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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
Mosley, Walter
1952 -
American author, born in the tough and run-down South Central district in Los Angeles. His mother had a Russian-Jewish...
Further reading
Gulik, Robert van
1910 - 1967
Robert Hans van Gulik was born in Zutphen, the Netherlands, and grew up in Batavia (now Jakarta) in the former Dutch East...
Further reading
Keneally, Thomas
1935 -
The novelist and non-fiction writer Thomas ‘Tom’ Keneally descends from a family of Irish prisoners that were deported to Aus...
Further reading
Herbert, James
1943 - 2013
James Herbert from England was one of the best-selling and most praised authors of horror fiction in the late 20th century....
Further reading