by Ben Holden
Thomas Dekker (1572–1632) wrote extensively about London, where he mainly lived. He collaborated with many contemporaries on various plays, such as The Honest Whore and The Roaring Girl (with Thomas Middleton, 1604 and 1605), Westward Ho (with John Webster, 1604) and The Witch of Edmonton (with John Ford and William Rowley, 1621). He was imprisoned several times for debt and Dekker’s experiences in prison are evoked in the prose works Lanthorn and Candle-Light (1608) and Dekker His Dream (1620). The poem ‘Golden Slumbers’, which inspired the Beatles song of the same title, appeared in his 1603 comedy, Patient Grissel.
Charles Dickens (1812–1870) worked as a reporter of debates at the House of Commons, before publishing his collected Sketches by Boz (Boz being his younger brother’s nickname) in 1836. He would write prolifically from then until the end of his life, from The Pickwick Papers (1836) to The Mystery of Edwin Drood (1870), which he was writing the day he died suddenly at his home Gads Hill, near Rochester, a property he had coveted as young boy.
Nora Ephron (1941–2012) was an American journalist, author, screenwriter and director. She was nominated for an Academy Award three times, for her original screenplays Silkwood (1984), When Harry Met Sally (1990) and Sleepless in Seattle (1994). Her other writing includes the novel Heartburn (1984) and non-fiction collections Wallflower at the Orgy (1970), I Feel Bad About My Neck (2006) and I Remember Nothing: And Other Reflections (2010), in which ‘Who Are You’ was published.
James Fenton (1949– ) is an English poet, journalist and literary critic. He was Oxford Professor of Poetry 1994–99. His collections include Terminal Moraine (1972), Manila Envelope (1989) and Out of Danger (1994), in which ‘Fireflies of the Sea’ was first published. His collected poems, Yellow Tulips, was published in 2015. Fenton’s awards include the Queen’s Gold Medal for Poetry (2007) and the PEN Pinter Prize (2015).
Robert Frost (1874–1963) was born in San Francisco. He failed to graduate from Harvard University and took up work instead as a teacher, cobbler and New England farmer, all the while writing poetry that was rejected for publication. In 1912, he came to England, where he befriended poet Edward Thomas, whom he would later describe as ‘the only brother I ever had’. Encouraged in his writings while in England by poets such as Rupert Brooke, Frost soon published A Boy’s Will (1913), to immediate acclaim. Subsequent volumes of poetry include West-Running Brook (1928), A Witness Tree (1942) and In the Clearing (1962). ‘After Apple Picking’ was published in North of Boston (1914). Frost won four Pulitzer Prizes and eventually returned to Harvard, 1939–43, as Professor of Poetry.
Neil Gaiman (1960– ) is an English-born, now US-resident author of over thirty acclaimed novels and graphic novels. His first novel was Good Omens (1990), a collaboration with Terry Pratchett. Notable subsequent novels include Neverwhere (1996), Stardust (1999), American Gods (2001), Coraline (2003), The Graveyard Book (2008, inspired by Rudyard Kipling’s Jungle Book, and the first work to be awarded both the Newbery and Carnegie Medals for Children’s Literature) and The Ocean at the End of the Lane (2013). ‘Diamonds and Pearls: A Fairy Tale’ was first published in Who Killed Amanda Palmer: A Collection of Photographic Evidence (2008), a collaboration with Gaiman’s future wife, and reprinted in his short-story collection Trigger Warning (2015).
Louise Glück (1943– ) has published sixteen collections of poetry, including The Triumph of Achilles (1985), The Wild Iris (1992) and Faithful and Virtuous Night (2014). Her collections’ numerous awards include multiple National Book Awards for Poetry and also the Pulitzer Prize. She teaches at Yale University and was appointed the US Poet Laureate from 2003–2004, succeeding Billy Collins. Her poem ‘Evening Star’ first appeared in Averno (2006).
The Brothers Grimm were Jacob (1785–1863) and Wilhelm Grimm (1786–1859). They were born in Hanau, Germany, and developed a love of folklore while studying together at the University of Marburg. Their first collection of folk tales, Nursery and Household Tales, was published in 1812. The Brothers revised and republished the collection many times, 86 stories swelling to more than 200. Those stories included ‘Cinderella’, ‘Snow White’, ‘Sleeping Beauty’, ‘Rapunzel’, ‘Rumpelstiltskin’ and ‘Hansel and Gretel’.
