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
Black-and-white photograph of Elizabeth Bishop in 1964. Her hair is short and wavy; her chin rests on one hand. She wears pearl ear studs and a shirt with notched collar. In front of her stands an object which might be a group of miniature national flags.

Elizabeth Bishop

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EB , a leading US poet of the later twentieth century, published six volumes of poetry during her lifetime, of which several collect writing already published. Her prose included translations, essays, a travel book, and...
Title page of Clementina Black's second novel, "Orlando", 1879 (1880 on title-page), vol. 1. This story contrasts a lost world of romance with a modern world in which women can be self-directed.

Clementina Black

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CB wrote on a range of topics across many genres. Her work included six novels, journal articles, short stories, translations, plays, children's literature, and over seventy essays. She edited several journals which emerged from the...

Helen Blackburn

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HB wrote during the second half of the nineteenth century. She is seen today as a significant figure in the fight for women's suffrage, although during her own lifetime she was sometimes criticized as too...
Title page from the first volume of Owens Blackburne's most popular publication, "Illustrious Irishwomen, being Memoirs of some of The Most Noted Irishwomen from the Earliest Age to the Present Century", Tinsley Brothers, 1877. Some of her previous titles are listed. The copy used once belonged to Boston College Library, Chestnut Hill, Mass.

E. Owens Blackburne

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A professional writer, who always wrote under her pseudonym, EOB produced novels, short stories, poetry, journalism, and biographical work during the course of her relatively short career in the late nineteenth century. Her fiction and...
Colour photo of Malorie Blackman looking at the camera, smiling. She is wearing a black V-neck shirt, with three-quarter length sleeves and a pair of dangly silver earrings.

Malorie Blackman

MB , British Children's Laureate for 2013-15, had by the end of that period published more than sixty books for ages ranging from little children to young-adult readers. Only a small selection of her oeuvre...

R. D. Blackmore

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Black and white photograph of Antoinette Brown Blackwell shown from the shoulders up, at a three-quarter turn. Her hair is pulled back and pinned at the back of her head, and she is wearing a jacket with a high collar, that is buttoned to the top. The top button of her jacket is much larger than the others and there is a loop of thin rope hanging from it.

Antoinette Brown Blackwell

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ABB is remembered as the first woman to be ordained in the United States. Though she published only ten works, she wrote extensively throughout her life and produced numerous speeches and essays. She took...

Caroline Blackwood

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CB began writing, or at least publishing, relatively late in a life which had hitherto seemed more that of a muse than of an author. Her novels and short stories tend to draw on painful...
Black and white photograph of Isa Blagden, seated with a book in her lap. She wears a dress with wide skirt, puff sleeves, a high collar, a pattern of stitched swirls going up the torso, and a tightly laced waist covering like a corset. Her dark hair is pinned at the back of her head.

Isa Blagden

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IB is the author of five fairly sentimental yet often outspokenly feminist novels, a small volume of poetry, and a number of essays and short stories—almost all of which were published in London during the...

William Blake

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Head-and-shoulders portrait in crayon of Susanna Blamire by Giacomo Cambruzzi, c. 1777. She has a fashionably high hairstyle with some locks hanging loose behind, and a scoop-neck blue gown.

Susanna Blamire

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SB was a later eighteenth-century poet with strong local roots. From her youth she wrote occasional poems and songs for her friends. She gave them away, generally without keeping copies. Some slipped anonymously and separately...

Barbara Blaugdone

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BB was a later seventeenth-century Quaker minister and autobiographer.
Matthew, Henry Colin Gray, Brian Harrison, and Lawrence Goldman, editors. Oxford Dictionary of National Biography.
Her writing is, typically, political as well as religious.
Frontispiece to Ann Eliza Bleecker's Posthumous Works, 1793, an engraved portrait bust on a pedestal bearing her name. She looks out from an oval frame decorated with flowers. She faces the viewer, though she is turned slightly to her left. Her hair is off her face, with curls collected at the nape of her neck. She wears a dress with a simple neckline embellished with small ruffles.

Ann Eliza Bleecker

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AEB , now seen as the finest American lyricist of the late eighteenth century, left only about thirty-six of her poems extant; she destroyed the rest. Two prose fictions were also published after her early death.
Painting of Marguerite Gardiner, Countess of Blessington, by Thomas Lawrence, 1822. She sits in a red chair with an ermine cloak beside her, wearing an ivory dress with short puff sleeves and low décolleté with a sprig of flowers. Her dark, lustrous hair is smoothed tightly back into loops behind her head.

Marguerite Gardiner, Countess of Blessington

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Marguerite Blessington wrote non-fiction, poetry, and novels, many of them in the silver-fork category. Although she was a popular novelist in her day, well reviewed and respected by a number of other writers, her account...
Three-quarter-length chalk drawing of Mathilde Blind by Lucy Madox Brown, 1872. Blind is seated, at a three quarter turn, her hands in her lap holding papers and her long, dark hair loose down her back. She is wearing a green dress with fur trim and an orange shawl.

Mathilde Blind

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MB was one of the leading poets of the later nineteenth century; her burning sense of political and social injustice runs like a unifying thread through her work. Her poetry combines great beauty of sound...

Enid Blyton

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EB was probably the most prolific and successful children's writer of the twentieth century. In three decades she produced more than four hundred titles: picture-books for small children, fairy stories, adventure stories, school stories, fantasy...

Giovanni Boccaccio

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Black and white photograph of Barbara Bodichon in profile, looking towards the right. Her hair is pulled back in a bun, with some part in a single plait. She is wearing a white blouse with a ruffled neckline, and a black jacket with buttons.

Barbara Leigh Smith Bodichon

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BLSB 's literary work emerged from her convictions as a feminist. Her accounts of women's political, legal, and educational disabilities (in lectures, pamphlets, and an important periodical) played a crucial role in mid-Victorian legal reform...

Henry George Bohn

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Eavan Boland

EB was a leading Irish poet (latterly part resident in the USA) who also established a reputation as a critic writing on literary issues of feminism, nationalism, and modernism. Her work appeared in many...