Thursday, September 15, 2011

Agatha Christie, (15 September 1890 – 12 January 1976)

  A British crime writer of novels, short stories, and plays. She also wrote romances under the name Mary Westmacott, but she is best remembered for her 66 detective novels and 14 short story collections (especially those featuring Hercule Poirot or Miss Jane Marple), and her successful West End plays. According to the Guinness Book of World Records, Christie is the best-selling novelist of all time and, with William Shakespeare, the best-selling author of any type. She has sold roughly four billion copies of her novels.
 

Wednesday, September 14, 2011

Betty Neels (b. 15 September 1909 - d. 7 June 2001)

  Aprolific English author of romance novels. She wrote over 134 titles (first publication entirely for Mills & Boon in England and later reprinted in the United States by Harlequin), beginning in 1969 and continuing until her death. Her work is known for being particularly chaste.

Tuesday, September 13, 2011

John Boynton Priestley, (13 September 1894 – 14 August 1984

An English novelist, playwright and broadcaster. He published 26 novels, notably The Good Companions (1929), as well as numerous dramas such as An Inspector Calls. His output included literary and social criticism.

Monday, September 12, 2011

James Christopher Frey (born September 12, 1969)

An American writer. His books A Million Little Pieces (2003) and My Friend Leonard (2005), as well as Bright Shiny Morning, were bestsellers. He was the subject of a scandal when investigators discovered that major elements of A Million Little Pieces, a purportedly autobiographical account of the author's struggle with addiction, were untrue.
 

Sunday, September 11, 2011

David Herbert Richards Lawrence (11 September 1885 – 2 March 1930)

D H Lawrence an English novelist, poet, playwright, essayist, literary critic and painter. His collected works represent an extended reflection upon the dehumanising effects of modernity and industrialisation. In them, Lawrence confronts issues relating to emotional health and vitality, spontaneity, and instinct.

Saturday, September 10, 2011

Hannah Webster Foster (September 10, 1758 – April 17, 1840

An American novelist.  Her epistolary novel, The Coquette; or, The History of Eliza Wharton, was published anonymously in 1797. Although it topped the American bestseller lists of the 1790s, it was not until 1866 that her name appeared on the title page. In 1798 she published The Boarding School; or, Lessons of a Preceptress to Her Pupils, a commentary on female education in the United States.

Friday, September 9, 2011

Phyllis Whitney (September 9, 1903 – February 8, 2008)

An American mystery writer. Rare for her genre, she wrote mysteries for both the juvenile and the adult markets, many of which feature exotic locations. A review in The New York Times once dubbed her "The Queen of the American Gothics", although she hated this title. She preferred to say she wrote "romantic novels of suspense".

Thursday, September 8, 2011

Grace Metalious (born Marie Grace DeRepentigny, September 8, 1924 – February 25, 1964)

Was an American author, best known for her controversial novel Peyton Place, which stayed on The New York Times bestseller list for 59 weeks. It sold 20 million copies in hardcover and another 12 million as a Dell paperback.  At the age of 30, she began work in the fall of 1954 on a manuscript about the dark secrets of a small New England town. The novel had the working title The Tree and the Blossom. By the spring of 1955, she had finished a first draft. However, she and her husband regarded The Tree and the Blossom as an unwieldy title and decided to give the town a name which could be the book's title. They first considered Potter Place (the name of a real community near Andover, New Hampshire). Realizing their town should have a fictional name, they looked through an atlas and found Payton (the name of a real town in Texas). They combined this with Place and changed the "a" to an "e".
 

Wednesday, September 7, 2011

Tristan Bernard (7 September 1866 – 7 December 1947)

A French playwright, novelist, journalist and lawyer.

Elinor Morton Wylie (September 7, 1885 – December 16, 1928)

An American poet and novelist popular in the 1920s and 1930s. She was famous during her life almost as much for her ethereal beauty and personality as for her melodious, sensuous poetry.  If her poetry is derivative of anyone, though, that would be of the British Romantic poets, and particularly of Shelley, whom she admired to a degree that some critics have seen as abnormal.
 

Tuesday, September 6, 2011

China Tom MiƩville born 6 September 1972

An award-winning English fantasy fiction writer. He is fond of describing his work as "weird fiction" (after early twentieth century pulp and horror writers such as H. P. Lovecraft), and belongs to a loose group of writers sometimes called New Weird. He is also active in left-wing politics as a member of the Socialist Workers Party. He has stood for the House of Commons for the Socialist Alliance, and published his PhD thesis as a book on Marxism and international law. He teaches creative writing at Warwick University.
 

Monday, September 5, 2011

Frank Garvin Yerby (September 5, 1916 – November 29, 1991

An African American historical novelist. He is best known as the first African American writer to become a millionaire from his pen, and to have a book purchased by a Hollywood studio for a film adaptation.  
Yerby was originally noted for writing romance novels set in the Antebellum South. In mid-century, Yerby embarked on a series of best-selling historical novels ranging from the Athens of Pericles to Europe in the Dark Ages. Yerby took considerable pains in research, and often footnoted his historical novels. In all, he wrote 33 novels. In 1946, he published The Foxes of Harrow, a southern historical romance, which became the first novel by an African-American to sell more than a million copies. In this work he faithfully reproduced many of the genre's most familiar features, with the notable exception of his representation of African American characters, who bore little resemblance to the "happy darkies" that appeared in such well known works as Gone With the Wind. That same year he also became the first African-American to have a book purchased for screen adaptation by a Hollywood studio, when 20th Century Fox optioned Foxes. Ultimately, the book became a 1947 Oscar-nominated film starring Rex Harrison and Maureen O'Hara.

Sunday, September 4, 2011

Joan Aiken (4 September 1924 – 4 January 2004)

An English novelist. She was born in Rye, East Sussex, into a family of writers, including her father, American poet Conrad Aiken (who won a Pulitzer Prize for his poetry), her sister, Jane Aiken Hodge and her brother John Aiken (with her siblings, Joan Aiken authored Conrad Aiken Remembered (1989), a short, subtle appreciation of their complex and difficult father). Joan's mother, Canadian-born Jessie MacDonald, a Masters graduate from Radcliffe College, married English writer Martin Armstrong soon after separating from Conrad Aiken.


Saturday, September 3, 2011

Sally Benson (September 3, 1897, – July 19, 1972,)

American screenwriter, who was also a prolific short story author, best known for her semi-autobiographical stories collected in Junior Miss and Meet Me in St. Louis.


Friday, September 2, 2011

Cleveland Amory (2 September 1917 – 14 October 1998)

An American author who devoted his life to promoting animal rights. He was perhaps best known for his books about his cat, named Polar Bear, whom he saved from the Manhattan streets on Christmas Eve 1977.  The executive director of the Humane Society of the United States described Amory as "the founding father of the modern animal protection movement." 




Thursday, September 1, 2011

Edgar Rice Burroughs (September 1, 1875 – March 19, 1950)

An American author, best known for his creation of the jungle hero Tarzan and the heroic Mars adventurer John Carter, although he produced works in many genres.  Tarzan was a cultural sensation when introduced.