Edgar Allan Poe Born in Boston, he was the second child of two actors. His father abandoned the family in 1810, and his mother died the following year. Thus orphaned, the child was taken in by John and Frances Allan, of Richmond, Virginia. Although they never formally adopted him, Poe was with them well into young adulthood. Poe switched his focus to prose and spent the next several years working for literary journals and periodicals, becoming known for his own style of literary criticism. Poe and his works influenced literature in the United States and around the world, as well as in specialized fields, such as cosmology and cryptography. Life and career Early life He was born Edgar Poe in Boston, Massachusetts, on January 19, 1809, the second child of English-born actress Elizabeth Arnold Hopkins Poe and actor David Poe, Jr. The Allan family had Poe baptized in the Episcopal Church in 1812. Poe moved back with the Allans to Richmond, Virginia in 1820. Military career Publishing career
Douglas Adams Douglas Noel Adams (11 March 1952 – 11 May 2001) was an English writer, humorist, and dramatist. Adams also wrote Dirk Gently's Holistic Detective Agency (1987) and The Long Dark Tea-Time of the Soul (1988), and co-wrote The Meaning of Liff (1983), The Deeper Meaning of Liff (1990), Last Chance to See (1990), and three stories for the television series Doctor Who. A posthumous collection of his work, including an unfinished novel, was published as The Salmon of Doubt in 2002. Adams became known as an advocate for environmentalism and conservation, and also as a lover of fast cars, cameras, technological innovation, and the Apple Macintosh. Early life[edit] Adams was born on 11 March 1952 to Janet (née Donovan) and Christopher Douglas Adams in Cambridge, England.[4] The following year Watson and Crick famously first modelled DNA at Cambridge University, leading Adams to later quip he was DNA in Cambridge months earlier. Education[edit] Career[edit] Writing[edit]
M. R. James Early influences[edit] Scholarly works[edit] James is best known for his ghost stories, but his work as a medieval scholar was prodigious and remains highly respected in scholarly circles. Indeed, the success of his stories was founded on his antiquarian talents and knowledge. He catalogued many of the manuscript libraries of the Cambridge colleges. James also achieved a great deal during his directorship of the Fitzwilliam Museum in Cambridge [1893–1908]. James was Provost of Eton College from 1918 to 1936.[1] He died in 1936 and was buried in Eton town cemetery. Ghost stories[edit] James's ghost stories were published in a series of collections: Ghost Stories of an Antiquary (1904), More Ghost Stories of an Antiquary (1911), A Thin Ghost and Others (1919), and A Warning to the Curious and Other Ghost Stories (1925). According to James, the story must "put the reader into the position of saying to himself, 'If I'm not very careful, something of this kind may happen to me!'" Film[edit]
Bernard Cornwell Biography[edit] Cornwell was born in London in 1944. His father was a Canadian airman, and his mother was English, a member of the Women's Auxiliary Air Force. He was adopted and brought up in Thundersley, Essex by the Wiggins family, who were members of the Peculiar People, a strict sect who were pacifists, banned frivolity of all kinds and even medicine. After he left them, he changed his name to his mother's maiden name, Cornwell. Cornwell was sent to Monkton Combe School. Career[edit] As a child, Cornwell loved the novels of C. Cornwell and wife Judy co-wrote a series of novels, published under the pseudonym "Susannah Kells". In June 2006, Cornwell was made an Officer of the Order of the British Empire in the Queen's 80th Birthday Honours List.[7] Novel series[edit] The Sharpe stories[edit] Cornwell's best known books feature the adventures of Richard Sharpe, an English soldier during the Napoleonic Wars. The Warlord Chronicles[edit] The Grail Quest novels[edit] The Saxon Stories[edit]
Bram Stoker's Dracula Bram Stoker's Dracula is a 1992 American horror fantasy erotic drama film directed and produced by Francis Ford Coppola, based on the novel Dracula by Bram Stoker.[3][4][5] It stars Gary Oldman as Count Dracula, Winona Ryder as Mina Harker, Anthony Hopkins as Professor Abraham Van Helsing, and Keanu Reeves as Jonathan Harker. Bram Stoker's Dracula was greeted by a generally positive critical reception and was a box office hit, although Reeves' performance has been widely criticised. Its score was composed by Wojciech Kilar and featured "Love Song for a Vampire" by Annie Lennox, which became an international hit, as the closing credits theme. Plot[edit] In 1462, Vlad Dracula, a member of the Order of the Dragon, returns from a victory against the Turks to find his wife, Elisabeta, has committed suicide after receiving a false report of his death. In 1897, newly qualified solicitor Jonathan Harker takes the Transylvanian Count Dracula as a client from his colleague R. Cast[edit] [edit]
