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

Margaret Kennedy

-
MK achieved international fame early in her writing career with the publication of her novel The Constant Nymph and its subsequent successes on the stage and screen. Though she never attained such high recognition again...
Margaret Kennedy Black and white photograph of Margaret Kennedy. She is seated, with her body turned away but her head turned back to face the viewer. Her dark hair is coiled over her ears, and she wears a light dress with lace.

Hannah Kilham

-
HK was remarkable as an early nineteenth-century activist, an advocate for the poor, for chimney-sweeping children, for the Irish, for slaves and ex-slaves, for Africans whom she saw as needing Christianity, and against the current...

Anne Killigrew

-
AK (also a painter) was a fine Restoration-period poet, who has the misfortune of being better known for Dryden 's praises of her than for her actual work.

Jemima Kindersley

-
JK is an original and compelling writer, both in her travel book (the earliest travel narrative by an Englishwoman to deal with South America, Africa, and India, written in 1764-9 and published...

Harriet Hamilton King

-
HHK , a deeply religious woman, published primarily during the second half of the nineteenth century and focused many of her writings on her lifelong passions: the struggle for Italian nationalism and the revolutionary figures...

Sophia King

-
SK , like her sister Charlotte Dacre , seems to use the sensational in both her poetry and fiction (which span the end of the eighteenth century and the early nineteenth) to figure her actual...

Anna Kingsford

-
Anna Kingsford , described by W. T. Stead as one of the most interesting and fascinating of the women of the Victorian era,
Review of Reviews.
13 (January 1896): 75
was a successful physician, religious leader, and woman...
Anna Kingsford Black and white photograph of Anna Kingsford, standing in an interior setting with a frame on the wall and a chair behind her. She is wearing a black lace dress with a black ribbon around her neck, black gloves, and a black clutch in her hands. Her light hair is twisted and pinned on top of her head, and she has short curly bangs.

Fanny Kingsley

-
Fanny Kingsley 's literary activity centres around the life of her husband, the writer and clergyman Charles Kingsley. She edited his letters for publication after his death, as well as several volumes of his...

Mary Kingsley

-
MK 's two lengthy travel books about West Africa feature personal experience (including sharply amusing anecdotes) and comment on African culture, politics, and biology. As well as books, she penned essays for periodicals and letters...
Mary Kingsley Black and white photograph of Mary Kingsley in profile, seated in a wooden chair. She is wearing a black pillbox hat that ties under her chin, and a dark dress with leg-of-mutton sleeves.

Rudyard Kipling

-
An Indian-born English journalist, novelist, and travel writer, best-known for short stories, poetry, and children's books, RK won the Nobel Prize for Literature. He never felt like a native in England although he spent most...
Rudyard Kipling Black-and-white photograph of Rudyard Kipling by Elliott and Fry. He has metal-framed glasses and a thick moustache; he is looking to the right.

Flora Klickmann

-
FK was a journalist first and foremost, whose most famous books were her Flower-Patch series of sketches, which were largely reprinted from the Girl's Own Paper (where she had a long run as editor from...

Ellis Cornelia Knight

-
ECK , whose life was lived close to some makers of history during the French Revolutionary period and later, indulged her scholarly or literary bent in unusual or pioneering genres: a sequel to Samuel Johnson
Ellis Cornelia Knight Photograph of the painting of Ellis Cornelia Knight bywearing Angellica Kauffman. Knight is seated at a desk or table bearing books, papers, and a quill pen in inkstand. She has her left elbow propped up on the desk and another pen in her right hand. She is a simple white dress and blue shawl, with a black belt at her high waist fastened with a cameo. Her dark, curly hair, held by a headband, falls below her shoulders. Her expression is meditative. Manchester Art Gallery.

Lucy Knox

-
LK published two volumes of poetry, mainly sonnets, in the late 1800s. Her poems included some on political and social issues, exploring marriage, religion, Anglo-Irish relations, and the Woman Question with a directness and clarity...

Fanny Aikin Kortright

-
FAK , writing through the later half of the nineteenth century, was primarily known as a sensation novelist. Her books were regularly noticed, though not flatteringly, in the Athenæum. Her first publication was a...

Julia Kristeva

JK is one of the three French feminist theorists whose writings dominated the field of British and especially French and North American literary criticism and humanities scholarship during the 1980s and 1990s. Particularly influential have...
Julia Kristeva Colour photo of Julia Kristeva sitting at a round white table. Her hair is short and blonde. She wears a black leather jacket and belt over a black shirt with embroidery at the neckline. She is smiling.

L. E. L.

-
LEL was one of the most prolific and popular authors of her day. She produced an immense corpus of poetry, several works of fiction (the first a particularly striking silver fork novel), and considerable review...
L. E. L. Black and white photograph of a three-quarter length drawing of L.E.L. in chalk and pencil by Daniel Maclise, early 1830s. She is wearing a white dress whose wasp waist is accentuated by a broad belt, large billowing skirt and upper sleeves, and high standaway collar. Her dark, shining hair is centre-parted and pulled back, with tiny kiss-curls below and a tall, plaited arrangement above. Her expression is languishing. National Portrait Gallery.

Marie-Madeleine de Lafayette

-
MML , writing in France in the late seventeenth century, originated there the new form of the novel: shorter, less diffuse, more vigorous in its emotional effect than the long, many-storied, courtly romances. She was...
Marie-Madeleine de Lafayette Black and white, head-and-shoulders image of a lost painting of Marie-Madeleine de Lafayette by Louis Ferdinand Elle l'Aîné. She sits with her head resting on one hand, wearing a gown with a V neck and puffed sleeves, without jewellery. Her dark hair is pulled back into a pearl-wrapped bun, with a ringlet lying on her shoulder.

May Laffan

-
Although she is relatively unknown today, ML 's journal attack on the convent education system, her four novels, one novella, and four short stories about late nineteenth-century Ireland (most published anonymously) were controversial and well-known...

Lady Caroline Lamb

-
LCL was the author of three early-nineteenth-century novels and of an unpublished diary and occasional poetry. Some of her satirical poems were published. She wrote her first novel as a personal testament and retaliation after...
Lady Caroline Lamb Photograph of a portrait of Lady Caroline Lamb, by Sir Thomas Lawrence. Her head is tilted, and her curly brown hair is presented as natural and unstyled. Her head and neck emerge from a background impressionistically rendered without concrete detail.

Mary Lamb

-
ML is still known primarily as the sister of the essayist Charles Lamb , and as the central character in a painful and sensational story. She was, however, the lead author in her three collaborations...
Mary Lamb, 1764 - 1847 Image of the head of Mary Lamb, 1764 - 1847, from a portrait of her with her brother Charles, by Francis Stephen Cary, 1834. She looks straight at the viewer; her face and some visible black hair are encircled by a white ruffled cap tied with a broad, dark ribbon, and she wears a black cloak.