A-Z of Authors Last Names

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Walter Moers

Author of some very whimsical and surreal fantasies, such as The 13 1/2 Lives of Captain Bluebear.

Ogden Nash.

Jane O'Neill

Jane O'Neill was educated at Trinity College, Dublin and Girton College, Cambridge, and is a life-member of the Brontë Society. She has run workshops and published books for teachers and students on Wuthering Heights and Jane Eyre, and wrote and produced "The Young Person's Guide to the Brontës of Haworth" for the Brontë Parsonage Museum. It won a commendation from The Society for the Interpretation of Britain's Heritage.

I'm reading The Brontë Treasury right now. It's actually rather meh.

Samuel Pepys.

Anna Quindlen

Ayn Rand

John Sandford

Leo Tolstoy

Leon Uris

Kurt Vonnegut

Mary Wollstonecraft (1759 - 1797)

British Feminist writer, activist and philosopher
Mother of Mary Wollstonecraft Godwin Shelley (Frankenstein)

Wrote novels, treatises, a travel narrative, a history of the French Revolution, a conduct book, and a children's book.

Wollstonecraft is best known for A Vindication of the Rights of Woman (1792), in which she argues that women are not naturally inferior to men, but appear to be only because they lack education. She suggests that both men and women should be treated as rational beings and she imagines a social order founded on reason.

Mitch Albom (b. 1958)

American author, journalist, screenwriter, dramatist, radio and television broadcaster, and musician. His books have sold over 39 million copies worldwide.

Best known for:
Tuesdays with Morrie (1997)
The Five People You Meet in Heaven (2003)

Anne Brontë (1820-1849)

Pen names: Acton Bell, Annii
British poet and novelist
Raised by her father who was an Evangelical clergyman, and her Methodist aunt
Youngest sister of Charlotte, Branwell and Emily Brontë
Best friend of Emily; together they created the paracosm of Gondal (elaborate fantasy stories and poetry)
Governess for several wealthy families
Heavily censored by Charlotte
Died aged 29 in Scarborough by the Sea
The only Brontë not to be interred in the family vault

Novels:
Agnes Grey (1847) - criticising the gentry class
The Tenant of Wildfell Hall (1848) - considered the first "sustained" feminist novel -- about domestic violence

Geoffrey Chaucer (1343 – 1400)

English poet, author, philosopher and astronomer
Considered the greatest English poet of the Middle Ages
Legitimised the use of Middle English in Middle Ages' Literature (v. French and Latin)
"The Father of English Literature"
The first writer buried in Poets' Corner of Westminster Abbey

Most Notable Works:
The Canterbury Tales
The Book of the Duchess
The House of Fame
The Legend of Good Women
Troilus and Criseyde

Chaucer also made steps towards modernity as far as the legitimacy of depicting the “lower classes” was concerned.

You don’t find many realistic depictions of artisans before Chaucer.

He risked offending some of the aristocracy. But he treaded the line quite well.

Daniel Defoe (1660-1731)

Early proponent of the English novel

Most notable works:
Robinson Crusoe
The Life and Adventures of Robinson Crusoe
The Further Adventures of Robinson Crusoe
Captain Singleton
Memoirs of a Cavalier
Moll Flanders
Roxana: The Fortunate Mistress