Biographies

Joseph Smith Fletcher

Joseph Smith Fletcher (7 February 1863 – 30 January 1935) was an English journalist and author. He
wrote more than 230 books on a wide variety of subjects, both fiction and non-fiction, and was one of
the most prolific English writers of detective fiction.

He was born in Halifax, West Yorkshire, the son of a clergyman. His father died when he was eight
months old, and after which his grandmother raised him on a farm in Darrington, near Pontefract. He
was educated at Silcoates School in Wakefield, and after some study of law, he became a journalist.

At age 20, Fletcher began working in journalism, as a sub-editor in London. He subsequently returned to
his native Yorkshire, where he worked first on the Leeds Mercury using the pseudonym A Son of the Soil,
and then as a special correspondent for the Yorkshire Post covering Edward VII’s coronation in 1902.

Fletcher’s first books published were poetry. He then moved on to write numerous works of historical
fiction and history, many dealing with Yorkshire, which led to his selection as a fellow of the Royal
Historical Society.

Michael Sadleir stated that Fletcher’s historical novel, When Charles I Was King (1892), was his best
work. Fletcher wrote several novels of rural life in imitation of Richard Jefferies, beginning with The
Wonderful Wapentake (1894).

In 1914, Fletcher wrote his first detective novel and went on to write over a hundred more, many
featuring the private investigator Ronald Camberwell.

Fletcher published multiple crime fiction novels during the “Golden Age of Detective Fiction,” namely his
The Middle Temple Murder (1919) which served as the basic formulaic template for writing detective
fiction novels; though, this particular novel (in addition to many of his others) did not share many
general traits with those that characterize this particular literary era. On the contrary, it’s argued that
Fletcher is an almost exact contemporary of Conan Doyle. Most of his detective fiction works
considerably pre-date that era, and even those few published within it do not conform to the closed
form and strict rules professed, if not unfailingly observed, by the Golden Age writers.
Christina Rossetti

Christina Georgina Rossetti (5 December 1830 – 29 December 1894) was an English writer of romantic,
devotional and children’s poems, including “Goblin Market” and “Remember”. She also wrote the words
of two Christmas carols well known in Britain: “In the Bleak Midwinter”, later set by Gustav Holst,
Katherine Kennicott Davis, and Harold Darke, and “Love Came Down at Christmas”, also set by Darke and
other composers. She was a sister of the artist and poet Dante Gabriel Rossetti and features in several of
his paintings.

Rossetti’s first poems were written in 1842 and printed in her grandfather’s private press. In 1850, under
the pseudonym Ellen Alleyne, she contributed seven poems to the Pre-Raphaelite journal The Germ,
which had been founded by her brother, William Michael, and his friends.

Rossetti is best known for her ballads and her mystic, religious lyrics; and her poetry is marked by
symbolism and intense feeling. Rossetti’s best-known work, Goblin Market and Other Poems (Macmillan
and Co.), was published in 1862. The collection established Rossetti as a significant voice in Victorian
poetry. The Prince’s Progress and Other Poems (Macmillan and Co.), appeared in 1866 followed by Sing-
Song (George Routledge and Sons), a collection of verse for children, in 1872 (with illustrations by Arthur
Hughes).

By the 1880s, recurrent bouts of Graves’ disease ended Rossetti’s attempts to work as a governess. While
the illness restricted her social life, she continued to write poems, compiled in later works such as A
Pageant and Other Poems (Macmillan, 1881). Rossetti also wrote religious prose works, such as Seek and
Find: A Double Series of Short Studies of the Benedicite (Society for Promoting Christian Knowledge and
Pott, Young, & Co., 1879); Called To Be Saints (Society for Promoting Christian Knowledge and E. & J. R.
Young & Co., 1881) and The Face of the Deep: A Devotional Commentary (Society for Promoting
Christian Knowledge and E. & J. R. Young & Co., 1892).

In 1891, Rossetti developed cancer, of which she died in London on December 29, 1894. William
Michael, edited her collected works in 1904, but her three-volume Complete Poems were published by
Louisiana State University Press between 1979 and 1990.
Jamuel Yaw Asare

Jamuel Yaw Asare is a playwright, poet and novelist whose works have been recognized and celebrated
internationally. According to NY Reagan Classics, his nationality is not open for reasons best known to his
team but some scholars claim he’s of Canadian and Ghanaian descent while others claim he’s of British
and Ghanaian descent. And according to Linton Yvette Andrews and Amelia Abraham (British), the
identity of Jamuel Yaw Asare, the elusive writer, who is hardly available to be photographed, interviewed
in person or seen in public, is a matter of intense debate among scholars.

He’s noted however for writing romance (“Khadija” on Brittle Paper-literary magazine founded by Ainehi
Edoro, a doctoral graduate from Duke University and now a professor at the University of Wisconsin-
Madison., “Maya Gonzalez”, Ecstasy and other romance poems on Poetry Soup-Greater Atlanta Area,
East Coast, Southern US and Woodstock, Georgia, United States and Story Mirror) tragedy (Maya
Gonzalez- Spanish, Egyptian and Azerbaijani classics, Malikat Saba- Ethiopian Classics, The Bohemian
Widow – Bohemian Classics,etc.), Classical works (The Forgotten Bards: Song of the Classical Minstrels,
The Far Off Call: The Cry of the Writer’s Ink to an Anonymous Reader on P.S. – Greater Atlanta Area, East
Coast, Southern US and Woodstock, Georgia, United States ) and epics (Haile).

Jamuel hails from a family of writers and intellectuals, and his love for literature was nurtured from an
early age.

His writing career began in his teenage years, and his works have since been published in various literary
magazines and anthologies. His works explore themes of love, tragedy, revenge, identity, social justice,
veneration,etc. He has won several awards for his writing, including the Story Mirror T30 Cup Edition
Writing Competition in India.

