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It is 130 years today since Louis-Ferdinand Céline was born.
A pseudonym of Louis-Ferdinand Destouches, born in Courbevoie, near Paris. His father was an insurance company official and his mother sold laces, but the family was poor. Céline’s way to writing and his literary breakthrough with Journey to the End of the Night (Voyage au bout de la nuit) in 1932 was anything but straight. He enlisted early on, and was in the initial phase of the First World Wa...
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It is 130 years today since Dashiell Hammett was born.
American detective writer, born in St. Mary's County in Maryland. He grew up in Baltimore where his family moved when he was seven years old. Dashiell Hammett dropped out of school when thirteen and got on with odd jobs before ending up a private detective at Pinkertons. He worked as a detective primarily in San Francisco and then used his experiences in his novels. During the First World War,...
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It is 99 years today since Tony Hillerman was born.
American author of German descent born as Anthony Grove Hillerman in Sacred Heart, Oklahoma. Tony Hillerman grew up on a farm; his father ran the village shop and his mother was a nurse. He attended a boarding school with mainly Native American children from the Potawatomie tribe between 1930 and 1938. He graduated from Konowa High School in 1942, in 1948 he graduated with a Bachelor of Arts...
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It is 64 years today since Sharon Bolton was born.
The English author Sharon Bolton was born in Blackburn, Lancashire, as the oldest of three girls. She grew up in Darwen and attended Darwen Moorland High School. She decided that she wanted to pursue a career in dancing or acting, so she read drama at Loughborough University in Leicestershire. She later worked in PR and advertising before reading business administration at Warwick University,...
Sample of Authors
Cheever, John
1912 - 1982
American author born in Quincy, Massachusetts. Cheever’s father owned a shoe factory, but he fell on hard times in the f...
Further reading
Hughes, Dorothy B.
1904 - 1993
The American author, journalist and critic Dorothy B. Hughes, born Dorothy Belle Flanagan, never wrote much fiction, but...
Further reading
Canetti, Elias
1905 - 1994
The prose writer and playwright Elias Canetti was born in the city of Rustchuk (or Ruse) in Bulgaria. His father, who was a...
Further reading
Gogol, Nikolai
1809 - 1852
Nikolai Vasilievich Gogol is one of the great Russian authors of the 19th century. He was born in the village of...
Further reading