famous english writers biography

The 20 Best Biographies of Writers

The best biographies of writers cut through the gossip, the scandals, the myths, and the legends to deftly balance the life of the author with their literary legacy. This list features the best literary biographies of writers who penned classic works across more than four hundred years of literary history. From Shakespeare to Richard Wright to Mary Shelley and Virginia Woolf, these favorite biographies of writers encompass a deep bench of the best biographies of famous writers. Let’s dive in!

But first, if you’re interested in more of the best literary biographies, be sure to check out our list of the 10 best biographies of poets :

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And now for an epic list of the 20 best biographies of writers…

Agatha christie: an elusive woman by lucy worsley.

Agatha Christie, one of the “Masters of Suspense,” lived a remarkable life while penning classics like Murder on the Orient Express and And Then There Were None . Read all about it in Lucy Worsley’s Agatha Christie: An Elusive Woman . Among the best literary biographies, this one dispels the mysteries in the real life of this iconic mystery writer.

How to read it: Purchase Agatha Christie: An Elusive Woman on Amazon

Also a poet: frank o’hara, my father, and me by ada calhoun.

This unusual literary biography blends personal memoir with a bio of one of the greatest poets of all time, Frank O’Hara (for his collected poems, check out this edition ). In Also a Poet , Ada Calhoun discovers tapes of interviews between Peter Schjeldahl, her father, an art critic, and poet Frank O’Hara. The recordings were intended to be used in Schjeldahl’s unfinished biography of O’Hara. One of the best biographies of writers, Calhoun sets out to complete her father’s book while also intertwining memoirs of her own complicated relationship with her father. The result is a raw and real read you won’t soon forget.

How to read it: Purchase Also a Poet on Amazon

Jane austen: a life by claire tomalin.

Among readers who have favorite biographies of writers, Claire Tomalin’s Jane Austen: A Life often ranks high among the best literary biographies. We all know Jane Austen—author of, among other classics, Pride and Prejudice and Emma —right? Not so fast. Tomalin’s biography uncovers the previously limited life of this incredibly influential writer.

How to read it: Purchase Jane Austen: A Life on Amazon

Begin again: james baldwin’s america and its urgent lessons for our own by eddie s. glaude jr..

The best biographies of writers explore the legacy of the famous author whose portrait they are trying to draw. And that’s exactly what Eddie S. Glaude Jr. does in Begin Again: James Baldwin’s America and Its Urgent Lessonsf or Our Own . This bio of James Baldwin, perhaps most famous for his novel with queer themes, Giovanni’s Room , argues that Baldwin’s vision of America remains relevant today.

How to read it: Purchase Begin Again on Amazon

Born to be posthumous: the eccentric life and mysterious genius of edward gorey by mark dery.

I’m a huge Edward Gorey fan. I’ve read his books—some of which are collected in Amphigorey: Fifteen Books —over and over again and count him as an influence on my own writing. So imagine how delightful it was to encounter Born to Be Posthumous , Mark Dery’s compelling portrait of Gorey, definitely one of he best biographies of writers. This engrossing literary biography captures the “eccentric life and mysterious genius” of Gorey in a book that illuminates this exceptional-but-often-overlooked pioneer of the macabre.

How to read it: Purchase Born to Be Posthumous on Amazon

The bradbury chronicles: the life of ray bradbury by sam weller.

I love Ray Bradbury. During a very difficult time in my life, I sought refuge in Bradbury’s imagination, devouring two of his most treasured short story collections, The Martian Chronicles and The Illustrated Man (get them both in this Ray Bradbury boxed collection by the Library of America). I was completely swept up in wonder and fascination. So I’m so excited to say that Sam Weller’s The Bradbury Chronicles illuminates the life of this towering figure in America’s literary history, easily one of the best biographies of famous writers. Read this book and learn about the incredible life of one of the most incredible authors ever.

How to read it: Purchase The Bradbury Chronicles on Amazon

The brontë myth by lucasta miller.

One of the best biographies of famous English writers, Lucasta Miller’s The Brontë Myth is a deep dive into the lives and literary works of the Brontë sisters, whom you may know best from Jane Eyre (Charlotte Brontë) and Wuthering Heights (Emily Brontë). Miller’s bio unfurls the tangled reputation of these three brilliant sisters, liberating them from the various schools of thought—psychoanalytical, feminist, etc.—that have embraced the Brontës and counted them as their own. Instead, we get a fresh update on the lives of these influential sister-authors, free of the various schools of criticism that have ensnared them in their jaws. (If you’re just getting started with the Brontës, check out this handsome box set of their most well-known novels .)

How to read it: Purchase The Brontë Myth on Amazon

Cross of snow: a life of henry wadsworth longfellow by nicholas a. basbanes.

Chances are you’ve heard of Henry Wadsworth Longfellow, but until now, this iconic 19th century American author has lived a life undiscovered. Read the best of Longfellow’s work before diving into this incredible look at an incredible writer. In Cross of Snow , Nicholas A. Basbanes reveals the life of Longfellow, charting his influences and the writer he influenced himself. This breakthrough study is easily one of the best literary biographies.

How to read it: Purchase Cross of Snow on Amazon

Every love story is a ghost story: a life of david foster wallace by d. t. max.

The turbulent life of David Foster Wallace, author of that infamous classic, Infinite Jest , is demystified in D. T. Max’s Every Love Story Is a Ghost Story , the must-read literary biography of this important America scribe. The best biographies of writers sort through the gossip, the speculation, and the larger-than-life reputations of their subjects, allowing the author’s life to be seen in line with their work without overtaking their literary genius. And that’s exactly what Max manages in one of the best biographies of famous writers.

How to read it: Purchase Every Love Story Is a Ghost Story on Amazon

I am alive and you are dead: a journey into the mind of philip k. dick by emmanuel carrère.

The genius of Philip K. Dick has left us with classic sci-fi works like Do Androids Dream of Electric Sheep (inspiration for the SF film Blade Runner ) and A Scanner Darkly . But who was the man behind these important books that helped establish the science fiction genre? You’ll find the answer to that question in Emmanuel Carrère’s I Am Alive and You Are Dead , an essential literary biography for any fan of Dick’s writing. Definitely one of the best biographies of writers, I Am Alive and You Are Dead is subtitled “A journey into the mind of Philip K. Dick,” an apt description of this deep dive into the brain of this key figure in science fiction and literature in general.

How to read it: Purchase I Am Alive and You Are Dead on Amazon

T.s. eliot: an imperfect life by lyndall gordon.

I consider many of T.S. Eliot’s poems to be perfect, not to mention Old Possum’s Book of Practical Cats , which was illustrated by Edward Gorey (whose bio I included above in this list of the best biographies of writers). But there’s no denying that Eliot lived a, well, complicated life that included anti-Semitism and misogyny. So how do we reconcile the poet’s work with the poet himself? You’ll find out in Lyndall Gordon’s T.S. Eliot: An Imperfect Life , among the greatest biographies of poets. Gordon takes Eliot on in this unflinching study of Eliot’s life and literature. The best literary biographies face their subject head on, revealing the “imperfect” lives of their subjects, and it’s precisely that approach that makes this book among the most essential biographies of famous English writers.

How to read it: Purchase T.S. Eliot: An Imperfect Life on Amazon

J.r.r. tolkien: a biography by humphrey carpenter.

Who was the man who wrote The Lord of the Rings , easily the most influential fantasy books ever written? You’ll find out in Humphrey Carpenter’s J.R.R. Tolkien: A Biography . This one definitely ranks among the best biographies of writers because of the nimble way Carpenter weaves together the life of Tolkien with his work, offering a master class of how to write literary biographies. Uncover the man from the myth in this close read on the man who penned a fictional universe as vast and complete as our own universe.

How to read it: Purchase J.R.R. Tolkien: A Life on Amazon

Mary shelley by miranda seymour.

She wrote the groundbreaking science fiction novel Frankenstein , but who was the woman behind this classic story? In Miranda Seymour’s Mary Shelley , we discover exactly that. Among the best literary biographies, this book is a saga of the life of Mary Shelley, a life that saw as much sorrow and trauma as joy. In this book, surely one of the must-have biographies of female writers, Seymour sifts through the documents about Shelley’s life to situate famous English author within her historical and cultural context while also surveying how Shelley influenced the canon of English literature.

How to read it: Purchase Mary Shelley on Amazon

Richard wright: the life and times by hazel rowley.

Richard Wright is perhaps best known for his novel Native Son , but the author also contributed many more books and writing to American letters. In this book, Hazel Rowley digs deep into Wright’s exceptional life and magnificent literature to braid the two together. The result is one of the best biographies of writers, one that highlights the important contributions of a leading figure in American literary history.

How to read it: Purchase Richard Wright: The Life and Times on Amazon

Savage beauty: the life of edna st. vincent millay by nancy milford.

The poetry of Edna St. Vincent Millay positions this influential author as one of the leading poets of twentieth century. And it’s precisely that legacy that Nancy Milford illuminates in Savage Beauty: The Life of Edna St. Vincent Millay . With this fresh perspective on Millay, the midcentury master of verse, readers get one of the best biographies of poets. If all biographies of female writers were this comprehensive and inquisitive, there’d be no time to read anything else, marking this as an exceptional biography. If you’re interested in important female authors, check out this one vibrant, bold life of Millay, and you won’t be disappointed.

How to read it: Purchase Savage Beauty on Amazon

Shirley jackson: a rather haunted life by ruth franklin.

I’m a big fan of Shirley Jackson. I count We Have Always Lived in the Castle among my all-time favorite books. So it’s with great pleasure that I share that Ruth Franklin’s Shirley Jackson: A Rather Haunted Life definitely counts as one of the best biographies of writers. This literary biography goes deep into the life of Jackson, and in so doing, you’ll realize why Franklin subtitles this as “a rather haunted life.” Franklin highlights how this iconic writer danced on the edge of the macabre, radicalized the American literary world, and scandalized the public. It’s a book that’s as dishy as it is illuminating, ranking as among the best literary biographies.

How to read: Purchase Shirley Jackson: A Rather Haunted Life on Amazon

Updike by adam begley.

John Updike. Just the name of this author conjures up visions of some of the best writing in the English language, like the Rabbit tetralogy and critically acclaimed short stories . How on earth do you begin to assemble the life of this significant author? Somehow Adam Begley manages it in Updike , one of the best biographies of writers. Begley’s bio of Updike meets its match, becoming as innovative and important as its titular subject. The result is a dazzling biography whose story is just as gripping as one of Updike’s novels. You won’t want to pass this one up.

How to read it: Purchase Updike on Amazon

Virginia woolf by hermione lee.

When I was a senior in college, I did an independent study of Virginia Woolf with a great professor. To get ready for the course, I read biographies of Virginia Woolf, including Hermione Lee’s bio that I’m including in this list of the best literary biographies. Lee tackles her larger-than-life subject, Virginia Woolf, known for her Modernist novels like Mrs. Dalloway and, my personal favorite, To the Lighthouse . Lee is more than up to the task, and the result is, according to The Philadelphia Inquirer : “A biography wholly worthy of the brilliant woman it chronicles. . . . It rediscovers Virginia Woolf afresh.” If you’re at all curious about Woolf, the Modernists, the Bloomsbury Group, or the history of English literature, pick this one up.

How to read it: Purchase Virginia Woolf on Amazon

Will in the world: how shakespeare became shakespeare by stephen greenblatt.

Any list of the best biographies of famous English writers would be incomplete without a bio of the father of English literature: yep, William Shakespeare. What’s left to say about the Bard, who penned some of the most important writing in the English language ? Turns out, plenty. And that’s exactly what you’ll find in Stephen Greenblatt’s masterful biography Will in the World , which attempts to uncover Shakespeare’s origin story. Greenblatt explores Shakespeare’s early life, and the cultural, historical, and artistic forces that explain, so the subtitle says, “How Shakespeare Became Shakespeare.” The outcome is Will in the World , a finalist for the Pulitzer Prize and part of the curriculum of anyone looking for the best biographies of writers. This literary biography proves it’s still possible to write fresh, surprising, captivating, and engrossing biographies of famous writers. And Will in the World is the ultimate mic-drop, making it the only Shakespeare biography you need.

How to read it: Purchase Will in the World on Amazon

Wrapped in rainbows: the life of zora neale hurston by valerie boyd.

Many people discover Harlem Renaissance author Zora Neale Hurston through her novel Their Eyes Were Watching God , but in the award-winning Wrapped in Rainbows , Valerie Boyd uncovers the writer’s total miraculous output and undeniable influence. This key book is for sure one of the best literary biographies that any student of American literature will want to check out.

How to read it: Purchase Wrapped in Rainbows on Amazon

And there you have it an essential list of the 20 best biographies of writers. which of these best literary biographies will you read first, share this:.

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Sarah S. Davis is the founder of Broke by Books, a blog about her journey as a schizoaffective disorder bipolar type writer and reader. Sarah's writing about books has appeared on Book Riot, Electric Literature, Kirkus Reviews, BookRags, PsychCentral, and more. She has a BA in English from the University of Pennsylvania, a Master of Library and Information Science from Clarion University, and an MFA in Writing for Children and Young Adults from Vermont College of Fine Arts.

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Britain’s top British writers

TWe list the top British writers who make up our great literary landscape, from William Shakespeare to Ian Fleming, creator of James Bond

William Shakespeare (1564-1616)

The Bard is the most famous of British writers. The playwright is still commemorated for having coined nearly 1,700 of the words and phrases we still use today. He began as a playwright and as an actor in London although he is as known for his birthplace of Stratford-upon-Avon where many of his plays are still performed.

Shakespeare died in 1616 leaving most of his estate to his daughter Susanna. The only mention of his wife, Anne Hathaway, in his last will and testament was to leave her his “second best bed”.

Jane Austen (1775-1817)

Paving the way for female British writers everywhere, for a woman to write, and to write about women, in her time was not the ‘done thing’. It comes as no surprise to hear that the name we know so well today, Jane Austen, published her novels anonymously.

Her books deal with the lives of the upper and middle classes in England. Sense and Sensibility came first, but all her books were a resounding success – Emma , Mansfield Park , Northanger Abbey , Persuasion. While Pride and Prejudice was famously described by Austen as her ‘darling child’ and remains a national favourite. Her house in Chawton in Hampshire is open to visit.

Charles Dickens (1812-1870)

From A Christmas Carol to Oliver Twist , it is difficult not to recognise one of Charles Dickens’ iconic tales. The Victorian writer is quintessential of his time.

He dealt with the struggles of contemporary life with unforgettable characters. Dickens was also a lover of theatre – both writing and performing – and performed for Queen Victoria in 1851. His birthplace museum in Portsmouth is open for visitors.

Charlotte Brontë (1816-1855)

The eldest of the Brontë sisters, Charlotte outlived both her sisters and their successes. Jane Eyre , her most famous novel, created an enduring image of the wild moors of Yorkshire and introduced her criticism of society’s treatment of women. She did not actively seek to defy the roles set for women at the time. Instead she used her words in a modest feminist stand against the times.

George Eliot (1819-1880)

Hiding behind her pen name, George Eliot, Mary Ann Evans wanted to be taken seriously as a novelist at a time when women’s writing was often associated with romantic novels.

She met her partner George Henry Lewes through her literary circle in London. As he was married, their relationship was shunned by friends and family. They lived together despite the scandal. Her most famous novel, Middlemarch helped her to gain social acceptance through her psychological insights.

CS Lewis (1898-1963)

Born in Northern Ireland, Lewis studied at Oxford University. After serving as a soldier in WW1, he settled into life as a professor first at Oxford and then Cambridge university. Although renowned for his children’s fantasy tales, he also wrote profusely on religion and theology.

However, his first book in his Chronicles of Narnia series, The Lion, the Witch and the Wardrobe, released in 1950, remains one of the most beloved of his published works.

George Orwell (1903-1950)

Born Eric Arthur Blair, Orwell adopted his pen name shortly before his first book in 1933 called Down and Out in Paris and London .

By the time he published his first big novel, Animal Farm in 1945, he was an established, and indeed prolific, journalist.

He had dealt with British colonies, unemployed miners, civil wars and communism in his work – all of which had a profound impact on his writing. Animal Farm shows his anti-Stalin beliefs through a political, farmyard fable. Several years later Nineteen Eighty-Four came out and secured his longevity as an author.

Ian Fleming (1908-1964)

The writer of the Bond novels created a winning framework for the world of spy literature.

However, he did not begin to create and develop the Bond character until the age of 43. After a successful career working in newspapers, as a broker and in Naval Intelligence – he settled in his house in Jamaica where Bond was born. After writing Casino Royale , the first adventure of James Bond, he continued to publish 13 more titles. They have all been played out in iconic blockbuster hits since. Diverging from the adult scene just once, he wrote the story of the flying car, Chitty Chitty Bang Bang for his only son Caspar.

Roald Dahl (1916-1990)

British novelist, Roald Dahl, has straddled both the adult short story and the children’s story genre. He is certainly one of the most-loved British writers of all time.

Many believe his first book to be James and the Giant Peach , but it was in fact a picture book called The Gremlins. It was adapted from the script for the potential, but unrealised, Walt Disney film. He did not publish another children’s book until he was a father. He decided to concentrate on his short stories for adults, which he later continued alongside his prolific books. Dahl created many wonderful characters such as the BFG, the Twits and Willy Wonka in his children’s books. He also wrote in a magical ‘whizz-popping’ language that still enthrals readers.

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• A Guide to Britain’s Most Famous Writers Through History

Britain arguably has more famous writers than any other country, their works spanning every period of history and many literary styles.

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They’ve written some of the most recognised lines, dreamt up characters whose fame goes beyond the novels of which they’re the subject, and imagined plots that have captivated readers for centuries. Stretching back over a thousand years, the British literary tradition is vast and shows no signs of coming to a halt. We asked former student at the Oxford Summer School to create a guide to a mere handful of Britain’s most famous writers and their most celebrated works.

The Beowulf Poet

We don’t even know the name of the first famous writer on this list, but his or her composition is one of the most famous poems of all time. The Anglo-Saxon epic known as Beowulf was written sometime between the 7th century and the early 11th, though its exact dating is unknown. The 3,128-line tale – set in Scandinavia – depicts a world of heroes, kings and monsters, shedding a unique light on a period of history that we know comparatively little about. Its most famous scholar was J.R.R. Tolkien, who was influenced by Beowulf in his creation of his own mythological world, Middle Earth.

