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My favorite writers of books and comic books.
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- Writer
- Animation Department
As the creator of 'Scrooge McDuck', Carl Barks did more than any other comic book artist to widen the popularity of Donald Duck, bringing in the process a vast array of memorable supporting characters into the Disney universe, among them Uncle Scrooge himself, Gladstone Gander, Gyro Gearloose (and his Little Helper), the Beagle Boys, and the Junior Woodchucks.
Unlike many other artists working (all anonymously) for the Disney company, Barks did not mindlessly churn out condescending, forgettable stories of a childish nature during his 24-year stint on the Disney Ducks. He consistently produced delightful top-quality material, both in his scripts and in his art as well as in his dialogues, which echoed with deep human resonance. "I polished and polished on the scripts and drawings until I had done the best I could in the time available", he said. In both types of stories -- the 10-page comedies and the longer adventure stories -- he produced between 1942 and 1966, he managed to convey the intricacies and subtleties of the full scope of human emotions (from envy and cynicism and alarm and desperation to joy and scorn and triumph and smugness) while capturing the essence of exotic locations from the four corners of the world (from scorching deserts and primal forests to humid jungles and freezing snow-clad mountains through the urban setting of Duckburg).
His mastery at this is witnessed to by, among others, Newsweek's homage to his artistry and by Time's conclusion that "Scrooge and his creator Carl Barks belong in the great mainstream of American Folklore." Beyond that is the plain fact that he was known to his readers simply as "the good artist" (a descriptor necessary during a time when the Disney company didn't identify any of its cartoonists). His publishers tried in the early '50s to replace him on the 10-page comedies in Walt Disney's Comics and Stories so that he could concentrate on the longer adventure epics in Donald Duck and Uncle $crooge (these were the three titles that contained the bulk of Barks' output through the years); they were promptly flooded with a barrage of pleading and irate letters from readers demanding that "the good artist" be brought back.
Among his many fans were George Lucas, and Steven Spielberg, who were inspired by the adventure comic books. One South American adventure in particular ("The Prize of Pizarro", Uncle $crooge nr 26, June-August 1959) inspired sequences in all three Indiana Jones films (the booby traps both in the lost temple in the opening pre-credits sequence of Raiders of the Lost Ark (1981), and in the final scenes of Indiana Jones and the Last Crusade (1989), as well as the flood through the mines of Indiana Jones and the Temple of Doom (1984)). In an homage printed in Uncle Scrooge: His Life & Times (edited by Edward Summer and published by Gary Kurtz), Lucas writes that when he discovered the McDuck character as a kid, he liked him "so much that I immediately went out and bought all the Uncle $crooge comics I could find on the newsstand. My greatest source of enjoyment in Carl Barks' comics is in the imagination of his stories .... The stories are also very cinematic .... these comics are a priceless part of our literary heritage." Indeed, the titles of his adventures (many of which were inspired by the National Geographic) duly resonate with exoticism and adventure: "The Mummy's Ring", "Terror of the River", "Mystery of the Swamp", "Ghost of the Grotto", "Lost in the Andes", "Sheriff of Bullet Valley", "Trail of the Unicorn", "The Golden Helmet", "The Seven Cities of Cibola", etc...
His stories were constantly reproduced in Disney comics across the globe, after his retirement in 1966 (the same year that Walt Disney, who was born nine months after Barks, died). And soon his 6,371 comics pages (according to one count) from some 450 comic books were being reprinted (by then computer-colored) in impressive coffee-table volumes and hand-sewn hardback tomes, not just in the United States, but throughout the western world (Scandinavia, Germany, Italy, etc...).
Certainly the most widely read comic book artist of all time, Barks is also in all probability, what with Disney being the world's largest publisher of children's magazines and books (every year over two billion people around the globe read a Disney book or magazine, the company claims), the most widely-read author of any type of reading material of the 20th century.
