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

Mary Ward

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MW , seventeenth-century religious reformer and founder of a religious Order, used her writings (letters, autobiography, prayers, notes, and speeches) as a means to forward her radical ecclesiastical administration. She also wrote devotional works for...
Mary Ward Oval-framed portrait of Mary Ward. She is wearing a smooth white cap that covers her whole head, and dark clothing with a white collar. An inscription mostly in Latin, with a single German word, reads above the picture "Institut Beatae Mariae Virginis" and below "Gründerin [Founder] Maria Ward 1585-1645."

Mary Augusta Ward

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Best known for her influential loss-of-faith novel Robert Elsmere, MAW was among the more prolific and popular novelists of the later Victorian and Edwardian periods. Her fifty-year career spanned an era of enormous transformation...
Mary Augusta Ward Black and white photograph of Mary Augusta Ward sitting in an upholstered chair, her hair in a bun, hands folded in her lap, and face turned to be seen in profile. She wears a long, full skirt and a gauzy blouse with a high collar, loose sleeves, and patterned panels in front.

Anna Letitia Waring

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Anna Letitia Waring , who published throughout the later nineteenth century and into the twentieth, was a hymn-writer, who also produced instructional tracts and poetry. Although she wrote from an early age right up until...

Marina Warner

MW has produced countless articles, book introductions and reviews, twelve non-fictional monographs, two volumes of short stories, half-a dozen children's books, and five novels. She has also written books about artists, art exhibition catalogues, opera...
Marina Warner Photograph of Marina Warner receiving the Holberg prize in 2015. She is wearing a patterned shirt, pink blazer, and necklace to match. Her hair is styled up, and she is smiling as she holds her framed prize certificate.

Sylvia Townsend Warner

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STW once commented that her career in writing was an accidental one, as her initial career was in musicology. However, she was very prolific for more than fifty years of the twentieth century over a...

Elizabeth Warren

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EW , active at the mid seventeenth century, is a learned writer who fills her three Puritan theological pamphlets with strongly structured argument and with Latin notes and references in the margins. Her polemic has...

Mercy Otis Warren

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MOW has been called First Lady of the American Revolution. She was its historian—the only writer to fill this role at an early date from anything like a revolutionary point of view—but she was also...
Mercy Otis Warren Painting of Mercy Otis Warren by John Singleton Copley. She stands in an outdoor background of trees and flowers, holding one hand out, and wearing a deep blue gown with quantities of lace at the wrists, frills and more lace elsewhere, and a silver bow in the centre of the bodice. She has a lacy white cap tied with a silver ribbon on her brown hair.

Jane Warton

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JW tried her hand at various genres of literature during the later eighteenth century, without making any one her own. She published poetry, essays, conduct books, and a remarkable novel. She may have been an...

Mary Rich Countess of Warwick

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Mary Rich , writing during the later seventeenth century, is an introspective religious diarist and autobiographer, who uses words to make sense of her experiences.
Mary Rich, Countess of Warwick Line engraving of Mary Rich, Countess of Warwick, by Robert White, published 1678 with an embellished oval frame resting on a pedestal. She wears a gown with scooped neckline, and no jewelry but a brooch. Her hair is a broad mass of mid-length ringlets. An inscription below gives her name ("The Right Honorable Mary Countess Dowager of Warwick") and, in Latin, her age and date of death.

Elisabeth Wast

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EW was a Scottish religious writer of the late seventeenth and early eighteenth centuries, whose account of her spiritual struggles was not published until after her death.

Sarah Waters

SW made her high-profile literary debut in 1998 with her first lesbian historical novel, Tipping the Velvet (which had been rejected by many publishers before it reached print). Her novels since then have been all...
Sarah Waters Colour photograph of Sarah Waters displayng a copy of her book "The Night Watch", 2006. She leans forward, with short blonde-streaked hair, blue eyes, and a smile, wearing a black shirt and holding a pen.

Rosamund Marriott Watson

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RMW published under several names during the later nineteenth and early twentieth century seven volumes of poetry, one novel, some articles, and many literary reviews. She edited Sylvia's Journal, as well as several other...

Susanna Watts

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SW wrote all her life (during the later eighteenth and earlier nineteenth centuries): mostly in unfashionable genres, to earn much-needed income and to forward good causes. She pictured herself as a slave to publishers, fagging...

Evelyn Waugh

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EW was a twentieth-century novelist whose startling black humour goes together with devastating satire and a low estimate of unredeemed human nature (whether he is fictionalizing the failings of other people or of himself). He...
Evelyn Waugh Black and white, full-face, head and shoulders photograph of Evelyn Waugh, taken by Carl Van Vechten on 15 December 1940.

Harriet Shaw Weaver

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HSW wrote reviews and leaders for the influential little magazine The Egoist while she was its editor. She wrote historical surveys of philosophical concepts of time and space, but neither of these was ever published...

Beatrice Webb

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An important and forceful left-wing intellectual (a shaper both of the Fabian Society and of the Labour Party ), BW wrote at the end of the nineteenth century and in the early twentieth century. Her...
Beatrice Webb Black and white photograph of Beatrice Webb, seated with one arm resting on the arm of her chair. She is wearing a dark jacket with a light collar, and a polka-dotted tie. Her white hair is pulled back.

Mary Webb

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MW became very well known in the early twentieth century as a poetic regional novelist. She also wrote poetry, essays, short stories, and reviews. Her subject-matter is a rural past of love, violence, beauty and...
Mary Webb Black and white photograph of Mary Webb, shown in profile, from the shoulders up. She is wearing a simple light dress with a high collar and her dark hair is pulled back into a bun.

Augusta Webster

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AW wrote poetry, two novels (one for children), drama, and journalism, including book reviews and criticism, in the latter part of the nineteenth century. Despite her translations from and imaginative interpretations of classical literature, her...
Augusta Webster This image of Augusta Webster is captioned "photographed by Ferrando, Roma". Turned three quarters to our right, she is wearing a black dress with a white frill collar, with her hair pulled back in a bun. Under the image her signature is reproduced.

Julia Wedgwood

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JW began by publishing novels, but her father opposed it. She turned to writing about social, cultural, and intellectual issues of the day. Her private letters to Robert Browning are notable for their literary and...

Ellen Weeton

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EW is remarkable as a letter-writer, diarist, and autobiographer. She also wrote reviews, poems, and essays.