Writers

Canadian author L. M. Montgomery was born in 1874. She is in a class of her own. Famous for her children's novel Anne of Green Gables, Montgomery has touched people of all ages around the world with her unique outlook on child life. Touching, sweet, innocent, dreamy and romantic her novels are a must read. I only wish she had written more.

Mark Twain says about Anne of Green Gables, "The sweetest creation of child life yet written." And that means something coming from the author of The Adventures of Tom Sawyer. Her books have a quality about them that transports you to a world of fantasy. Most of her novels are set in Prince Edward Island - a small island in Canada which she has single-handedly made famous.

Her novels: 
Anne of Green Gables (1908)
Anne of Avonlea (1909)
Kilmeny of the Orchard (1910)
The Story Girl (1911)
The Golden Road (1913)
Anne of the Island (1915)
Anne's House of Dreams (1917)
Rainbow Valley (1919)
Rilla of Ingleside (1921)
Emily of New Moon (1923)
Emily Climbs (1925)
The Blue Castle (1926)
Emily's Quest (1927)
Magic for Marigold (1929)
A Tangled Web (1931)
Pat of Silver Bush (1933)
Mistress Pat (1935)
Anne of Windy Poplars (1936)
Jane of Lantern Hill (1937)
Anne of Ingleside (1939)

Short Story Collections:
Chronicles of Avonlea (1912)
Further Chronicles of Avonlea (1920)
The Road to Yesterday (1974)
The Doctor's Sweetheart and Other Stories (1979)
Akin to Anne: Tales of Other Orphans (1988)
Along the Shore: Tales by the Sea (1989)
Among the Shadows: Tales from the Darker Side (1990)
After Many Days: Tales of Time Passed (1991)
Against the Odds: Tales of Achievement (1993)
At the Altar: Matrimonial Tales (1994)
Across the Miles: Tales of Correspondence (1995)
Christmas with Anne and Other Holiday Stories (1995)
The Blythes are Quoted (2009)

She has also written many short stories and poems. Go HERE for her Wikipedia page.


This American writer, daughter of educator Amos Bronson Alcott, was born in 1832. She is most famous for her light family drama Little Women and it's subsequent sequels. I like her for her homey and moral style (although sometimes it gets too moral) and the way her characters always try to lead a good and honest life in the face of temptations. Besides Little Women and Good Wives which are autobiographical, she wrote suspense novels such as Behind a Mask. 

Some of her novels:
Behind a Mask (1866)
Little Women (1868)
Good Wives (1869)
An Old Fashioned Girl (1870) 
Little Men (1871) 
Eight Cousins (1875) 
Under the Lilacs (1878) 
Jo's Boys (1886)

and more. For her Wikipedia page, go HERE.

 
Daphne du Maurier was born in London in 1907. Coming from an artistic family, she soon took to writing. Many of her novels are set in Cornwall where she spent a lot of her life. She was influenced greatly by the gothics, especially Charlotte Bronte, hence, an eerie feeling can be found in her novels. Most famous is her description of Menabilly (known as Manderley in Rebecca) in the opening passage of Rebecca - her most famous novel. Menabilly was a real life home from which she drew a lot of her inspiration. In fact, one of her books, The King's General, is based on the story of the house.

Her novels:
I'll Never Be Young Again (1932)
The Progress of Julius (1933)
Jamaica Inn (1936)
Rebecca (1938)
Frenchman's Creek (1941)
Hungry Hill (1943)
The King's General (1946)
The Parasites (1949)
My Cousin Rachel (1951)
Mary Anne (1954)
The Scapegoat (1957) 
Castle Dor (1961) (with Sir Arthur Quiller-Couch)
The Glass-Blowers (1963)
The Flight of the Falcon (1965)
The House on the Strand (1969)
Rule Britannia (1972)

She also wrote many plays and short stories. Go HERE to see her Wikipedia page.

Born in 1890, the queen of crime, Agatha Christie has written over 70 books, and numerous plays. She features regularly on my blog as a detective fiction writer, but besides mystery, she has written other books under the pseudonym Mary Westmacott.

Agatha Christie's mystery novels have a unique appeal. They depict early 20th century England when the old way of maids, butlers and cooks was slowly being replaced by modernity. She wrote for a long span of time with her first novel being published in 1920 and her last in 1976.





Her novels:
The Secret Adversary (1922)
The Murder on the Links (1923)
The Man in the Brown Suit (1924)
The Secret of Chimneys (1925)
The Murder of Roger Ackroyd (1926)
The Big Four (1927)
The Seven Dials Mystery (1929)
The Murder at the Vicarage (1930)
Peril at End House (1932)
Lord Edgware Dies (1933)
The A.B.C. Murders (1936)
Murder in Mesopotamia (1936)
Dumb Witness (1937)
Hercule Poirot's Christmas (1938)
Murder is Easy (1939)
Ten Little Niggers also known as And Then There Were None (1939) 
Sad Cypress (1940) 
One, Two, Buckle My Shoe (1940)
N or M? (1941)
The Body in the Library (1942)
Five Little Pigs (1942)
Towards Zero (1944)
The Hollow (1946)
Taken at the Flood (1948)
A Murder is Announced (1950)
They Came to Baghdad (1951)
Mrs. McGinty's Dead (1952)
Destination Unknown (1954)
Hickory Dickory Dock (1955)
The Clocks (1963)
Third Girl (1966)
By the Pricking of my Thumbs (1968)
Hallowe'en Party (1969)
Nemesis (1971)
Elephants Can Remember (1972)
Postern of Fate (1973)
Curtain (1975)


Born in England in 1902, Georgette Heyer is most famous for her Regency Romances. Set in the time of the regency - the early 19th century when the Prince Regent rules in his father, George III's, place - her novels showcase a genre somewhat developed from Austen's style.