Born to a homesteading family in Oregon on March 27, 1901, Carl Barks left school at 15 and spent the next two decades "in grim and demanding jobs" (to quote Michael Barrier's "Carl Barks and the Art of the Comic Book". These included rancher, logger, railroad repairman and printer. During the Depression, he went on to become an illustrator for a humor magazine, eventually becoming its most productive member. He joined the Disney studio in 1935, where he became a story man on the animated cartoons of a character created a year earlier (a duck by the name of Donald) and worked with such people as Harry Reeves, Chuck Couch, Jack Hannah, Homer Brightman and Nick George. Health problems eventually forced Barks to leave the Burbank studio during World War II for the dry air of the California desert, where he made the transition to comic books.
And so, it was after the age of 40, in an era when most people had little more than a third of their lives in front of them, that Carl Barks made the fateful jump of his life, the one that would leave his name an immortal one in the annals of what the French call "le neuvième art" (the ninth art form). And yet, it would not be until after his retirement that his name would, slowly but surely, become known to the mainstream public. It was during the 1960s that persistent fans (among them his official biographer, Michael Barrier) finally managed to identify "the good artist" (also dubbed the Duckman and the comic book king), become his correspondents, and proceed to make his name known to the outside world.
Despite having retired (and as his name was slowly becoming famous), "Unca Carl" did not remain inactive. He turned to painting, specifically signed oil paintings of his Disney Ducks, paintings that today easily fetch thousands of dollars and whose prices have occasionally topped $100,000. Indeed, it is easy to forget that Barks' retirement years lasted far longer than his comic book career and he spent many more years before the canvas than he did over the drawing board. In fact, Barks lived to the ripe old age of 99, and it is somewhat amazing to realize how vast an amount of time this actually means. His life spans such an extensive amount of time that his date of birth is further removed from that of his death than it is to the Lewis and Clark expedition to explore the untamed wilderness west of the Mississippi (including Oregon, the region where the Barks family would eventually settle).
He was sprightly and active until the very last. People half his age reported that he could remember events they had long forgotten. His pace was such that during his 1994 trip to Europe (his first outside North America) to celebrate Donald's 60th birthday, young Disney handlers and PR staff (imagine yuppies in their 30s) at Paris' Euro Disneyland had to quicken their pace to keep up with the then-93-year-old man. His philosophy could be summarized in these words: "I worked hard at trying to make something as good as I could possibly make it... I always tried to write a story I wouldn't mind buying myself."- Don Rosa was born on 29 June 1951 in Louisville, Kentucky, USA. He is a writer, known for Retour à la case mémoire, TaleSpin (1990) and The Don Rosa House Tour (2011). He has been married to Ann Payne since 1980.
- Jean M. Auel was born on 18 February 1936 in Chicago, Illinois, USA. She is a writer, known for The Clan of the Cave Bear (1986), Today (1952) and Bestseller (1999). She has been married to Ray Bernard Auel since 19 March 1954. They have five children.
- Robert E. Howard created Conan the Barbarian in a series of short stories and novels in the 1930's. Born in Peaster, Texas, he was raised in Cross Plains. His fiction was carried in pulp magazines of the time such as Weird Tales, and H.P. Lovecraft was a friend and admirer of his. He committed suicide after holding vigil by his mother's deathbed in 1936.
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Guy Gavriel Kay was born on 7 November 1954 in Weyburn, Saskatchewan, Canada. He is a writer and producer, known for Scales of Justice (1990), White (2012) and The Voyager Diaries (2014).- Writer
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George R.R. Martin is an American novelist and short-story writer in the fantasy, horror, and science fiction genres, a screenwriter, and television producer. He is known for his international bestselling series of epic fantasy novels, A Song of Ice and Fire, which was later adapted into the HBO dramatic series Game of Thrones (2011).
