Gilbert White – naturalist and ornithologist – is most famous for his ground-breaking work The Natural History and Antiquities of Selborne (1789). The book is as popular as ever, having been republished more than 300 times. It was a favorite of Charles Darwin and Virginia...
CS Lewis was born in Belfast, Northern Ireland in 1898. He grew up in Ireland but moved to England in 1916 to attend University College, Oxford. After serving in the First World War, he returned to Oxford and completed his studies. In 1925 Lewis became...
John Milton is remembered and admired for his epic blank-verse poem Paradise Lost (1667). Born in London in 1608, he had expected to become an Anglican priest, but instead he was drawn to writing and philosophical studies. In 1638-39 he toured France and Italy, meeting...
William Blake – born in 1757 in London – was an inspiration for songwriters Bob Dylan, Jim Morrison and Van Morrison. The beat poet Allen Ginsberg’s 1970 album, Songs of Innocence and Experience, featured musical settings of poems from Blake’s collection of the same name....
John Bunyan’s name is eternally linked to his most famous work, The Pilgrim’s Progress (1678). It was an immediate success and is among the most widely published books in English. Born in 1628 in Elstow, near Bedford (50 miles north of London), Bunyan underwent a...
In 1834 Thomas Carlyle and his wife Jane moved into 5 (now 24) Cheyne Row, a Georgian terraced house in London’s elegant Chelsea district, where Carlyle lived until his death in 1881. It was there that he wrote his masterwork The French Revolution: A History...
Samuel Taylor Coleridge owes his fame to his masterful poetry and also to his influence on other poets, including his friend William Wordsworth. The two first met in 1795, when they set up homes a few miles apart in Somerset. Coleridge Cottage, now owned by...
EM Forster – born in London in 1879 – was a well-regarded novelist and short story writer. He was nominated 16 times for the Nobel Prize for Literature, but never won. Five of his six novels, which examine class differences and hypocrisy, were successfully adapted...
Victoria (Vita) Sackville-West was born in 1892 at Knole House (now owned by the National Trust), near Sevenoaks in Kent, and she spent much of her early life there. In 1913 she married diplomat Harold Nicholson and in 1930 they purchased Sissinghurst Castle, a run-down...
Laurence Sterne was born in Ireland in 1713. After graduating from Jesus College, Cambridge in 1737 he was ordained as a priest. He then moved to north Yorkshire and made it his home for most of the rest of his life. His masterwork – The...