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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...

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Sample of Authors

Portrait image of John Rhode

Rhode, John
1884 - 1964

John Rhode is a pseudonym for Cecil John Charles Street, one of Britain's most prolific and secretive authors of detective...

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Författarporträtt av Shaw, George Bernard

Shaw, George Bernard
1856 - 1950

Irish author and Nobel Prize laureate born in Dublin to a middle-class family. His father was an alcoholic and his mother...

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Portrait image of John Berger

Berger, John
1926 - 2017

The English author and artist John Berger was born in a middle-class home in Stoke Newington, London. His father, S.J.D....

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Författarporträtt av Eco, Umberto

Eco, Umberto
1932 - 2016

Umberto Eco was an Italian author, literary scholar, historian and philosopher born in Alessandria in Piedmont. His surname...

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