Martin serves as the series' co-executive producer, and also scripted four episodes of the series. In 2005, Lev Grossman of Time called Martin "the American Tolkien".- Writer
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Christopher Paolini was born on 17 November 1983 in Los Angeles County, California, USA. He is a writer and producer, known for Eragon (2006), To Sleep in a Sea of Stars and Eragon.- Writer
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English writer, scholar and philologist, Tolkien's father was a bank manager in South Africa. Shortly before his father died (1896) his mother took him and his younger brother to his father's native village of Sarehole, near Birmingham, England. The landscapes and Nordic mythology of the Midlands may have been the source for Tolkien's fertile imagination to write about 'the Shire' and 'hobbits' in his later book the Hobbit (1937). After his mother's death in 1904 he was looked after by Father Francis Xavier Morgan a RC priest of the Congregation of the Oratory. Tolkien was educated at King Edward VI school in Birmingham. He studied linguistics at Exeter College, Oxford, and took his B.A. in 1915. In 1916 he fought in World War I with the Lancashire Fusiliers. It is believed that his experiences during the Battle of the Somne may have been fueled the darker side of his subsequent novels. Upon his return he worked as an assistant on the Oxford English Dictionary (1918-20) and took his M.A. in 1919. In 1920 he became a teacher in English at the University of Leeds. He then went on to Merton College in Oxford, where he became Rawlinson and Bosworth Professor of Anglo-Saxon (1925-45) and Merton professor of English Language and Literature (1945-59). His first scholarly publication was an edition of Sir Gawain and the Green Knight (1925). He also wrote books on Chaucer (1934) and Beowulf (1937). In 1939 Tolkien gave the Andrew Lang Lecture at the University of St. Andrews in Scotland titled: "On Fairy-Stories". Tolkien will however be remembered most for his books the Hobbit (1937) and the Lord of the Rings (1954-55). The Hobbit began as a bedtime story for his children". He wrote Lord of the Rings over a period of about 14 years.
Tolkien also discussed parts of his novels with fellow Oxfordian and fantasy writer CS Lewis during their 'meetings'. He was trying to create a fantasy world so that he could explain how he had invented certain languages, and in doing so created 'Middle-earth'. However among his peers at Oxford his works were not well received as they were not considered 'scholarly'. It was after LOTR was published in paperback in the United States in 1965 that he developed his legendary cult following and also imitators. Tolkien was W. P. Ker lecturer at Glasgow University in 1953. In 1954 both the University of Liege and University College, Dublin, awarded him honorary doctorates. He received the CBE in 1972. He served as vice-president of the Philological Society and was a Fellow of the Royal Society of Literature. He was made an honorary fellow of Exeter College. Despite the immense popularity of his books today Tolkien did not greatly benefit from their sales. His son Christopher Tolkien was able to publish some of his works posthumously after his manuscripts were found.- Writer
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Fritz Leiber Jr. was born on 24 December 1910 in Chicago, Illinois, USA. He was a writer and actor, known for Night of the Eagle (1962), A Pail of Air and Game for Motel Room. He was married to Margo Skinner and Jonquil Stephens. He died on 5 September 1992 in San Francisco, California, USA.- Writer
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Homer is the name traditionally ascribed to the brilliant Greek bard that authored, most notably, the Iliad and the Odyssey (Western civilization's first complete stories). Nothing concrete is known of his life, but he is traditionally thought to be blind and was probably born in either Chios or Smyrna. His epic poems were most likely memorized and recited in bardic lays and only later written down. While the details and dates of Homer's life have been lost in the mists of time, the Iliad and Odyssey were probably composed in the late eighth century B.C.- Marion Zimmer Bradley was born on 3 June 1930 in Albany, New York, USA. She was a writer, known for Darkover, The Mists of Avalon (2001) and The Chronic Rift (1990). She was married to Walter Breen and Robert Alden Bradley. She died on 25 September 1999 in Berkeley, California, USA.
