English Writers

Harold Pinter, 1930-2008

Harold Pinter had a long career as an actor, director, screenwriter, and playwright. It is as a playwright that he will be remembered for. His plays changed 20th century drama: it was an entirely new kind of drama that can hardly be described other than in the way it struck the audience. The plays reveal and expose the stark isolation of individuals in what we think of as a social environment where human beings are regarded as social animals. Pinter won the Nobel Prize for literature in 2005.
Charles Dickens was a man of many parts. He was an actor, philanthropist, social reformer, and above all, what he is best known for – a novelist and short story writer. He was as prominent in those other pursuits but he did not achieve lasting fame in those areas.
He was the author of such classics as Oliver Twist, David Copperfield, Great Expectations, A Tale of Two Cities, Bleak House, and many others, including one of the most famous short stories in the English language, A Christmas Carol. Charles Dickens novels are universally well-known and his characters like Oliver Twist, Mr Scrooge, Fagin, the Artful Dodger, are among the most familiar in all English literature. There are so many more that it would be impossible to list them.
John Donne’s life was colourful and varied. He was well travelled and held several jobs, mainly administrative, until he took holy orders and eventually became Dean of St Paul’s Cathedral in London. He falls into the category of “Jacobean” poet and is usually described as a “metaphysical” poet. He was, indeed, the pre-eminent metaphysical poet.
He was a contemporary of Shakespeare, but unlike so many of Shakespeare’s famous contemporaries, like Fletcher and Webster, he had nothing to do with the theatre. There is no evidence that he knew those playwrights, although they all lived and worked in London. His religious sonnets are unparalleled as regards religious poetry.
Mary Ann Evans wrote under the name George Eliot. She wrote some of the major novels of the Victorian era, including Adam Bede, Silas Marner, Romola, Felix Holt, Daniel Deronda and the two masterpieces, The Mill on the Floss and Middlemarch. Those were hugely influential in that they tapped into the small-town politics that characterised English society in the 19^th century.
Samuel Taylor Coleridge was best known as a literary critic and philosopher during his lifetime. He was one of the founders of the English Romantic Movement and, together with Wordsworth, a leading romantic poet. His two most famous poems are The Rhyme of the Ancient Mariner and Kubla Khan.