In 2021 and 2023, two of his novels won the heart of Gruppo Editoriale Europa, an international
publishing group operating in Europe under different brands: United Kingdom (under the brand name
Europe Books), Italy (under the brand name Europa Ediciones), and Germany (under the brand name
Europa Buch). In that same 2023, he was given a honorary award as a literary lieutenant and had the first
position in the Story Mirror T30 Cup Edition Writing Competition in India.

Another novel of his won the heart of Olympia Publishers, an international publishing group operating in
United Kingdom, USA, India and United Arab Emirates and of which they have Bumblebee Books as their
imprint.

Jamuel is a participant of the 7th cohort of the Sprinng Writing Fellowship (Nigeria and New York) and
thus received a green honorary ribbon and star award for demonstrating exemplary leadership during
the fellowship, serving as a Peer Captain and supporting fellows during the fellowship. He has been
featured in many literary events and festivals.

He's seen on:

 the list of 21st-century writers on Wikipedia

 list of Ghanaian writers on Wikipedia
 list of Ghanaian poets on Wikipedia
 list of English novelists on Wikipedia
  Commonwealth Writing Community as a Commonwealth writer with recognized numbers and
many more.

His quotes and other works can also be seen on:

 Your quote (India – Jamuel Asare’s quotes on Google or any other search engine)
 Miraquill (India)
 Baskadia Bitcoin
 https://www.poetrysoup.com/poems_poets/poems_by_poet.aspx?ID=154337
 Nojoto and many more.

Jamuel started his tertiary education in a British University and earned two BAs with First Class Honors
each. (BA in English Language and Literature and BA in Historical Linguistics). He then proceeded to get
an MBA in Business Management from Singapore Business University and another MBA in International
Marketing Management from the University of Athens in partnership with Cambridge International
Qualification.

He also has other qualifications such as:

 an MBA essentials in Environmental Health and Safety Management from University of Athens
 two honorary awarding qualifications from Oxford University Press
 a diploma in English from World English Institute (USA)
 a Teaching English as a Foreign Language qualification (TEFL – USA)
 a honorary qualification in Phonetics and Phonology from Literacy Mission Africa.
 A CEFR 7.5 Advanced English Score Qualification from British Council signed by Joanna
Pearson, English and Exams, Director of New Product Management.

He also received scholarly doctoral/PhD offers from:

 Unicaf – Zambia
 University of Dundee (a public research university in Scotland)
 Robert Kennedy College, Switzerland and in partnership with University of Cumbria, University
of Salford, Manchester, and York St.John University.
 Westford University College in partnership with University of Gloucestershire, UK.
 Parul University (India)
 Universidad Catolica de Murcia (Spain)
 Atlantic University .

Currently, Jamuel is noted as one of the notable 21st-century writers on Wikipedia and a rising star in
the literary world.

Marianne Moore
Marianne Craig Moore (November 15, 1887 – February 5, 1972) was an American modernist poet, critic,
translator, and editor. Her poetry is noted for its formal innovation, precise diction, irony, and wit. She
was nominated for the 1968 Nobel Prize in Literature by Nobel Committee member Erik Lindegren.

She’s inarguably one of American literature’s foremost poets, Marianne Moore’s poetry is characterized
by linguistic precision, keen and probing descriptions, and acute observations of people, places, animals,
and art. Her poems often reflect her preoccupation with the relationships between the common and the
uncommon, advocate discipline in both art and life, and espouse restraint, modesty, and humor. She
frequently used animals as a central image to emphasize themes of independence, honesty, and the
integration of art and nature. Moore’s work is frequently grouped with poets such as H.D., T.S. Eliot,
William Carlos Williams, Wallace Stevens, Ezra Pound, and, later, Elizabeth Bishop, to whom she was a
friend and mentor. In his introduction to her Selected Poems (1935), Eliot wrote: “Living, the poet is
carrying on that struggle for the maintenance of a living language, for the maintenance of its strength, its
subtlety, for the preservation of quality of feeling, which must be kept up in every generation … Miss
Moore is, I believe, one of those few who have done the language some service in my lifetime.”

Moore was born in 1887 near St. Louis, Missouri and grew up in Carlisle, Pennsylvania. She earned a BA
in biology and histology from Bryn Mawr College; early poems such as “A Jelly-Fish” were first published
in the college’s literary magazines. After graduation, Moore studied at Carlisle Commercial College and
taught at the Carlisle Indian School. Moore and her mother, who were devoted to each other, moved to
New York City in 1918 and Moore began working at the New York Public Library in 1921. Her first volume
Poems (1921) was selected and arranged by H.D., who gathered work that had appeared in journals such
as Others, the Egoist, and Poetry magazine. Moore’s second collection Observations (1924) included
poems chosen by Moore to represent the full range of her poetry’s forms and themes. The volume
contained classic Moore poems such as “Marriage,” a long free-verse poem featuring collage-like
assemblages of quotations and fragments, and “An Octopus,” a detailed exploration of Mount Rainier.
Named for the shape of the glacier surrounding the mountain, the poem is regarded as one of Moore’s
finest.

Moore was the editor of the influential literary magazine Dial from 1925 to 1929, when the magazine
shut down. Moore’s work on the Dial expanded her circle of literary acquaintances and introduced her
work to a more international audience. Moore published Selected Poems in 1935. The volume included
poems from Observations as well as pieces that had been published between 1932 and 1934. The ’30s
and ’40s were productive years for Moore: she published The Pangolin and Other Verse (1936), What Are
Years (1941), and Nevertheless (1944). The last volume included Moore’s anti-war poem “In Distrust of
Merits,” which was judged by W.H. Auden one of the best poems to come out of World War II. Moore,
however, described the poem as “just a protest—disjointed, exclamatory.” Moore’s comments on poetry
were notoriously ambiguous—her poem “Poetry” begins, “I too dislike it”—and she once described
herself as a “happy hack.”