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Born on Salamis island around 484 BC, Euripides is considered the first professional writer in Athens. His dramas evolve around human passions and his interest lies in strong feelings of love, hate and revenge. Often also the gods themselves share the same low moral standards as the humans do. In several of his plays women take leading parts, "Medea" is probably the most famous. He also stressed the importance of the dialogue and lessened the the influence of the choir. Of his around 90 plays, 18 plays remain, the rest are lost or only known in fragments.- Writer
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Ancient Greek poet and comic dramatist Aristophanes was the son of Philippus of Athens. A leading exponent of the Athenian "Old Comedy," Aristophanes lived most of his life during the Peloponnesian War against Sparta (431-404). Some of his works include "Acharnians" (425), "Knights" (424), "In the Clouds" (423), "In the Wasps" (422), "The Peace" (421), "The Birds" (414), "In Lysistrata" (411), "The Thesmophoriazusae" (411), "In the Frogs" (405; it won the first prize at the Lenaean festival), "In the Ecclesiazusae" (392) and "In the Plutus" (388). He is the only exponent of the Athenian Old Comedy who has left us complete plays. In his day comic plays were performed at Athens annually at the festivals of Dionysus and Lenaea, at which occasions five poets competed, each producing a single play. The targets of Aristophanes' humor includes notable politicians (Pericles, Cleon, Hyperbolus), poets (Euripides) and philosophers (Socrates), to name a few. Aristophanes often makes fun of cultural innovators (although the construction of his plays shows that he was one of them himself), whereas the characters with whom he expresses sympathy are usually people who just want to be left to enjoy themselves in traditional ways.- In addition to writing 17 novels and a collection of short stories based on the career of the real-life 7th Century Chinese magistrate/detective Dee Jen-djieh, Robert van Gulik was a scholar and diplomat. He had many publications in scholarly journals, and held a number of positions in the Netherlands Foreign Service, serving in various countries in Asia and the Middle East. He had a distinguished diplomatic career, rising to ambassadorial rank, and at the time of his death was the Netherlands Ambassador to Japan and the Republic of Korea.
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Maurice Druon was born on 23 April 1918 in Paris, France. He was a writer and actor, known for Vertigine d'amore (1949), A Matter of Time (1976) and The Possessors (1958). He was married to Madeleine Merignac. He died on 14 April 2009 in Paris, France.- Simone Ernestine Lucie Marie Bertrand de Beauvoir was born on January 9, 1908, in Paris, France. She was raised in an upper class bourgeois Catholic family. Her father, named Georges de Beauvoir, had a passion for books and theatre. He taught Simone reading at the age of 3, and she attempted to write as soon as she could read. Her early development was that of a remarkably talented child.
Her bold and spontaneous classmate, Zaza (Elisabeth Le Coin), was her earliest and strongest friendship. Beauvoir and Zaza were both students of Maurice Merleau-Ponty, whom Zaza loved. That relationship was disrupted by Zaza's controlling parents. Zaza died of encephalitis at age 20, leaving Beauvoir shocked and depressed. Zaza's short life was described by Beauvoir in several versions and in various literary forms; revealing Beauvoir's own post-traumatic scars. As Beauvoir was trying to soothe the pain of loss, she drifted away from the restrictive social order of French class society. For the rest of her life, Beauvoir harbored her traumatized inner child, and played a game of rebellion by advancing her individual choices. She had issues with social rules regulating the impulses of her own life, or having a stable relationship; and her life really turned into a series of impulses.
She was a Sorbonne student when she met Jean-Paul Sartre at the study group in 1929. At that time she was nicknamed 'Castor' (Beaver), with the dual meaning of her last name as English for the animal and its reputation as a dedicated worker. Beauvoir and Sartre both learned to hate the restrictions of upper class life. Both favored an 'authentic state of being'. Her rebellious nature played a painful role in their relationship from the very start. Knowing that her teaching assignment would separate them, Jean-Paul Sartre proposed to her. His proposal and marriage would lead to their teaching assignments in the same area. To his dismay, she turned down his proposal and left.
