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It is 184 years today since Thomas Hardy was born.
The English author Thomas Hardy was born in Stinsford near Dorchester in Dorset, the son of a stonemason and local builder. Hardy trained as an architect before moving to London when he was twenty-two years old. He returned to Dorset where he began to write his first novel. Hardy was interested in the writings of Charles Darwin and in naturalism. During his long life he became famous for his...
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It is 111 years today since Barbara Pym was born.
Barbara Mary Crampton Pym was born in Oswestry, Shropshire, near the Welsh border where she grew up with her younger sister Hilary. Her father was a lawyer and her mother the organist in the local church. Many of the vicars and lay clergy that visited their home later turned up in Pym's books. She was privately educated, first at a girl's school and later at boarding school. After reading...
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It is 75 years today since Ingrid Hedström was born.
TThe Swedish journalist and author Ingrid Hedström were born in Söderhamn in the central Swedish province of Hälsingland, and then moved to Avesta in nearby Dalarna when she was five years old. She is said to be one of the 1960’s so-called "welfare-state princesses", meaning that she was the first in her family to graduate from high school. She completed her final exam at Avesta Grammar School in...
Sample of Authors
Myrdal, Jan
1927 - 2020
Swedish author, born in Stockholm to Gunnar and Alva Myrdal, both social democratic cabinet ministers, Nobel Prize winners...
Further reading
Lessing, Doris
1919 - 2013
The British author Doris May Lessing was born in Kermanshah in Persia (present-day Iran) and grew up in South Rhodesia...
Further reading
Parsons, Julie
1951 -
Writer of detective stories Julie Parsons was born and grew up in New Zealand, to which her Irish parents had emigrated in...
Further reading
Crais, Robert
1953 -
Robert Crais is an American author born in Independence, Louisiana, and brought up on the banks of the Mississippi River in...
Further reading