Geoffrey Chaucer

Geoffrey Chaucer is considered by many to be the Father of English Literature and the greatest poet of the Middle Ages. Born around 1343, he’s most famous for The Canterbury Tales , a series of stories (mostly in verse) based around a group of pilgrims travelling to the shrine of Thomas Becket. The pilgrims have a story-telling competition, resulting in each of the tales being called by the character telling them – The Knight’s Tale, The Miller’s Tale, and so on. Chaucer was instrumental in developing the use of the vernacular Middle English, during a period when most works of literature were being written in Latin or French.

William Shakespeare

It’s hard to know where to begin when describing the works of possibly the most famous writer of all time, William Shakespeare. Also known simply as “The Bard”, Shakespeare’s works are so numerous, so universally admired, and his characters so memorable, that his output has never been equalled. The Elizabethan playwright, born in 1564, continues to captivate audiences with tales of star-crossed lovers in Romeo and Juliet , make audiences ache with laughter at the antics of his mischievous knight Sir John Falstaff in Henry IV Parts 1 and 2 , make us recoil in horror at the violence of Titus Andronicus , and inspire romance with his beautiful sonnets. His 37 plays are still performed all over the world every single day, most notably by The Royal Shakespeare Company, headquartered in Shakespeare’s hometown of Stratford-upon-Avon, which counts among its acclaimed productions some of the world’s most famous actors.

William Wordsworth

Another famous poet named William was born in 1770 and helped develop a new literary movement called Romanticism, which saw a new focus on nature and emotion. Famously penning the words “I wandered lonely as a cloud”, Wordsworth is most strongly associated with the Lake District region of England, the beautiful landscape of which was a big inspiration for him. Wordsworth was Poet Laureate from 1843 until he died in 1850, and he’s also noted for The Prelude , a semi-autobiographical poem published after his death.

Jane Austen

The author of such literary classics as Pride and Prejudice and Sense and Sensibility has a deserving place among Britain’s most famous writers. Born in 1775, Jane Austen is known for six novels, all set among the aristocracy and fundamentally romantic, but each also containing much humour and social commentary. Her novels have inspired numerous television and film adaptations, which have served to widen her appeal still further. Characters including Elizabeth Bennet, Mr Darcy, Emma, Marianne Dashwood and many more are familiar to millions of readers around the world, though Austen herself was not famous during her lifetime; she was writing at a time when female writers weren’t taken seriously, so her works were published anonymously while she was alive. It’s hard to believe it now, but her fame was only achieved posthumously, following the publication of a biography by her nephew.

George Eliot

While Jane Austen published anonymously to ensure her work would be taken seriously, Mary Ann Evans used a male pen name to ensure the same, with the result that we know her by the somewhat unfeminine name of George Eliot. Born in 1819, George Eliot wrote several of the most famous works of English literature, including Silas Marner , The Mill on the Floss and Adam Bede . But the crowning glory of her literary output was Middlemarch : a masterpiece of social commentary and a novel considered to this day to be one of the greatest ever written in the English language.

The Brontë sisters

The Brontë sisters were contemporaries of George Eliot, living in a parsonage on the Yorkshire moors. There were three of them: Charlotte, born in 1816; Emily, born in 1818; and Anne, born in 1820. Like George Eliot, they wrote under male pen names: Currer, Ellis and Acton respectively. Their works earned attention for their unbridled passion, which was unusual for the time and not always well-received. They all died young, but between them, these remarkable sisters wrote some of the most famous novels in English literature, including Jane Eyre by Charlotte, Wuthering Heights by Emily and The Tenant of Wildfell Hall by Anne.

Charles Dickens

Born in 1812, the Victorian novelist Charles Dickens – considered by many to be the greatest of his age – is responsible for some of the most widely recognised fictional characters ever created. From Oliver Twist and David Copperfield to Ebenezer Scrooge and Miss Havisham, Dickens’ characters are one of the best aspects of his imaginative novels, and just one of the ingredients of his literary genius. His many celebrated novels include Great Expectations , Bleak House , Nicholas Nickleby , A Christmas Carol , The Old Curiosity Shop and The Pickwick Papers . Dickens was a literary celebrity on an unprecedented scale, and one of his many novels – A Tale of Two Cities – is the best-selling novel of all time. His literary influence is so great that his name has spawned a new adjective – “Dickensian” – which means anything reminiscent of his works, particularly as regards the poverty he so vividly describes (though it’s often also used to refer to people who call to mind some of his entertainingly horrible characters).

Thomas Hardy

Thomas Hardy was a younger contemporary of Charles Dickens, born in 1840. His style was rather different, but he was influenced by Dickens and achieved wide literary acclaim in his own right, both as a novelist and, later, a poet (indeed, he considered himself to be more a poet than a novelist, writing novels mainly for the income they brought). While Dickens’ novels tended to be set in an urban environment, Hardy’s focus was the countryside and its decline. Many of his works are set in Wessex, a partly real, partly imagined rural region that harked back to England before the Norman Conquest. His hugely successful novels include Far From the Madding Crowd , Jude the Obscure , Tess of the D’Urbervilles and The Mayor of Casterbridge.

E. M. Forster

E.M. Forster was born in 1879 and is famous for novels including A Passage to India , Howard’s End and A Room with a View . Though his works achieved admiration during his lifetime, they’re best known to readers today through the popular series of film adaptations by Merchant-Ivory Productions. Forster’s works focus primarily on the Edwardian middle classes in different situations; for example, together with Where Angels Fear to Tread , A Room with a View looks at the narrow-mindedness of English tourists in Italy. A Passage to India was Forster’s most successful novel; it concentrates on the relationship between West and East at a time when India was subject to British rule.

Wilfred Owen

The horrors of the First World War inspired a new generation of poets to write some of the most well-known lines in English poetry, and among the most famous was Wilfred Owen. Owen’s poems graphically describe gruesome scenes from the trenches with brutal realism. His most celebrated poem, Dulce et Decorum Est , depicts the effects of an attack by poison gas, and continues to be recited at commemorative events to this day. Its title is ironic, referring to a line by the Roman poet Horace: “Dulce et decorum est pro patria mori”, which translates roughly as, “It is sweet and honorable to die for one’s country”. Tragically, Owen lost his life just a week before the end of the war, and most of his poems were published after his death.

Evelyn Waugh

Evelyn Waugh is best known for his novel Brideshead Revisited , though he wrote several other well-received novels and was also an accomplished journalist. He was born in 1903 and attended Oxford University, where his experiences were the inspiration for many of the Oxford scenes for which Brideshead Revisited is so famous. The novel was successful at the time of its publication, but it achieved a new following decades later with the release of a long television adaptation starring Jeremy Irons. To this day, there will always be a handful of Oxford undergraduate each year trying to emulate the hedonistic lifestyle of Charles and Sebastian – including, of course, the mandatory teddy bear (inspired, it is said, by the poet John Betjeman’s bear).

J.R.R. Tolkien

There was seemingly no end to the imagination of one of the greatest 20th century English writers. J.R.R. Tolkien (whom we’ve already encountered as a Beowulf scholar) didn’t just pen epic works of fantasy; he created an entire mythology to go with them, complete with languages, maps, chronologies and genealogies. Middle Earth, as he called his extraordinarily detailed imaginary world, was the setting for hugely successful novels including The Hobbit – intended primarily for children – and the rather darker three-volume epic The Lord of the Rings , which has been voted by Amazon readers as their favourite book of the millennium.

Agatha Christie

Agatha Christie is Britain’s most famous crime novelist, the author of 66 detective novels and creator of two of the most well-known literary sleuths, Hercule Poirot and Miss Marple. According to the Guinness Book of Records, Christie is the best-selling novelist of all time; she’s often referred to as “the Queen of Crime” for her mastery of suspense. Her titles include Murder on the Orient Express and Death on the Nile , which were also two of the most popular film adaptations of her works.

J.K. Rowling

Bringing this list right up to date, we end with J.K. Rowling, author of the phenomenally successful Harry Potter series – seven books that tell the tale of the eponymous young wizard and his battle to save the world from the onslaught of the evil wizard Voldemort. The world Rowling created has captured the imaginations of children and adults alike, in particular the school at the centre of the story, Hogwarts School of Witchcraft and Wizardry. Though Rowling’s novels arguably lack the literary merit of the other novels we’ve mentioned in this article, she’s certainly one of the most famous British writers of modern times, and therefore worthy of a place on this list. She’s now turned her attention to writing books for adults, assuming the pseudonym Robert Galbraith in an attempt to have her writing viewed independently of the success of the Harry Potter series. Do you have a favourite British writer whom you think should be on this list? Let us know in the comments below!

Image credits: banner ; Beowulf ; Shakespeare ; Austen ; Brontës ; Hardy ; Forster ; Castle Howard ; Poirot .

Biography Online

Top 100 Writers

• William Shakespeare
• J.R.R. Tolkien
• George Orwell
• Charles Dickens
• Leo Tolstoy
• Jane Austen
• Ernest Hemingway
• John Steinbeck
• James Joyce ( 1882 – 1941) Irish novelist
• Alexandre Dumas (1802-1870) French writer. Author of The Three Musketeers and The Count of Monte Cristo.
• Vladimir Nabokov (1899 –  1977) Russian author Lolita (1955) Pale Fire (1962)
• F. Scott Fitzgerald ( 1896 – 1940) American author
• Robert Frost ( 1874 – 1963) – American poet
• Virgil ( 70 BC –  19 BC) Roman poet
• William Wordsworth
• Oscar Wilde
• Gabriel Garcia Marquez (1927 –  2014) Colombian author. Nobel Prize in Literature (1982). Wrote: One Hundred Years of Solitude (1967), The Autumn of the Patriarch (1975) and Love in the Time of Cholera (1985)
• Victor Hugo (1802 – 1885) French novelist and poet. Wrote Les Misérables , 1862, and Notre-Dame de Paris , 1831
• J.K. Rowling
• Edgar Allan Poe (1809 – 1842) American author, poet, editor, and literary critic
• Virginia Woolf
• Emily Dickinson
• D. H. Lawrence
• Walt Whitman
• George Eliot ( 1819 – 1880) Pen name of Mary Ann Evans. Wrote novels, The Mill on the Floss (1860), Silas Marner (1861), Middlemarch (1871–72), and Daniel Deronda (1876)
• Marcel Proust
• Albert Camus
• J.D. Salinger
• Fyodor Dostoevsky
• Thomas Hardy
• Joseph Heller
• Salman Rushdie
• Charlotte Bronte
• Douglas Adams
• Emily Bronte
• W. Somerset Maugham
• Honore de Balzac
• Khalid Hosseini
• Toni Morrison
• Agatha Christie
• Joseph Conrad
• Evelyn Waugh
• William Faulkner
• John Updike
• Dante Alighieri
• Franz Kafka
• Edith Wharton
• Johann Wolfgang von Goethe
• Henry Miller
• William Butler Yeats
• Aldous Huxley
• Paulo Coelho
• Jorge Luis Borges
• Marcus Aurelius
• Jack London
• Henry David Thoreau
• Thomas Mann
• Graham Greene
• George R.R. Martin
• Jules Verne
• Jack Kerouac
• Jean Paul Sarte
• Hunter S. Thompson
• William Blake 
• Maya Angelou
• Tennessee Williams
• Robert Louis Stevenson
• George Bernard Shaw
• Rudyard Kipling
• E. M. Forster
• Rabindranath Tagore
• Gabriela Mistral
• Jalalud’din Rumi
• Wilfred Owen
• Ralph Waldo Emerson
• Samuel Taylor Coleridge
• John Milton
• Aleksandr Sergeyevich Pushkin
• Stephen King
• Sir Arthur Conan Doyle
• Phillip Roth
• Beatrix Potter
• Anton Chekhov
• G.K. Chesterton
• Enid Blyton
• Czeslaw Milosz
• Writer Biographies

Famous Authors: The 30 Greatest Writers Of All Time

Who are the most  most famous authors the world has ever known ? Perhaps that’s not the real question: we should instead be asking, ‘how can we judge’? With that in mind one can begin to talk about criteria. One can think about which famous writers had the most influence on the world as a result of what they wrote, or how their writings changed the world.

We don’t necessarily have to talk about their writing style or how good their prose is, as that is, in any case, far too subjective: their greatness could simply be about their ideas – ideas that grab the attention of the world and change the world’s perceptions forever. In that case the writing would only be a vehicle for the transmission of the idea they wish to convey. That idea or theory or research is the reason for writing the book.

And then, particularly if we are including Shakespeare as one of the influential writers, we need to look at what kind of writing we are talking about. Shakespeare falls into the fiction writer category and so, perhaps, to find our best writers we should look at other fiction writers whose work had something like the influence of William Shakespeare’s. It should therefore be clear that our list of the thirty greatest writers are all fiction writers. Our criterion will be that they should be poets, dramatists and prose fiction writers who have had a significant influence on the writers who came after them or on the direction of society.

But who, apart from Shakespeare, are the greatest writers of all time? Without further ado, here is a list of thirty of the greatest writers of all time offered by NoSweatShakespeare. It would be impossible to rank them so they are listed in order of their birth dates:

Homer ~850 BCE

Sophocles 496-406 BCE

Virgil (Publius Vergilius Maro) 70 BCE – 19 BCE

The Evangelist, Mark (Author of the Gospel of St Mark) 1st Century CE

Dante (Durante degli Alighieri) 1265-1321

Geoffrey Chaucer 1343-1400

Francois Rabelais 1498-1553

Cervantes (Miguel de Cervantes Cortinas) 1547-1616

John Donne 1572-1631

John Milton 1608-1674

John Bunyan (1628-1688)

Voltaire (François-Marie Arouet) 1694-1778

William Blake 1757-1827

Jane Austen 1775 – 1817

Hans Christian Andersen 1805-1875

Hans Christian Andersen was a Danish playwright, travel writer, poet, novelist and story writer. His fairy tales place him as one of the world’s greatest writers ever. Written basically for children they transcend age barriers because of their universal nature: they reach the deepest levels of the human condition, each story demonstrating something profound about what it means to be a human being… Read more on Hans Christian Anderson >>

Charles Dickens 1812-1870

Herman Melville 1819-1891

Gustave Flaubert 1821-1880

Fyodor Mikhailovich Dostoyevsky 1821-1881

Jules Verne 1828-1905

Leo Tolstoy (Count Lev Nikolayevich Tolstoy) 1828-1910

Emily Dickinson 1830-1886

Unknown as a poet during her lifetime, Emily Dickinson is now regarded by many as one of the most powerful voices of American culture. Her poetry has inspired many other writers, including the Brontes. In 1994 the critic, Harold Bloom, listed her among the twenty-six central writers of Western civilization.  After she died her sister found the almost two thousand poems the poet had written… Read Emily Dickinson quotes . Read more on Emily Dickinson >>

Lewis Carroll (Charles Lutwidge Dodgson) 1832-1898

James Joyce 1882-1941

Franz Kafka 1883-1924

T.S. Eliot 1888-1965

F scott fitzgerald 1896-1940.

Jorge Luis Borges 1899-1986

George Orwell 1903-1950

Gabriel Garcia Marques 1927-2014

Like our list of the thirty greatest writers of all time? Any we’re missing? Check out our list of famous English writers , and most famous American authors .

Fiction writers do not write to transmit an idea or report on research they have done. They use language to make us think that their inventions are real, that the places they create actually exist and that their characters are real people, like us, who love and hate and suffer and strive. They invite us to enter into the world of their text and although they usually write only to entertain, there is a sense in that they point to truths just as real as those reached by Darwin and Einstein. If they do that at the highest level, in creating a world that we both recognise and can be inspired by, they reveal themselves as great writers and influence the world in that way. Like Shakespeare.

So who are these writers who can be placed in the same category as Shakespeare for doing that? Shakespeare is, of course, foremost among the great writers. Apart from writing plays that can be held up like mirrors in which we can see ourselves as human beings clearly, and come to an understanding of many of the things that make us human, Shakespeare’s poetry has had a profound effect on the English language: the way we use it today has been shaped by his words and phrases. It can be difficult at times to utter a sentence in English without using a construction first used by Shakespeare. And whenever we need to find a phrase that will sum something we want to say up perfectly and beautifully, we will find a phrase somewhere in Shakespeare’s works .

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The #2, #3 and #4 writers of all time seem to be missing from this list: #1 Shakespeare #2 Faust as translated by the great poet Walter Arndt–Part II Act V = to anything in Mr. S. and maybe exceeds. #3 Daniel Deronda by G. Eliot #4 Against the Day by Thomas Pynchon #5 Middlemarch

To include neither Proust nor Faulkner is preposterous. No reasonable critic places Orwell, Carrol, Verne or Christian-Anderson above them.

Mr Daly, Your post, at best, is an organized mess. To define in an absolute term that a “reasonable critic” should side with you, is a crash landing of opinion. Your suggestions of authors Faulkner and Proust, is purely for dramatic effect. Salinger and King are above them all.

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Top 10 literary biographies

From Shakespeare to Shelley, Edith Wharton to VS Naipaul … literature’s greats have biographies to match

T he idea of writing about authors is, for me, irresistible, and I’ve just published my seventh. It was about Gore Vidal and I have often recalled Vidal’s wise suggestion (made 30 years ago) that I should write about major figures, as important lives make for Important Lives.

Needless to say, anyone involved in this business becomes a student of Great Lives, and I’ve spent decades reading and rereading my favourite examples in the genre. The beginning of literary biography for anyone is probably Boswell’s classic life of Samuel Johnson (1791), an entertaining portrait of the inimitable sage, or such Victorian treasures as Elizabeth Gaskell’s astute life of Charlotte Brontë (1857) or John Forster’s intimate biography of Charles Dickens (1874), his close friend. The 20th century saw many fine literary biographies emerging on both sides of the Atlantic, but it also produced numerous heavy and boring tomes: on the American side Mark Schorer’s staggeringly detailed life of Sinclair Lewis from 1961 or Joseph Blotner’s anaesthetising life of William Faulkner from 1974; on the British, Norman Sherry’s tedious three-volume life of Graham Greene, finished in 1991.

It is such a huge field that I have narrowed my 10 favourites down to the era after the second world war.

