty-Four (1949) - Non-fiction works: The Road to Wigan Pier (1937); Homage to Catalonia (1938) - Fought in Spanish Civil War - Died of tuberculosis
Henry James
1843-1916 American-British author - The Turn of the Screw (1898-gothic horror); The Wings of the Dove (1902); The Portrait of a Lady (1881); Daisy Miller (1878); The American (1877) - One of the key figures of 19th-century literary realism
Henry (Valentine) Miller
1891-1980 American author from NYC - Tropic of Cancer (1934); Black Spring (1936); Tropic of Capricorn (1939); The Rosy Crucifixion trilogy (1949–59 - Sexus, Plexus, Nexus) - Works banned in US until 1961 due to sexually explicit content
Herman Melville
1819-91 American author from NYC - Moby Dick, or The Whale (1851); Typee: A Peep at Polynesian Life (1846); Omoo: A Narrative of Adventures in the South Seas (1847); Bartleby, the Scrivener: A Story of Wall Street (1853); Billy Budd, Sailor (posthumous 1924) - Works didn’t come to be considered American classics until the early 20th century
Hilary Mantel
1952- English author from Derbyshire - Known for her trilogy about Thomas Cromwell: Wolf Hall (2009 - Booker Prize); Bring Up the Bodies (2012 - Booker); The Mirror and the Light (2020) - 1st woman to win Booker Prize twice
H(enry) L(ouis) Mencken
1880-1956 American journalist y satirist from MD - Called the “Sage of Baltimore” - Worked for Baltimore Sun newspaper y did satirical coverage of the Scopes Trial (1925) - Wrote The American Language (1919-about English spoken in the USA) - Admirer of Nietzsche, detractor of religion, populism, y democracy
H(oward) P(hillips) Lovecraft
1890-1937 American writer of horror fiction from RI - The Call of Cthulhu (1926-short story); The Shadow Out of Time (1934); At the Mountains of Madness (1931) - Virtually unknown during his life, died in poverty - Achieved much fame y influence posthumously
Jack London
1876-1916 American author from San Fran - The Call of the Wild (1903); White Fang (1906); The Iron Heel (1908-Dystopian); The People of the Abyss (1903) - Passionate advocate of unionization, socialism, and the rights of workers
James A. Michener
1907-97 American author from PA - Tales of the South Pacific (1948-Pulitzer-adapted into musical); The Drifters (1971); The Fires of Spring (1949); Alaska (1988); The World Is My Home (1992-memoir)
James (Augustine Aloysius) Joyce
1882-1941 Irish author - Dubliners (1914-short stories); A Portrait of the Artist as a Young Man (1916); Finnegans Wake (1939); Ulysses (1922); Exiles (1918-only play); Chamber Music (1907-poetry) - Writings always take place in Dublin
James Patterson
1947- American author from NY - Alex Cross series: Along Came a Spider (1993); Kiss the Girls (1995); Jack y Jill (1996) - Women’s Murder Club series: 1st to Die (2001); 2nd Chance; 3rd Degree
John le Carré (David John Moore Cornwell)
1931- English author - The Spy Who Came in from the Cold (1963); The Constant Gardner (2001); Tinker Tailor Soldier Spy - Worked for MI6
Josephus (Titus Flavius Josephus)
37-100 CE, born Joseph ben Matityahu, Roman-Jewish historian - Initially fought against the Romans during the First Jewish–Roman War - Earned favor of Vespasian after, y became his slave y translator - Later gained freedom y citizenship - Wrote The Jewish War (75); Antiquities of the Jews (94)
Joyce Carol Oates
1938- American writer from NYC - Black Water (1992); What I Lived For (1994); Blonde (2000); Lovely, Dark, Deep (2015); Them (1969-Nat. Book Award) - Nominated for Pulitzer 4 times - Professor at Princeton
Katherine Anne Porter
1890-1980 American journalist y author from TX - Ship of Fools (1962); Pale Horse, Pale Rider (1939); The Collected Stories of Katherine Anne Porter (1965-Pulitzer);
Kazuo Ishiguro
1954 Japan-born English author - An Artist of the Floating World (1986); The Remains of the Day (1989-Booker); Never Let Me Go (2005); The Buried Giant (2015) - Nobel Prize in Literature 2017
Larry McMurtry
1936- American author from TX - Horseman, Pass By (1962); The Last Picture Show (1966); Terms of Endearment (1975); Lonesome Dove (1985-Pulitzer) - Won Oscar for Best Adapted Screenplay in 2005 for Brokeback Mountain (from short story by Annie Proulx)
Lucy Maud Montgomery
1874-1942 Canadian author - Anne of Green Gables series set in Prince Edward Island: Anne of Green Gables (1908); Anne of Avonlea (1909); Anne of the Island (1915); Anne of Windy Poplars (1936); and more - Made an officer of the Order of the British Empire in 1935
Madeleine L’Engle
1918-2007 American author from NYC - Known for young-adult science-fiction - A Wrinkle in Time (1963); A Wind in the Door (1973); A Swiftly Tilting Planet; Many Waters; An Acceptable Time - Her works reflect both her Christian faith y her strong interest in science
(Valentin Louis Georges Eugène) Marcel Proust
1871-1922 French author - Best known for his monumental novel À la recherche du temps perdu (In Search of Lost Time; earlier translated as Remembrance of Things Past), published in 7 parts between 1913-27, incl. Swann’s Way, In the Shadow of Young Girls in Flower, Time Regained - Also wrote Pleasures and Days (1896); Pastiches, or The Lemoine Affair (1919)
