BIOGRAPHIES
GRAHAM GREENE (The power and the glory)
Graham Greene, in full Henry Graham Greene (born October 2, 1904,
Berkhamsted, Hertfordshire, Englanddied April 3, 1991, Vevey,
Switzerland), English novelist, short-story writer, playwright, and
journalist whose novels treat lifes moral ambiguities in the context of
contemporary political settings.
His father was the headmaster of Berkhamsted School, which Greene
attended for some years. After running away from school, he was sent to
London to a psychoanalyst in whose house he lived while under
treatment. After studying at Balliol College, Oxford, Greene converted to
Roman Catholicism in 1926, partly through the influence of his future
wife, Vivien Dayrell-Browning, whom he married in 1927. He moved to
London and worked for The Times as a copy editor from 1926 to 1930.
His first published work was a book of verse, Babbling April (1925), and
upon the modest success of his first novel, The Man Within (1929;
adapted as the film The Smugglers, 1947), he quit The Times and
worked as a film critic and literary editor for The Spectator until 1940. He
then traveled widely for much of the next three decades as a freelance
journalist, searching out locations for his novels in the process. The
world Greenes characters inhabit is a fallen one, and the tone of his
works emphasizes the presence of evil as a palpable force. His novels
display a consistent preoccupation with sin and moral failure acted out in
seedy locales characterized by danger, violence, and physical decay.
P.D. JAMES (An unsuitable job for a woman)
P.D. James, by name of Phyllis Dorothy James White, Baroness James of
Holland Park (born August 3, 1920, Oxford, Oxfordshire, Englanddied
November 27, 2014, Oxford), British mystery novelist best known for her
fictional detective Adam Dalgliesh of Scotland Yard.
The daughter of a middle-grade civil servant, James grew up in the
university town of Cambridge. Her formal education, however, ended at
age 16 because of lack of funds, and she was thereafter self-educated. In
1941 she married Ernest C.B. White, a medical student and future
physician, who returned home from wartime service mentally deranged
and spent much of the rest of his life in psychiatric hospitals. To support
her family (which included two children), she took work in hospital
administration and, after her husbands death in 1964, became a civil
servant in the criminal section of the Department of Home Affairs. Her
first mystery novel, Cover Her Face (1962), introduced Dalgliesh and was
followed by six more mysteries before she retired from government
service in 1979 to devote full time to writing.
D.H. LAWRENCE (Sons and lovers)
D.H. Lawrence, in full David Herbert Lawrence (born September 11,
1885, Eastwood, Nottinghamshire, Englanddied March 2, 1930, Vence,
France), English author of novels, short stories, poems, plays, essays,
travel books, and letters. His novels Sons and Lovers (1913), The
Rainbow (1915), and Women in Love (1920) made him one of the most
influential English writers of the 20th century.
TENNESSEE WILLIAMS (A streetcar named desire)
Tennessee Williams, original name Thomas Lanier Williams (born March
26, 1911, Columbus, Miss., U.S.died Feb. 25, 1983, New York City),
American dramatist whose plays reveal a world of human frustration in
which sex and violence underlie an atmosphere of romantic gentility.
Williams became interested in playwriting while at the University of
Missouri (Columbia) and Washington University (St. Louis) and worked at
it even during the Depression while employed in a St. Louis shoe factory.
Little theatre groups produced some of his work, encouraging him to
study dramatic writing at the University of Iowa.
SIR NOL COWARD (Blithe spirit)
Sir Nol Coward, in full Sir Nol Peirce Coward (born Dec. 16, 1899,
Teddington, near London, Eng.died March 26, 1973, St. Mary, Jam.),
English playwright, actor, and composer best known for highly polished
comedies of manners.
Coward appeared professionally as an actor from the age of 12. Between
acting engagements he wrote such light comedies as Ill Leave It to You
(1920) and The Young Idea (1923), but his reputation as a playwright
was not established until the serious play The Vortex (1924), which was
highly successful in London. In 1925 the first of his durable comedies,
Hay Fever, opened in London. Coward ended the decade with his most
popular musical play, Bitter Sweet (1929). In his plays Coward caught
the clipped speech and brittle disillusion of the generation that emerged
from World War I. His songs and revue sketches also struck the worldweary note of his times. Coward had another style, sentimental but
theatrically effective, that he used for romantic, backward-glancing
musicals and for plays constructed around patriotism or some other
presumably serious theme.
MURIEL SPARK (The prime of Miss Jean Brodie)
Dame Muriel Spark, in full Muriel Sarah Spark, ne Camberg (born Feb.
1, 1918, Edinburgh, Scot.died April 13, 2006, Florence, Italy), British
writer best known for the satire and wit with which the serious themes of
her novels are presented.
Spark was educated in Edinburgh and later spent some years in Central
Africa; the latter served as the setting for her first volume of short
stories, The Go-Away Bird and Other Stories (1958). She returned to
Great Britain during World War II and worked for the Foreign Office,
writing propaganda. She then served as general secretary of the Poetry
Society and editor of The Poetry Review (194749). She later published a
series of critical biographies of literary figures and editions of 19thcentury letters.
DAVID LODGE (Changing places)
David Lodge, in full David John Lodge (born Jan. 28, 1935, London,
Eng.), English novelist, literary critic, and editor known chiefly for his
satiric novels about academic life.
Several of Lodges novels satirize academic life and share the same
setting and recurring characters; these include Changing Places: A Tale
of Two Campuses (1975), Small World: An Academic Romance (1984),
and Nice Work (1988).
JEFFREY ARCHER (First among equals)
Jeffrey Howard Archer, Baron Archer of Weston-super-Mare (born 15 April
1940) is an English author and former politician. Before becoming an
author, Archer was a Member of Parliament (19691974), but resigned
over a financial scandal that left him almost bankrupt.[2] Later, after a
revival of his fortunes from the royalties of his best-selling novels, he
became deputy chairman of the Conservative Party (19851986) before
resigning after another scandal, which would lead to the end of his
career in elected office.[3] He was made a life peer in 1992. His political
career ended with his conviction and subsequent imprisonment (2001
2003) for perjury and perverting the course of justice, which followed his
second resignation. His books have sold around 330 million copies
worldwide.
