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

Tillie Olsen

-
TO , one of the leading lights of the twentieth-century feminist movement in the USA, prided herself on being a proletarian writer. She published very few books: a short-story volume, a novel, a book...
Tillie Olsen Photograph of Tillie Olsen, shown from the shoulders up, wearing a black turtleneck and a necklace of small red, blue, and white beads. Her hair is short, grey, and sticking straight up from her head.

Carola Oman

-
CO , daughter of a historian, published a single book of poetry in the wake of the First World War. She then turned first to historical novels, then to historical biography, with one book of...

Amelia Opie

-
AO , who was publishing at the end of the eighteenth century and during the earlier nineteenth century, is best known as a novelist, but was also a dramatist, poet, and short-story writer. The opinions...
Amelia Opie Photograph of a painting of Amelia Opie by her husband, John Opie, 1798. She is depicted from the waist up, against a background that is mainly dark with a landscape scene visible in the distance. She wears a simple white dress with a V-shaped neckline that is trimmed with white ruffles. Her brown hair is pulled back, with bangs, and a braid across the top, acting as a headband. She holds a straw hat wrapped in gauzy black fabric in her lap. National Portrait Gallery.

Emmuska Baroness Orczy

-
EBO , a best-selling novelist of the early twentieth century, is best-known for The Scarlet Pimpernel, her romance of aristocrats during the French Revolution. This was a play before it was a novel...
Emmuska, Baroness Orczy Black and white photograph of Baroness Emmuska Orczy, shown from the shoulders up, wearing a V-necked dress pinned with a brooch, with a gauzy fichu in the V and a larger brooch pinned in the middle. She is wearing pearl earrings and two strands of pearl necklace; her hair is dark, short, and curly.

George Orwell

-
Through the mid part of the twentieth century GO was prominent as a reporter on the social and political scene: he was one of those whose reporting helped to shape opinion and whose accounts now...

Dorothy Osborne

-
DO , widely known as a writer of love-letters, has been more admired by romantics than by feminists. She can be a sharply comic and often satirical observer of social custom and individual idiosyncrasy, as...
Dorothy Osborne Photograph of a painting of Dorothy Osborne (after her marriage, as Lady Temple) by Caspar Netscher, 1671. She is seated, with her elbow on the arm of her chair and her head resting on that hand. Against a background of figured black and gold drapery, she wears a dark gold dress with voluminous skirt and sleeves, clasped in front, with white linen at the full wrists and the neckline. She has a double string of pearls, and more pearls wrapped in her dark hair, loosely piled up hair. National Portrait Gallery

Alice Oswald

AO is a contemporary poet, the first to hold the historic position of Professor of Poetry at Oxford University . Her work includes multimedia and performance poetry.
Alice Oswald Cover of Weeds and Wild Flowers by Alice Oswald. The cover is blue with a white floral pattern, and the title written on it in black letters, with the author's and artist's names.

Thomas Otway

-

Ouida

-
During the late nineteenth and early twentieth centuries, Ouida published 44 volumes of fiction, primarily novels, but also novellas and short stories for both children and adults. Often publishing more than one book a year...

Jane Owen

-
JO , a scholarly Roman Catholic of the early seventeenth century, left a single religious work which was published after her death. Her rhetorical style includes elements of the sermon and the dialogue, as well...

Mary Oxlie

-
MO was either a northern English or a Scottish poet of the sixteenth century. Only a single poem survives that can be confidently attributed to her, a literary eulogy or friendship poem. It cannot, in...

Helen Oyeyemi

HO is often considered with other writers known as third-generation Nigerian
Hron, Madelaine. “’Ora Na-Azu Nwa’: The Figure of the Child in Third-Generation Nigerian Novels”. Research in African Literatures, Vol.
39
, No. 2, 1 July 2008, pp. 27-48.
or more generally with Black British writers. She gained very early acclaim and has been prolific, mainly working in the novel genre (with some...
Helen Oyeyemi Colour photo portrait of Helen Oyeyemi in London, 2005. In this close-up image, she looks directly at the camera. Her hair is in small braids with pale green and blue threads woven through and she is wearing a striped scarf and a beige plaid blazer.

Ruth Padel

RP is a contemporary writer who came late to publishing poetry, after a career as a classical scholar who wrote on Greek literature and feminist theory. She is also a career journalist and reviewer, and...
Ruth Padel Slightly blurry, half-length photograph of Ruth Padel in Crete, smiling with her arms crossed, wearing a dark jacket. a bright blue scarf, and gold earrings. Her hair is shoulder-length, curly, and rather wild. In front is a colourful length of woven fabric.

Isabel Pagan

-
IP was a labouring-class Scotswoman who lived partly by entertaining, singing and reciting songs and poems of her own composition. She published a single volume of her work during the early nineteenth century.

Louise Page

LP is a contemporary feminist playwright who has also made her mark in radio and television drama. Her first play to attract notice, Tissue, tackled the subject of breast cancer, and she has often...

Alicia Tyndal Palmer

-
During a six-year period (1809-15) ATP produced two novels, a biography, and a volume of stories. She specialised in the historical.

Mary Palmer

-
MP wrote, in the earlier part of the eighteenth century, some lively dialogues which may be the earliest literary writing to use the local dialect of Devon. They remained unpublished for nearly a hundred...
Mary Palmer Title-page of Mary Palmer's "A Dialogue in the Devonshire Dialect", probably written in the mid eighteenth century and published in 1837.

Christabel Pankhurst

-
CP 's early writing career was devoted to advancing the cause of militant suffragism; the second half of her career marked a shift to religious radicalism formed in part by her experience of the first...
Christabel Pankhurst Black and white photograph of young Christabel Pankhurst, standing in a garden with roses and other flowering plants behind her. She has her hands behind her back and one knee bent under a long flowing dress with draped skirt over pleated under-skirt, and a thick dark waistband. She has jaw-length wavy hair and her face is turned up as if to look at the sky.

Emmeline Pankhurst

-
EP 's writings, produced during the late nineteenth and early twentieth centuries, range from published political speeches to autobiography. All concern her lifelong struggle for women's emancipation.
Emmeline Pankhurst Sepia photograph of Emmeline Pankhurst, seated in a carved high-backed chair. She is wearing a white lacy button-up shirt with a high neck and bow at the collar, tucked into a black skirt with a high waist. She is wearing a long necklace, has short curly hair, and holds a pen in the hand which rests on her lap. Her expression is challenging.