Author biography

Jeanne Goosen, Author of We’re Not All Like That

Jeanne Goosen (July 13, 1938 – June 3, 2020) was a South African author, poet, and journalist. Her novel We’re Not All Like That (1990) explored the average Afrikaner household, pushing the boundaries of what could be said in fiction through the lead character of Doris van Greunen.

At the age of twelve, Goosen published her first short fiction in the Afrikaans lifestyle magazine Rooi Rose (Red Roses).

Goosen cited Crime and Punishment by Fyodor Dostoevsky as her first writing inspiration; she said that this book shook her deeply. Read More→


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Kathleen Raine – British Poet, Scholar, and Mystic

Kathleen Raine (June 14, 1908 – July 6, 2003) was a British poet, scholar, and mystic. She is also remembered as a William Blake scholar, and wrote extensively on W.B. Yeats and Thomas Taylor as well.

She fought against the materialism of her time and turned toward the artists, writers, and mystics. In her later life, she founded the Temenos Academy, a school that offers courses and lectures on philosphy, the higher arts, and contemplation.

Kathleen believed that the purpose of great art and literature was to illuminate mankind to higher states of the soul, and that the inner experience far more than the outer. Read More→


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Maria Edgeworth, prolific and influential English novelist

Maria Edgeworth (January 1, 1767 – May 22, 1849), was an Anglo-Irish author whose work has lately been considered deserving of reconsideration. She is best known for novels of Irish life and children’s stories.

Now overshadowed by her contemporaries, Jane Austen and the Brontë sisters, there are compelling arguments in favor of why her work still matters.

The  following biography was adapted from the entry in Dictionary of National Biography, 1885–1900, by Leslie Stephen (who happened to be Virginia Woolf’s father): Read More→


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Elspeth Barker, Author of O Caledonia

Elspeth Barker (November 16, 1940 – April 21, 2022) was a Scottish novelist and journalist. Her only novel, O Caledonia, published in 1991 and reissued in 2021, has been hailed as a classic of modern Scottish literature.

Darkly humorous, skillful, lyrical, and somewhat autobiographical, it tells the story of the life and death of a young girl named Janet. It won several awards on its first publication and remained Elspeth Barker’s only published work of fiction. Read More→


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Enid Blyton, Prolific & Controversial Children’s Book Author

Enid Blyton (August 11, 1897 – November 28, 1968) was a prolific British writer of children’s stories. Her most famous books include The Famous Five  and Secret Seven series, The Faraway Tree, and the Noddy books.

It is estimated that she wrote some seven hundred books, along with hundreds of short stories, magazine articles, and poems.

Blyton’s work is controversial for its sometimes dated and offensive views, yet decades after her death she remains one of the most popular children’s authors in the world. Read More→


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