Author profiles

A B C D E F G H I J K L M N O P Q R S T U V W Y

Anne Irwin

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Each of AI 's two substantial surviving poems is a thoughtful variation on an established eighteenth-century genre, the topographical poem and the philosophical epistle. She was also a witty and entertaining letter-writer.

Elizabeth Isham

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EI , living unmarried in a gentry family in the earlier seventeenth century, left two unique pieces of life-writing: a year-by-year summary of major events in her life, and a connected narrative based on the...

Naomi Jacob

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NJ was a highly prolific, popular author, whose profitable writing career began in the 1920s and produced more than seventy books. The greater number are novels, including a notable series detailing for fortunes of an...
Naomi Jacob Black-and-white photo of Naomi Jacob, circa 1930. She wears a suit and bow tie, with her hair short and finger waved. She gazes at a lit cigarette in her left hand that is billowing smoke.

Harriet Jacobs

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HJ is famous for her single book, the fictionalised autobiography Incidents in the Life of a Slave Girl, published in 1861, a slave narrative which one editor sees as also a kind of captivity...
Harriet Jacobs Black and white photograph of Harriet Jacobs, seated in an ornately carved, high-backed chair, wearing a long dark dress with long sleeves and a multi-layered dark bodice. Her white hair is frizzy and pulled back.

Frances Jacson

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FJ is now accepted as the author of five late eighteenth- and early nineteenth-century novels, published anonymously or with allusion to former titles in the chain, which were formerly attributed to Alethea Lewis . She...

Maria Elizabetha Jacson

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During the 1790s and the early nineteenth century, MEJ published three works about Linnean botany and plant physiology
Shteir, Ann B. “Botanical Dialogues: Maria Jacson and Women’s Popular Science Writing in England”. Eighteenth-Century Studies, Vol.
23
, No. 3, 1 Mar.–31 May 1990, pp. 301-17.
301
(the first of them designed expressly for the instruction of children) and one about gardening.

Muriel Jaeger

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MJ began her book-publishing career with four novels during the 1920s and 30s; she is one of the least known amongst the Somerville novelists who attended Oxford together at the time of the First World...

James Tiptree Jr.

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Alice Sheldon, better known by her pseudonym James Tiptree, Jr , was a twentieth-century US writer remembered primarily for her speculative fiction, in the form of both short stories and novels.
James Tiptree, Jr Slightly faded black and white photograph of James Tiptree Jr. seated next to her husband.

Elinor James

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EJ was a publisher and political writer in the late seventeenth and early eighteenth centuries, as well as a tireless admonisher of monarchs and fervent supporter of the Church of England . Her tone has...
Elinor James Portrait of Elinor James by an unidentified artist, c. 1690. She sits in a high-backed upholstered armchair by a table covered with a cloth, each boldly patterned. She is wearing a red silk dress with lace at neck and sleeves, and a tall head-dress with lace lappets. She displays several of the works which she wrote, printed, and distributed, including a splendidly bound copy of "Mrs. James's Vindication of the Church of England".

Henry James

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HJ (who began publishing in 1871 and continued into the twentieth century) left his native USA to settle in England early in his writing career. Known for his extreme subtlety, verging at times on obscurity...
Henry James Henry James in a black-and-white photo by William M. Vander Weyde. James is seen full-face, looking forward and to the left, wearing a formal suit, with bald head slightly tilted.

P. D. James

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PDJ was a crime writer with a major reputation in both Britain and the United States. As well as her mystery novels, she wrote non-mystery novels, one excursion into science fiction, non-fiction, a play...
P. D. James Photograph of P. D. James in Cologne, 2013. She sits with pen in hand, ready to sign a book. She is wearing a loose-fitting grey turtleneck, with a chunky necklace and a wristwatch, and glasses. Her grey hair is chin-length.

Anna Brownell Jameson

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ABJ , a prolific and professional writer of non-fiction, is best remembered for her travel writing, her treatises on art, and her provocative studies of fictional and famous women. In England she is noted for...
Anna Brownell Jameson Sepia-toned photograph of Anna Brownell Jameson, standing with her elbow resting on a book that sits atop a small cloth-draped table. She wears a light dress with white lace trim around the neck, a second layer over the shoulders, apparently a built-in shawl trimmed with dark gauzy cloth. A long, dark, gauzy scarf is draped behind her and over her arms. Her dark curly hair is topped by a bonnet of light and dark ribbons. In one hand she holds a small pair of spectacles.

Storm Jameson

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SJ was a prolific novelist with an intense commitment to political causes, especially pacifism, anti-fascism, artistic freedom, and various women's issues. Her fiction is generally thought of as realist or materialist in its techniques, and...
Storm Jameson Colour illustration of Storm Jameson. She wears a yellow top and has light blue eyes. Her hair is auburn and wavy. The image was created as part of a Famous British Authors card series, published in London.

Kathleen Jamie

KJ is a contemporary poet who has also published remarkable travel writing and edited poetry anthologies. She feels that her Scots nationality has been an advantage to her, enabling her to write and develop independently...
Kathleen Jamie Colour photo of Kathleen Jamie holding a copy of her book The Overhaul at the Costa Book Awards in London, 29 January 2013. Standing and shown in profile, she wears a brown-, red-, and grey-patterned dress.

Harriett Jay

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A now largely-forgotten novelist and playwright, HJ was prolific and popular in the late nineteenth to early twentieth century. She wrote eight novels, the majority devoted to the contemporary state of Ireland from an Anglo...
Harriett Jay Black and white photograph of Harriett Jay, seated in a chair and leaning her elbow on a desk, with a potted plant behind. She is wearing a long, simple, white dress with lace trim at the sleeves and throat, and a silver bracelet and ring. Her light hair is pulled back, with short curls in front.

Ann Jebb

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During the last quarter of the eighteenth century AJ was an intellectual journalist and controversialist, publishing on both theological and political topics. Most of her printed writing is epistolary, and she also wrote letters then...

Ann Jellicoe

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AJ was one of the new, post-war generation of playwrights associated with the Royal Court , who helped to revitalise theatre in Britain in the late 1950s and early 1960s. Her early plays, whose plotlessness...

Henrietta Camilla Jenkin

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HCJ was the author of eleven novels published over three and a half decades of the mid nineteenth century. They draw on her wide European and—perhaps most powerfully in her unflinching depiction of slavery—her Jamaican...

Elizabeth Jenkins

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EJ , whose productive period extended from just after World War Two into the twenty-first century, was the author of half a dozen historical biographies and twice that many novels (several of which portray women...

Elizabeth Jennings

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EJ was a twentieth-century English poet writing on family, literary, and religious subjects. Peter Levi calls her maybe the last poet of what may be called the soul.
qtd. in
The Ship. St Anne’s College.
92: 54
Early in her career she...