Moore’s Collected Poems (1951) won both the Pulitzer Prize in poetry and the National Book Award, and
in 1953 she was awarded the Bollingen Prize. Her later works include a translation of The Fables of La
Fontaine (1954); Like a Bulwark (1956); O, to Be a Dragon (1959); Tell Me, Tell Me: Granite, Steel, and
Other Topics (1966); and The Complete Poems of Marianne Moore (1967), which was reissued in 1981
with revisions to early poems and additional poems written later in life.
Moore’s Complete Poems generated controversy in both editions for the significant revisions to Moore’s
early work, including her heavy edits to the poem “Poetry.” Moore wrote as a note to her Complete
Poems, “Omissions are not accidents—M.M.” However, critics thought slashing “Poetry” from 31 lines to
three a mistake. Anthony Hecht once wrote that as “an admiring reader I feel that I have some rights in
[this] matter. Her poems are partly mine, now, and I delight in them because they exhibit a mind of great
fastidiousness, a delicate and cunning moral sensibility, a tact, a decorum, a rectitude, and finally and
most movingly, a capacity for pure praise that has absolutely biblical awe in it. She (and Mr. Auden, too,
as it will appear) however much I may wish to take exception to the changes they have made, have
provided a field day for Ph.D. candidates for years to come, who can collate versions and come up with
theories about why the changes were made.”

In addition to poetry, Moore wrote a significant number of prose pieces, including reviews and essays.
Her prose works cover a broad range of subjects: painting, sculpture, literature, music, fashion, herbal
medicine, and sports—she was an avid baseball fan and wrote the liner notes for Muhammed Ali’s
record, I Am the Greatest! Moore’s prose works include A Marianne Moore Reader (1961), Predilections
(1955), and The Complete Prose of Marianne Moore (1987).

Moore was highly regarded as a poet during her lifetime and even became somewhat of a celebrity,
famous for her tricorn hat and cape and featured in magazines such as Life, the New York Times, and The
New Yorker. Ford Motor Company asked her to come up with names for a new series of cars, though
they rejected her suggestions. Moore’s honors and awards included the Poetry Society of America’s Gold
Medal for Distinguished Development, the National Medal for Literature, and an honorary doctorate
from Harvard University. She died in 1972 in New York City.

Carl Sandburg

Carl August Sandburg (January 6, 1878 – July 22, 1967) was an American poet, biographer, journalist, and
editor. He won three Pulitzer Prizes: two for his poetry and one for his biography of Abraham Lincoln.
During his lifetime, Sandburg was widely regarded as “a major figure in contemporary literature”,
especially for volumes of his collected verse, including Chicago Poems (1916), Cornhuskers (1918), and
Smoke and Steel (1920). He enjoyed “unrivaled appeal as a poet in his day, perhaps because the breadth
of his experiences connected him with so many strands of American life”. When he died in 1967,
President Lyndon B. Johnson observed that “Carl Sandburg was more than the voice of America, more
than the poet of its strength and genius. He was America.

Poet Carl Sandburg was born into a poor family in Galesburg, Illinois. In his youth, he worked many odd
jobs before serving in the 6th Illinois Infantry in Puerto Rico during the Spanish-American War. He studied
at Lombard College, and then moved to Milwaukee, Wisconsin, where he worked as an organizer for the
Socialist Democratic Party. In 1913, he moved to Chicago, Illinois and wrote for the Chicago Daily News.
His first poems were published by Harriet Monroe in Poetry magazine. Sandburg’s collection Chicago
Poems (1916) was highly regarded, and he received the Pulitzer Prize for Corn Huskers (1918). His many
subsequent books of poetry include The People, Yes (1936), Good Morning, America (1928), Slabs of the
Sunburnt West (1922), and Smoke and Steel (1920).

“Trying to write briefly about Carl Sandburg,” said a friend of the poet, “is like trying to picture the Grand
Canyon in one black and white snapshot.” His range of interests was enumerated by his close friend,
Harry Golden, who, in his study of the poet, called Sandburg “the one American writer who distinguished
himself in five fields—poetry, history, biography, fiction, and music.”

Sandburg composed his poetry primarily in free verse. Concerning rhyme versus non-rhyme Sandburg
once said airily, “If it jells into free verse, all right. If it jells into rhyme, all right.” Some critics noted that
the illusion of poetry in his works was based more on the arrangement of the lines than on the lines
themselves. Sandburg, aware of the criticism, wrote in the preface to Complete Poems (1950), “There is
a formal poetry only in form, all dressed up and nowhere to go. The number of syllables, the designated
and required stresses of accent, the rhymes if wanted—they all come off with the skill of a solved
crossword puzzle. … The fact is ironic. A proficient and sometimes exquisite performer in rhymed verse
goes out of his way to register the point that the more rhyme there is in poetry the more danger of its
tricking the writer into something other than the urge in the beginning.” He dismissed modern poetry,
however, as “a series of ear wigglings.” In Good Morning, America (1928), he published 38 definitions of
poetry, among them: “Poetry is a pack-sack of invisible keepsakes. Poetry is a sky dark with a wild-duck
migration. Poetry is the opening and closing of a door, leaving those who look through to guess about
what is seen during a moment.” His success as a poet was limited to that of a follower of Walt Whitman
and of the Imagists. In Carl Sandburg, Karl Detzer says that in 1918 “admirers proclaimed him a latter-day
Walt Whitman; objectors cried that their six-year-old daughters could write better poetry.”