1. Henry James by Leon Edel (Five volumes: 1953 to 1972) I’ve read these at least five times, slowly. Savouring each morsel. Although there are famously reductive (pseudo-Freudian) elements, the scholarship is impressive, the alertness to James’s shifting sensibility superb. It’s beautifully written, too. No later biographer of James can ignore this monument to the art of biography.

2. James Joyce by Richard Ellmann (1959) One of the best modern examples of literary biography, with its artfully chosen detail and narrative arc combining with a close reading of major texts.

3. Edith Wharton : A Biography by RWB Lewis (1975) Full of scholarship and astute readings, with a fine general sense of the times as well. It’s a good place to begin, but Hermione Lee’s brilliantly written biography in 2007 was a necessary compliment, challenging the somewhat stodgy view that Lewis put forward, revealing her complex sexuality and originality as a writer.

4. The Life of Langston Hughes by Arnold Rampersad (two volumes: 1986, 1988) Rampersad summons the rich world of the Harlem Renaissance and reveals the depth of African-American literary consciousness in this remarkable biography.

5. Shelley: The Pursuit by Richard Holmes (1974) A startling, elegantly written, example of artistic biography. Holmes utterly revised our sense of this key Romantic poet, taking us into his political thoughts and activities, exploring his poetry in fresh ways.

6. Dickens by Peter Ackroyd (1990) This is among my favorite books. I’ve read it again and again, as Ackroyd is himself a writer of Dickensian vitality – the biographer and subject are so well matched here.

7. Will in the World: How Shakespeare Became Shakespeare by Stephen Greenblatt (2004). A vast shelf of biographies of the Bard exists, but this is the book I would take with me to a desert island along with Shakespeare’s plays. It has energy and a great deal of unassertive yet far-reaching scholarship.

8. Tolstoy by A N Wilson (1989) Wilson writes so well, and he brings a blazing critical intelligence to bear as well as novelistic skills in assembling a great life of a great writer. I love this book.

9. The Imperfect Life of T S Eliot by Lyndall Gordon (1998) This brings together Eliot’s Early Years – a truly groundbreaking book – and Eliot’s New Life. We see Eliot in all of his alienated grandeur here, a deeply strange man, prejudiced, terrified of women, and yet massively gifted as a poet and critic. The very recent biography of young Eliot by Robert Crawford deepens our vision of Eliot and should be read beside Gordon’s work.

10. The World Is What It Is by Patrick French (2009) This biography of V S Naipaul, is wildly entertaining as well as informative. There is a kind of unwavering clarity and honest here. The complex genius if Naipaul is fully exposed. It’s a model of its kind.

• Jay Parini’s Every Time a Friend Succeeds Something Inside Me Dies: The Life of Gore Vidal is published by Little, Brown at £25 and is available from the Guardian bookshop at £20.
• Biography books
• Henry James
• James Joyce
• Edith Wharton
• Langston Hughes
• Charles Dickens

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50 Must-Read Literary Biographies

Sarah Ullery

Sarah suffers from chronic sarcasm, and an unhealthy aversion to noise. She loves to read, and would like to do nothing else, but stupid real life makes her go to work. She lives in the middle of a cornfield and shares a house with two spoiled dogs and a ton of books.

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I live vicariously through the lives and stories of the writers I love and admire. Sometimes I read biographies of authors whose lives parallel aspects of my own; small lives that eventually produce great art. Lives like Jane Austen and Emily Dickinson, or Penelope Fitzgerald who didn’t write her first book until she was 58.

I like to read biographies that share a commonality with my own life, but like the best fiction, I’d rather be transported to worlds with characters that are larger than life. Lives that are tumultuous, scandal-ridden, and full of perils. Lives that are exciting and rich and full of conflict. Lives that produce stories like Native Son , The Bell Jar, Lolita , A Rage in Harlem , or Frankenstein .

I also like to read about the lives of the authors of some of my favorite books—Iris Murdoch and The Sea, The Sea , Philip K. Dick and A Scanner Darkly , Mary Shelley and Frankenstein , Penelope Fitzgerald and The Blue Flower— but this can be a perilous exercise. Some authors were pretty terrible people, which can ruin your perception of their writing. But like most of us, artists and writers lived lives rife with nuance, and through even-handed, well-researched biographies, readers can take a peek into the minds that have created some of the stories we love.

The Peabody Sisters: Three Women Who Ignited American Romanticism by Megan Marshall

The supposed “American Brontës,” the three Peabody sisters influenced the thinking of writers like Thoreau and Hawthorne. The youngest sister, Sophia, married Nathaniel Hawthorne.

Margaret Fuller: A New American Life by Megan Marshall

After you finish the story of the Peabody sisters and are searching for more stories about American Romanticism and the role women played in the literary scene at the time, pick up Megan Marshall’s other book, about Margaret Fuller.

The Silent Woman: Sylvia Plath and Ted Hughes  by Janet Malcolm

This is a biography of the biographies that have been written about Sylvia Plath. It tries to correct the myth surrounding Plath and Ted Hughes.

Romantic Outlaws: The Extraordinary Lives of Mary Wollstonecraft and Her Daughter Mary Shelley by Charlotte Gordon

Mary Wollstonecraft died a week after giving birth to Mary Shelley, but in many ways, despite not knowing each other, their lives were very alike. A wonderful book about the mother who wrote A Vindication of the Rights of Women  and the daughter who wrote Frankenstein .

Neruda: The Poet’s Calling by Mark Eisner

A Biography of the Chilean poet Pablo Neruda:

“In this part of the story I am the one who Dies, the only one, and I will die of love because I love you, Because I love you, Love, in fire and blood . “ —from Pablo Neruda’s “I Do Not Love You Except Because I Love You”

Frederick Douglass: Prophet of Freedom by David W. Blight

This is the most recent biography of Frederick Douglass. It’s a wonderfully rendered story of a complex and brilliant man who greatly influenced American history.

Eden’s Outcasts: The Story of Louisa May Alcott and Her Father by John Matteson

I’m not a huge fan of Little Women — I find Louisa May Alcott’s life much more interesting than her writing.

Genet: A Biography of Janet Flanner by Brenda Wineapple

Genet is the pen name for Janet Flanner, a woman who fled her home in Indianapolis at 30 to live with her girlfriend in Paris in the 1920s. While in Paris, she became a correspondent for the New Yorker .

Warrior Poet: A Biography of Audre Lorde by Alexis De Veaux

Audre Lorde did not live a quiet life, and this biography relishes in the myth and power of Lorde as an early black lesbian feminist.

Vera (Mrs. Vladimir Nabokov) by Stacy Schiff

What was it like to be married to the author of Lolita ? The story of Vera and Vladimir Nabokov was a love story that spanned 52 years. Stacy Schiff, if you’ve never read any of her other biographies, is a master.

Lyrics of Sunshine and Shadow: The Tragic Courtship and Marriage of Paul Laurence Dunbar and Alice Ruth Moore by Eleanor Alexander

This has all the bad: racism, sexism, abuse, sexual assault—so I warned you! It’s a hard story. I hesitate to call it a romance—maybe there was love, but the relationship between Dunbar and Moore was definitely not stable. This is a relatively short biography, but it certainly packs a punch!

The Blue Hour: A Life of Jean Rhys by Lilian Pizzichini

I’ve always been hesitant to read Jean Rhys’s most famous book,  Wide Sargasso Sea , because I’ve always loved Jane Eyre . But recently I picked up Jane Eyre for a reread and I thought, God, Rochester is an ass. Maybe it’s time for Wide Sargasso Sea .

Chester B. Himes: A Biography by Lawrence P. Jackson

Chester B. Himes is probably most famous for his crime noir series the Harlem Cycle , which starts with A Rage in Harlem . Himes was arrested for armed robbery and spent almost ten years in prison, but while in prison his articles were featured in publications like Esquire . Plagued by racism in America, Himes moved to Paris where he became famous for his Harlem series.

Mary Shelley by Miranda Seymour

Mary Shelley was the daughter of the feminist Mary Wollstonecraft, and wife to the poet Percy Shelley, who drowned when she was only 24. The idea for Frankenstein was born on a stormy night as a group of writers were telling scary stories.

James Baldwin: A Biography by David A. Leeming

David Leeming was friends with Baldwin for 25 years before writing his biography. This is a wonderful glimpse into the life of one of the preeminent voices of African American literature in the world.

Born to be Posthumous: The Eccentric Life and Mysterious Genius of Edward Gorey by Mark Dery

A man who created creepy comics and lived with a horde of cats and thousands of books automatically sounds sounds like the kind of person whose biography I want to read.

Becoming Modern: The Life of Mina Loy by Carolyn Burke

Both a poet and visual artist, Mina Loy moved in the most influential circles of her time. She bumped shoulders with Gertrude Stein, Man Ray, and Marcel Duchamp—to name a few.

Rebecca West: A Life by Victoria Glendinning

A great selling point for a biography is when the subject is described as a sexual rebel. I’m also a sucker for a story about a dysfunctional English family, which Rebecca West famously wrote with The Fountain Overflows .

The Brontë Myth by Lucasta Miller

Okay, I’d rather read about the Wollstonecrafts/Shelleys, or the Peabodys, because I think the Brontës are a bit overrated…but like the Plath biography, which was a biography of her biographies, this book tries to demystify the myth that surrounds the Brontës.

Anaïs Nin: A Biography by Deirdre Bair

Best known for her sexual exploits, diaries, and relationships with leading intellectuals of her time, Anaïs Nin was more than the sum total of her famous idiosyncrasies.

Simone de Beauvoir: A Biography by Deirdre Bair

A biography collected from conversations with de Beauvoir, who’s best known for her philosophical writing on existentialism and her relationship with Jean Paul Sartre.

Virginia Woolf by Hermione Lee

A well balanced biography about a woman whose life is as well known as her books; still, you’ll find some tidbits in this biography that you’ve probably never known, and might come to see Woolf in a new light—for better or worse. Hermione Lee is a master biographer.

Why This World: A Biography of Clarice Lispector

A writer whose work has seen a resurgence in recent years—Clarice Lispector was born in post–War World I Ukraine, and emigrated to Brazil in her early years. Her writing and life is steeped in mysticism.

Jane Crow: The Life of Pauli Murray by Rosalind Rosenberg

It’s hard to find biographies about black female writers. Especially writers from the 20th and 19th centuries. Jane Crow was a lawyer, writer, and civil rights crusader. She’s an example of a woman we should know more about.

Flannery: A Life of Flannery O’Connor by Brad Gooch

I wish there were more biographies about Flannery O’Connor, the master of the short story. This is a good biography, but I want more.

How to Live: A Life of Montaigne in One Question and Twenty Attempts at An Answer by Sarah Bakewell

Four hundred years ago Montaigne wrote The Essays , where he tried to answer the universal question: How to live? This biography explores his questions and answers in a historical context.

Ralph Ellison: A Biography by Arnold Rampersand

A wonderfully in-depth story of Ralph Ellison’s life. He was born in 1913 in the south and moved to New York City in 1936. He had a grandiose personality that was sometimes at odds with other writers and politically active intellectuals of his time.

A Life of Langston Hughes: Volume I: 1902–1941, I, Too, Sing America by Arnold Rampersad

Langston Hughes’s life is told in three volumes. The first relates Hughes’s early years as he traveled the world.

Edith Wharton by Hermione Lee

I own this book. It’s HUGE. I bought it after reading Edna St. Vincent Millay’s biography in which it is mentioned that Edith Wharton was in Paris at the same time as Millay. But while Millay struggled at times with finances, Wharton was born to privilege.

Wrapped in Rainbows: The Life of Zora Neale Hurston by Valerie Boyd

In high school we had to choose a book from a list of 100 American classics to read every month. Their Eyes Were Watching God was the best book I read from that list. Zora Neale Hurston’s life was fascinating.

I Am Alive and You Are Dead: A Journey into the Mind of Philip K. Dick by Emmanuel Carrère

A Scanner Darkly is a favorite book. A life as strange as the stories he wrote: “ It is sometimes an appropriate response to reality to go insane .”

Richard Wright: The Life and Times by Hazel Rowley

This powerful story about the author of Native Son weaves Wright’s own writing and quotations into the biography.

The Life of Emily Dickinson by Richard B. Sewall

There are a lot of biographies of Emily Dickinson, but this is my choice.

Penelope Fitzgerald: A Life by Hermione Lee

Penelope Fitzgerald was nearly 60 before publishing her first book, which makes me love her. She’s best known for writing The Blue Flower , The Bookshop , and Offshore .

Katherine Anne Porter: The Life of an Artist by Darlene Harbour Unrue

“Pale Horse, Pale Rider” is one of my favorite short stories. A woman is in bed with a fever during the influenza epidemic, and in her fever she remembers her childhood, and worries about her fiancé who is a soldier fighting in the first world war. The author, Katherine Anne Porter, lived a life that was no less compelling.

Zelda by Nancy Milford

A woman driven mad by her husband’s lecherous appropriation of her personality and writing. Confession: I’m not a huge fan of F. Scott Fitzgerald, so it doesn’t pain me to discover he was a jerk.

Iris Murdoch: A Life by Peter J. Conradi

The Sea, The Sea is one of my favorite books. Charles Arrowby is absurd, frustrating, and totally realized as a man coming to the end of his life, but fighting like hell to delay the breakdown into old age. Iris Murdoch at first imagined herself to be the next George Eliot, but ended up embracing Dostoevsky’s influence.

Poet of the Appetites: The Lives and Loves of M.F.K. Fisher by Joan Reardon

Fisher wrote extensively about her own life in memoirs like The Gastronomical Me and  How to Cook a Wolf , in which she writes about food and its relationship with life and love.

Alice Walker: A Life by Evelyn C. White

Alice Walker was the first black woman to win a Pulitzer Prize for her novel The Color Purple . This might be the only biography on the list whose subject is still alive, which brings a new dynamic to the biography.

Shirley Jackson: A Rather Haunted Life by Ruth Franklin

Your life can’t be all rainbows and unicorns if you’re writing stories like The Haunting of Hill House and We Have Always Lived in the Castle .  This is a biography about the woman, the books, and the times in which they existed.

The Banished Immortal: A Life of Li Bai by Ha Jin

Li Bai was a Chinese poet who lived a long, long time ago, but whose work and legacy is still greatly revered today in China.

Savage Beauty: The Life of Edna St. Vincent Millay by Nancy Milford

My favorite literary biography. Edna St. Vincent Millay was fashioned as a modern Sappho, and a holdover of Victorian era poets like Elizabeth Barrett Browning. But despite her writing style, her personal life was very modern.

Gellhorn: A Twentieth-Century Life by Caroline Moorehead

The life of the illustrious war correspondent Martha Gellhorn who reported from the frontlines of most of the biggest wars of the 20th century. A fascinating figure.

Looking for Lorraine: The Radiant and Radical Life of Lorraine Hansberry by Imani Perry

Best known for her play  A Raisin in the Sun , Lorraine Hansberry counted James Baldwin and Nina Simone as friends. She was a prominent voice in the civil rights movement, she joined one of the first lesbian organizations, and challenged JFK to take a wider stance on civil rights. Why don’t we hear more about Lorraine Hansberry more? She died at 34.

Borges: A Life by Edwin Williamson

To read his books and short stories, it would be easy to imagine that Borges’s life could be stranger than fiction. But this biography focuses on the human side of Borges and brings new light to his work and thinking.

Ida: A Sword Among Lions by Paula Giddings

Ida B. Wells was an African American reporter who investigated and fought to end lynching in the south. This is the story of a brilliant and fearless reporter, and an indictment against the United States.

Prairie Fires: The American Dreams of Laura Ingalls Wilder by Caroline Fraser

I’ve never read Little House on the Prairie . I prefer reading about the rocky life story of the author behind the books.

The Collected Autobiographies of Maya Angelou by Maya Angelou

Yes, an autobiography. I included it because I don’t think anyone should try to retell Maya Angelou’s story. Her telling, and poetry, should be the last word.

The Invention of Angela Carter: A Biography by Edmund Gordon

A biography about the author of the morbid and gothic fairytales like The Bloody Chamber and gothic novels like The Magic Toyshop .

My Soul Looks Back by Jessica B. Harris

Jessica B. Harris writes about her early life in New York City when she moved in social circles that included James Baldwin, Toni Morrison, and Maya Angelou. A vibrant city, full of vibrant people.

Harriet Jacobs: A Life by Jean Fagan Yellin

Harriet Jacobs wrote the memoir Incidents in the Life of a Slave Girl , which became the most well-read slave narrative written by a woman. Jean Fagan Yellin expands on Harriet Jacobs life, and the world into which she escaped.

Need more? Check out these articles too:

7 Great New Literary Biographies for Your TBR

50 Must- Read Biographies

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Blog – Posted on Monday, Jan 21

The 30 best biographies of all time.

Biographer Richard Holmes once wrote that his work was “a kind of pursuit… writing about the pursuit of that fleeting figure, in such a way as to bring them alive in the present.”

At the risk of sounding cliché, the best biographies do exactly this: bring their subjects to life. A great biography isn’t just a laundry list of events that happened to someone. Rather, it should weave a narrative and tell a story in almost the same way a novel does. In this way, biography differs from the rest of nonfiction .

All the biographies on this list are just as captivating as excellent novels , if not more so. With that, please enjoy the 30 best biographies of all time — some historical, some recent, but all remarkable, life-giving tributes to their subjects.

If you're feeling overwhelmed by the number of great biographies out there, you can also take our 30-second quiz below to narrow it down quickly and get a personalized biography recommendation  😉

Which biography should you read next?

Discover the perfect biography for you. Takes 30 seconds!

1. A Beautiful Mind by Sylvia Nasar

This biography of esteemed mathematician John Nash was both a finalist for the 1998 Pulitzer Prize and the basis for the award-winning film of the same name. Nasar thoroughly explores Nash’s prestigious career, from his beginnings at MIT to his work at the RAND Corporation — as well the internal battle he waged against schizophrenia, a disorder that nearly derailed his life.

2. Alan Turing: The Enigma: The Book That Inspired the Film The Imitation Game - Updated Edition by Andrew Hodges

Hodges’ 1983 biography of Alan Turing sheds light on the inner workings of this brilliant mathematician, cryptologist, and computer pioneer. Indeed, despite the title ( a nod to his work during WWII ), a great deal of the “enigmatic” Turing is laid out in this book. It covers his heroic code-breaking efforts during the war, his computer designs and contributions to mathematical biology in the years following, and of course, the vicious persecution that befell him in the 1950s — when homosexual acts were still a crime punishable by English law.