In 1932 Beauvoir was teaching in Rouen. There she met Olga Kozakiewich and began a relationship. In 1935 she introduced Sartre to her 18-year-old student Olga Kozakiewich and the three formed the 'family'. Beauvoir merged both relationships into a trio, that led to an unexpected and overwhelming outcome. While she imagined the trio would illustrate the 'authenticity' of their relationships; in reality the inevitable competition from the younger and independent-minded Olga became a growing threat. Beauvoir saw Olga as an object, a mere cast member of the game. She also overestimated her own tolerance. Eventually the trio failed before the challenge to reciprocate in recognition of each one's 'authentic' consciousness. Each member wrote a different account of the same events in their 'family' life.
While her academic studies focused on the role of individual choice; the realities of her private life conflicted with her theory. The scenario that caused her earlier traumatic experience of her separation from Zaza was being replayed with variations. Beauvoir continued experimenting with her 'open family' by including her other students and Sartre's students too. Other family member's 'authentic' consciousness added to social inventiveness and a sort of a group-therapy during the occupation of Paris in WWII. "Existence causes transformation of consciousness" - commented Jean-Paul Sartre.
The Jean-Simone-Olga 'family' affair is immortalized in her first novel 'L'Invitee' (She Came to Stay, 1943). At that time they were living in an occupied Paris. The open 'family' included several former students of both Beauvoir and Sartre; forming a unique social group with Olga Kazakiewich, Nathalie Sorokine and Jacques-Laurent Bost. The complex manner of relationships in the 'family' was somewhat based on the intellectual connection between students and teachers, who also included sharing of cooking and other domestic duties. Beauvoir was forced into a rare experience of cooking only during the war, while being unencumbered with domestic duties for the rest of her life. The author of 'The Second Sex' ate at cafés and lived in good hotels, always being served.
Sartre and Beauvoir traveled to the South of France where they wooed André Gide and André Malraux to their underground group 'Socialisme et Liberte'. Their active resistance soon turned into writing for 'Combat', published by 'Albert Camus'. In 1945 Beauvoir joined the editorial staff at 'Les Tempes Modernes', a leftist journal named after the Chaplin's film. Sartre, being the magazine's founder among other intellectual friends, published Beauvoir's works first, giving her a steady platform and publicity. A that time she published 'Le Sang des Autres' (The Blood of Others, 1945) a reflection of Resistance during WWII. Her friend 'Albert Camus' wrote a positive review on Beauvoir's book. Her only play 'Les Bouches Inuites' (Useless Mouths, 1945) was also called 'Who Shall Die'. Her long project-study of the ethical question of immortality led to her book 'All Men Are Mortal'. She was shocked by the poor reception of her weak and confusing book.
In 1947 Beauvoir was on a 5-month lecture tour of American Universities. There she met writer Nelson Algren. Their relationship lasted 17 years, complicating her other relationships. She called him "crocodile husband" for his American smile. He called her "frog wife" for being French, both called it love. She wrote a book 'L'Amerique au Jour le Jour' (America Day by Day, 1948) critical of social problems, class, and racial inequalities in the United States. Around 1950 Nelson Algren proposed to marry her in a letter. Beauvoir once again declined an offer of marriage. They wrote over three hundred passionate letters from 1947 - 1964. She caused much pain to Jean-Paul Sartre; who wanted a family, and finally in 1962, he adopted a Jewish Algerian girl, named Arlette El Kaim.
In America Beauvoir learned of Alfred Kinsey and his gender studies in the 1930's and 1940's. She started writing 'The Second Sex' at the time of the 'Kinsey Report' (1948). In 1949 her first excerpts from 'The Second Sex' appeared in France in the May, June, and July issues of the Sartre's magazine 'Les Tempes Modernes'. Her book was published in November of 1949, and made a sensation on both continents. By the 1950's Beauvoir had started to doubt her attractiveness. Her affair with reporter Claude Lanzmann, 17 years her junior, brought her new energy of assurance. They moved in together for 2 years, but she also needed to keep both the "crocodile husband" and Jean-Paul Sartre. In 1954 she was awarded the Prix Goncourt for 'Les Mandarins' (The Mandarins) and purchased a small apartment in Montparnasse. There she would live with Sartre between her travels until her death.