Thom Gunn (1929–2004) was born in England but emigrated to the United States in 1954. His many collections of poetry include Touch (1967), Jack Straw’s Castle (1976), The Passages of Joy (1982), The Man with Night Sweats (1992, a series of elegies related to the AIDS crisis, which includes ‘The Hug’) and his final collection, Boss Cupid (2000).
Ivor Gurney (1890–1937) was born in Gloucester, the son of a tailor. He wrote two volumes of verse, Severn and Somme (1917) and War’s Embers (1919). He composed two A. E. Housman song cycles and also set six Edward Thomas poems to music, including the poem in this anthology, ‘Lights Out’ (1918–25). Gurney was very unsettled after the war and would sleep rough frequently, as well as take night walks back to Gloucestershire from London, as recalled in this anthology’s extract from Robert Macfarlane’s The Wild Places. By the time of his death, he had composed nearly 300 songs and 1,700 poems.
Nathaniel Hawthorne (1804–1864) was born in Salem, Massachusetts. Hawthorne was descended directly from John Hathorne, the only judge of the Salem witch trials not to repent subsequently his verdict. The author added a ‘w’ to his surname, Hathorne, to distance himself from this relative. His first book was a collection of stories, Twice-Told Tales. His novel, The Scarlet Letter (1850), was one of the first mass-produced books in the United States, and was followed by, among other works, The House of the Seven Gables (1851) and A Wonder-Book for Boys and Girls (1851), a book of retold myths.
Seamus Heaney (1939–2013) published twelve volumes of original poems, including Seeing Things (1991), in which ‘The Rescue’ featured. His other works include several books of critical essays, drama and translations, including 2016’s posthumous The Aeneid: Book IV (2016). He was awarded the 1995 Nobel Prize for Literature.
Ted Hughes (1930–1998) was born in Yorkshire. His first collection of poetry, The Hawk in the Rain, was published in 1957. He went on to publish many volumes of both poetry and prose. His works for children include The Iron Man (1968). Later works include Tales from Ovid (1997) and Birthday Letters (1998), the cover for which was designed by his daughter, Frieda. The poem in this collection, ‘Full Moon and Little Frieda’, was first published in Wodwo (1967). Hughes was Poet Laureate from 1984 until his death.
Washington Irving (1783–1859), born in New York, trained as a lawyer before turning to writing. He visited Britain in 1815, where Walter Scott encouraged Irving to publish The Sketch Book in 1819–20, which featured picturesque sketches of English life and American adaptations of German folk tales, such as ‘Rip Van Winkle’ and ‘The Legend of Sleepy Hollow’. The book made Irving a celebrity, and he returned to America in 1832 as the first American author to have achieved international fame. From 1842 to 1846, he was American Ambassador to Spain, and his later works include a five-volume life of George Washington (1855–9).
Shirley Jackson (1916–1965) was an American author who found fame after the publication in The New Yorker of her macabre short story ‘The Lottery’, in 1948. Her subsequent novels include The Haunting of Hill House (1959), extracted here and twice filmed for cinema, and We Have Always Lived in the Castle (1962). Jackson also wrote a children’s novel, Nine Magic Wishes (1963), available in an edition illustrated by her grandson, Miles Hyman, as well as a children’s play based on ‘Hansel and Gretel’, entitled The Bad Children (1959).
Tove Jansson (1914–2001) was a Finnish writer and artist. Best known as the creator of the Moomin stories, she also wrote ten novels for adults, including The Summer Book (1972). Her story ‘Flying’ appeared in the semi-autobiographical collection of short stories, Sculptor’s Daughter (1968). She was awarded the Hans Christian Andersen Medal for her children’s writing in 1966.
Myesha Jenkins (1948– ) is an American writer and performer of poetry. Her two collections are Br
eaking the Surface (2005) and Dreams of Flight (2011). In 2013, she was awarded a Mbokodo Award for Women in the Arts.
Elizabeth Jennings (1926–2001) was an English poet and critic who published her first collection, Poems, in 1953. Over 30 collections followed, among them Song for a Birth or a Death (1961), Growing Points (1975) and Praises (1998). She also wrote two volumes of prose and several collections of poetry for children.
Brian Keenan (1950– ) was born in Belfast. He left his hometown in 1985 to take up a teaching position in the American University in Beirut, Lebanon. In April 1986, he was abducted by an Islamic fundamentalist jihad organization, which held him captive until August 1990. He recounted the years in captivity in An Evil Cradling (1992). Keenan later wrote Between Extremes with his former cellmate, John McCarthy, a chronicle of their journey to Chile, a trip that they had planned while hostages. Keenan’s other books include a novel, Turlough (2000).
Jane Kenyon (1947–1995) was an American poet and translator. Four collections of Kenyon’s poems were published during her lifetime: From Room to Room (1978), The Boat of Quiet Hours (1986), Let Evening Come (1990) and Constance (1993).
Rudyard Kipling (1865–1936) was born in Bombay, India, but spent most of his life in England. He was awarded the Nobel Prize for Literature in 1907 for his poetry and prose – works that continue to enthral readers of all ages, from poetry collections such as Barrack Room Ballads (1892) to the two Jungle Books (1894–5), Kim (1901), Just So Stories (1902), Rewards and Fairies (1910) and the autobiographical Something of Myself (1937). The character of Hobden, who appears in his verse story ‘The Land’, first showed up as a hedger in Puck of Pook’s Hill (1907), and the poem itself appears at the end of a short story in his collection A Diversity of Creatures (1917).
Charles Lamb (1775–1834) was an author, poet and critic, who worked for most of his life as a clerk at East India House in London. In 1796, his sister Mary stabbed their mother to death during an episode of mania. Charles’s guardianship of his sister was accepted by the authorities. Together, they went on to write Tales from Shakespeare (1807), for younger readers, which found success, as well as a number of children’s books, including Mrs Leicester’s School (1809). Charles Lamb published his collected verse and prose in two volumes, The Work of Charles Lamb (1820).
Edward Lear (1812–1888) was born in London, the youngest of 20 children, but spent his later life in Italy. He travelled widely under the 13th Earl of Derby’s patronage, publishing Sketches of Rome (1842) and Illustrated Excursions in Italy (1846). He became a close friend to his patron’s grandchildren, for whom he wrote and illustrated A Book of Nonsense (1845, published anonymously). Other such works followed: Nonsense Songs, Stories, Botany and Alphabets (1871), which contains ‘The Owl and The Pussycat’, More Nonsense Rhymes (1871) and Laughable Lyrics (1877).
Colum McCann (1965– ) was born in Dublin. His novels include Dancer (2003), Let the Great World Spin, winner of the 2009 National Book Award, and Transatlantic (2013). He has also written two collections of stories. He is the co-founder of the non-profit global story-exchange organization, Narrative 4, and is Professor of Creative Writing at Hunter College, New York. ‘The Word Shed’ was first published in The New Yorker in 2014.
Stéphane Mallarmé (1842–1898) taught English in schools in Paris, before his poetry made him a leading figure for both the Structuralist and Symbolist literary movements. He translated Edgar Allan Poe’s The Raven before writing ‘A Faun’s Afternoon’ (1876), later set to music by Claude Debussy. His influential works include Poésies (1887) and Vers et Prose (1893).
Katherine Mansfield (1888–1923) was born and raised in Wellington but left to study in London during 1903. Bar one spell studying music back home, Mansfield never revisited New Zealand. Her first collection of stories, In a German Pension (1911), was inspired by her own experiences of giving birth to a stillborn child conceived by a man other than her husband (whom she had left immediately after their wedding ceremony). She published two other collections of short stories before her untimely death due to tuberculosis: Bliss, and Other Stories (1920) and The Garden Party, and Other Stories (1922). Posthumous collections include Something Childish, and Other Stories (1924).
Walter de la Mare (1873–1956) was an English poet, short-story writer and novelist. His first written work, published after years of working for an oil company, appeared to little fanfare in 1902: Songs of Childhood (under the name Walter Ramal). He is perhaps best remembered for his works for children, such as the anthology Come Hither (1923), and for supernatural short stories, among them ‘Seaton’s Aunt’ and ‘All Hallows’. His 1921 novel Memoirs of a Midget won the James Tait Black Memorial Prize for fiction and his Collected Stories for Children won the 1947 Carnegie Medal for Children’s Literature.
Guy de Maupassant (1850–1893) was born in the Norman château of Miromesnil, near Dieppe. He worked as a government clerk before taking to writing at the encouragement of Gustave Flaubert, who was a friend of his mother’s. Maupassant earned a reputation in the English-speaking world as the ‘French Chekhov’ with his nearly 300 short stories, translations of which appeared from 1887. His novels include Une Vie or A Woman’s Life (1883) and Bel-Ami (1885).