3. Alexander Hamilton by Ron Chernow

Ron Chernow’s Alexander Hamilton is not only the inspiration for a hit Broadway musical, but also a work of creative genius itself. This massive undertaking of over 800 pages details every knowable moment of the youngest Founding Father’s life: from his role in the Revolutionary War and early American government to his sordid (and ultimately career-destroying) affair with Maria Reynolds. He may never have been president, but he was a fascinating and unique figure in American history — plus it’s fun to get the truth behind the songs.

Prefer to read about fascinating First Ladies rather than almost-presidents? Check out this awesome list of books about First Ladies over on The Archive.

4. Barracoon: The Story of the Last "Black Cargo" by Zora Neale Hurston

A prolific essayist, short story writer, and novelist, Hurston turned her hand to biographical writing in 1927 with this incredible work, kept under lock and key until it was published 2018. It’s based on Hurston’s interviews with the last remaining survivor of the Middle Passage slave trade, a man named Cudjo Lewis. Rendered in searing detail and Lewis’ highly affecting African-American vernacular, this biography of the “last black cargo” will transport you back in time to an era that, chillingly, is not nearly as far away from us as it feels.

5. Churchill: A Life by Martin Gilbert

Though many a biography of him has been attempted, Gilbert’s is the final authority on Winston Churchill — considered by many to be Britain’s greatest prime minister ever. A dexterous balance of in-depth research and intimately drawn details makes this biography a perfect tribute to the mercurial man who led Britain through World War II.

Just what those circumstances are occupies much of Bodanis's book, which pays homage to Einstein and, just as important, to predecessors such as Maxwell, Faraday, and Lavoisier, who are not as well known as Einstein today. Balancing writerly energy and scholarly weight, Bodanis offers a primer in modern physics and cosmology, explaining that the universe today is an expression of mass that will, in some vastly distant future, one day slide back to the energy side of the equation, replacing the \'dominion of matter\' with \'a great stillness\'--a vision that is at once lovely and profoundly frightening.

Without sliding into easy psychobiography, Bodanis explores other circumstances as well; namely, Einstein's background and character, which combined with a sterling intelligence to afford him an idiosyncratic view of the way things work--a view that would change the world. --Gregory McNamee

6. E=mc²: A Biography of the World's Most Famous Equation by David Bodanis

This “biography of the world’s most famous equation” is a one-of-a-kind take on the genre: rather than being the story of Einstein, it really does follow the history of the equation itself. From the origins and development of its individual elements (energy, mass, and light) to their ramifications in the twentieth century, Bodanis turns what could be an extremely dry subject into engaging fare for readers of all stripes.

7. Enrique's Journey by Sonia Nazario

When Enrique was only five years old, his mother left Honduras for the United States, promising a quick return. Eleven years later, Enrique finally decided to take matters into his own hands in order to see her again: he would traverse Central and South America via railway, risking his life atop the “train of death” and at the hands of the immigration authorities, to reunite with his mother. This tale of Enrique’s perilous journey is not for the faint of heart, but it is an account of incredible devotion and sharp commentary on the pain of separation among immigrant families.

8. Frida: A Biography of Frida Kahlo by Hayden Herrera

Herrera’s 1983 biography of renowned painter Frida Kahlo, one of the most recognizable names in modern art, has since become the definitive account on her life. And while Kahlo no doubt endured a great deal of suffering (a horrific accident when she was eighteen, a husband who had constant affairs), the focal point of the book is not her pain. Instead, it’s her artistic brilliance and immense resolve to leave her mark on the world — a mark that will not soon be forgotten, in part thanks to Herrera’s dedicated work.

9. The Immortal Life of Henrietta Lacks by Rebecca Skloot

Perhaps the most impressive biographical feat of the twenty-first century, The Immortal Life of Henrietta Lacks is about a woman whose cells completely changed the trajectory of modern medicine. Rebecca Skloot skillfully commemorates the previously unknown life of a poor black woman whose cancer cells were taken, without her knowledge, for medical testing — and without whom we wouldn’t have many of the critical cures we depend upon today.

10. Into the Wild by Jon Krakauer

Christopher McCandless, aka Alexander Supertramp, hitchhiked to Alaska and disappeared into the Denali wilderness in April 1992. Five months later, McCandless was found emaciated and deceased in his shelter — but of what cause? Krakauer’s biography of McCandless retraces his steps back to the beginning of the trek, attempting to suss out what the young man was looking for on his journey, and whether he fully understood what dangers lay before him.

11. Let Us Now Praise Famous Men: Three Tenant Families by James Agee

"Let us now praise famous men, and our fathers that begat us.” From this line derives the central issue of Agee and Evans’ work: who truly deserves our praise and recognition? According to this 1941 biography, it’s the barely-surviving sharecropper families who were severely impacted by the American “Dust Bowl” — hundreds of people entrenched in poverty, whose humanity Evans and Agee desperately implore their audience to see in their book.

12. The Lost City of Z: A Tale of Deadly Obsession in the Amazon by David Grann

Another mysterious explorer takes center stage in this gripping 2009 biography. Grann tells the story of Percy Fawcett, the archaeologist who vanished in the Amazon along with his son in 1925, supposedly in search of an ancient lost city. Parallel to this narrative, Grann describes his own travels in the Amazon 80 years later: discovering firsthand what threats Fawcett may have encountered, and coming to realize what the “Lost City of Z” really was.

13. Mao: The Unknown Story by Jung Chang

Though many of us will be familiar with the name Mao Zedong, this prodigious biography sheds unprecedented light upon the power-hungry “Red Emperor.” Chang and Halliday begin with the shocking statistic that Mao was responsible for 70 million deaths during peacetime — more than any other twentieth-century world leader. From there, they unravel Mao’s complex ideologies, motivations, and missions, breaking down his long-propagated “hero” persona and thrusting forth a new, grislier image of one of China’s biggest revolutionaries.

14. Mad Girl's Love Song: Sylvia Plath and Life Before Ted by Andrew Wilson by Andrew Wilson

Titled after one of her most evocative poems, this shimmering bio of Sylvia Plath takes an unusual approach. Instead of focusing on her years of depression and tempestuous marriage to poet Ted Hughes, it chronicles her life before she ever came to Cambridge. Wilson closely examines her early family and relationships, feelings and experiences, with information taken from her meticulous diaries — setting a strong precedent for other Plath biographers to follow.

15. The Minds of Billy Milligan by Daniel Keyes

What if you had twenty-four different people living inside you, and you never knew which one was going to come out? Such was the life of Billy Milligan, the subject of this haunting biography by the author of Flowers for Algernon . Keyes recounts, in a refreshingly straightforward style, the events of Billy’s life and how his psyche came to be “split”... as well as how, with Keyes’ help, he attempted to put the fragments of himself back together.

16. Mountains Beyond Mountains: The Quest of Dr. Paul Farmer, a Man Who Would Cure the World by Tracy Kidder

This gorgeously constructed biography follows Paul Farmer, a doctor who’s worked for decades to eradicate infectious diseases around the globe, particularly in underprivileged areas. Though Farmer’s humanitarian accomplishments are extraordinary in and of themselves, the true charm of this book comes from Kidder’s personal relationship with him — and the sense of fulfillment the reader sustains from reading about someone genuinely heroic, written by someone else who truly understands and admires what they do.

17. Napoleon: A Life by Andrew Roberts

Here’s another bio that will reshape your views of a famed historical tyrant, though this time in a surprisingly favorable light. Decorated scholar Andrew Roberts delves into the life of Napoleon Bonaparte, from his near-flawless military instincts to his complex and confusing relationship with his wife. But Roberts’ attitude toward his subject is what really makes this work shine: rather than ridiculing him ( as it would undoubtedly be easy to do ), he approaches the “petty tyrant” with a healthy amount of deference.

18. The Passage of Power: The Years of Lyndon Johnson IV by Robert A. Caro

Lyndon Johnson might not seem as intriguing or scandalous as figures like Kennedy, Nixon, or W. Bush. But in this expertly woven biography, Robert Caro lays out the long, winding road of his political career, and it’s full of twists you wouldn’t expect. Johnson himself was a surprisingly cunning figure, gradually maneuvering his way closer and closer to power. Finally, in 1963, he got his greatest wish — but at what cost? Fans of Adam McKay’s Vice , this is the book for you.

19. Prairie Fires: The American Dreams of Laura Ingalls Wilder by Caroline Fraser

Anyone who grew up reading Little House on the Prairie will surely be fascinated by this tell-all biography of Laura Ingalls Wilder. Caroline Fraser draws upon never-before-published historical resources to create a lush study of the author’s life — not in the gently narrated manner of the Little House series, but in raw and startling truths about her upbringing, marriage, and volatile relationship with her daughter (and alleged ghostwriter) Rose Wilder Lane.

20. Prince: A Private View by Afshin Shahidi

Compiled just after the superstar’s untimely death in 2016, this intimate snapshot of Prince’s life is actually a largely visual work — Shahidi served as his private photographer from the early 2000s until his passing. And whatever they say about pictures being worth a thousand words, Shahidi’s are worth more still: Prince’s incredible vibrance, contagious excitement, and altogether singular personality come through in every shot.

21. Radioactive: Marie & Pierre Curie: A Tale of Love and Fallout by Lauren Redniss

Could there be a more fitting title for a book about the husband-wife team who discovered radioactivity? What you may not know is that these nuclear pioneers also had a fascinating personal history. Marie Sklodowska met Pierre Curie when she came to work in his lab in 1891, and just a few years later they were married. Their passion for each other bled into their passion for their work, and vice-versa — and in almost no time at all, they were on their way to their first of their Nobel Prizes.

22. Rosemary: The Hidden Kennedy Daughter by Kate Clifford Larson

She may not have been assassinated or killed in a mysterious plane crash, but Rosemary Kennedy’s fate is in many ways the worst of “the Kennedy Curse.” As if a botched lobotomy that left her almost completely incapacitated weren’t enough, her parents then hid her away from society, almost never to be seen again. Yet in this new biography, penned by devoted Kennedy scholar Kate Larson, the full truth of Rosemary’s post-lobotomy life is at last revealed.

23. Savage Beauty: The Life of Edna St. Vincent Millay by Nancy Milford

This appropriately lyrical biography of brilliant Jazz Age poet and renowned feminist, Edna St. Vincent Millay, is indeed a perfect balance of savage and beautiful. While Millay’s poetic work was delicate and subtle, the woman herself was feisty and unpredictable, harboring unusual and occasionally destructive habits that Milford fervently explores.

24. Shelley: The Pursuit by Richard Holmes

Holmes’ famous philosophy of “biography as pursuit” is thoroughly proven here in his first full-length biographical work. Shelley: The Pursuit details an almost feverish tracking of Percy Shelley as a dark and cutting figure in the Romantic period — reforming many previous historical conceptions about him through Holmes’ compelling and resolute writing.

25. Shirley Jackson: A Rather Haunted Life by Ruth Franklin

Another Gothic figure has been made newly known through this work, detailing the life of prolific horror and mystery writer Shirley Jackson. Author Ruth Franklin digs deep into the existence of the reclusive and mysterious Jackson, drawing penetrating comparisons between the true events of her life and the dark nature of her fiction.

26. The Stranger in the Woods: The Extraordinary Story of the Last True Hermit by Michael Finkel

Fans of Into the Wild and The Lost City of Z will find their next adventure fix in this 2017 book about Christopher Knight, a man who lived by himself in the Maine woods for almost thirty years. The tale of this so-called “last true hermit” will captivate readers who have always fantasized about escaping society, with vivid descriptions of Knight’s rural setup, his carefully calculated moves and how he managed to survive the deadly cold of the Maine winters.

27. Steve Jobs by Walter Isaacson

The man, the myth, the legend: Steve Jobs, co-founder and CEO of Apple, is properly immortalized in Isaacson’s masterful biography. It divulges the details of Jobs’ little-known childhood and tracks his fateful path from garage engineer to leader of one of the largest tech companies in the world — not to mention his formative role in other legendary companies like Pixar, and indeed within the Silicon Valley ecosystem as a whole.

28. Unbroken: A World War II Story of Survival, Resilience, and Redemption by Laura Hillenbrand

Olympic runner Louis Zamperini was just twenty-six when his US Army bomber crashed and burned in the Pacific, leaving him and two other men afloat on a raft for forty-seven days — only to be captured by the Japanese Navy and tortured as a POW for the next two and a half years. In this gripping biography, Laura Hillenbrand tracks Zamperini’s story from beginning to end… including how he embraced Christian evangelism as a means of recovery, and even came to forgive his tormentors in his later years.

29. Vera (Mrs. Vladimir Nabokov) by Stacy Schiff

Everyone knows of Vladimir Nabokov — but what about his wife, Vera, whom he called “the best-humored woman I have ever known”? According to Schiff, she was a genius in her own right, supporting Vladimir not only as his partner, but also as his all-around editor and translator. And she kept up that trademark humor throughout it all, inspiring her husband’s work and injecting some of her own creative flair into it along the way.

30. Will in the World: How Shakespeare Became Shakespeare by Stephen Greenblatt

William Shakespeare is a notoriously slippery historical figure — no one really knows when he was born, what he looked like, or how many plays he wrote. But that didn’t stop Stephen Greenblatt, who in 2004 turned out this magnificently detailed biography of the Bard: a series of imaginative reenactments of his writing process, and insights on how the social and political ideals of the time would have influenced him. Indeed, no one exists in a vacuum, not even Shakespeare — hence the conscious depiction of him in this book as a “will in the world,” rather than an isolated writer shut up in his own musty study.

If you're looking for more inspiring nonfiction, check out this list of 30 engaging self-help books , or this list of the last century's best memoirs !

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20 Greatest English Writers of Modern Literature

Best English Writers of Modern English Literature

When we look into the Modern period of English Literature, It is the end of the long reign of Queen Victoria which was about 1901 and after stability which the country had so long enjoyed after the beginning of the 20th century through roughly 1965.

So the modern period we can say came around the end of the 19th century and almost after the beginning of the 20th century mostly during WW1.

We have listed 20 Most prominent figures of English Literature that belonged to England or Scotland. If we have missed someone, please do let us know in the comments.

Virginia Woolf – Re-inventor of the novel 

The English novelist, critic, and essayist Virginia Woolf ranks as one of England’s most distinguished English writers of the middle part of the twentieth century. Her novels can perhaps best be described as impressionistic, which is a literary style that attempts to inspire impressions rather than recreating reality.

Virginia Woolf

In 1917, for amusement, she and her husband Leonard Woolf founded the Hogarth Press by setting and hand printing on an old press ‘Two Stories’ by ‘L. and V. Woolf.’ The volume was a success, and over the years they published many important books.

Hogarth Press published the best and most original work that came to its attention, and the Woolfs as publishers favored young and unknown writers. Virginia Woolf herself was the author of about fifteen books.

The last, ‘A Writer’s Diary’, was published in 1953 after her death. Her most famous works are ‘Mrs. Dalloway’, ‘To the Lighthouse’, and ‘Jacob’s Room’ as well as ‘The Voyage Out,’ and ‘Night Out.’

Virginia also wrote experimental novels and is credited with re-inventing the novel. She was also a champion of women’s rights as is seen from her essay ‘A Room of One’s Own.’ 

H.G.Wells – Writer of Science Fiction

Herbert George Wells was not only an author; he was also a sociologist, journalist, and historian. He was a fantastic and very descriptive writer, and gained fame as an author of science fiction, though he wrote on other themes like politics and history also.

Some of H.G. Wells’ most famous books are ‘War of the Worlds’ and ‘The Time Machine.’ He wrote many other books, such as ‘The World Set Free,’ ‘The Soul of a Bishop,’ ‘The Secret Places of the Heart’, and many more.

In one of his books, ‘War of the Worlds,’ H.G. Wells writes about Martians attacking Earth. In another book, ‘The Time Machine,’ the main character builds a time machine, in which he could travel into the future.

Wells’ books made people interested in science and space. In his time not many people believed in the sort of technology used in his books. The people who were alive then, would probably be amazed at our technology now. Wells’ books were somewhat like predictions, and therein lies his greatness. 

Robert Lewis Stevenson – ‘Tusitala’ 

Robert Louis Stevenson was a Scottish essayist, novelist, and poet. He prepared for a career in law but never practiced. His immensely popular novels ‘Treasure Island’, ‘Kidnapped’, ‘Dr. Jekyll and Mr. Hyde’ and ‘The Master of Ballantrae’ were written over the course of a few years.

‘A Child’s Garden of Verses’, which he wrote in 1885 is one of the most influential children’s works of the 19th century. Stevenson’s popularity is based primarily on the exciting subject matter of his adventure novels and stories of the fantastic.

Treasure Island’ is a swiftly paced story of a search for buried gold. Having suffered from tuberculosis for much of his life, Stevenson spent many years traveling in search of a climate that would suit his illness.

He finally settled in Samoa, where he died in 1894, and was buried. He was called ‘tusitala’ by the local people because he was such a great storyteller – and the word ‘tusitala’ means ‘storyteller’ in their language

Walter Scott – Historical Novelist

Walter Scott was a famous English novelist of the early 19th century and a pioneer in the art of the historical novel. It was the success of ‘Waverley’, that established Scott in the career of a novelist. This historical novel was so popular that a railway station and football team were named after it!

Walter Scott

However, Scott didn’t even claim credit for the ‘Waverley’ novels, until several years after they were first published. His first successes were largely in the realm of Scottish history.

Then at a critical point of his career, Scott turned to English history for his subject matter. He began with ‘Ivanhoe’ which was a complicated romance set in 12th century England, and then wrote three other novels set in the period of the Crusades. 

George Orwell – Author of ‘1984’

George Orwell was an English novelist, essayist, and critic. He served for five years in the Burmese police, and also lived for some time as a tramp and dishwasher!

His most famous book was ‘Animal Farm’ in which he attacked the Russian Revolution. His other famous book ‘Nineteen Eighty Four’, describes the horrors of dictatorship.

D. H. Lawrence

D. H. Lawrence was an English novelist, story writer, critic, poet, and painter and one of the great figures in 20th century English literature. Lawrence’s childhood was dominated by poverty and friction between his parents.

