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

Julian of Norwich

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Julian of Norwich was a religious visionary whose experiences of the divine came to her in the later fourteenth century. She was also something that no Englishwoman had been before her: the author of a...
Julian of Norwich Photograph of the statue of Julian of Norwich sculpted for a niche in the west front of Norwich Cathedral by David Holgate in 2014, six centuries after Julian's death. The photo, taken from below, shows only the waist up. Julian has an alert face and heroic stance, wrapped in a loose cloak and hood, and holding a book titled (in capitals very unlike the writing of her own day) "Revelations of Divine Love."

Elizabeth Justice

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EJ published in the mid eighteenth century two equally unusual books: an account of a voyage to Russia and an autobiographical novel.

Sarah Kane

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Sarah Kane , whose brief life occupied the last quarter of the twentieth century, left (besides monologues) five full-length plays which explore a nightmarish world of violence and sexual brutality. They provoked a strong visceral...
Sarah Kane Photograph of Sarah Kane. She is wearing a black button up and has short hair. She is holding an unlt cigarette in her mouth.

Sylvia Kantaris

With a slender output (five collections of poetry and two collaborative volumes), SK is a respected poet of the late twentieth century. Her choice of topics is bold: not only erotic love but also violent...
Sylvia Kantaris Colour photograph of Sylvia Kantaris in academic dress when she received an honorary D.Litt. from Exeter University. Her gown is red, with light blue and white in the hood, her cap black with a light blue tassel, her hair shoulder-length and blonde.

Anna Kavan

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AK is primarily a novelist and short story writer of the first half of the twentieth century, who based her writing quite closely on her life. In her writing, as well as in her life...

Julia Kavanagh

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JK , a prolific novelist and biographer, published extensively in order to support herself and her invalid mother during the second half of the nineteenth century. She has since disappeared into relative obscurity. JK composed...
Julia Kavanagh Photograph of a head-and-shoulders, oval painting of Julia Kavanagh by Henri Chanet, c.1874-6. She is set against a gold-coloured background, wearing a blue-grey dress with lace trimmed, ruffled sleeves, and a dark blue shawl fastened with a brooch. Her dark hair is loosely gathered at the nape of her neck. She rests her chin on one hand and gazes serenely at the viewer.

Jackie Kay

JK 's poetry, plays, and fiction explore issues of divided, displaced, or mixed identity. Her writings probe and challenge assumptions about race, gender, and sexuality with a mixture of pain and humour. She often draws...
Jackie Kay Photo of Jackie Kay taken during the annual Edinburgh International Book Festival. She is wearing brown tinted glasses and a dress with small polka-squares that matches her earrings. she has short black hair.

Sheila Kaye-Smith

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Writing mostly in the first half of the twentieth century, SKS published thirty-one novels, in addition to about twenty works in other genres: biography, criticism, saints' lives, country lore, and books of memoirs (one of...
Sheila Kaye-Smith Black and white, half-length photo of Sheila Kaye-Smith from "Harper's Magazine, October 1922. She looks to her right, wearing a boat-neck dark top with a long beaded necklace; her wavy, dark hair is bobbed, with a fringe.

Judith Kazantzis

JK , a poet, journalist, historical compiler, short-story writer, visual artist, and blogger of the twentieth and twenty-first centuries, is known for the strong anti-war, anti-establishment stand she takes in her writings. She has also...
Judith Kazantzis Black and white, head-and-shoulders, smiling photograph of Judith Kazantzis. She wears a light collared shirt in a muted print a necklace of large beads, and simple dangling earrings. Her blonde hair has a long fringe.

Molly Keane

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MK had two distinct phases in her writing career. Between 1926 and 1961 she wrote, under the pseudonym M. J. Farrell, eleven novels and four plays. After almost twenty years of silence, she published...

Annie Keary

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AK , writing in the second half of the nineteenth century, produced both children's books and adult novels, as well as some translation and journalism, sometimes in collaboration with her sister Eliza. Her fiction for...

John Keats

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John Keats Painting of John Keats by William Hilton after Joseph Severn. Keats is seated with an open book in front of him, his chin on his hand, gazing into the distance. National Portrait Gallery.

Claire Keegan

The writing style of CK , contemporary Irish short-story writer, is minimalist, and she does not often discuss her process, giving a definite sense that she would prefer not to have to comment on her...

Isabella Kelly

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IK , who published during the very late eighteenth and the early nineteenth century, was a poet and a leading Minerva Press novelist in gothic and other modes.
Garside, Peter et al., editors. The English Novel 1770-1829. Oxford University Press, 2000, 2 vols.
She also wrote a couple of pedagogic...

Mary Ann Kelty

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MAK 's first publications were novels issued in the 1820s (intelligent, pious but not totally unworldly), which had considerable success in Britain, the USA, and Continental Europe. Later the religious element became dominant in her...

Adelaide Kemble

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After her mid-nineteenth-century career as an opera singer ended at her marriage, AK published a novel and a collection of stories. She left for posthumous publication another incomplete novel, two biographical memoirs, and some poetry...
Adelaide Kemble Photograph of a painting of Adelaide Kemble, painted with loose brushstrokes that give the painting the impression of softness. She is shown from the shoulders up, wearing a soft pink dress and holding flowers of a similar shade. She has a light, gauzy bonnet or scarf atop her dark, curly hair, which is pulled up and appears to be tied underneath the bonnet.

Fanny Kemble

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FK was a prolific nineteenth-century writer best known for her journals, which covered her life in the theatre and her residence in the American south. Her first-hand documentation of the institution of slavery was particularly...
Fanny Kemble Black and white photograph of a painting of Fanny Kemble by Sir Thomas Lawrence, She is seated in a chair draped with a fur-trimmed blanket, with a column visible in the background. She is wearing a white gown, low on her shoulders, with wasp waist, puffed sleeves, and ruffled trim. Her dark, shining hair, smooth and middle-parted, is pulled back in a bun.

Maria Theresa Kemble

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MTK was an actress and playwright who began her acting career in London at the age of eight and her public career as a writer just before the dawn of the nineteenth century. She wrote...
Maria Theresa Kemble Painting of Maria Theresa Kemble by Samuel de Wilde, in character as the male lover, Patie, in a stage version of Allan Ramsay's Scottish pastoral "The Gentle Shepherd" (which she first played in 1796). She stands in a meadow among mountains, holding a shepherd's crook, dressed in white shirt and trousers, with a tartan jacket, cummerbund, and Scots bonnet sporting a large black feather. Garrick Club.

Margery Kempe

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MK , called the first English autobiographer, wrote (in the earlier fifteenth century) an account of her life-experience as immensely significant to God and to herself. In a sense, though her subject is herself, she...

May Kendall

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May Kendall is most notable for late-nineteenth-century poems characterized by sharp humour and sarcastic wit on topics related to evolutionary science and the new woman. Her novels employ sarcasm and irony to examine British...