In 'The Second Sex', first published in French in 1949, she presented a combination of 'feminism' with 'existentialism' with a 'Freudian' view of sexuality. The news was that it was written by a brilliant woman. She became recognized as one of the "founding mothers" of the modern day feminism. Her works were translated and published worldwide. The English translation of her main works were made by her principal English translator, Patrick O'Brian, the author of the story for the film 'Master and Commander'.
In 1955 Beauvoir and Sartre went on official visits to the Soviet Union and to communist China. As left-leaning academics they accepted the official invitations from the communist governments. Sartre and Beauvoir met with Nikita Khrushchev. She accepted the commission from both communist governments and wrote her 'La Longue Marche' (The Long March, 1957). She wrote in her letter to her "crocodile husband", Nelson Algren, that "the book was written largely to obtain money." She was apparently unconcerned by the brutal nature of the communist dictatorships. Beauvoir praised communism, the Chinese government, and the achievements of the Revolution. In 1960 she and Sartre accepted the invitation of Fidel Castro and made a trip to Cuba. At the same time she actively supported the Vietnamese Communist party. In 1967 Beauvoir and Sartre joined Bertrand Russell in the 'Tribunal of war Crimes in Vietnam'.
Her mother, Francoise de Beauvoir, whom she loathed at times, caused her more emotional pain than the millions of victims of communism. Her book 'A Very Easy Death' (1958) recounts the death of her mother, which was her way of coping with her loss; while she barely mentioned her father's death. During the illness of her mother, Beauvoir bonded with Sylvie Le Bon and developed a ten-year relationship with feelings that inspired her beautiful book 'All Said and Done' (1972). She adopted 'Sylvie Le Bon de Beauvoir' in 1980. In her later years Beauvoir's dependence on alcohol and amphetamine drugs led to Sartre's alienation from her. Sartre bought a house in the South of France and moved there with his adopted Jewish daughter, musician Arlette El Kaim Sartre. After the death of Sartre in 1980, Beauvoir published his letters to her (Lettres au Castor, 1983) as well as a very cold book of memoirs 'Adieux: A Farewell to Sartre', written from 1981-1985. Her bitter disputes with Sartre's daughter, Arlette El Kaim, ended only with Beauvoir's death.
Beauvoir was certainly not the first brilliant writer who turned her promiscuity on both continents into a money-making business under the mask of "academic writing" and "social experiment." Her writings show her profound knowledge and powerful thought which could be above the delusional ideals of both her own bourgeois past and Sartre's "utopian" and "communist" present. Her form of denial eventually led to an ordinary path of drugs and alcohol. Simone de Beauvoir died of complications of alcoholism on April 14, 1986. She was laid to rest in the grave of Jean-Paul Sartre in the Cimetiere du Montparnasse in Paris, France. - As Gordon Daviot, she was a famous well-known playwright during the 1930s, and, as Gordon Daviot, published her first mystery novel, "The Man In The Queue". For the second, "A Shilling For Candles", she took a family name, Josephine Tey, under which she published a further six.
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He is a professor of semiotics, the study of communication through signs and symbols, at the University of Bologna. Also a philiosopher, a historian, literary critic, and an aesthetician. He is an avid book collector and owns more than 30,000 volumes. The subjects of his scholarly investigations range from St. Thomas Aquinas, to James Joyce, to Superman. He lives in Milan.- Miguel de Cervantes' baptism occurred on October 9, 1547, at Alcala de Henares, Spain, so it is reasonable to assume he was born around that time, and Alcala de Henares has long claimed itself as his birthplace. The son of Rodrigo de Cervantes, an itinerant and not-too-successful surgeon, Miguel was educated by monks as he and his family wandered from city to city. In 1570 he obtained a position as a kind of secretary to Cardinal Aquaviva in Rome. In 1571 he became a soldier and fought in the famous Battle of Lepanto that pitted Spain against Turkish forces. Being ill with fever at the time, and wishing to prove his bravery, he asked to be put in the most dangerous fighting position on his ship. He was, and received two wounds in the chest and one in his left hand, which rendered him disabled for life. Returning home with his brother Rodrigo in 1575, they were captured by the Barbary pirates and sold into slavery. He and his fellow captives made three attempts to escape, all unsuccessful - one because they were betrayed by a fellow captive. In each attempt Cervantes deliberately shouldered the blame on himself, in an attempt to shield his fellow captives from torture. The Turkish Bey was so impressed with his perhaps foolhardy audacity that he spared him each time. The Cervantes family was able to ransom Rodrigo but not Miguel, and he remained in captivity until 1580, when he was finally ransomed by two Trinitarian friars.