Admirers of his poetry, however, have included Sherwood Anderson (“among all the poets of America he
is my poet”), and Amy Lowell, who called Chicago Poems (1916) “one of the most original books this age
has produced.” Lowell’s observations were reiterated by H.L. Mencken, who called Sandburg “a true
original, his own man.” No one, it is agreed, can deny the unique quality of his style. In his newspaper
days, an old friend recalls, the slogan was, “Print Sandburg as is.” It was Sandburg, as Golden observes,
who “put America on paper,” writing the American idiom, speaking to the masses, who held no terror for
him. As Richard Crowder notes in Carl Sandburg, the poet “Had been the first poet of modern times
actually to use the language of the people as his almost total means of expression. … Sandburg had
entered into the language of the people; he was not looking at it as a scientific phenomenon or a
curiosity. … He was at home with it.” Sandburg’s own Whitmanesque comment was, “I am the people—
the mob—the crowd—the mass. Did you know that all the work of the world is done through me?” He
was always read by the masses, as well as by scholars. He once observed, “I’ll probably die propped up in
bed trying to write a poem about America.”

Sandburg’s account of the life of Abraham Lincoln is one of the monumental works of the century.
Abraham Lincoln: The War Years (1939) alone exceeds in length the collected writings of Shakespeare by
some 150,000 words. Though Sandburg did deny the story that in preparation he read everything ever
published on Lincoln, he did collect and classify Lincoln material for 30 years, moving himself into a
garret, storing his extra material in a barn, and for nearly 15 years writing on a cracker-box typewriter.
His intent was to separate Lincoln the man from Lincoln the myth, to avoid hero-worship, to relate with
graphic detail and humanness the man both he and Whitman so admired. The historian Charles A. Beard
called the finished product “a noble monument of American literature,” written with “indefatigable
thoroughness.” Allan Nevins saw it as “homely but beautiful, learned but simple, exhaustively detailed
but panoramic … [occupying] a niche all its own, unlike any other biography or history in the language.”
The Pulitzer Prize committee apparently agreed. Prohibited from awarding the biography prize for any
work on Washington or Lincoln, it circumvented the rules by placing the book in the category of history.
As a result of this work, Sandburg was the first private citizen to deliver an address before a joint session
of Congress (on February 12, 1959, the 150th anniversary of Lincoln’s birth).

Perhaps Sandburg was best known to America as the singing bard—the “voice of America singing,” says
Golden. Sandburg was an author accepted as a personality, as was Mark Twain. Requests for his lectures
began to appear as early as 1908. He was his own accompanist, and was not merely a musician of sorts;
he played the guitar well enough to have been a pupil of Andres Segovia. Sandburg’s songs were
projected by a voice “in which you [could] hear farm hands wailing and levee Negroes moaning.” It was
fortunate that he was willing to travel about reciting and recording his poetry, for the interpretation his
voice lent to his work was unforgettable. With its deep rich cadences, dramatic pauses, and Midwestern
dialect, his speech was “a kind of singing.” Ben Hecht once wrote: “Whether he chatted at lunch or
recited from the podium he had always the same voice. He spoke like a man slowly revealing
something.”

Sandburg was the recipient of numerous honorary degrees, had six high schools and five elementary
schools named for him, and held news conferences with presidents at the White House. “My father
couldn’t sign his name,” wrote Sandburg; “[he] made his ‘mark’ on the CB&Q payroll sheet. My mother
was able to read the Scriptures in her native language, but she could not write, and I wrote of Abraham
Lincoln whose own mother could not read or write! I guess that somewhere along in this you’ll find a
story of America.”

A Sandburg archives is maintained in the Sandburg Room at the University of Illinois. Ralph G. Newman,
who is known primarily as a Lincoln scholar but who also is the possessor of what is perhaps the largest
and most important collection of Sandburgiana, has said that a complete bibliography of Sandburg’s
works, including contributions to periodicals and anthologies, forewords, introductions, and foreign
editions would number more than 400 pages. Sandburg received 200 to 400 letters each week. Though,
to a friend who asked how he managed to look 10 years younger than he appeared on his last visit, he
replied, “From NOT answering my correspondence,” he reportedly filed his mail under “F” (friendly and
fan letters), “No reply needed,” and “Hi fi” (to be read and answered).

For all this fame, he remained unassuming. What he wanted from life was “to be out of jail, … to eat
regular, … to get what I write printed, … a little love at home and a little nice affection hither and yon
over the American landscape, … [and] to sing every day.” He wrote with a pencil, a fountain pen, or a
typewriter, “but I draw the line at dictating ’em,” he said. He kept his home as it was, refusing, for
example, to rearrange his vast library in some orderly fashion; he knew where everything was.
Furthermore, he said, “I want Emerson in every room.”

On September 17, 1967, there was a National Memorial Service at the Lincoln Memorial in Washington,
DC, at which Archibald MacLeish and Mark Van Doren read from Sandburg’s poetry. A Carl Sandburg
Exhibition of memorabilia was held at the Hallmark Gallery in New York City, from January to February,
1968, and his home is under consideration as a National Historical site.

Sandburg’s prose and poetry continues to inspire publication in new formats. The volume Arithmetic
(1993), for example, presents Sandburg’s famous poem of the same title in the form of a uniquely
illustrated text for children. Sandburg’s poem is a humorous commentary on the grade-school
experience of learning arithmetic: “Arithmetic is where numbers fly like pigeons in and out of your
head.” Reviewers praised the creative presentation of the poem, and the effectiveness of what School
Library Journal reviewer JoAnn Rees called Ted Rand’s “brightly colored, mixed-media anamorphic
paintings.” Also written for children, several of Sandburg’s unpublished “Rootabaga” stories (also
referred to as “American fairy tales”) have been posthumously collected by Sandburg scholar George
Hendrick in More Rootabagas (1993). Sandburg had published Rootabaga Pigeons in 1923 and Potato
Face in 1930, leaving many other tales in the series unpublished. Critics praised the inventiveness,
whimsicality, and humor of the stories, which feature such characters and places as “The Potato Face
Blind Man,” “Ax Me No Questions,” and “The Village of Liver and Onions.” “Sandburg was writing for the
children in himself,” comments Verlyn Klinkenborg in New York Times Book Review, “for the eternal child,
who, when he or she hears language spoken, hears rhythm, not sense.”