The appearance of his first novel ‘The White Peacock’ launched Lawrence into a writing career. Lawrence’s novel ‘Sons and Lovers’ appeared in 1913 and was based on his childhood. Lawrence’s best-known work is ‘Lady Chatterley’s Lover’, first published privately in Florence in 1928. He died in France of tuberculosis. 

Rudyard Kipling – Author of Jungle Book

You must have seen or heard about the movie ‘Jungle Book’ with its famous characters like Mowgli, Baloo, and Bagheera. But did you know that it is based on a book written by a great English writer, Rudyard Kipling?

Rudyard Kipling was born in Bombay but educated in England. In 1882 he returned to India, where he worked for Anglo-Indian newspapers. Kipling enjoyed early success with his poems but soon became known as a gifted short story writer.

He glorified the British Empire and the common soldier in many of his works. ‘ Kim ‘ (published in 1901) is widely considered his best novel.

Kipling was the first Englishman to receive the Nobel Prize for Literature. Kipling had poor eyesight, which proved a blessing in disguise. He had hoped to enter the army, but his mediocre results as a student dashed these hopes- and the military’s loss proved to be literature’s gain! 

Thomas Hardy – An Immortal English Writer

Thomas Hardy is one of the immortals of English literature. He wrote from his personal knowledge and experience, and his stories were set in locations that were familiar to him. Hardy started by writing poetry, but later, he switched to writing novels.

At first, he published anonymously, but when people became interested in his works, he began to use his own name. Hardy’s novels were published in serial form in magazines that were popular both in England and America. His first popular novel was ‘Under the Greenwood Tree’, published in 1872.

The next great novel, ‘Far from the Madding Crowd’ was a huge success and other popular novels followed in quick succession. After a long and highly successful life, Thomas Hardy died on January 11, 1928, at the age of 87. His ashes were buried in Poets’ Corner at Westminster Abbey. His works will live on forever. 

Mary Anne Evans aka George Eliot 

Did you know that the famous writer George Eliot was actually a lady named Mary Anne Evans? She used a male pen name, she said, to ensure that her works were taken seriously, for in those days it was believed that women could write only light-hearted romances.

She chose ‘George’ as her first name as it was the name of her lifelong companion, George Lewes, and ‘Eliot’ because ‘it was a good mouth-filling word’!

George Eliot was one of the leading English writers of the Victorian era. Mary Anne Evans’s transformation into the fiction writer George Eliot began in 1856 when she decided to try her hand at writing novels.

Her first novel ‘Adam Bede’, was a success and it was followed by two more popular novels ‘The Mill on the Floss’ and ‘Silas Marner’.

Mary Anne Evans lived a controversial and unconventional life that has been the subject of much scholarly debate, and the study of many biographers. Her works stand on their own making her one of the best of the Victorian writers. 

Charles Dickens – Greatest Writer of Victorian Era

Charles Dickens was one of the most influential and greatest writers of the Victorian era. From 1837 till 1841, Charles took to writing novels, but his novels were published in small parts instead of at one time.

He wrote novels like ‘Oliver Twist’, ‘ Nicholas Nickelby’, and The Old Curiosity Shop’. From 1841 to 1860, Charles wrote a few more novels, which were very much based on his personal experience.

Charles Dicken’s Wax Statue at Madame Tussauds Museum

‘David Copperfield’, ‘Bleak House’, ‘A Tale of Two Cities”, and ‘Great Expectations’, are among his famous works during that period. Because his novels were published in installments in periodicals, many more people could afford to read them, as periodicals were not as expensive as books.

Moreover, each installment would end with a hook that kept his readers wondering what was coming next, thus ensuring the sales of the next installment!

Dickens also took part in protests and campaigns against social injustice, hypocrisy in the society, and wrote stories, pamphlets, and plays in this context.

Although Dickens’s main profession was as a novelist, he continued his journalistic work until the end of his life Dickens had the rare gift of being able to capture the imagination of the audience. His powers of observation were amazing, and he had a rare wit.

His characters were unforgettable, and his command of the language incredible. Dickens was a sympathizer of the poor, the suffering, and the oppressed and when he died, one of the greatest English writers was lost to the world. 

Daniel Defoe 

Daniel Defoe was an observant reporter, historian, humorist, and grand storyteller. He is best known as the author of the famous book ‘Robinson Crusoe.’

It is the story of a shipwrecked sailor who is washed ashore on a deserted island. He spends 28 years on this remote tropical island encountering natives, captives, and mutineers before being rescued.

The story is written in a simple narrative style and is considered to be one of the most widely published books in history. 

Lewis Carroll – Children’s author – Brilliant mathematician 

Have you heard of the maths teacher who wrote children’s novels? Lewis Carroll did just that. While working as a maths lecturer at Christchurch, Oxford, he wrote novels for children. He also wrote brilliant mathematical works!

‘Lewis Carroll’ was the pen name adopted by Charles Lutwidge Dodgson. Carroll was very shy and hid his hands continually in a pair of grey-and-black gloves. He was troubled by a stammer, but he got along well with children.

During a picnic in 1862, Carroll told a long story to a girl named Alice Liddell. His famous book, Alice’s Adventures in Wonderland,’ was born out of this tale. Alice, a seven-year-old girl is the heroine of this story. She dreams that she plunges down a rabbit hole. She meets such strange creatures as the Cheshire cat, the Mad Hatter, the March Hare, and the King and queen of hearts.

The incidents in this novel are illogical and have a dream-like quality. This story is continued in the novel, ‘Through the Looking Glass,’ which is even more famous. Lewis Carroll delighted his friends with games, puzzles, and riddles and some of his novels have puzzled generations of readers. 

Bronte sisters

The Bronte sisters led a strange and troubled life. They lost their mother at an early age, and two of their sisters died while they were in school. They lived in a cold house by the Parish graveyard. Yet Charlotte, Emily, and Anne Bronte wrote some of the finest novels in the English language.

A simple present from their father, a box of toy soldiers, changed the course of their life. Charlotte seized a toy soldier and declared him to be her hero. This sparked their imagination, and they began to write. In 1846, the three sisters published a collection of poems at their own expense.

Just two copies were sold. This failure did not defeat them. Each one started writing a novel, but all the three novels were later rejected by publishers. Finally in 1847, Charlotte Bronte’s novel, ‘Jane Eyre,’ was published. It became an immediate success.

The same year saw the publication of Emily Bronte’s novel ‘Wuthering Heights’ and Anne Bronte’s, ‘Agnes Grey’. Curiously, all three Bronte sisters wrote under male pen names! Thus the Bronte sisters made literary history. 

Enid Blyton -a legend in Children’s literature

Enid Blyton lit up the world of children with her books. She was the eldest of three children. Her father Thomas Carey Blyton painted, wrote poetry, played the piano, and was a photographer too.

Enid Blyton was brought up to be a musician. Her family thought her writing was a waste of time! In 1917, her first published poem appeared in Nash’s Magazine. She edited ‘Sunny Stories’, a new magazine for children.

Many of her stories, plays, and songs were well received. Blyton’s first full-length children’s adventure book, The Secret Island’ was published in 1938. This was a fast-moving story woven around loveable characters.

This led to such series as The Famous Five’, The Secret Seven’, ‘The Adventure Series’, ‘The Mystery Series’, and the ‘Barney’ mystery books. Her works celebrate good food, the spirit of friendship, and honesty.

Blyton could write 10000 words a day! In 1940, eleven books were published in her name. Blyton’s books have sold over 60 million copies! 

Jane Austen – Modern English Novelist

Jane Austen, the noted English novelist made romanticism fashionable. In romanticism, the author’s feelings, tastes, and opinions find their way into the writing. This is called subjectivity. For instance, Jane Austen loved dancing, and it is frequently featured in her novels. Romanticism also gave importance to inspiration.

Jane Austen’s novels were brilliantly witty and beautifully structured. Unlike most other English writers, Jane Austen had a happy childhood. She was the seventh child of Reverend George Austen and his wife Cassandra. She was born in Hampshire, England.

Jane Austen

At the age of fourteen, she wrote her first novel, ‘Love and Friendship’. In her early twenties, Jane Austen wrote three novels. They were later re-worked and published as ‘Sense and Sensibility’, ‘Pride and Prejudice,’ and ‘Northanger Abbey’.

‘Sense and Sensibility’ and ‘Pride and Prejudice’ were published in 1811 and 1813 respectively. ‘Mansfield Park’ came out in 1814, and ‘Emma’, in 1816. Jane Austen died at the age of forty-one. Northanger Abbey was published in 1818, the year after her death.

None of the books published in her lifetime had her name on them – they were described as being written ‘By a Lady’! 

Arthur Conan Doyle

Heard about Sherlock Holmes an immortal character? Say the word detective, and the image of Sherlock Holmes springs to the mind. He was so life-like that readers forgot that they were reading about a character in a book.

They even send mail to his fictional address in Baker Street! Sherlock Holmes was a quiet and intelligent character, but his creator Arthur Conan Doyle got tired of him.

He wanted to write ‘serious’ novels. So in one of his later books, he killed him off. There was a public outcry, and Doyle was forced to bring Holmes back from the dead.

Holmes formed a memorable partnership along with his unintelligent associate Dr. Watson. Holmes first appeared in Doyle’s story, ‘A Study in Scarlet’. It was published as a serial in Strand Magazine.

Holmes appeared in ‘The Sign of the Four’ ( 1889), ‘Adventures’ (1891), and ‘The Hound of the Baskervilles’ (1902). Collected Holmes’s stories appeared in ‘Adventures of Sherlock Holmes’. It ran into five volumes. More than 175 films have been made on Sherlock Holmes.

Arthur Conan Doyle was Scottish by birth and a doctor by profession. He believed in ghosts and played first-class cricket. He also displayed his detective talent, in just the same manner as Sherlock Holmes! 

William Wordsworth – Modern English Writer

William Wordsworth’s words were worth their weight in gold. ‘He was the nearest of all writers to Shakespeare and Milton, and yet in a style perfectly unborrowed and his own’, wrote his friend and fellow poet, Coleridge. His intense love for nature lights up his poems.

Wordsworth sensed the spirit that lives in nature. The perfect use of language, the freshness of his thought, and his magnificent imagination made his poems sensational. Yet they were simple.

In 1798, Wordsworth published his first collection of poems, ‘Lyrical Ballads’, together with Coleridge. This collection marks the birth of the Romantic school in English poetry. In 1843, he was appointed Poet Laureate on the death of Robert Southey, another Lakeland poet. ‘Daffodils,’ is one of his most famous poems. 

Harold Pinter

Harold Pinter (1930-2008) was a great English playwright, actor, and director. His plays are associated with the ‘Theatre of the Absurd’ and are typically marked by a sense of menace. Pinter was a master of dialogue.

‘The Birthday Party’, ‘The Caretaker’, and ‘Party Time’, ‘Monologue and No Man’s Land’, ‘The Homecoming’ are some of his notable plays. “I write because I want to write “, said Harold Pinter. 

O. Henry – ‘the master of Surprise Endings’

William Sydney Porter was accused of stealing money from a bank and was thrown into prison. There, he started to write short stories. He took the pen name, O. Henry, the name of his favorite warden. ‘Cabbages and Kings,’ was O.Henry’s first collection of short stories.

‘The Ransom of Red Chief,’ is a typical O. Henry story. It tells the tale of two kidnappers who kidnap a boy, find that he is a real nuisance, and finally pay the boy’s father to take him back!

O. Henry was a master of surprise endings. He wrote about the common folk and his humorous, energetic style was influenced by Mark Twain and Ambrose Bierce. In his lifetime, O. Henry published ten collections of over six hundred short stories. 

Robert Browning – ‘Master of Dramatic Monologue’

Great writers are great readers too. In his teens, Browning discovered Shelley, who had a lasting influence on his poetry. Some of Browning’s best-known lyrics appeared in his collection ‘Bells and Pomegranates’.

Browning’s greatest work is The Ring and the Book’. It has ten different descriptions, each from a different viewpoint, of the same murder. Browning is the master of dramatic monologue as evidenced by his poem ‘The Last Duchess’.

The words reveal not only setting and action but the speaker’s character as well. Browning used sudden openings, irregular rhythms, and ordinary language. 

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The History of Nursing: From Ancient Times to Modern Healthcare

Nursing is a profession that has been an integral part of human society for thousands of years. It is the practice of caring for the sick, injured, or vulnerable and promoting health and well-being.

Nursing is a profession that has been an integral part of human society for thousands of years. It is the practice of caring for the sick, injured, or vulnerable and promoting health and well-being. Nursing has evolved over time to become a highly respected profession that requires specialized knowledge and skills. In this article, we will explore the history of nursing and its etymology.

Etymology of Nursing

The word “nurse” comes from the Latin word “nutrire,” which means to nourish. The term “nurse” has been used to describe women who provide care for others since ancient times. In ancient Rome, nurses were often slaves or women from lower social classes who were tasked with caring for sick and injured individuals. The word “nurse” was also used in the Middle Ages to refer to wet nurses, women who breastfed infants that were not their own.

The modern meaning of the word “nurse” began to take shape in the 19th century when nursing began to be recognized as a profession. The first nursing school was established in 1860 by Florence Nightingale, who is considered the founder of modern nursing. Nightingale’s work during the Crimean War revolutionized nursing and set the standard for nursing education and practice.

History of Nursing

Nursing has a long and varied history that dates back to ancient times. In many early societies, nursing was seen as a woman’s role and was often performed by midwives, priestesses, or other women in the community.

In ancient Egypt, nursing was a highly respected profession that was often performed by men. The goddess Isis was considered the patroness of nursing, and many nurses wore her symbol, the horned viper, on their clothing.

In ancient Greece, nursing was also considered a respected profession. Hippocrates, the father of medicine, recognized the importance of nursing and wrote about the role of nurses in caring for the sick.

During the Middle Ages, nursing was primarily performed by religious orders, such as nuns and monks. These orders established hospitals and provided care for the sick and injured.

The 19th century saw a significant shift in the way nursing was practiced and perceived. Florence Nightingale, a British nurse, revolutionized nursing by emphasizing the importance of cleanliness, hygiene, and patient care. She established the first nursing school and wrote extensively on the subject of nursing.

During World War I, nursing played a crucial role in caring for wounded soldiers. Nurses worked in field hospitals and on the front lines, often in dangerous and difficult conditions.

In the 20th century, nursing continued to evolve as medical technology advanced. Nurses began to specialize in different areas, such as pediatrics, oncology, and critical care. Today, nursing is a highly respected profession that requires specialized knowledge and skills.

Nursing is a profession that has evolved over time to become an integral part of modern healthcare. From its roots in ancient societies to the establishment of the first nursing school by Florence Nightingale, nursing has a rich and varied history. Today, nurses are essential members of healthcare teams and play a vital role in caring for the sick and injured. The etymology of the word “nurse” reflects the fundamental role of nursing in nourishing and caring for others.

Non-violence: 8 Famous Personalities influenced by Gandhian Philosophy

It’s no wonder that the whole world came to worship MK Gandhi as a great soul – a Mahatma for his idea of Non-violence. It was Rabindranath Tagore, the great poet, who first addressed him as ‘Mahatma’, and soon the whole world started using this name with great respect and affection. A truly befitting name for the father of nation India, who represents all that is noble about our great heritage.

Gandhiji’s memory lingers in the minds and hearts of admirers all over the world. Indians can take great pride in the fact that some of the most well-known personalities of the 20th and 21st centuries cite Mahatma as their role model. Barack Obama, the former president of the United States of America had once talked about Gandhi as his ‘real hero’. Dalai Lama, Pearl S. Buck, and Steve Jobs are a few among the long list of his admirers.

American historian, Will Durant, best known for his great work, The Story of Civilization, was an admirer of Gandhiji. The inspiration for Attenborough’s film Gandhi was ‘The Life of Mahatma Gandhi,’ the book written by the celebrated American journalist Louis Fischer. He was a follower of Gandhi. He said on Gandhi’s assassination, “Just an old man in a loincloth in distant India. Yet when he died, humanity wept.” It is no wonder Gandhiji is admired even today. The ardent expression of his will goes beyond the spirit of his Age.

Idea of Non-violence

It is the Gandhian Philosophy or idea of non-violence that made India’s struggle for freedom unique in history. Gandhiji taught us that one is blessed to possess non-violence, or ahimsa, in the midst of violence. He objected to violence because it perpetuates hatred. Yet to him, non-violence was not akin to cowardice. He showed the world that non-violence is not a weapon of the weak; on the other hand, it is a weapon that can be tried to express a higher form of courage. Mahatma Gandhi was the first leader in history to use the idea of non-violence to fight such a mighty power. It’s no wonder that Gandhian Philosophy inspired many leaders like Martin Luther King Jr and Nelson Mandela.

Martin Luther King Jr.

Gandhiji was very famous worldwide for his non-violent movements, including indefinite fasts and marches. He was nominated for the Nobel Peace Prize about five times throughout his life. His life and teachings have inspired many revolutionaries and liberationists of the 20th century, and Martin Luther King Jr.of the United States was one of them. Martin Luther King Jr., the key figure in the Civil Rights Movement in the USA, was greatly inspired by the thoughts and actions of Mahatma Gandhi. He acknowledged this fact many times himself.

From his schooldays in Pennsylvania, Martin Luther King Jr. was drawn towards Gandhiji’s philosophy and actions. When he was leading the struggle for achieving civil liberty for African- American citizens, he incorporated Gandhian principles. To fight for liberty, he declared his two weapons as faith in God, and non-violence. His incorporation of nonviolence started with the famous ‘Bus-Boycott Movement’ in the country. King Jr. had claimed that “the spirit of passive resistance came to me from the Bible and Jesus. But the techniques of execution came from Gandhi”. Many Gandhian ideals like love, non-violence, and self -sacrifice did go into the formulation of the philosophy and technique of King’s social protest movement.

Nelson Mandela

Nelson Mandela was the great leader who fought for ending apartheid, a system that separated whites from non-whites in South Africa. Mandela traveled throughout South Africa and encouraged people to take part in non-violent demonstrations against the racial segregation policies of the government. He was arrested for anti-government activities and eventually, sentenced to life in prison in 1964. Protests against this were held not only in South Africa but around the world.