Michael (Monroe) Lewis
1960- American non-fiction author from New Orleans - Moneyball: The Art of Winning an Unfair Game (2003-about the sabermetric approach to baseball); The Blind Side (2006); The Big Short: Inside the Doomsday Machine (2010); Flash Boys (2014)
Milan Kundera
1929- Czech-French author - The Unbearable Lightness of Being (1984, about the Prague Spring); The Joke (67); The Book of Laughter and Forgetting (79) - Perennial Nobel nominee
N(avarre) Scott Momaday
1934- Kiowa Native-American author - House Made of Dawn (1969 - Pulitzer winner); The Way to Rainy Mountain (69) - Stanford PhD
Naguib Mahfouz
1911-2006 Egyptian writer - 1988 Nobel Prize for Literature - Children of Gebelawi (1959); The Thief and the Dogs (1961); The Cairo Trilogy; Miramar (1967) - Survived an assassination attempt by an Islamic extremist in 1994 at age 82
N(ora) K Jemison
1972- American sci-fi author from IA - Broken Earth series: The Fifth Season (2015-Hugo); The Obelisk Gate (2016-Hugo); The Stone Sky (2017-Hugo) - 1st African-American to win Hugo for Best Novel
Norman Mailer
1923-2007 American author - The Naked and the Dead (1948); The Executioner’s Song (79-Pulitzer); non-fiction The Armies of the Night (68-Pulitzer); essay The White Negro (57) - Co-founded The Village Voice newspaper
Robert Ludlum
1927-2001 American author from NYC - Best known as the creator of Jason Bourne from the original The Bourne Trilogy series - The Bourne Identity (1980); The Bourne Supremacy (1986); The Bourne Ultimatum (1990) - Estimated to have 500 million copies in print
(Joseph) Rudyard Kipling
1865-1936 English writer from Bombay - The Jungle Book (1894); Kim (1901); The Man Who Would Be King - Poems: Mandalay (1890); Gunga Din (1890); The White Man’s Burden (1899); “If—” (1910-“you’ll be a Man, my son”) - Awarded Nobel Prize in Lit at age 42 (1907-still youngest recipient, 1st English)
Samuel Pepys
Pronounced “Peeps” - 1633-1703 English Naval administrator - Kept famous diary from 1660-69 with first-hand accounts of Great Plague of London(1665), Great Fire (1666), 2nd Anglo-Dutch War (1667) - Chief Sec of Admiralty under Charles II y James II - Reformed the Royal Navy
(Harry) Sinclair Lewis
1885-1951 American author from MN - Main Street (1920); Babbitt (1922); Arrowsmith (1925-Pulitzer-declined); Elmer Gantry (1927); It Can’t Happen Here (1935) - Nobel Prize in Lit 1930 (1st from USA)
Stan Lee (Stanley Martin Lieber)
1922- American comic-book writer from NYC - Worked for Marvel Comics, later became its president - Created characters Spider-Man, the Hulk, the Fantastic Four, the X-Men, Iron Man, Thor, etc. - Led the expansion of Marvel from small publishing house to large corp
Terry McMillan
1951- Afr-American female author - Waiting to Exhale (1992); How Stella Got Her Groove Back (1996); Disappearing Acts (1989); The Interruption of Everything (2006) - Works characterized by relatable female protagonists
Thomas Malory
1415-1471 English author - Wrote Le Morte d’Arthur (published 1485) about the legendary King Arthur, Guinevere, Lancelot, Merlin y the Knights of the Round Table - Little known about him, but believed to have been a soldier who wrote the work while in prison
**
(Paul) Thomas Mann
1875-1955 German author - Buddenbrooks (1901); Dr. Faustus (1947); Death in Venice (1912); The Magic Mountain (1924) - Nobel Prize Literature 1929 - Fled to USA in WWII, then lived in Switzerland
Thomas Pynchon
1937- American author - Gravity’s Rainbow (1973-NBA-snubbed for Pulitzer); V. (1963); The Crying of Lot 49 (1966); Mason y Dixon (1997); Bleeding Edge (2013) - Notoriously reclusive, almost no photos of him exist
**
Toni Morrison (Chloe Ardelia Wofford)
1931-2019 American author from OH - Beloved (1987-Pulitzer); Song of Solomon (1977); The Bluest Eye (1970) - Nobel Prize in Lit 1993 - Awarded Pres Medal of Freedom in 2012 - Professor at Princeton
Ursula K(roeber) Le Guin
1929-2018 American fantasy y sci-fi author from CA - The Left Hand of Darkness (1970); The Lathe of Heaven (1971); The Dispossessed (1974); Powers (2009) - Record for most Nebula Awards for Best Novel (4)
Vladimir (Vladimirovich) Nabokov
Russian-American author y entomologist - Lolita (1955); Pale Fire (1962); Pnin (1957); Speak, Memory; Bend Sinister - Expert lepidopterist (butterflies), y composer of chess problems
W(illiam) Somerset Maugham
1874-1965 British author y playwright - Of Human Bondage (1915); The Moon and Sixpence (1919); The Razor’s Edge (1944); Liza of Lambeth (1897) - Gay, but married for a time; later disowned daughter y adopted younger lover as son - Served as ambulance driver y spy during WWI
Washington Irving
1783-1859 American author from Tarrytown, NY - Aka Johnathan Oldstyle - Wrote short story collection The Sketch Book of Geoffrey Crayon, Gent. (1820) containing Rip van Winkle y The Legend of Sleepy Hollow - Wrote bios of Washington, Muhammad, y Columbus -Ambassador to Spain 1842-46
Yukio Mishima
1925-1970 Japanese author - Confessions of a Mask (1949); The Temple of the Golden Pavilion (1956); Sun and Steel - Led an unsuccessful coup on a military base y committed seppuku, called the Mishima Incident