In 2002, a collection of Sandburg’s previously unknown letters, manuscripts, and photographs was
auctioned for $80,000 by Tom Hall Auctions in Schneckville, Pennsylvania. The papers belonged to
Sandburg’s editor until her death, when they were given to her nephew. Many items were obtained by
the University of Illinois, where Sandburg’s papers are held.

Elisha Oluyemi

Elisha Oluyemi is a Yorùbá writer and the editor-in-chief of Fiery Scribe Review. Winner of the Brigitte
Poirson Literature Prize for Short Story (2023) and the Ikenga Short Story Prize (2023), he is currently
shortlisted for the Isele Short Story Prize (2024). Elisha’s writing appears in Strange Horizons, LOLWE,
Mystery Tribune, Broken Antler, Mukana Press, Ghudsavar Magazine, Isele Magazine, The Bitchin’ Kitsch,
Sledgehammer, and elsewhere. He has also contributed to forthcoming anthologies, Mukana Anthology
of African Writing (2024) & UNBOUND: Anthology of Nigerian Poets Under-40 (Griots Lounge, 2024). For
fun and relaxation, Elisha learns Korean, listens to classical music, and studies criminal minds. He tweets
@ylisha_cs.

Michael Imossan

Michael Imossan is a poet, playwright and editor of Ibibio origin. He is the author of the award-winning
chapbook “For the Love of Country and Memory” (poetrycolumnnd, 2022) as well as the gazelle, “A
Prelude to Caving” (Konyashamsrumi, 2023). His full length manuscript “Broken in Three Places” was
named semi-finalist for the Sillerman Prize for African Poetry. He is a recipient of the PEN international
writers grant.
Frances Ellen Watkins Harper

Frances Ellen Watkins Harper (September 24, 1825 – February 22, 1911) was an American abolitionist,
suffragist, poet, temperance activist, teacher, public speaker, and writer. Beginning in 1845, she was one
of the first African American women to be published in the United States.

Born free in Baltimore, Maryland, Harper had a long and prolific career, publishing her first book of
poetry at the age of 20. At 67, she published her widely praised novel Iola Leroy (1892), placing her
among the first Black women to publish a novel.

As a young woman in 1850, Harper taught domestic science at Union Seminary in Columbus, Ohio, a
school affiliated with the African Methodist Episcopal Church (AME). In 1851, while living with the family
of William Still, a clerk at the Pennsylvania Abolition Society who helped refugee slaves make their way
along the Underground Railroad, Harper started to write anti-slavery literature. After joining the
American Anti-Slavery Society in 1853, Harper began her career as a public speaker and political activist.

Harper also had a successful literary career. Her collection Poems on Miscellaneous Subjects (1854) was
a commercial success, making her the most popular African American poet before Paul Laurence Dunbar.
Her short story “Two Offers” was published in the Anglo-African in 1859, making literary history as the
first short story published by a Black woman.

Harper founded, supported, and held high office in several national progressive organizations. In 1886,
she became superintendent of the Colored Section of the Philadelphia and Pennsylvania Women’s
Christian Temperance Union. In 1896 she helped found the National Association of Colored Women and
served as its vice president.

Harper died at age 85 on February 22, 1911.

Walt Whitman

Walter Whitman Jr. ( May 31, 1819 – March 26, 1892) was an American poet, essayist, and journalist. He
is considered one of the most influential poets in American literature. Whitman incorporated both
transcendentalism and realism in his writings and is often called the father of free verse. His work was
controversial in his time, particularly his 1855 poetry collection Leaves of Grass, which was described by
some as obscene for its overt sensuality.

Whitman was born in Huntington on Long Island, and lived in Brooklyn as a child and through much of
his career. At the age of 11, he left formal schooling to go to work. He worked as a journalist, a teacher,
and a government clerk. Whitman’s major poetry collection, Leaves of Grass, first published in 1855, was
financed with his own money and became well known. The work was an attempt to reach out to the
common person with an American epic. Whitman continued expanding and revising Leaves of Grass until
his death in 1892.

During the American Civil War, he went to Washington, D.C., and worked in hospitals caring for the
wounded. His poetry often focused on both loss and healing. On the assassination of Abraham Lincoln,
whom Whitman greatly admired, he authored two poems, “O Captain! My Captain!” and “When Lilacs
Last in the Dooryard Bloom’d”, and gave a series of lectures on Lincoln. After suffering a stroke towards
the end of his life, Whitman moved to Camden, New Jersey, where his health further declined. When he
died at the age of 72, his funeral was a public event.

Whitman’s influence on poetry remains strong. Art historian Mary Berenson wrote, “You cannot really
understand America without Walt Whitman, without Leaves of Grass… He has expressed that civilization,
‘up to date,’ as he would say, and no student of the philosophy of history can do without him.”
Modernist poet Ezra Pound called Whitman “America’s poet… He is America.”

Christopher Marlowe

Christopher Marlowe (baptized 26 February 1564 – 30 May 1593) was an English playwright, poet and
translator of the Elizabethan era. Marlowe was the foremost Elizabethan tragedian of his day. He greatly
influenced William Shakespeare, who was born in the same year as Marlowe and who rose to become
the pre-eminent Elizabethan playwright after Marlowe’s mysterious early death. Marlowe’s plays are
known for the use of blank verse and their overreaching protagonists.

