19th Century - page 9 - the iconic authors

Sherwood Anderson

1876 - 1941

The American novelist and short story writer, Sherwood Anderson, was a self educated author whose prose style was based on everyday speech. His subjective and self revealing works strongly influenced American writing during the interwar period. They had an impact on noteworthy authors, such as Ernest Hemingway and William Faulkner, whose first books he helped publish.

Stephen Crane

1871 - 1900

The American poet, novelist and short story writer, Stephen Crane is known as one of the pioneers of modern American Naturalism in literature. His writing is characterised by a vivid intensity, distinctive dialects and irony. His main themes are fear, spiritual crisis and social isolation.

His Civil War novel, The Red Badge of Courage, a classic of American literature, won international acclaim.

T.S. Arthur

1809 - 1885

Timothy Shay Arthur was a popular 19th century American author who wrote dozens of stories for the most popular American monthly magazine, Godey's Lady's Book. Widely forgotten now, Arthur did much to draw attention to the values and habits which defined the respectable middle-class life in antebellum America.

Thomas Moore

1779 - 1852

Thomas Moore was an Irish poet, songwriter, satirist and political propagandist whose espousal of the Catholic cause made him a popular hero amongst the Irish nationalists.

Being a close friend of Lord Byron, he played a leading part in one of the most famous episodes of the Romantic period, in 1824: in order to protect the dead, he and the publisher John Murray decided to burn Byron’s memoirs.

Virginia Woolf

1882 - 1941

Virginia Woolf was an English writer whose best known novel is Mrs Dalloway. She is considered to be one of the leading modernists of the 20th century and a pioneer in the use of the stream of consciousness. Her novels, through their non linear approches to narrative, exerted a major influence on the genre. In the 1970s, she became one of the main subjects of feminist criticism.

W. W. Jacobs

1863 - 1943

W. W. Jacobs was an English author of short stories and novels. Even though most of his work was written in a humourous tone, he is nowadays remembered as the creator of "The Monkey’s Paw". That classic horror short story is written in the dickensian tradition, that is to say that it uses a gentle humour and focuses on the poor social condition of the White Families.

W.E.B Du Bois

1868-1963

American scholar, civil rights activist, Pan-Africanist, pacifist and writer, he published many articles, poems, novels and speeches which awarded him large recognition after his death. After the US failed to renew his passport, he became a citizen of Ghana in 1963, where he died of old age while working on an encyclopedia of the African diaspora.

Walt Whitman

1819 - 1892

American poet, journalist and essayist, Walt Whitman was part of the transition between transcendentalism and realism. Among the most influential poets of the American literature, he is regarded as the father of the free verse. His verse collection, Leaves of Grass, first published in 1855 and revised until his death, is a landmark in the history of American literature even though it was ... [+]

Washington Irving

1783 - 1859

The American writer, essayist, biographer and diplomat, Washington Irving, was called "the first American man of letters". He is best known for his short stories "Rip Van Winkle" and "The Legend of Sleepy Hollow". He was among the first American writers to get international fame. As a politician, he advocated writing should become a legitimate profession and argued in favour of stronger bans to ... [+]

Willa Cather

1873 - 1947

Willa Cather was an American writer who was well known for her Prairy Trilogy, novels about frontier life on the Great Prairie. She was also awarded the Pulitzer Prize in 1923 for her novel One of Ours, set during Word War I.

William Blake

1757 - 1827

English poet, painter and printmaker, William Blake was largely disregarded during his lifetime. However, he is nowadays recognized as the earliest and most original of all Romantic poets.

Blake was unfairly considered mad by his contemporaries for his eccentric views on society. He was politically influenced by the French and American Revolutions and was hostile to almost all forms of ... [+]

William Wordsworth

1770 - 1850

William Wordsworth was a major English Romantic poet. His joint publication with Samuel Taylor Coleridge, The Lyrical Ballads, helped to launch Romanticism in English literature.

His contact with the French Revolution brought about his interest in the "common" people’s life, troubles and speeches, which were of the utmost importance to his following works.

From 1843 to his death, he was ... [+]