George Orwell. English author and journalist (1903–1950) Eric Arthur Blair (25 June 1903 – 21 January 1950), better known by his pen name George Orwell, was an English novelist, essayist, journalist, and critic.[1] His work is characterised by lucid prose, social criticism, opposition to totalitarianism, and support of democratic socialism.[2] Blair was born in India, and raised and educated in England.
After school he became an Imperial policeman in Burma, before returning to Suffolk, England, where he began his writing career as George Orwell—a name inspired by a favourite location, the River Orwell. He lived from occasional pieces of journalism, and also worked as a teacher or bookseller whilst living in London. Life[edit] Early years[edit] Blair family home at Shiplake, Oxfordshire Before the First World War, the family moved 2 miles (3 km) south to Shiplake, Oxfordshire, where Eric became friendly with the Buddicom family, especially their daughter Jacintha.
Policing in Burma[edit] Southwold[edit] Honoré de Balzac. Honoré de Balzac (French: [ɔ.nɔ.ʁe d(ə) bal.zak]; 20 May 1799 – 18 August 1850) was a French novelist and playwright. His magnum opus was a sequence of short stories and novels collectively entitled La Comédie humaine, which presents a panorama of French life in the years after the 1815 fall of Napoleon Bonaparte. Due to his keen observation of detail and unfiltered representation of society, Balzac is regarded as one of the founders of realism in European literature. He is renowned for his multifaceted characters, who are morally ambiguous. His writing influenced many subsequent novelists such as Marcel Proust, Émile Zola, Charles Dickens, Edgar Allan Poe, Eça de Queirós, Fyodor Dostoyevsky, Gustave Flaubert, Benito Pérez Galdós, Marie Corelli, Henry James, William Faulkner, Jack Kerouac, and Italo Calvino, and philosophers such as Friedrich Engels and Karl Marx. Balzac suffered from health problems throughout his life, possibly due to his intense writing schedule.
Biography[edit] Kurt Vonnegut. Leo Tolstoy. Count Lev Nikolayevich Tolstoy (/ˈtoʊlstɔɪ, ˈtɒl-/;[1] Russian: Лев Никола́евич Толсто́й, pronounced [lʲɛf nʲɪkɐˈlaɪvʲɪtɕ tɐlˈstoj]; 9 September [O.S. 28 August] 1828 – 20 November [O.S. 7 November] 1910), usually referred to in English as Leo Tolstoy, was a Russian novelist today regarded as one of the greatest of all time. In the 1870s Tolstoy experienced a profound moral crisis, followed by what he regarded as an equally profound spiritual awakening. His literal interpretation of the ethical teachings of Jesus, centering on the Sermon on the Mount, caused him to become a fervent Christian anarchist and pacifist.
His new-found asceticism and determination to renounce his considerable wealth tipped his marriage into bitter turmoil, which continued right up to his death at the age of 82 in the waiting room of an, until then, obscure Russian railway station. Life and career Death Tolstoy's grave with flowers at Yasnaya Polyana. Tolstoy died in 1910, at the age of 82. Personal life In films. Fyodor Dostoyevsky. Joseph Conrad. Joseph Conrad (born Józef Teodor Konrad Korzeniowski;[1]:11–12 Berdichev, Imperial Russia, 3 December 1857 – 3 August 1924, Bishopsbourne, Kent, England) was a Polish author who wrote in English after settling in England.
He was granted British nationality in 1886, but always considered himself a Pole. [note 1] Conrad is regarded as one of the greatest novelists in English,[2] though he did not speak the language fluently until he was in his twenties (and always with a marked accent). He wrote stories and novels, often with a nautical setting, that depict trials of the human spirit in the midst of an indifferent universe. He was a master prose stylist who brought a distinctly non-English[note 2] tragic sensibility into English literature.[3] While some of his works have a strain of romanticism, his works are viewed as modernist literature. Early life[edit] Nowy Świat 47, Warsaw, where three-year-old Conrad lived with his parents in 1861 Apollo did his best to home-school Conrad. Ayn Rand. Literary critics received Rand's fiction with mixed reviews,[6] and academia generally ignored or rejected her philosophy, though academic interest has increased in recent decades.[7][8][9] The Objectivist movement attempts to spread her ideas, both to the public and in academic settings.[10] She has been a significant influence among libertarians and American conservatives.[11] Life[edit] Early life[edit] Rand was born Alisa Zinov'yevna Rosenbaum (Russian: Али́са Зиновьевна Розенбаум) on February 2, 1905, to a Russian Jewish bourgeois[12] family living in Saint Petersburg.
She was the eldest of the three daughters of Zinovy Zakharovich Rosenbaum and his wife, Anna Borisovna (née Kaplan), largely non-observant Jews. The subsequent October Revolution and the rule of the Bolsheviks under Vladimir Lenin disrupted the life the family had previously enjoyed. Her father’s business was confiscated and the family displaced. Arrival in the United States[edit] Early fiction[edit] Later years[edit] Franz Kafka. Kafka was born into a middle-class, German-speaking Jewish family in Prague, the capital of the Kingdom of Bohemia, then part of the Austro-Hungarian Empire. In his lifetime, most of the population of Prague spoke Czech, and the division between Czech- and German-speaking people was a tangible reality, as both groups were strengthening their national identity.
The Jewish community often found itself in between the two sentiments, naturally raising questions about a place to which one belongs. Kafka himself was fluent in both languages, considering German his mother tongue. Kafka trained as a lawyer and after completing his legal education, obtained employment with an insurance company. Life[edit] Family[edit] Plaque marking the birthplace of Franz Kafka in Prague. The Kafka family had a servant girl living with them in a cramped apartment. Education[edit] Employment[edit] Former home of the Worker's Accident Insurance Institute. Private life[edit] Kafka had an active sex life. Miss FB.