A warrant was issued for Marlowe’s arrest on 18 May 1593. No reason was given for it, though it was
thought to be connected to allegations of blasphemy—a manuscript believed to have been written by
Marlowe was said to contain “vile heretical conceipts.” On 20 May he was brought to the court to attend
upon the Privy Council for questioning. There is no record of their having met that day, however, and he
was commanded to attend upon them each day thereafter until “licensed to the contrary.” Ten days later,
he was stabbed to death by Ingram Frizer. Whether the stabbing was connected to his arrest has never
been resolved.

Of the dramas attributed to Marlowe, Dido, Queen of Carthage is believed to have been his first. It was
performed by the Children of the Chapel, a company of boy actors, between 1587 and 1593. The play
was first published in 1594; the title page attributes the play to Marlowe and Thomas Nashe.

Marlowe’s first play performed on the regular stage in London, in 1587, was Tamburlaine the Great,
about the conqueror Tamburlaine, who rises from shepherd to war-lord. It is among the first English
plays in blank verse, and, with Thomas Kyd’s The Spanish Tragedy, generally is considered the beginning
of the mature phase of the Elizabethan theatre. Tamburlaine was a success, and was followed with
Tamburlaine the Great, Part II.

The two parts of Tamburlaine were published in 1590; all Marlowe’s other works were published
posthumously. The sequence of the writing of his other four plays is unknown; all deal with controversial
themes.

The Jew of Malta (first published as The Famous Tragedy of the Rich Jew of Malta), about a Maltese
Jew’s barbarous revenge against the city authorities, has a prologue delivered by a character
representing Machiavelli. It was probably written in 1589 or 1590, and was first performed in 1592. It
was a success, and remained popular for the next fifty years.
Edward the Second is an English history play about the deposition of King Edward II by his barons and
the Queen, who resent the undue influence the king’s favourite have in court and state affairs.

The Massacre at Paris is a short and luridly written work, the only surviving text of which was probably a
reconstruction from memory of the original performance text, portraying the events of the Saint
Bartholomew’s Day Massacre in 1572, which English Protestants invoked as the blackest example of
Catholic treachery. It features the silent “English Agent”, whom subsequent tradition has identified with
Marlowe himself and his connections to the secret service. The Massacre at Paris is considered his most
dangerous play, as agitators in London seized on its theme to advocate the murders of refugees from the
low countries and, indeed, it warns Elizabeth I of this possibility in its last scene.

Doctor Faustus (or The Tragic all History of the Life and Death of Doctor Faustus), based on the German
Faustbuch, was the first dramatized version of the Faust legend of a scholar’s dealing with the devil.
While versions of “The Devil’s Pact” can be traced back to the 4th century, Marlowe deviates significantly
by having his hero unable to “burn his books” or repent to a merciful God in order to have his contract
annulled at the end of the play. Marlowe’s protagonist is instead carried off by demons, and in the 1616
quarto his mangled corpse is found by several scholars. Doctor Faustus is a textual problem for scholars
as two versions of the play exist: the 1604 quarto, also known as the A text, and the 1616 quarto or B
text. Both were published after Marlowe’s death.

Thomas Nashe

Thomas Nashe (baptized November 1567 – c. 1601; also Nash) was an Elizabethan playwright, poet,
satirist and a significant pamphleteer.: 5 He is known for his novel The Unfortunate Traveller, his
pamphlets including Pierce Penniless, and his numerous defences of the Church of England.

His first publication was a preface to Greene’s Menaphon (1589), surveying the follies of contemporary
literature; he expanded this theme in The Anatomie of Absurditie (1589). His hatred of Puritanism drew
him into the Martin Marprelate controversy. In 1592 Nashe replied to the savage denunciations of
Richard Harvey, astrologer and brother of Gabriel Harvey, with Pierce Pennilesse His Supplication to the
Divell. He avenged Gabriel Harvey’s attack on R. Greene with Strange Newes, of the Intercepting Certaine
Letters (1592). A florid religious meditation, Christs Teares over Jerusalem (1593), was dedicated to Lady
Elizabeth Carey, and The Terrors of the Night (1594), a discourse on dreams and nightmares, was
dedicated to her daughter. He published The Unfortunate Traveller: Or The Life of Jacke Wilton (1594)
and returned to satire with Have with You to Saffron‐walden: Or, Gabriell Harveys Hunt is up (1596), to
which Harvey replied; in 1599 Archbishop Whitgift ordered that the works of both writers should be
suppressed. Nashe’s lost satirical comedy The Isle of Dogs also led to trouble with the authorities. He
published Nashes Lenten Stuffe (1599), a mock encomium of the red herring (or kipper) which includes a
burlesque version of the story of Hero and Leander; and Summers Last Will and Testament (1600). Nashe
had a share in Marlowe’s Dido, Queene of Carthage. He was amusingly satirized as ‘Ingenioso’ in the
three Parnassus Plays (1598–1606).

Bjørnstjerne Bjørnson

Bjørnstjerne Martinius Bjørnson (8 December 1832 – 26 April 1910) was a Norwegian writer who
received the 1903 Nobel Prize in Literature “as a tribute to his noble, magnificent and versatile poetry,
which has always been distinguished by both the freshness of its inspiration and the rare purity of its
spirit”. The first Norwegian Nobel laureate, he was a prolific polemicist and extremely influential in
Norwegian public life and Scandinavian cultural debate. Bjørnson is considered to be one of the four
great Norwegian writers, alongside Ibsen, Lie, and Kielland. He is also celebrated for his lyrics to the
Norwegian national anthem, “Ja, vi elsker dette landet”. The composer Fredrikke Waaler based a
composition for voice and piano (Spinnersken) on a text by Bjørnson, as did Anna Teichmüller (Die
Prinzessin).

