Christopher Isherwood

Christopher William Bradshaw Isherwood (1904-1986) was a English novelist. Short Biography: Educated at Cambridge, he lived in Germany (1929-1933) just before Hitler's rise to...

Washington Irving

Washington Irving (1783-1859) was an American essayist and short-story writer. Short Biography: He published a mock-heroic History of New York in 1809, supposedly written by...

Eugene Ionesco

Eugene Ionesco (1912-1994) was a Romanian-born French dramatist, a leading exponent of the Theatre of the Absurd. Short Biography: Most of his plays are in one act and concern...

Henrik Ibsen

Henrik Johan Ibsen (1828-1906) was a Norwegian playwright and poet, whose realistic and often controversial plays revolutionized European theatre. Short Biography: Driven into...

Aldous Huxley

The satirical disillusion of Aldous Leonard Huxley (1894-1963) witty first novel, Crome Yellow (1921), continued throughout Antic Hay (1923), Those Barren Leaves (1925), and Point Counter...

Leigh Hunt

Leigh James Henry Hunt (1784-1859) was a English poet and essayist. Short Biography: Convicted for libel against the Prince Regent in his Liberal newspaper The Examiner, he was...

Ted Hughes

Ted Hughes (1930-1998) was an English poet, poet laureate from 1984. Short Biography: His work includes The Hawk in the Rain in 1957, Lupercal in 1960, Wodwo in 1967, and River...

William Hudson

William Henry Hudson (1841-1892) was an Anglo-American author, born of US parents at Florencio near Buenos Aires, Argentina. Short Biography: He was inspired by recollections...

William Dean Howells

William Dean Howells (1837-1920) was an American novelist and editor. Short Biography: The "dean" of US letters in the post-Civil War era, and editor of the Atlantic Monthly...

Anthony Hope

Pen name of Anthony Hope Hawkins (1863-1933) was a English novelist. Short Biography: He wrote the romance "The Prisoner of Zenda" (1894), and its sequel "Rupert of Hentzau"...

Winifred Holtby

Winifred Holtby (1898-1935) was a English novelist, poet, and journalist. Short Biography: She was an ardent advocate of women's freedom and racial equality, and wrote the novel...

James Hogg

James Hogg (1770-1835) was a Scottish novelist and poet, known as the "Ettrick Shepherd". Short Biography: Born in Ettrick Forest, Selkirkshire, he worked as a shepherd at Yarrow...

James Hilton

James Hilton (1900-1954) settled in Hollywood as one of its most successful script writers, for example Mrs. Miniver. Short Biography: His books include Lost Horizon (1933),...

Hildegard of Bingen

Hildegard of Bingen (1098-1179) was a Nun and scientific writer, abbess of the Benedictine convent of St. Disibode, near the Rhine, from 1136. Short Biography: She wrote a mystical...

Patricia Highsmith

Patricia Highsmith (1921-1995) was an American crime novelist. Short Biography: Her first book Strangers on a Train (1950) was filmed by Hitchcock, and she excels in tension...

Hermann Hesse

Hermann Hesse (1877-1962) was a German writer who became a Swiss citizen in 1923. Short Biography: A conscientious objector in World War I and a pacifist opponent of Hitier,...

Lillian Hellman

Lillian Hellman (1907-1984) was an American playwright, whose work is largely concerned with contemporary political and social issues. Short Biography: The Children's Hour (1934)...

William Hazlitt

William Hazlitt (1778-1830) was a British essayist and critic, noted for his invective, scathing irony and gift for epigram. Short Biography: His critical essays include Characters...

Vaclav Havel

Vaclav Havel (1936-2011) was a Czech dramatist and politician, president of Czechoslovakia (1989-1992) and of the Czech Republic from 1993. Short Biography: His plays include...

L. P. Hartley

Leslie Poles Hartley (1895-1972) was a English novelist, noted for his exploration of the sinister. Short Biography: His books include the trilogy The Shrimp and the Anemone...

Bret Harte

Francis Bret Harte (1836-1902) was a American writer. Short Biography: He became a goldminer at 18 before founding the Overland Monthly in 1868 in which he wrote short stories...

Dashiell Hammett

Dashiell Hammett (1894-1961) was an American crime novelist, whose books include The Maltese Falcon (1930), The Glass Key (1931), and The Thin Man (1932). Short Biography: Hammett...

Richard Hakluyt

Richard Hakluyt (1553-1616) was an English geographer whose chief work is The Principal Navigations, Voyages and Discoveries of the English Nation (1598-1600). Short Biography: He...

Robert Grosseteste

Robert Grosseteste (c. 1169-1253) prolific writings include many scientific works, as well as translations of Aristotle, and commentaries on the Bible. Short Biography: He was...