On February 11th, 1990, South African president F.W. de Klerk released Mandela from prison, and the two worked together to end apartheid. Later, they won the Nobel Prize for their efforts. In 1994, for the first time in history, non-whites were allowed to vote in the elections. In that election, Mandela was elected President by a huge majority. Mandela was a true follower of Gandhian philosophy. He grew up in the land where Satyagraha was born, and Gandhi’s legacy was still very strong there. In short, there were many parallels between the life of Gandhiji and Mandela. Mandela was no doubt an ‘African Gandhi’.

Romain Rolland

Romain Rolland was a French novelist, dramatist, and essayist. Being an idealist, he was deeply involved with pacifism, the fight against fascism, and the search for world peace. He was the recipient of the Nobel Prize for Literature in 1915. Mahatma Gandhi and Romain Rol-land met in 1931. His regard for Gandhi was so great that he admired him as “another Christ.” Romain Rolland published a famous biography of Gandhiji in 1924, titled ‘Mahatma Gandhi,’ written originally in French, it was later translated into several European languages.

Since the publication of his biography of Gandhi in 1924, Romain Rolland remained an ardent supporter of Gandhian ideals. Rolland believed that the Gandhian path was towards international cooperation, reimbursement of the grievances of colonized nations, and a negotiating mechanism to satisfy the mutual needs of imperialistic powers and the countries seeking Independence.

Rolland read Gandhi’s books like ‘Hind Swaraj’, and articles that came in Young India, and was deeply moved by his ideas. Gandhiji and this French philosopher had many things in common. They were born in the same generation. Both were influenced by Tolstoy. Both detested violence and warfare.

Albert Einstein

Einstein was a lifelong pacifist, and so was Mahatma Gandhi. Both believed that war was an obstacle in the way of human progress. Einstein talked about Gandhiji after his death in a memorial service held in Washington, “Everyone concerned with a better future for humanity and must be deeply moved by the tragic death of Gandhi. He died a victim of his own principle, the principle of non-violence. He died because, in a time of disorder and general unrest in his country, he refused any personal armed protection.

It was his unshakable belief that the use of force is an evil in itself, to be shunned by those who strive for absolute justice”. “Generations to come, it may well be, will scarce believe that such a man as this one ever in flesh and blood walked upon this Earth.” Einstein’s words on Gandhiji stand evergreen.

Sardar Patel

Sardar Vallabhbhai Patel was the first Deputy Prime Minister of India. Patel’s meeting with Gandhiji brought a significant change in his life and brought him into the Indian freedom struggle. He met Gandhiji for the first time at the Gujarat Political Conference in Godhra. On Gandhi’s encouragement, Patel became the secretary of the Gujarat Sabha and later led the Kheda Satyagraha.

Patel supported Gandhiji’s noncooperation movement. Not only that, he supported Gandhiji’s decision of calling off the non-cooperation movement after the Chauri Chaura incident. He considered Gandhiji as a role model and worked against alcoholism, untouchability, and caste discrimination, as well as for the empowerment of women. Gandhiji and Patel developed a close bond of affection, trust, and frankness. Their relationship could be described as that of an elder brother and his younger brother. Patel was intensely loyal to Gandhiji, and both he and Nehru looked to him to arbitrate disputes.

Khan Abdul Ghaffar Khan

Khan Abdul Ghaffar Khan, more popularly known as ‘Frontier Gandhi’ in India, and ‘Bacha Khan’ in Pakistan was the pioneer of a Gandhian- style, non-violent struggle against the British. He was a close friend of Mahatma Gandhi, and also a political and spiritual leader of the Muslims and the rest of the country. Ghaffar Khan met Gandhi and entered politics in 1919, during the agitation over the Rowlatt Act, which permitted the confinement of political protestors without trial.

During the following year, he became part of the Khilafat Movement, and in 1921, he was elected president of a district Khilafat committee in his native province. Soon after attending a Congress meeting in 1929, Ghaffar Khan founded the Red Shirts movement among the Pashtuns. It championed non-violent nationalist agitation in support of Indian independence and sought to awaken the Pashtuns’ political consciousness. By the late 1930s, Ghaffar Khan had become a member of Gandhi’s inner circle of advisers. Ghaffar Khan, who had opposed the partition, chose to live in Paki-stan. His memoirs, ‘My Life and Struggle, ‘ was published in 1969.

Rabindranath Tagore

Rabindranath Tagore played a significant role in our freedom movement. He wrote the national anthem for our country. Even though Gandhiji and Tagore had differences over various matters, their patriotism connected them. Tagore was the one who first addressed Gandhiji as the Mahatma, which means great soul. Gandhiji called Tagore, Gurudev.

Tagore and Gandhiji met for the first time on March 6, 1915. Gandhiji changed the system of Congress and introduced new methods such as the non-cooperation movement and civil disobedience. Rabindranath Tagore had some differences of opinion regarding these movements, and he opposed the burning of foreign clothes. In spite of his differences with Gandhiji, Tagore respected Gandhiji for his great influence on the life of Indians.

Maulana Azad

Maulana Abul Kalam Azad was one of the most influential independent activists during India’s freedom struggle. He was also a noted writer, poet, and journalist. Azad was a prominent political leader of the Indian National Congress and was elected as Congress president in 1923 and 1940. He was elected as the president of the special session of the Congress in Delhi in 1923. Maulana Azad was arrested in 1930 for the violation of the salt laws as part of Gandhiji’s Salt Satyagraha. He was put in Meerut jail for a year and a half.

Maulana Azad became the President of the Congress in 1940 and remained in the post till 1946. Maulana Azad started a weekly called AIBalagh with the same mission of propagating Indian nationalism based on Hindu-Muslim unity. Azad was a staunch opponent of partition and supported a confederation of autonomous provinces having a common defense and economy. Like Gandhiji, partition hurt him greatly and shattered his dream of a unified nation. Azad was the first education minister of Independent India.

Mahatma Gandhi: All About the Father of Nation India

The life of Mohandas Karamchand Gandhi was a unique journey along the path of greatness. He courageously proclaimed that his life was his message. A simple man clad in a handwoven dhoti, he believed that the greatest weapon is one’s own character.

Gandhiji lived in troubled times when India’s social and political existence was crushed by the mighty British Empire. His clarity of vision and his mission ignited the minds of thousands of people. Under his leadership, the freedom struggle of India, for the first time, became a truly mass movement. He had no armies to command, yet the mightiest empire of the times was no match for his determined leadership, clear vision, and strength of character.

Mahatma Gandhi’s Life Timeline

1869: Mohandas Karamchand Gandhi born on October 2 in Porbandar. 1882: Married Kasturba. Both aged 13. 1888: Gandhi’s first son Harilal is born, Gandhi sails to England to study law. 1891: Returns to India after being called to bar. 1892: His second son Manilal is born. 1893: In April, sails to South Africa to work for Dada Abdullah & Co. 1896: Return to India to collect his family. 1897: His third son Ramdas, is born. 1899: Boer War: Gandhi supports the British and organizes Ambulance Corps. 1900: His youngest son Devadas, is born. 1904: Phoenix Farm purchases and Gandhi sets up his Ashram. 1906: Zulu Rebellion: Gandhi again organizes Ambulance corps. 1906: First Satyagraha campaign begins in South Africa. Gandhi is sent to prison four times during the next five years. 1913: South Africa repeals some of the discriminatory legislation against the Indian community. 1915: Gandhiji returns to India and founds an Ashram at Ahmedabad. 1919: Gandhiji calls for a hartal on March 30 and April 6. 1922: Gandhiji jailed in March for 6 years. Released in February 1924. 1928: Congress calls for Independence for India. 1930: March: the Salt March to Dandi. Gandhiji arrested in May just before the congress organizes the demonstration at the Dharasana Saltworks. 1931: Gandhiji released in January and leaves for Round Table Conference in London. 1932: On his return to India, Gandhiji is re-arrested. Released in May 1933:  In September, he starts fast to death on ‘untouchable issue’. 1942: “Quit India” resolution passed by the Congress. Gandhiji and other leaders arrested. 1944: Kasturba dies in prison on February 22nd. Gandhiji released in May. 1946: April: Jinnah calls for a separate Pakistan. August: Communal riots in Calcutta. Gandhiji goes into troubled areas. 1947: February: Lord Mountbatten appointed as the last Viceroy of British India. August 15: Independence declared. September: Gandhiji undertakes fast to the death against communal violence. 1948: January 30: Gandhiji assassinated by Nathuram Vinayak Godse.

Childhood of Gandhiji

Mohandas Karamchand Gandhi was born in Porbandar, Gujarat, on 2nd October 1869. His parents were Karamchand Gandhi and Putlibai. His father worked as a prime minister in Porbandar and in Rajkot.

Putlibai was a deeply religious woman. She was also a vegetarian as per tradition and used to fast to cleanse herself of the craving for food. Neither fancy clothes nor jewelry attracted her. At the same time, she was a woman of great common sense and was well informed about all matters of state. She left a strong impression on young Mohandas, and he had great admiration for his mother. She treated all living creatures equally and respected them all. Putlibai valued the opinions of others. Now, it is clear that she laid the foundation for the values Gandhiji upheld. She was a role model for his life and principles.

Gandhiji’s life as a student began at Rajkot where he studied the basics of arithmetic, history, geography, and the Gujarati language. As a student, he did not show exceptional merit. He did not excel in the playground either. He was a boy who adored long walks rather than playing games.

Mahatma Gandhi matriculated from Bombay University in 1887. Gandhiji’s honesty finds mention in the pages of history. Once, during his school days, an inspector visited his school. The children have dictated five English words. His teacher encouraged young Mohandas to copy from his fellow student a word he had misspelled. He refused to do this, despite inviting the displeasure of his own teacher. Thus, though he was an ordinary student he had strongly embraced high values.

Gandhiji got good role models through reading. He came to know about many great characters in Indian mythology through reading. Among them were some who won his admiration like Raja Harischandra, a virtuous king who went through harsh tests, yet never deviated from the truth. He was also motivated by the story of Prahlad, the boy prince who showed his father the greatness of God. Such great characters had an overwhelming influence on young Gandhi. There is no doubt that these heroes had a great role to play in molding Gandhiji’s principles like truth and honesty.

Can you believe that there existed a time in India when child marriages were so common? Mahatma Gandhi was himself a victim of this practice. It may seem curious now, that most of the time these marriages took place without the children knowing they were entering a new life.

After marriage, these children would be happy to get a new playmate! Kasturbai Makhanji, later known as Kasturba Gandhi, and Mohandas Karamchand Gandhi got married in the year 1883. Due to his marriage, he lost a year at school, but he later made up for this.

Life was a little bit confusing for both of them in the beginning. Young Mohandas often tried to control his wife with strict rules, but that didn’t work well. In his later life, Kasturba became an ardent supporter of Gandhiji’s public life.

Study Abroad

Gandhiji had qualified for college education after his matriculation in 1887. His father had been a Diwan in Porbandar, and everybody in the family was expecting Gandhiji too, to become a Diwan. At that time, a degree in law was a must to occupy this coveted post.

A family friend advised Gandhiji to pursue his study of law in England. This kindled a keen interest in Gandhiji, but there were a lot of hurdles in taking up studies in a foreign land. Foremost among them was the question of money. His family was not financially sound at that time. But this problem was solved when Gandhiji’s elder brother made arrangements for monetary support.

His mother was very particular about keeping his religious purity in food and other habits and he even had to take an oath to remain a strict vegetarian in England, and to keep his morals. The community to which he belonged also opposed Gandhiji’s journey to a foreign land. He was later declared an outcast by the community. In any case, he set out on his journey on September 4th, 1888.

Gandhiji in London

Gandhiji went to London to pursue his studies in law and to become a solicitor. The main problem he faced was food. Gandhiji was a vegetarian, and he had a tough time finding proper food. Even the vegetarian food he got was tasteless. He was in effect starving, and very reluctant to ask his landlady for extra rations of bread. Like any other Indian student who was studying abroad, Gandhiji was homesick, too.

English was an alien language for him. The English ways of dressing and etiquette appeared strange to Gandhiji. He was influenced by Henry Salt’s writing, and he joined the vegetarian society. He was also nominated to its executive committee. Some of the vegetarians he met were members of the Theosophical Society. This organization, founded in 1875, to expand the horizon of universal brotherhood, had a great influence on him.

Gandhiji overcame initial difficulties with sheer willpower abroad. He made efforts to blend into the ways of English society. He tried to modify his attire. Gandhiji even asked his brother to send him a gold watch and made changes in his hairstyle by parting it.

Mahatma Gandhi also collected a top hat, evening suit, and walking stick. Can you believe, that in spite of his meager budget, he signed for dance lessons which he quit later, as he could not cope with them? Mahatma Gandhi thought that mastering the violin was a better option, so he invested money in that.

He even attended classes in public speaking. He also decided to take up the London matriculation exam with his studies. But the courses at University College London were not simple. Gandhiji finally passed his law examinations in January 1891 and enrolled as a barrister. Thus his student years in London came to an end and he sailed for India on 12th June 1891.

Mahatma Gandhi in South Africa

After his return from London, Gandhiji hunted for a job. He moved to Bombay, hoping to build up a career, but he could not find success there as a lawyer. Life became even more troublesome when he tried to be a part of a court case related to his brother, Laxmidas. That is when he received a job offer from an Indian business firm in South Africa named Dada Abdulla & Co. He had no choice other than to accept it.

He started his journey to South Africa in April 1893. This was a turning point in his life. He came to finish a single assignment but was to stay there for twenty-one years. On reaching South Africa, he was horrified to realize the condition of Indians there. This was a time when many Indians in Africa were deprived of their fundamental rights, because of their skin color. While practicing law, Gandhiji began to work for the Indians in South Africa.

Racial discrimination was common in the then South African society. Thousands of people were denied their basic rights on the basis of their skin color. Indians migrated to South Africa to work in the British plantations and farms. The driving force behind their migration was mainly monetary benefits, but the condition of the Indians was very poor compared to their lives in India.

They had to struggle to get a meager amount of money and even a loaf of bread. But some of them were able to overcome these struggles, and become as successful as the whites and they became a source of fear for the whites. The whites tried hard to exterminate the Indians in many ways. Various laws were introduced to attack the Indians and to curtail their fundamental rights. This racial segregation in a way touched every aspect of their life. Indians were given the status of ‘coolies’. Merchants were mocked as coolie merchants. For pretty long years, colored people could ride only in third class cars on South African trains.

Gandhiji got to know about the condition of Indians living there, and soon, he experienced the horror of the conditions himself.

One day, Gandhiji was on a business trip from Durban to Pretoria. He purchased a first-class ticket. Soon after Gandhi settled into the first-class carriage, a European passenger on that train complained to the conductor that an Indian was on board. This white man was very reluctant to share his compartment with Gandhiji. Gandhiji was told to move out of the compartment. He was pushed out of the train by the railway officials, along with his luggage.

Gandhiji spent the whole night in the station, shivering in the cold. He then took the firm decision to fight against racial discrimination. This journey was a turning point in the life of Gandhiji.

At Natal Indian Congress

Gandhiji while living in a place called Natal in South Africa, founded an organization known as the Natal Indian Congress. He was a tireless secretary of the congress. The prime aim of congress was to unity Indians, and make them aware of their rights. They struggled against the discrimination Indians faced at the hands of the British.

The constitution of the organization was officially launched on 22nd August 1894. In its infant years, the Natal Indian Congress submitted many petitions for changes in discriminatory laws. Gandhiji imparted a harmonious spirit in the diverse Indian community.

He plied all the government offices, legislature, and the media with logical statements of the grievances of the Indian community. Gandhiji and his organization stood for the cause of the upliftment of the Indian working class. Thus it became a burning issue in newspapers like ‘The Times of London’, and ‘Englishman’ of Calcutta.

Do you know who the Boers are? ‘Boer’ is the Dutch word for farmer. It was used to designate the progenies of the Dutch-speaking settlers of the Eastern Cape frontier in Southern Africa during the 18th century. Boer War was fought between the British and Boers. This war was a symbol of the imperialistic greed of the British over its colonies. The British decided to mine gold and diamonds in the land of Boers. The Boers became so offended by this decision, that they declared war against the British. Eventually, the Boers lost the war against the British.

Surprisingly, the Indians in South Africa, along with Gandhiji, supported the British, during the war, though they sympathized with the condition of the Boers. This was because they believed that only then could they survive, or earn their rights in the territory of Britain. The service provided by the Indians in the Warfield was appreciated by the British officers.

First Experiment with Satyagraha

Gandhiji was an ardent believer of Satyagraha as a powerful weapon. The word Satyagraha means truth-force. It embraces civil disobedience and relentless pursuit of truth and peace. This inspirational concept, which completely changed the face of the Indian struggle for independence, was first tested in South Africa.

Gandhiji proposed certain rules for satyagrahis to follow. He trained the Indians during the South African passive resistance campaign. In short, this was a trial run for his future campaigns. No worship of violence, and belief in suffering the insults patiently, etc. are the mottos of a satyagrahi.

Satyagraha does not aim at humiliating rivals but aims to soften their heart by peace. Satyagraha was fruitful in South Africa and along with this, Gandhiji practiced self-reliance. It was compulsory for him that his family should also be self-reliant. He used to wash his clothes by himself. He cut his own hair, and that of his children as well. In short, it is clear that the Indian freedom struggle was a much bigger test for Gandhiji and his idea of Satyagraha.

Influence of John Ruskin

John Ruskin and his magnum opus ‘Unto This Last,’ were an influential force in Gandhiji’s life. Ruskin argued in his writing that true wealth is not earning more and more money but accustomed more to peace in one’s life. He also held that being peaceful is more imperative than being powerful.

Motivated by this idea, Gandhiji began a farm outside Durban-the Phoenix settlement. It was Gandhiji’s first experimental ashram. In the ashram, Gandhiji and his supporters lived a life of no luxuries. They cultivated and ran a printing press for the Indians to express their opinions.

They published a weekly journal founded by Gandhiji. It featured informative articles on various topics like politics, diet, health, and sanitary habits. The Tolstoy Farm was another community started by Gandhiji near Johannesburg. Gandhiji urged proper hygiene in his ashrams, as he believed that being hygienic is important for a healthy spiritual life.

Return from South Africa

Gandhiji was a popular figure when he returned to India from South Africa. He returned along with his family in 1915. He received a warm welcome from his people. Gandhiji was not aware of the existing conditions and key problems in India. So, he was certain not to campaign for the rights of Indians until he got to know the context clearly.