Bjørnson, the son of a pastor, grew up in the small farming community of Romsdalen, which later
became the scene of his country novels. From the start his writing was marked by clearly didactic intent;
he sought to stimulate national pride in Norway’s history and achievements and to present ideals. For
the first 15 years of his literary career he drew his inspiration from the sagas and from his knowledge of
contemporary rural Norway. He exploited these two fields in what he described as his system of “crop
rotation”: saga material was turned into plays, contemporary material into novels or peasant tales. Both
stressed those links that bound the new Norway to the old; both served to raise the nation’s morale. The
early products of this system were the peasant tale Synnøve solbakken (1857; Trust and Trial, Love and
Life in Norway, and Sunny Hill), the one-act historical play Mellem slagene (1857; “Between the Battles”),
and the tales Arne (1858) and En glad gut (1860; The Happy Boy) and the play Halte-Hulda (1858; “Lame
Hulda”).

In 1857–59 he was Ibsen’s successor as artistic director at the Bergen Theatre. He married the actress
Karoline Reimers in 1858 and also became the editor of the Bergenposten. Partly because of his activity
with this paper, the Conservative representatives were defeated in 1859 and the path was cleared for
the formation of the Liberal Party a short time later. After traveling abroad for three years, Bjørnson
became director of the Christiania Theatre, and, from 1866 to 1871, he edited the Norsk Folkeblad.
During this same time there also appeared the first edition of his Digte og sange (1870; Poems and
Songs) and the epic poem Arnljot Gelline (1870).

Bjørnson’s political battles and literary feuds took up so much of his time that he left Norway in order to
write. The two dramas that brought him an international reputation were thus written in self-imposed
exile: En fallit (1875; The Bankrupt) and Redaktøren (1875; The Editor). Both fulfilled the then current
demand on literature (stipulated by the Danish writer and critic Georg Brandes) to debate problems, as
did the two dramas that followed: Kongen (1877; The King) and Det ny system (1879; The New System).
Of his later works, two novels are remembered, Det flager I byen og på havnen (1884; The Heritage of
the Kurts) and På Guds veje (1889; In God’s Way), as are a number of impressive dramas, including Over
Ævne I og II (1883 and 1895; Beyond Our Power and Beyond Human Might). The first of the novels deals
critically with Christianity and attacks the belief in miracles, whereas the second deals with social change
and suggests that such change must begin in the schools. Paul Lange og Tora Parsberg (1898) is
concerned with the theme of political intolerance.

Later in life, Bjørnson came to think of himself as a Socialist, working tirelessly in behalf of peace and
international understanding. Bjørnson enjoyed worldwide fame, his plays were influential in establishing
social realism in Europe, and he was awarded the Nobel Prize in 1903. Nonetheless, his international
reputation has diminished in comparison with that of Ibsen.

Anton Pavlovich Chekhov

Anton Chekhov was a Russian writer recognized as a master of the modern short story and a leading
playwright of the late 19th and early 20th centuries.

His father, Pavel, was a grocer with frequent money troubles; his mother, Yevgeniya, shared her love of
storytelling with Chekhov and his five siblings.When Pavel’s business failed in 1875, he took the family to
Moscow to look for other work while Chekhov remained in Taganrog until he finished his studies.
Chekhov finally joined his family in Moscow in 1879 and enrolled at medical school. With his father still
struggling financially, Chekhov supported the family with his freelance writing, producing hundreds of
short comic pieces under a pen name for local magazines.

During the mid-1880s, Chekhov practiced as a physician and began to publish serious works of fiction
under his own name. His pieces appeared in the newspaper New Times and then as part of collections
such as Motley Stories (1886). His story “The Steppe” was an important success, earning its author the
Pushkin Prize in 1888. Like most of Chekhov’s early work, it showed the influence of the major Russian
realists of the 19th century, such as Leo Tolstoy and Fyodor Dostoyevsky.

Chekhov also wrote works for the theater during this period. His earliest plays were short farces;
however, he soon developed his signature style, which was a unique mix of comedy and tragedy. Plays
such as Ivanov (1887) and The Wood Demon (1889) told stories about educated men of the upper
classes coping with debt, disease and inevitable disappointment in life.

Chekhov wrote many of his greatest works from the 1890s through the last few years of his life. In his
short stories of that period, including “Ward No. 6” and “The Lady with the Dog,” he revealed a profound
understanding of human nature and the ways in which ordinary events can carry deeper meaning.

In his plays of these years, Chekhov concentrated primarily on mood and characters, showing that they
could be more important than the plots. Not much seems to happen to his lonely, often desperate
characters, but their inner conflicts take on great significance. Their stories are very specific, painting a
picture of pre-revolutionary Russian society, yet timeless.

From the late 1890s onward, Chekhov collaborated with Constantin Stanislavski and the Moscow Art
Theater on productions of his plays, including his masterpieces The Seagull (1895), Uncle Vanya (1897),
The Three Sisters (1901) and The Cherry Orchard (1904).
In 1901, Chekhov married Olga Knipper, an actress from the Moscow Art Theatre. However, by this point
his health was in decline due to the tuberculosis that had affected him since his youth. While staying at a
health resort in Badenweiler, Germany, he died in the early hours of July 15, 1904, at the age of 44.

Chekhov is considered one of the major literary figures of his time. His plays are still staged worldwide,
and his overall body of work influenced important writers of an array of genres, including James Joyce,
Ernest Hemingway, Tennessee Williams and Henry Miller.

James Branch Cabell

James Branch Cabell (April 14, 1879 – May 5, 1958) was an American author of fantasy fiction and
belles-lettres. Cabell was well-regarded by his contemporaries, including H. L. Mencken, Edmund Wilson,
and Sinclair Lewis. His works were considered escapist and fit well in the culture of the 1920s, when they
were most popular. For Cabell, veracity was “the one unpardonable sin, not merely against art, but
against human welfare.”