The Saxon Stories The following novels are now available: Style[edit] The series is frequently compared to The Warlord Chronicles, not only because of similarities between the two protagonists (both were orphaned), but also in the similarities between the foreign menace in the form of the Danes in The Saxon Stories and the Saxons in The Warlord Chronicles. The main character, Uhtred of Bebbanburg (the old Saxon name of Bamburgh Castle), is an old man telling tales of events that took place decades earlier, starting from his childhood and going on, his story intertwining with the story of the British Isles in the end of the ninth century. Bernard Cornwell mentioned in the historical notes at the end of The Lords of the North that he intended to continue writing The Saxon Stories. References[edit] See also[edit] Anglo-Saxon warfare
Vlad the Impaler Vlad III, Prince of Wallachia (1431–1476/77), was a member of the House of Drăculești, a branch of the House of Basarab, also known by his patronymic name: Dracula. He was posthumously dubbed Vlad the Impaler (Romanian: Vlad Țepeș pronounced [ˈvlad ˈt͡sepeʃ]), and was a three-time Voivode of Wallachia, ruling mainly from 1456 to 1462, the period of the incipient Ottoman conquest of the Balkans. His father, Vlad II Dracul, was a member of the Order of the Dragon, which was founded to protect Christianity in Eastern Europe. Vlad III is revered as a folk hero in Romania as well as other parts of Europe for his protection of the Romanian population both south and north of the Danube. As the cognomen 'The Impaler' suggests, his practice of impaling his enemies is part of his historical reputation.[2] During his lifetime, his reputation for excessive cruelty spread abroad, to Germany and elsewhere in Europe. Name[edit] Bust of Vlad the Impaler in Sighișoara, his place of birth Family[edit]
Hermann Hesse Biography[edit] Family background[edit] Hermann Hesse was born on 2 July 1877 in the Black Forest town of Calw in Württemberg, German Empire. His parents served in India at a mission under the auspices of the Basel Mission, a Protestant Christian missionary society. Hesse's birthplace, 2007 Hesse's father, Johannes Hesse, the son of a doctor, was born in 1847 in the Estonian town of Paide (Weissenstein). Hesse grew up in a Swabian Pietist household, with the Pietist tendency to insulate believers into small, deeply thoughtful groups. Childhood[edit] From childhood, Hesse appeared headstrong and hard for his family to handle. St. Hermann Hesse's grandfather Hermann Gundert, a doctor of philosophy and fluent in multiple languages, encouraged the boy to read widely, giving him access to his library, which was filled with the works of world literature. Young Hesse shared a love of music with his mother. Education[edit] Becoming a writer[edit] Between Lake Constance and India[edit]
Frankenstein Frankenstein; or, The Modern Prometheus, is a novel written by English author Mary Shelley about eccentric scientist Victor Frankenstein, who creates a grotesque creature in an unorthodox scientific experiment. Shelley started writing the story when she was eighteen, and the novel was published when she was twenty. The first edition was published anonymously in London in 1818. Shelley's name appears on the second edition, published in France in 1823. Shelley had travelled through Europe in 1814, journeying along the river Rhine in Germany with a stop in Gernsheim which is just 17 km (10 mi) away from Frankenstein Castle, where two centuries before an alchemist was engaged in experiments.[1][2][3] Later, she traveled in the region of Geneva (Switzerland)—where much of the story takes place—and the topics of galvanism and other similar occult ideas were themes of conversation among her companions, particularly her lover and future husband, Percy Shelley. Summary[edit] Composition[edit]
The Warlord Chronicles The Warlord Chronicles is a trilogy of books about Arthurian Britain written by Bernard Cornwell. The story is written as a mixture of historical fiction and Arthurian mythology. The books have been published by Penguin and Michael Joseph in the United Kingdom and by St Martin's Press in the United States, in hardcover and paperback editions, each with different ISBNs. Books in the trilogy[edit] Treatment of legend and history[edit] Once upon a time, in a land that was called Britain, these things happened ... well, maybe. Like other "historical" takes on the Arthurian legends, the series postulates that Post-Roman Britain was a difficult time for the native Britons, being threatened by invasion from the Anglo-Saxons in the East and raids from the Irish in the West. The story is written as if it took place in Dark Age Britain as described in the original Welsh legends, with appropriate types of technology, culture, warfare, and attitudes. [edit] Other editions[edit] References[edit]