Gandhiji built an ashram at Sabarmati in the heart of Ahmadabad. About 200 people including men and women promised to live in the ashram, according to the principles of Gandhiji. They had to follow a simple vegetarian diet, with prayer and social service. There were no luxuries. Weaving was their major vocation. Gandhiji encompassed the castaways also. This caused great disapproval among the inhabitants of the ashram itself. Even in the contemporary world, there are ashrams around India, where people still follow the Gandhian philosophy of life.

Role of Gopal Krishna Gokhale in Gandhiji’s life

Gopal Krishna Gokhale was a social and political leader of the Congress party, known for his restraint and moderation, and his determination to work inside the system. Gandhiji admired Gokhale a lot, and his liberal outlook impressed him very much.

Gandhiji knew Gokhale from his South African days. When he came back to India, Gandhiji went to see Gokhale. Gokhale urged him to get a better understanding of India’s present status and problems so that he could practice Satyagraha in the Indian struggle for freedom.

In his autobiography, Gandhiji talked about Gokhale as his greatest supporter and guide. Gandhiji had an admiration for Gokhale being a political leader as well. He respected the principles of Gokhale. Gandhiji described Gokhale as being pure as crystal, gentle as a lamb, brave as a lion, and chivalrous to a fault. But, regardless of Gandhiji’s extreme reverence for Gokhale, he also had differences of opinion with him.

The Champaran and Kheda agitations of Bihar and Gujarat in 1918 were the first golden feathers in Gandhiji’s crown. What was the Champaran agitation? It was piloted by the local agrarians of Champaran in Bihar. They were enforced to cultivate indigo, whose demand had been declining over two decades, and were forced to sell their crops at a fixed price. Unhappy by this condition, they asked for Gandhiji’s help. Gandhiji proclaimed civil disobedience, and his fight for justice was rewarded.

The government compelled the landholders to refund a portion of the rent to the farmers, and the enforcement of indigo cultivation was also abolished. The Kheda Agitation took place when Kheda was affected by famine in 1918, and planters were demanding liberation from the levies. Gandhiji, along with Sardar Vallabhbhai Patel battled for this cause, using non-cooperation as a weapon. The deadlock lasted for five months as the authorities were not ready to compromise. But finally, at the end of May 1918, the government relaxed the conditions of reimbursement of the taxes up until the famine ended.

Mahatma Gandhi supported the British in World War I

Many Indian soldiers flocked to participate in World War I. It was for them Gandhiji extended his support. This was partly due to the promise of the British government to reciprocate by supporting the Indian dream of Swaraj, after the end of World War I. The largely relocated Indian soldiers fought along with British soldiers. They struggled in numerous areas like Mesopotamia and Europe. Many lost their lives in the battles.

Britain and her allies emerged victoriously. But Indians lost their hearts as the British retreated from their promise of self-government after World War I. Instead of self-government, they offered minor reforms, but most of them were disappointing to Gandhiji and his followers. In short, Indians felt embittered. Then, it became clearer to Gandhiji and his men that the British would not free India, at any cost.

Khilafat Movement

When Gandhiji entered the Indian political scene, there was great communal disharmony among the people. Gandhiji asserted that Indians should be united to fight against the mighty imperial power of the British. It was in this background that the Khilafat issue came up. After Turkey was defeated in the First World War, its territories were divided among European powers.

The Ottoman emperor in Turkey was also the Sultan-Khalifa of the global Musli m community. There was great worry among the Indian Muslims over the fate of the holy places of Islam which were under the custodianship of the Khalifa. Gandhiji feared that their resentment would turn into violent channels, and he wanted to prevent this.

Therefore, he offered to lead the Muslim community on this issue, if they accepted his nonviolent methods . His decision to help the Khilafat Movement was questioned by many. After the termination of the Khilafat Movement when Turkey gained a more favorable diplomatic position, communal riots started in many places in India, much to the displeasure of Gandhiji.

Rowlatt Act

The Rowlatt Act was the legislation passed by the Imperial Legislative Council, and it was officially named the Anarchical and Revolutionary Crimes Act. It was passed on March 18th, 1919. The act was based on the report of the Rowlatt committee, and it was also named after its president, British judge, Sir Sidney Rowlatt. The act aroused protests among Indians. It endangered the basic civil rights of people who participated in political activities against the government.

This act gave enormous powers to the police for inspection, and to arrest any person on any grounds without a warrant. It aimed at curtailing the freedom of the Indian citizens, and to suppress any nationalist uprising in the country. The act injured civil rights and even the nationality of the Indians. Gandhiji was extremely critical of this act. It caused the government to enact repressive measures against the Indian citizens.

The legal fight against the Rowlatt Act seemed futile. Do you know what Gandhiji did? Gandhiji accepted this fact and decided to conduct a hartal or a general strike as a way of demonstrating his objection to the implementation of this act.

A day of hartal was declared, where everything came to a stand-still. Stores had to be closed. Employees went on strike. These were attempts of civil disobedience on a mass scale. The Indians hoped that these actions would deliver a message of repudiation and resistance to the Britishers. Remarkable support against the unfair law received from all streams of the society was appreciable. But Satyagraha was an unfamiliar weapon to many in India.

In many places, people turned violent. Gandhi recognized the seriousness of the situation and canceled the hartal. Then, Gandhiji launched a 72-hour fast as a penance for the violence in the hartal.

Jallianwala Bagh Massacre

We cannot trivialize the Rowlatt Act as a black act. The introduction of this act acted as a catalyst for many other events that led to India’s Independence. The Jallianwala Bagh massacre was one such event. On April 13th, 1919 a peaceful protest meeting was going on in Amritsar, in a garden surrounded on three sides by high walls. This place was called Jallianwala Bagh.

The crowd consisted of some non-violent protesters and pilgrims who had come for Baishakhi celebrations. The British commander General Dyer decided to crush the meeting with utmost brutality. The innocent crowd was fired without giving them the warning to disperse. About 379 lives were lost in the massacre and more than 1200 were injured.

This brutality traumatized Indians. Many Indians who were at once staunch believers of peace, took to weapons, in reaction to the callous attitude of the British. Gandhiji was horrified and was determined to free India from the pitiless hands of the British without bloodshed. As an act of protest, he returned the medals which he was given by the British during the Boer War.

Changes in Indian National Congress

The Indian National Congress was founded in 1885, by a British named A.O. Hume. It started as an elitist organization and was an association of intelligentsia. In 1924, Gandhiji emerged as the president of the Indian National Congress. He put forth a number of reforms within the party.

The first major change was in the party’s reach to the masses who resided in the remote villages of India, thereby eliminating the elitist status of the party. Gandhiji famously stated that the soul of India lies in our villages, both in monetary and in logistical terms. Hence, no movement can be truly fruitful without the wholehearted support of the dwellers of the Indian villages.

After taking the presidential ship of the Indian National Congress, he introduced the principles of Satyagraha. The party witnessed the birth of many charismatic leaders with great public appeal. They were also loyal to Gandhiji. Thus the non-cooperation movement naturally reached massive national dimensions with a huge number of followers. This movement marked the beginning of the life of Gandhiji as the leader of the masses.

Newspapers published by Mahatma Gandhi

Mahatma Gandhi published two journals, ‘Young India’ and ‘Navjivan’ to air his views and to educate the public about Satyagraha. Educating his countrymen was his priority when he started these newspapers. Young India was one of the prominent newspapers introduced by Gandhiji. He used Young India to propagate his unique propaganda regarding the use of nonviolence in organizing movements. Mahatma Gandhi urged the readers to consider, organize, and plan for India’s eventual struggle for Independence from British imperialism. He began publishing another weekly newspaper called Harijan in 1933 in English.

The word ‘Harijan’ means ‘the people of God’. The newspaper lost its popularity in 1948. During this time, Mahatma Gandhi also published Harijan Bandu in Gujarati, and Harijan Sevak in Hindi. ‘Young India’ and ‘Harijan’ became the influential voices of his own views on all subjects. The language in which he wrote in newspapers was passionate and powerful, and he wrote about burning issues of the time.

Swadeshi policy

The Swadeshi policy was part and parcel of the non-cooperation movement. Gandhiji urged people to boycott British goods and to throw their foreign clothes into the fire. Gathering at crossroads, people burnt their imported clothes. They picketed the shops selling western goods. People took firm decisions like using only goods made in India, and this was famously called the Swadeshi movement.

Gandhiji always wanted Indians to spin their clothes by themselves. He promoted Khadi products as an alternative to British made clothes. Every day Gandhiji would spin 182 meters of yarn. He would never take rest without completing his daily chores. He perceived the spinning wheel as a symbol of liberation. It was common in the congress meetings and also wherever nationalists gathered. The spinning wheel was viewed as one of Gandhiji’s efforts to revive the village economy and to help the village folk to come out of their poverty.

Chauri Chaura incident

The Chauri Chaura incident is a black mark on the pages of Indian history. This happened on 5th February 1922. On this day, a large group of peaceful protesters participating in a procession had an encounter with the police, who opened fire. Combat broke out between the police and the mob. Then, the demonstrators set fire to a police station in Chauri Chaura, killing all of its occupants.

This incident led to the deaths of three civilians and 22 policemen. Mahatma Gandhi was disheartened by this incident and halted the non-cooperation movement on the national level. On the other hand, the British declared martial law in response to the incident. Numerous raids were conducted, and hundreds of people were arrested. Gandhi went on a fast for five days after this incident. Thus, Chauri Chaura became a backlash for the Indian way of peaceful resistance.

The British authorities were worried about the consequences of arresting Gandhiji. However, when the unhappy incident occurred at Chauri Chaura, they seized the opportunity to arrest him. Gandhiji was taken into custody on the evening of March 10th, 1922 from his ashram. He was accused of revolting against the government and was sentenced to six years’ imprisonment.

Gandhiji spent his prison days in a fruitful way. He got acquainted with many books, and he found time also to spin his charka. Some of the books that dominated his reading time were Bernard Shaw’s ‘Man and Superman’, Buckle’s ‘History of Civilisation in England’, H. G. Wells’ ‘Outline of History’, Goethe’s ‘Faust’ and Kipling’s ‘The Barrack-Room Ballads’. His interest in literary studies that had been neglected due to his busy schedule, was revived during these prison days. He was released in 1924 for an operation for severe appendicitis.

Simon Commission

The British Government decided that a commission should be sent to India to examine the effects and operations of the Montagu-Chelm’s-ford reforms, and also to suggest more reforms in India. The commission was a group of seven Members of Parliament of the United Kingdom, under the chairmanship of Sir John Simon, assisted by Clement Attlee.

The Simon Commission arrived in India, in 1928. They came to study the constitutional reforms in India, but the Indian political parties were completely ignored in this process. They were neither approached nor asked to participate in the discussions.

The Indians felt insulted and took a decision to boycott the Simon Commission. This decision was taken at the meeting of the Indian National Congress in Madras. They also challenged Lord Birkenhead, the Secretary of State for India, to draft a constitution that would be satisfactory to the Indian masses. Gandhiji was frustrated by the approach of the Simon Commission towards Indians.

Everywhere, the Simon Commission was received by angry protesters waving black flags and shouting the slogan, ‘Simon Go Back!’. The conditions in Punjab were even worse, where Lala Lajpat Rai, the prominent leader, died during the protests.

Simon Commission had arrived in Lahore on 30th October 1928, and the protest there was headed by Lala Lajpat Rai. He had risen to fame through his resolution against the Commission in the Legislative Assembly of Punjab in February 1928. In order to make way for the Commission, the local police force began to beat protesters in which Lala Lajpat Rai was killed. This made the Commission even more infamous. The commission published its two-volume report in May 1930. But the report was not accepted by the Indians.

Purna Swaraj

Indians dreamt of a free nation. But the Simon Commission instigated a difference of opinion among Indians regarding self-government. Only Gandhiji was capable of mending this gap. Despite the fact that Indians were suspicious of the intentions of the British, they were unified in their desire for the making of a free India.

Thus, Congress decided to celebrate the Purna Swaraj declaration or the announcement of the Indian Independence. Mahatma Gandhi hoisted the Indian flag on 31st December 1929, in Lahore. The Indian flag was hoisted publicly everywhere by the congress volunteers. People were asked to celebrate Independence Day on 26th January. Gandhiji and other Indian leaders began to plan for a massive non-violent campaign to encourage the common people to embrace peace, even if they were attacked by the British.

Mahatma Gandhi’s Civil Disobedience Movement

The civil disobedience movement of the year 1930 was a landmark in the history of Indian nationalism. Disobeying British laws was the core of this movement. Indians had lost faith in the British and their government because of their continuous neglect of the local people. Congress had no option other than to launch the civil disobedience movement.

It was then that Gandhiji wrote a letter to Lord Irwin, the Viceroy of India narrating the many injustices of British rule. The decision to launch the ‘satyagraha’ campaign by producing salt at Dandi was also conveyed through the letter. The British ignored the letter. Therefore, Gandhiji and Congress decided to launch the massive civil disobedience movement to defy the British.

Gandhiji inaugurated the movement in 1930, by violating the salt law. Salt was produced everywhere. Indians dared to do anything, even at the cost of their lives, for their dream of a free India. The Dandi Salt March with its spirit united Indians and had an immense effect on the whole nation.

Salt March aka Dandi March

Salt has enormous significance as it is an indispensable ingredient in our food. Ever since the East India Company established its power, it became a criminal offense for Indians to produce and sell salt. Gandhiji disobeyed this law laid down by the British.

The ruling government-imposed tax even on salt, and earned a large profit from that too. Not surprisingly, the salt tax represented 8.2 percent of the British Raj tax revenue. The British believed that they would be able to establish their full control over natural resources by manufacturing salt.

Indians found this hard to digest. Many were skeptical of Mahatma Gandhi’s choice of salt as a means of civil disobedience. But some leaders like C. Rajagopalachari understood Gandhiji’s viewpoint. After the protest gathered momentum, leaders recognized the value of salt as a symbol and appreciated Gandhiji’s genius in choosing salt.

The Dandi March was indeed a march towards India’s Independence. It was covered extensively through newspapers and documentaries. This historic event grabbed the attention of newspapers internationally, and they wrote editorials about it. It gave momentum to the nationwide civil disobedience. This march was an organized challenge to the British authority, and in a way, a blow to their esteem.

The Dandi March, which was followed by the Noncooperation movement and the declaration of Purna Swaraj, also occupied a significant place in the pages of India’s history. Do you know what happened on that day? Gandhiji started a march from his ashram in Sabarmati, to Dandi Beach in Gujarat. The march lasted for 24 days. It began on 12th March 1930 and ended on 6th April 1930. About 79 people accompanied Gandhiji for the march of 390 Km to the Dandi.

The participation of women in the freedom fight was not notable, until the Dandi March. But the Salt Satyagraha changed the whole scenario. Thousands of women, from urban to rural areas began to actively participate in Satyagraha. Gandhiji had asked only men to be part of Dandi March. But the radical action inspired the women of the country as well.

Sarojini Naidu, the nightingale of India, led 2500 volunteers in a march to Dharasana salt works on 21st May. The salt work was guarded by the police. They attacked the satyagrahis with lathis. Not a single person raised his hand against the police. Sarojini Naidu was arrested and sent to jail. The participation of women in Salt Satyagraha was rapidly growing day by day. The Salt Satyagraha earned glory because of the massive participation from all walks of society.

First Round Table Conference

The round table Conferences were a series of conferences aimed to discuss the future of India. Demands for Swaraj or self-rule had been growing across India. By the 1930s, many British politicians believed that India needed to move towards dominion status. In order to make decisions regarding this, they conducted three Round Table Conferences in London.

The first one among these was organized in England on November 12th, 1930. There were 89 delegates from India who attended the conference. Indian delegates also made their presence felt at the conference, but no member of the Indian National Congress was invited. It was also true that many of the Indian leaders were imprisoned for their participation in the civil disobedience movement. Later, the British realized that they would have to work with the Congress as it was India’s most prominent party. As a gesture of goodwill, Mahatma Gandhi and other Congress leaders were released.

Gandhi Irwin Pact

The rising intensity of the civil disobedience movement worried the British. Lord Irwin, the then Viceroy of India, initiated negotiations with Gandhiji, which led to the signing of the Gandhi-Irwin Pact on 5th March in 1931 before the Second Round table Conference in London.

There were many provisions in the pact. One of the main provisions was to stop the civil disobedience movement. Another proposal was the participation of the Indian National Congress in the Round Table Conference. The pact also stated that the British government was also ready to lift the ban on the Indian National Congress. Peaceful picketing was allowed, but picketing for the boycott of foreign goods was not to be allowed beyond a limit permitted by law.

The Congress agreed to join the Second Round Table Conference to sketch the constitutional reforms. Some of the other conditions were that the British would retract all orders imposing curbs on the activities of the Indian National Congress. They also agreed to withdraw trials except those involving violence and to release prisoners arrested for participating in the civil disobedience movement. It was believed that they would identify him as one among them only when he wore simple clothes. He stuck to this attire even when he traveled on trips abroad, and until his last breath.

When he attended the round table conference, Mahatma Gandhi was in a dhoti and a shawl. Once, when he visited Buckingham Palace, he was asked whether he felt unclothed compared to King George V. Gandhiji retorted humorously that the King had enough on him for both of them! Gandhiji was appreciated by many, in spite of his dressing style. In short, Gandhiji’s personal habits, his attire, and his diet fascinated the English people.

Gandhiji’s visit to Lancashire

Lancashire was the heart of Britain’s textile industry, which was greatly affected by the boycott of foreign clothes by Indians. Therefore, Gandhiji’s visit to this place was a significant move. Gandhiji proclaimed at Springvale Garden Village, There is no boycott of British cloth, as distinguished from other foreign cloth, since the 5th of March when the truce was signed.

As a nation, we have pledged to boycott all foreign cloth, but in case of an honorable settlement between England and India, I should not hesitate to give preference to Lancashire cloth over all other foreign cloth, to the extent that we may need to supplement our cloth and on agreed terms”. He spoke of being the “representative of half-naked, half-starved dumb Indians”. He was pained by the unemployment created in the Lancashire cotton mills as a result of the boycott of foreign clothes in India. Mahatma Gandhi did not fail to meet a single group of workers in the factory. And, he went on to explain the fact that there was no starvation or semi-starvation among Lancashire workers. But, he said, “we have both”. He told them about the poor standard of living of the Indians compared to the high resources they enjoyed.