He then began a writing career, which was at first completely unsuccessful due to the fact that Cervantes deliberately tried to write the kind of plays and poetry popular at the time, and to imitate their style, something he was woefully inadequate at doing. He fathered a daughter out of wedlock, and entered into an unhappy marriage in 1584. He took on a series of odd jobs to make ends meet. His financial difficulties netted him three or more prison terms and an excommunication by the Spanish Inquisition, although it was clear he never committed any crimes. Finally, in 1605, he published the first part of the novel which gave him immortality, the brilliant and unforgettable "Don Quixote de La Mancha", which was supposed to be a satire on the chivalric novels of the time, but was actually a work unlike anything anyone else had ever written (the second part followed ten years later, after the success of the first had produced a plagiarized sequel that not only coarsened the satire but contained openly insulting remarks about Cervantes). "Don Quixote"'s surface seems comic, but Cervantes, finally writing in his own personal style and no one else's, created two characters, Don Quixote and Sancho Panza, to whom he gives more multi-layered depth than anyone else up to that time had given characters, except possibly the depth that William Shakespeare had given to Hamlet. The novel "Don Quixote" itself becomes an ironic mixture of comedy, humiliation, disillusionment and tragedy. All of its characters, except those in the interpolated romance novels, are believable and each reacts to Don Quixote's madness in an illuminating way. "Don Quixote" was immensely successful in its time, but it did not make Cervantes a wealthy man.
His other highly regarded works are his collection of "Exemplary Stories", published in 1613, and his "Eight Interludes", published in 1615. He died of dropsy on April 23, 1616, but in an especially ironic twist, his gravesite is lost. His contemporary, William Shakespeare, died ten days later, which according to the Julian calendar then used in England was, coincidentally, also April 23, 1616. Strangely enough, to the end of his life, Cervantes valued his poetic work more highly than his prose (perhaps just a case of wishful thinking) and never considered "Don Quixote" his masterpiece. He died without knowing that it would be one day regarded as the world's greatest novel by many critics. - Writer
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James Clavell was born on October 10, 1921, in Sydney, New South Wales, as Charles Edmund Dumaresq Clavell. He was a film and TV writer and producer. During World War II, he was a British soldier and a Japanese prisoner on Java and in Singapore, which led to his great interest in things East Asian and Japanese, and the experiences of prisoners of war. Clavell is very well-known for "The Great Escape" (1963), "The Satan Bug" (1965), "King Rat" (1965), "To Sir, with Love" (1967), "Tai-Pan" (1986), "Noble House" (1988), and especially "Shogun" (1980). Shogun won the Golden Globe Award for Best TV-Series - Drama and the Emmy Award for Outstanding Limited Series: James Clavell (executive producer).
Clavell was married to April Stride, and they were parents of two children. He died on September 7, 1994, in Vevey, Vaud, Switzerland.- Born the eldest son and third child of James and Mary Defoe, Defoe received a very good education, as his father intended him to become a Presbyterian minister, but he chose to become a merchant instead. In 1684 he joined the army of the rebel Duke of Monmouth, but when the rebellion failed, Defoe was forced into semi-exile. He went bankrupt in 1692, and began writing professionally. He wrote a satirical pamphlet in 1703 called "The Shortest Way with the Dissenters", for which he was pilloried. After a stint in Newgate prison and more troubles with his bankruptcy, Defoe wrote "Robinson Crusoe" and "Moll Flanders", both of which were great successes. Labeled a social historian for his interest in colonization, economics, and exploration, Defoe died of a lethargy in Cripplegate on 24 April 1731.