The novels are immersed in various colloquial terms and have a light comic style to them. They deal mostly with the question of proper marriages using the term mesalliance. 


Regency novels:
The Black Moth (1921)
Powder and Patch (1930)
These Old Shades (1926)
The Masqueraders (1928)
Devil's Cub (1932)
The Convenient Marriage (1934)
Regency Buck (1935)
The Talisman Ring (1936)
An Infamous Army (1937)
The Spanish Bride (1940)
The Corinthian (1940)
Faro's Daughter (1941)
The Reluctant Widow (1946)
The Foundling (1948)
Arabella (1949)
The Grand Sophy (1950)
The Quiet Gentleman (1951)
Cotillion (1953)
The Toll-Gate (1954)
Bath Tangle (1955)
Sprig Muslin (1956)
April Lady (1957)
Sylvester, or the Wicked Uncle (1957)
Venetia (1958)
The Nonesuch (1962)
False Colours (1963)
Frederica (1965)
Black Sheep (1966)
Cousin Kate (1968)
Charity Girl (1970)
Lady of Quality (1972)

Historical Novels:
The Great Roxhythe (1923)
Simon the Coldheart (1925)
Beauvallet (1929)
The Conqueror (1931)
Royal Escape (1938)
My Lord John (1975)

Mystery Novels:
The Unfinished Clue (1934)
Death in the Stocks (1935)
They Found Him Dead (1937)
A Blunt Instrument (1938)
No Wind of Blame (1939)
Envious Casca (1941)
Penhallow (1942)
Duplicate Death (1951)
Detection Unlimited (1953)


Margarette Mitchelle
Born in 1900, this writer broke many hearts when she died without writing a sequel to her famous novel Gone With the Wind. The book is an epic. If you are a book lover and haven't read Gone With the Wind - well, I'm not sure if you are a book lover! Set in the American Civil War, the novel follows the journey of Scarlett O'Hara from the time when war is announced, to after it is over. We see what the changes are in her, the people around her, and most of all, in the South.


Author Jean Auel is a contemporary writer. Born in 1936 she became known for the first book of her Earth's Children series, The Clan of the Cave Bear, a prehistorical novel set in the Ice Age. The novel has no romance in it, yet it is the very essence of romance. What isn't romantic about a young girl trying to survive as an outcast with people who don't understand her? Auel continued the famous saga of Ayla, her protagonist, through six books with the last being The Land of Painted Caves.

Her novels:
The Valley of Horses (1982)
The Mammoth Hunters (1985)
The Plains of Passage (1990)
The Shelters of Stone (2002)
The Land of Painted Caves (2011)


Jane Austen. Who hasn't heard of her? She was born at the height of the Romantic Age in 1775, but you don't find any of the characteristics common to Romantic writers in her works. Her novels depict a certain class of society and have often been labelled as the "comedy of manners". They have a biting irony to them and a way of criticising the society she grew up in. Little is known about Jane's personal life and her own personality.

Her novels:
Love and Friendship (1790)
Sense and Sensibility (1811)
Pride and Prejudice (1813)
Mansfield Park (1815) 
Emma (1815) 
Northanger Abbey (1817) 
Persuasion (1817)


Henrik Ibsen
Norwegian dramatist Henrik Ibsen is a precursor of the realist movement in drama. Born in 1828, he initially started writing poetic drama later switching to the prose drama for which he became famous. His plays mostly depict tabooed social issues in his time and were considered scandalous and immoral. They tackle issues with a realism that forced many people to confront the issues in there society. His dramatic technique later shaped most of realist drama that was to follow.
  
His plays:
Catiline (1850)
The Burial Mound (1850)
Norma  (1851)
St. John's Eve (1852) 
Lady Inger of Oestraat (1854)
The Feast at Solhaug (1855)
Olaf Liljekrans (1856)
The Vikings at Helgeland (1857)
Love's Comedy (1862)
The Pretenders (1863)
Brand (1866) 
Peer Gynt (1867)
The League of Youth (1869)
Emperor and Galilean (1873)
Pillars of Society (1877)
A Doll's House (1879)
Ghosts (1881)
An Enemy of the People (1882)
The Wild Duck (1884)
Rosmersholm (1886) 
The Lady from the Sea (1888)
Hedda Gabler (1890)
The Master Builder (1892)
Little Eyolf (1894)
John Gabriel Borkman (1896) 
When We Dead Awaken (1899)
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