By Elodie Barnes | On November 22, 2023 | Updated March 15, 2025 | Comments (0)
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→
By Elodie Barnes | On October 24, 2023 | Updated March 15, 2025 | Comments (0)
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→
By Alex J. Coyne | On October 12, 2023 | Updated September 2, 2024 | Comments (0)
Nadine Gordimer (November 20, 1923 – July 13, 2013) was a South African activist and Nobel Prize-winning author. Her short stories and long form fiction explored themes of alienation, apartheid, and exile in the context of South African people.
She published her first short story collection in 1949, and her first novel,The Lying Days, in 1953. Many of her works, including July’s People and Burger’s Daughter, were banned by the apartheid government at the time they were published.
In addition to the Nobel Prize for Literature, the Commonwealth Writer’s Prize, and countless other awards and honors, she cofounded the Congress of South African Writers (COSAW) and was a notable member of the African National Congress (ANC). Read More→
By Elodie Barnes | On October 1, 2023 | Updated March 15, 2025 | Comments (0)
Nina Bawden (January 19, 1925 – August 22, 2012) was a British novelist, children’s book writer, and campaigner. Best known for the children’s novel Carrie’s War, she published twenty-three adult novels and twenty children’s books over some fifty years.
In all of her writing, she made “use of all of my life, all memory, wasting nothing,” and claimed that if her books were read in sequence, they formed a “coded autobiography.”
She was also a fierce campaigner for rail safety after being involved in the Potters Bar train crash of 2002. Read More→
By Katharine Armbrester | On August 11, 2023 | Updated June 22, 2026 | Comments (0)
Sigrid Undset (May 20, 1882 – June 10, 1945) was the Norwegian author of thirteen novels that have been translated into nearly all major languages. She received the Nobel Prize for Literature in 1928 for “her powerful descriptions of Northern life during the Middle Ages.”
Her medieval epics Kristin Lavransdatter and Olav Audunsson (also known as The Master of Hestviken) have been recently reprinted and freshly translated by scholar Tiina Nunnally. Read More→
Categories: 
Comments: