British Author Biographies

The focus here is on the memorable and the unusual rather than the important or useful. (In other words, don't come here to study for that big English exam.)

		Poet	Playwright	Essayist*	Journalist	Novelist
Sir Walter "the Unfortunate" Raleigh	1552-1618
Christopher "James Bond" Marlowe	1564-1593
John "Un-" Donne	1572-1631
Ben "Origin Unknown" Jonson	1572-1637
John "the Lady" Milton	1608-1674
Daniel "The True-Born Englishman" Defoe	1660-1731
Jonathan "Isaac Bickerstaff" Swift	1667-1745
Henry "Feilding" Fielding	1708-1754
William "New Age" Blake	1757-1827
Robert "Auld Lang Syne" Burns	1759-1796
William "The Interminable" Wordsworth	1770-1850
Samuel Taylor "Estese" Coleridge	1772-1834
Jane "Persuasion" Austen	1775-1817
		Poet	Playwright	Essayist*	Journalist	Novelist
George "Don Juan" Gordon, Lord Byron	1788-1824
John "Doctor" Keats	1795-1821
Elizabeth "Ba" Barrett Browning	1806-1861
Alfred, "Eccentric" Lord Tennyson	1809-1892
William "Snob" Makepeace Thackeray	1811-1863
Charles "David Copperfield" Dickens	1812-1870
Robert "The Obscure" Browning	1812-1889
Charlotte "Jane Eyre" Brontë	1816-1854
Branwell "The Forgotten" Brontë	1817-1848
Emily "The Strange" Brontë	1818-1848
Anne "Agnes Grey" Brontë	1820-1849
Charles "Lewis Carroll" Dodgson	1832-1898

* This category also includes general nonfiction, such as Wordsworth's travel guide and Donne's sermons.