Gandhi’s view on World War II

The British tried to lure India with the promise of a free state in return for their valuable support during wartime. But the Indians were rebuffed when they were asked for Independence. Gandhiji did not accept this offer as he firmly believed in non-violence. The period of the Second World War was not only a period of external tensions but also internal conflicts.

The great famine of Bengal of 1943 was one of the many disasters India faced during the war. Despite the disastrous effects of World War II, it brought about a golden age in the colonies of Britain. The age of anxiety paved the way for the age of hope and freedom. Despite its many aftermaths, the end of the imperialistic era was glorious. The repercussion of the war occurred in all its colonies. India lost the lives of many army men. The cries for self-government and the loss of faith in the ruling imperialists were heard everywhere.

Although Mahatma Gandhi works for India’s freedom from the British Empire since 1915, it was not until Britain was embroiled in World War II that the goal of Indian independence finally came within reach. In August of 1942, the All India Congress Committee gathered in Bombay, to formally endorse the Quit India movement, which called for an immediate end to British imperialism.

Cripps Mission

Winston Churchill’s declaration in the British Parliament to send Sir Stafford Cripps to India seemed a good decision Sir Stafford Cripps arrived in Delhi on 22nct March 1942 and immediately started his discussions with the Governor-General and the counselors. The leaders of different parties met him, and consultations and discussions went on for twenty days. Nehru and Maulana Azad represented the Congress.

Muhammed Ali Jinnah represented the Muslims, and B.R. Ambedkar represented the socially backward classes. Leaders from all the communities of Indian society were represented. Cripps had prepared a draft declaration for Indian leaders which included terms like the establishment of dominion status for India, introduction of a constitutional assembly, and the granting of rights to the provinces to make separate constitutions. These offers would be granted only after the conclusion of the war.

The Congress committee rejected the proposals because they were related primarily to the future. Cripps proposals were suddenly withdrawn on 11th April 1942. The whole drama of the Cripps Mission to India seemed to be only a propaganda move, without any intention of acceding to India’s demands. Cripps Mission’s proposals were unacceptable to Gandhiji and Congress. Commenting on this, Mahatma Gandhi said, “It is a post-dated cheque on a crashing bank.”

Quit India Movement

The Quit India Movement was a civil disobedience movement launched by Mahatma Gandhi on 8th August 1942, at the Bombay Session of the All India Congress Committee. A resolution was passed demanding an immediate end to the British rule. A mass non-violent struggle was organized on the widest scale possible. Gandhiji’s slogan of ‘Do or Die’ inspired millions of Indians, and strengthened their determination to die, rather than give up the goal of freedom.

The British response to the movement was quick. Congress was banned, and most of its leaders were arrested before they could start mobilizing the people. The people, however, were unstoppable. They attacked all the symbols of the British government such as railway stations, law courts, and police stations. Railway lines were damaged, and telegraph lines were cut. In some places, people even formed alternative governments. The British responded to this with terrible brutality. However, though they could oppress the people, they could not suppress the people’s demand that foreign rulers should quit India.

Impact of Kasturba Gandhi’s Death on Mahatma Gandhi

One of the most devastating incidents in Gandhiji’s personal life was the demise of his wife, Kasturba Gandhi in 1944. Kasturba was an unlettered woman when she entered Gandhiji’s life in 1883. It was Gandhiji who gave her the first lessons in learning how to read and write. She respected the ideals of her husband, though she had disagreements with him on many grounds. Kasturba, an ardent supporter of Gandhiji throughout his life, was affectionately called ‘Ba’ by Gandhiji. Kasturba worked alongside her husband. When Gandhi became involved in the agitation to improve the working conditions of Indians in South Africa and gave them the power to represent themselves, Kasturba eventually decided to join the struggle.

In September 1913, she was arrested, and sentenced to three months, imprisonment with hard labor. After Gandhiji’s return to India, Kasturba took Gandhiji’s place when he was under arrest and was always closely associated with the freedom struggle of India, giving encouragement to women volunteers. Kasturba was active in supervising the activities of the ashram and lived like a satyagrahi. She joined the Quit India Movement along with Mahatma Gandhi.

Gandhiji was arrested during the Quit India Movement in 1942. Later, Kasturba too got arrested along with many followers of Gandhiji. She was confined in the Aga Khan Palace in Pune. Kasturba Gandhi spent her last hours in the prison, and she breathed her last in the lap of Gandhiji on 22nd February 1944. After her death, Gandhi indeed lost a pillar of strength in his life. “I cannot imagine life without Ba … her passing has left a vacuum which will never be filled,” Gandhi wrote.

Formation of Interim Government

The Interim Government of India was formed on September 2nd, 1946, to help the transition of India from British rule to independence. In August 1946, the Congress decided to join the Interim Government in response to the call of the British Government to facilitate the process of transfer of power. The Interim Government was headed by the Viceroy, Lord Wavell.

Jawaharlal Nehru was the Vice-President of the Council, with the powers of a Prime Minister. Leaders like Sardar Vallabbhai Patel, Dr. Rajendra Prasad, Jagjivan Ram, C. Rajagopalachari, etc. also held prominent positions. This government was entrusted with the mission of assisting the transition of India and Pakistan from British rule to independence as two separate nations.

The Interim Government was in place till 15th August 1947, when the nations of India and Pakistan received independence from colonial rule. Until August 15th, 1947, India continued under the rule of the United Kingdom and the Interim Government set out to establish diplomatic relations with other countries, such as the United States of America. For the time being, the Constituent Assembly, from which the Interim Government was created, had the challenging task of drafting the Constitution for Independent India.

Idea of Partition

During the second half of the nineteenth century, when British dominance had been firmly established throughout the Indian subcontinent, some novel trends were in the making. Colonialism boosted a spirit of nationalism, but at the same time, also caused feelings of communalism to rise up. Thus, the colonial rule had a dubious role in the making of India. The flare-up of the communal issue ultimately resulted in the partition of the subcontinent into India and Pakistan.

In fact, the Congress opposed the partition up to 1945, but it had to accept it subsequently, as a remedial measure. Nationalist historians blame this on the colonial policy of divide and rule, but imperial ideologues maintain that the Indian socio-cultural milieu caused it.

The demand of the Muslim League and Jinnah for a separate nation was found unreal by Congress leaders like Jawaharlal Nehru. But when the League rejected long term provisions of the Cabinet Mission plan and announced the ‘Direct Action’ from 16th August 1946, the Congress leaders were compelled to reconsider their approach towards the demand. The League envisaged the Congress as a Hindu elitist group and was fearful of the Hindu Swaraj. This led to the partition of India, despite all of the peace-making efforts of the Congress Party.

Lord Louis Mountbatten

Shortly after his arrival in India on 24th March 1947, Lord Mountbatten took part in discussions with Indian political leaders. He had free and frank discussions with Sardar Patel, Maulana Azad, Jawaharlal Nehru, Gandhiji, and other prominent leaders. He had talks with the members of the Muslim League too.

Mountbatten worked sincerely with the goal of persuading the Congress and the League to agree to an acceptable plan, to end the rule of the British Raj, and to work out the modalities for the withdrawal of the British. He also wanted to keep India in the Commonwealth of Nations. The time was also favorable for his plans. India was tormented by communal wars.

Brutality and human sacrifice were spiraling beyond human endurance. Being the last British Viceroy in India, Mountbatten got abundant freedom to solve the prevailing issues without any interference from Britain. Since the time at his disposal was very short, he wanted to prepare for the transfer of power without wasting time. Mountbatten knew the art of dealing with the political leaders of India in a dignified way. Mahatma Gandhi alone opposed the idea of partition among the leaders. But ultimately, he too accepted the decision with a deep sense of sorrow.

Mahatma Gandhi and First Independence Day

On 15th August 1947, when the day of independence finally arrived, it was celebrated with gusto everywhere in the country. Jawaharlal Nehru, who had become the first Prime Minister of India, hoisted the Indian national flag at the Red Fort in Delhi. But in Calcutta, disturbed by the partition, Gandhiji was on his tireless pursuit to end the violence that had torn the nation apart.

Gandhiji refused to participate in any merriment along with his protege Abdul Ghaffar Khan, who was the last person to fight partition till the very end. He believed that the kind of freedom India had got contained the seeds of future conflict between India and Pakistan. Gandhiji’s fears came true at the time of partition. Many people lost their lives. India and Pakistan witnessed fifteen crores of its citizens migrating from one place to another. Soon communal riots broke out.

On 9th August, Gandhi reached Calcutta ready to move on to Noakhali, a place torn by communal riot. Gandhiji decided to stay at Hyderi Manzil, adjacent to a Muslim dominated slum called Miabagan. There, he held prayer meetings.

Mahatma Gandhi’s Last Fast

Gandhiji began his last fast on 13th January 1948. He announced his intention to fast till death. He was then aged 78, and it was his eighteenth fast. Gandhiji’s health declined very quickly during this time. On 18th January, after five very difficult days, political and religious leaders came to assure Gandhiji that attacks would end.

They promised to restore communal peace and friendship by every possible effort. Gandhiji broke his fast on the sixth day. But, without giving time for his body to recover from the fast, he again started working. But, there was a fraction of a society that disliked Gandhi, and slowly, their number was growing.

On one of his evening prayer meetings, a bomb was thrown. It didn’t injure anyone. But it was clearly a warning sign that Gandhiji’s life was under threat. Sardar Vallabhbhai Patel, the then minister of home affairs, was fearful that Gandhiji would be killed. He wanted to search for everyone attending the prayer meeting. But Gandhi refused to agree to this proposal.

The assassination of Mahatma Gandhi

Mahatma Gandhi was assassinated on 30th January 1948, by Nathuram Godse at Birla House in New Delhi. At 5:17 pm on 30th January 1948, Gandhiji walked to the prayer grounds. His grandnieces held his arms, as he had trouble walking alone. Gandhiji was weakened by fasting. Hundreds of people had assembled for the prayers. Gandhiji reached the stage and greeted the audience.

Suddenly, a young man rushed forward. He kneeled before Gandhiji, and then rose to pull out a pistol and fired three bullets. Everything finished within minutes. Gandhiji fell down dead. His last words were “Hey Ram”. The assassin was Nathuram Godse. He was an extremist who believed that Gandhiji was associating with Muslims, against Hindus. Nathuram Godse was seized immediately. Godse had planned the murder along with Narayan Apte, another extremist, and six others. Both Godse and Apte were executed in 1949. The other conspirators were sentenced to life imprisonment.

Mahatma Gandhi’s funeral procession took place on January 31st. The Mahatma had specified before he died, that he did not want his body preserved, but instead, wanted a traditional cremation. Gandhi’s body was placed upon a flower-bedecked military weapons carrier, which was pulled, using ropes, by two hundred men from the Indian Army, Navy, and Air Force. The vehicles had their engines switched off. It took four and a half hours for the procession to cover eight kilometers, beginning at the Birla House and proceeding to the banks of the Yamuna River.

Ramdas, the third son of Gandhiji, lit the funeral pyre. People shouted the slogan ‘Mahatma Gandhi Ki Jai’. The next day, the second service was held by his friends and relatives by collecting the ashes in a khadi bag, and then, the bag was placed in a copper urn. Ashes of Gandhiji were carried through the streets of Allahabad in procession.

After thirteen days of mourning, Gandhiji’s ashes were sprinkled in seven sacred rivers of India. On his death, Nehru remarked, “the light has gone out of our lives and there is darkness everywhere . . .” Gandhiji’s monument at Raj Ghat attracts visitors from around the world, as well as noted personalities who wish to pay their respects to the father of the nation. People around the world adopted the idea of Gandhiji and became famous as Gandhi of their country .

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The True Story of Mary & George Involves a Cunning Mother and a Nearly Unbelievable Plan

Mary and George Villiers’ plot to gain favor and wealth from King James I is the basis of a new Starz miniseries starring Julianne Moore and Nicholas Galitzine.

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Editor’s Note: This article contains spoilers about events related to the upcoming limited series Mary & George .

Penniless after the death of her first husband in 1606 and with four children to support, Englishwoman Mary Villiers desperately searched for a way to turn her family’s fortune around. Her radical solution—to infiltrate the court and personal life of King James I—would catapult Mary and her second son, George, to the center of the English monarchy and earn them a rather notorious reputation throughout history.

In what could be described as an extreme case of helicopter parenting, the series explores how Mary helped her son manipulate the king for their family’s own benefit—with George gaining plenty of property and prestige along the way. Eventually, though, his outspokenness caught up to him with unintended consequences.

Mary was eager to provide for her children

Although Mary eventually became a major part of the king’s circle, her early life was much less noteworthy. Believed to have been born in 1570, Mary was the daughter of a Leicester squire named Anthony Beaumont. With little money or status, she began working as a waiting woman —essentially, a personal servant—to a richer relative in her teenage years. It was during this time she married her first husband, a sheep farmer named George Villiers who was also her cousin.

The King’s Assassin: The Fatal Affair of George Villiers and James I

George, who already had six children from his first marriage, had four more kids with Mary. They welcomed one daughter, Susan, and three sons: John, George, and Christopher.

In 1606, when the younger George was in his early teens, his father died and left the family broke. Mary hastily remarried a much older wealthy nobleman named William Raynor , hoping to benefit financially. However, he quickly fell ill and died only two years later. Mary’s hopes of economic security went unfulfilled when Raynor’s estate went to his daughter Elizabeth, instead.

And so Mary wed a third time to Thomas Compton, whose brother had a role in the court of King James I. Looking to exploit the connection, Mary scraped together enough money to send 16-year-old George to France for two years, where he became an accomplished rider and dancer and learned the skills necessary to be a courtier.

All George had to do now was work his way into the king’s good graces.

George quickly became the king’s favorite assistant

Once described by a bishop as “the handsomest-bodied man in all of England,” George did charm James I with help from Mary and some members of the court, who saw a political opportunity.

At the time, Robert Carr , the Earl of Somerset, was the king’s favorite adviser. However, courtiers viewed him as high-handed and possessive, not to mention easily influenced by the king’s Scottish connections (James also ruled Scotland), and they saw a chance to replace him with George. According to The Telegraph , they appointed George as the royal cupbearer, responsible for handing the king his drinks. The plan worked; soon after, George and the king began hunting and riding together.

George was knighted in 1615 and also became a Gentleman of the Bedchamber—an adviser who helped dress the king, guard his chambers, and accompany him in public. His title and role continued to evolve over the next decade, from viscount to earl (officially taking Carr’s appointment) to marquis. Finally, in 1624, George became the Duke of Buckingham. By that time, he had married Lady Katherine Manners , one of the richest women in England with whom he had four children.

Mary experienced her own rapid ascent, befriending the countess of Salisbury and becoming a confidante to the king. She appeared at court so much that George once petitioned her to stay away so as “not to intermeddle with business.” Still, she gained the title of Countess of Buckingham in 1618, further proof her family had attained the wealth and prestige she desired.

George and James were likely lovers until their relationship soured

Although George and King James wouldn’t have disclosed it, evidence suggests their relationship became sexual. James married Ann of Denmark in 1589 and the couple had multiple children, three of whom survived into adulthood. However, he was also notorious for his cadre of male favorites and is described by historian Michael B. Young as “the most prominent homosexual figure in the early modern period.”

George and the king’s connection was reflected in letters the pair exchanged. James referred to his young assistant as his “sweet child and wife,” while George described himself as James’ “most humble slave and servant.”

Despite their personal affinity for each another, the king and duke’s clashing political motives began to drive them apart. George became a tutor and ally of James’ son Charles , the heir to the throne, and was eager to declare war on Spain after a failed marriage negotiation for the young prince in 1623. The king refused, committed to maintaining peace.

Meanwhile, James’ health had begun to decline. He eventually died in March 1625 after contracting a malaria-like fever—sparking rumors that George might have poisoned him to gain favor with Charles and pursue his war. While no conclusive evidence was found, Woolley explored this theory in his book and it could also appear in Mary & George .

In 1628, George met a bloody end

With his ally Charles now on the throne, George ordered multiple attacks, including against Spain. However, they failed miserably, leading parliament to initiate impeachment proceedings against him . King Charles I was able to spare him that fate, but the duke’s reputation had become irreparable.

According to Portsmouth Cathedral , George hoped to organize another military campaign, this time into France, in 1628. However, an angry mob of 300 sailors surrounded his carriage in Portsmouth, and the duke used deadly force to push them back. The stage was set for more violence.

On August 23, 1628, John Felton, a disgruntled army lieutenant who George owed money and had denied a promotion, arrived in Portsmouth with a dagger he bought with money borrowed from his mother. He stabbed the 35-year-old duke, killing him, inside a crowded room at the Greyhound Inn. Felton immediately confessed to the crime inside a kitchen area then formally pleaded guilty and was hanged that November.

The duke’s body was returned to London, where King Charles ordered a burial inside Henry VII’s chapel at Westminster Abbey—a place previously reserved for royals . Meanwhile, Mary, who had likely known her son was vulnerable given his declining reputation, lived not much longer after his murder. She died on April 19, 1632, and was likewise buried at Westminster.

Although the mother and son couldn’t sustain their grip on power forever, their prolonged influence on the royal family and dignified interments illustrate just how successful their scheme ultimately proved.

Watch Mary & George on Starz

Mary & George , a seven-episode limited series rated TV-MA, features Julianne Moore as Mary Villiers, Nicholas Galitzine as George Villiers, and Tony Curran as King James I. Moore explained to Vanity Fair in March 2024 that the show offers a nuanced perspective of Mary’s political shrewdness and relationship with her son.

“I don’t think it’s particularly great parenting,” Moore said. “But [Mary’s] someone who featured in history who’s not talked about and when she is talked about she’s vilified. And it’s like, wait a minute. Why would she be vilified? Why would someone have depicted her as a witch when, in fact, she managed to achieve a lot for herself and set up all of her kids?”

You can make your own interpretation when the first episode of Mary & George debuts April 5 at 9 p.m. ET/PT on Starz . Episodes continue through the series finale on May 17 and will also stream on the Starz app.

Tyler Piccotti first joined the Biography.com staff as an Associate News Editor in February 2023, and before that worked almost eight years as a newspaper reporter and copy editor. He is a graduate of Syracuse University. When he's not writing and researching his next story, you can find him at the nearest amusement park, catching the latest movie, or cheering on his favorite sports teams.

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