Although escapist, Cabell’s works are ironic and satirical. Mencken disputed Cabell’s claim to
romanticism and characterized him as “really the most acidulous of all the anti-romantics. His gaudy
heroes … chase dragons precisely as stockbrockers play golf.” According to Louis D. Rubin, Cabell saw art
as an escape from life, but found that, once the artist creates his ideal world, it is made up of the same
elements that make the real one.

Interest in Cabell declined in the 1930s, a decline that has been attributed in part to his failure to move
out of his fantasy niche despite the onset of World War II. Alfred Kazin said that “Cabell and Hitler did
not inhabit the same universe”.

The library at Virginia Commonwealth University is named after Cabell.

André Gide

André Gide (born Nov. 22, 1869, Paris, France—died Feb. 19, 1951, Paris) was a French writer, humanist,
and moralist who received the Nobel Prize for Literature in 1947.

Gide was the only child of Paul Gide and his wife, Juliette Rondeaux. His father was of southern
Huguenot peasant stock; his mother, a Norman heiress, although Protestant by upbringing, belonged to
a northern Roman Catholic family long established at Rouen. When Gide was eight he was sent to the
École Alsacienne in Paris, but his education was much interrupted by neurotic bouts of ill health. After
his father’s early death in 1880, his well-being became the chief concern of his devoutly austere mother;
often kept at home, he was taught by indifferent tutors and by his mother’s governess. While in Rouen
Gide formed a deep attachment for his cousin, Madeleine Rondeaux.

Gide returned to the École Alsacienne to prepare for his baccalauréat examination, and after passing it in
1889, he decided to spend his life in writing, music, and travel. His first work was an autobiographical
study of youthful unrest entitled Les Cahiers d’André Walter (1891; The Notebooks of André Walter).
Written, like most of his later works, in the first person, it uses the confessional form in which Gide was
to achieve his greatest successes.

In 1891 a school friend, the writer Pierre Louÿs, introduced Gide into the poet Stéphane Mallarmé’s
famous “Tuesday evenings,” which were the centre of the French Symbolist movement, and for a time
Gide was influenced by Symbolist aesthetic theories. His works “Narcissus” (1891), Le Voyage d’Urien
(1893; Urien’s Voyage), and “The Lovers’ Attempt” (1893) belong to this period.

In 1893 Gide paid his first visit to North Africa, hoping to find release there from his dissatisfaction with
the restrictions imposed by his puritanically strict Protestant upbringing. Gide’s contact with the Arab
world and its radically different moral standards helped to liberate him from the Victorian social and
sexual conventions he felt stifled by. One result of this nascent intellectual revolt against social hypocrisy
was his growing awareness of his homosexuality. The lyrical prose poem Les Nourritures terrestres
(1897; Fruits of the Earth) reflects Gide’s personal liberation from the fear of sin and his acceptance of
the need to follow his own impulses. But after he returned to France, Gide’s relief at having shed the
shackles of convention evaporated in what he called the “stifling atmosphere” of the Paris salons. He
satirized his surroundings in Marshlands (1894), a brilliant parable of animals who, living always in dark
caves, lose their sight because they never use it.

In 1894 Gide returned to North Africa, where he met Oscar Wilde and Lord Alfred Douglas, who
encouraged him to embrace his homosexuality. He was recalled to France because of his mother’s
illness, however, and she died in May 1895.

In October 1895 Gide married his cousin Madeleine, who had earlier refused him. Early in 1896 he was
elected mayor of the commune of La Roque. At 27, he was the youngest mayor in France. He took his
duties seriously but managed to complete Fruits of the Earth. It was published in 1897 and fell
completely flat, although after World War I it was to become Gide’s most popular and influential work. In
the postwar generation, its call to each individual to express fully whatever is in him evoked an
immediate response.

Fyoder Dostoevsky

Fyodor Mikhailovich Dostoevsky ( 11 November 1821 – 9 February 1881[3][c]), sometimes transliterated

as Dostoyevsky, was a Russian novelist, short story writer, essayist and journalist. Numerous literary
critics regard him as one of the greatest novelists in all of world literature, as many of his works are
considered highly influential masterpieces.

Dostoevsky’s literary works explore the human condition in the troubled political, social, and spiritual
atmospheres of 19th-century Russia, and engage with a variety of philosophical and religious themes. His
most acclaimed novels include Crime and Punishment (1866), The Idiot (1869), Demons (1872), and The
Brothers Karamazov (1880). His 1864 novella Notes from Underground is considered to be one of the
first works of existentialist literature.[5]

Born in Moscow in 1821, Dostoevsky was introduced to literature at an early age through fairy tales and
legends, and through books by Russian and foreign authors. His mother died in 1837 when he was 15,
and around the same time, he left school to enter the Nikolayev Military Engineering Institute. After
graduating, he worked as an engineer and briefly enjoyed a lavish lifestyle, translating books to earn
extra money. In the mid-1840s he wrote his first novel, Poor Folk, which gained him entry into Saint
Petersburg’s literary circles. However, he was arrested in 1849 for belonging to a literary group, the
Petrashevsky Circle, that discussed banned books critical of Tsarist Russia. Dostoevsky was sentenced to
death but the sentence was commuted at the last moment. He spent four years in a Siberian prison
camp, followed by six years of compulsory military service in exile. In the following years, Dostoevsky
worked as a journalist, publishing and editing several magazines of his own and later A Writer’s Diary, a
collection of his writings. He began to travel around western Europe and developed a gambling
addiction, which led to financial hardship. For a time, he had to beg for money, but he eventually
became one of the most widely read and highly regarded Russian writers.