William Maxwell (1908–2000) was born in Illinois. He was the author of six novels, three short-story collections, an autobiographical memoir and a collection of literary essays and reviews. He also wrote two books for children, including The Heavenly Tenants (1946), in which the constellations of the zodiac spring to life. A New Yorker editor for 40 years, he became a mentor to many of the most prominent authors of his day (such as John Updike, Vladimir Nabokov and John O’Hara). His novel, So Long, See You Tomorrow, won the American Book Award and in 1995, he received the PEN/Malamud Award. The story included in this anthology, ‘All the days and all the nights’, was first published on the occasion of his 80th birthday.
Czełsaw Miłosz (1911–2004) was born on the Polish–Lithuanian border of Vilnius and fought for the Resistance in Warsaw during the Second World War. He eventually settled, after the war, in California, where he taught at Berkeley, and became a US citizen in 1970. His works include the poetry collections Poem on Time Frozen (1933) and Three Winters (1936), as well as various novels, many essays and The Captive Mind (1953), an apologia for his withdrawal from Poland. He was awarded the Nobel Prize in 1980 and eventually moved back to Europe, living in Cracow. ‘Ars Poetica?’ first appeared in City Without a Name (1969).
William Morris (1834–1896) was an English craftsman, poet and socialist. A professional painter from 1857–1862, Morris was part of the Pre-Raphaelite Brotherhood. He went on to design furniture and revolutionized design and the art of decoration in England. His best-known literary works include The Earthly Paradise (1868–1870) and a four-volume epic saga, The Story of Sigurd the Volsung and the Fall of the Nibelungs (1876), as well poetic works such as Love is Enough (1972) and translations of both Virgil’s Aenied (1875) and Homer’s Odyssey (1887).
Haruki Murakami (1949– ) was born in Kyoto, Japan, the only child of Japanese literature teachers. His notable works include A Wild Sheep Chase (1982), Norwegian Wood (1987), The Wind-Up Bird Chronicle (1995), Kafka on the Shore (2002) and 1Q84 (2009). He has also translated English works into Japanese, ranging from Raymond Chandler to J. D. Salinger. His short-story collections include The Elephant Vanishes (1993) and Blind Willow, Sleeping Woman (2006). ‘Scheherazade’ was first published in English in the 13 October 2014, issue of The New Yorker.
Les Murray (1938– ) grew up on a dairy farm at Bunyah on the north coast of New South Wales, Australia. He made literature his full-time career from 1971, having worked as a translator and as a civil servant. Since then, he has published two verse novels, collections of prose writings, and over 30 collections of poetry. He has won prizes including the T. S. Eliot Prize, the Petrarch Prize and The Queen’s Gold Medal for Poetry.
Vladimir Nabokov (1899–1977) was born in St Petersburg. He was trilingual
from a young age, speaking Russian, English and French fluently; the first book he recalled his mother reading to him was in English, Misunderstood (1869) by Florence Montgomery. A prolific writer of novels, short stories, plays and poems in the Russian language, he emigrated to the United States in 1940, after which he wrote in English. His Russian novels include The Luzhin Defense (1930) and The Gift (1938); his English fiction includes Lolita (1955), Pale Fire (1962) and Ada (1969). His translations include Eugene Onegin into English and Alice in Wonderland into Russian. His memoir Speak, Memory was published in 1951.
Dorthe Nors (1970– ) is the Danish author of a celebrated short-story collection, Karate Chop (2008), as well as one novella and five novels, including Mirror, Shoulder, Signal (2016).
B. J. Novak (1979– ) is an American actor, stand-up comedian and writer. He is perhaps best known for his work on the Emmy Award-winning comedy series The Office. His books include 2014’s The Book with No Pictures and One More Thing: Stories and Other Stories, in which ‘The Rematch’ appears.
Bernard O’Donoghue (1945– ) is an Irish poet and academic, who is an Emeritus fellow at Wadham College, Oxford. His poetry collections include Gunpowder (1995, which won the Whitbread Prize for Poetry and in which his poem ‘Stealing Away’ first appeared), Here Nor There (1999), Outliving (2003), Farmers Cross (2011) and The Seasons of Cullen Church (2016). His verse translation of Sir Gawain and the Green Knight was published in 2006.
John O’Hara (1905–1970) was born in Pottsville, Pennsylvania, which in his fiction becomes ‘Gibbsville’, the setting for his first novel, among others, Appointment in Samarra (1934). His second novel, Butterfield 8 (1935), was set in New York, and much of his work would shuttle between the two locales. He published 15 more novels, as well as 247 stories in The New Yorker, a tally that still remains a record.