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Robert Louis Stevenson was a Scottish novelist, poet, and travel writer from Edinburgh. His most popular works include the pirate-themed adventure novel "Treasure Island" (1883), the poetry collection "A Child's Garden of Verses" (1885), the Gothic horror novella "Strange Case of Dr Jekyll and Mr Hyde" (1886) which depicted a man with two distinct personalities, and the historical novels "Kidnapped" (1886) and "The Black Arrow: A Tale of the Two Roses" (1888). Stevenson spend the last years of his life in Samoa, where he tried to act as an advocate for the political rights of Polynesians.
In 1850, Stevenson was born in Edinburgh. His father was Thomas Stevenson (1818-1887), a civil engineer, lighthouse designer, and meteorologist. Thomas was a co-founder of the Scottish Meteorological Society, and one of the sons of the famed engineer Robert Stevenson (1772-1850). Thomas' brothers were the engineers David Stevenson and Alan Stevenson. Stevenson's mother (and Thomas' wife) was Margaret Isabella Balfour, a member of a centuries-old gentry family. Stevenson's maternal grandfather was Lewis Balfour (1777-1860), a minister of the Church of Scotland. Lewis was himself a grandson of the philosopher James Balfour (1705-1795).
Both Stevenson's mother and his maternal grandfather had chronic problems with coughs and fevers. Stevenson demonstrated the same problems throughout his childhood. His contemporaries suspected that he was suffering from tuberculosis. Modern biographers have suggested that he was instead suffering from bronchiectasis (a congenital disorder of the respiratory system) or sarcoidosis (an autoimmune disease which affects the lungs).
Stevenson's parents were Presbyterians, but they were not particularly interested in indoctrinating their son. Stevenson's nurse was Alison "Cummy" Cunningham, a fervently religious woman. While tending to Stevenson during his recurring illnesses, she read to him passages from the Bible and from the works of the Puritan preacher John Bunyan (1628-1688). She also narrated to him tales of the Covenanters, a 17th-century religious movement.
Stevenson's poor health as a child kept him away from school for extended periods. His parents had to hire private tutors for him. He did not learn to read until he was 7 or 8-years-old. However, he developed an interest in narrating stories in early childhood. When he learned to write, he started writing tales as a hobby. His father Thomas was happy about this hobby, as he was also an amateur writer in his early life. In 1866, Stevenson completed his first book. It was "The Pentland Rising: A Page of History, 1666", a historical narrative of a Covenanter revolt. It was published at his father's expense.
In November 1867, Stevenson entered the University of Edinburgh to study engineering. He showed little interest in the subject matter. He joined both the debating club Speculative Society, and an amateur drama group organized by professor Fleeming Jenkin (1833-1885). During the annual holidays, Stevenson repeatedly joined his father in travels to inspect the family's engineering works. He displayed little interest in engineering, but the travels turned his interests towards travel writing.
In April 1871, Stevenson announced to his father that he wanted to become a professional writer. His father agreed, on the condition that Stevenson should also study to gain a law degree. In the early 1870s, Stevenson started dressing in a Bohemian manner, wore his hair long, and joined an atheist club. In January 1873, Stevenson explained to his father that he no longer believed in God, and that he had grown tired of pretending to be pious. He would eventually rejoin Christianity, but remained hostile to organized religion until his death.
In late 1873, Stevenson visited London. He had an essay published in the local art magazine "The Portfolio" (1870-1893), and started socializing with the city's professional writers. Among his new friends was the poet William Ernest Henley (1849-1903). Henley had a wooden leg, due to a childhood illness which led to amputation. Stevenson later used Henley as his inspiration for the one-legged pirate Long John Silver.
Stevenson qualified for the Scottish bar in July 1875, at the age of 24. He never practiced law, though his legal studies inspired aspect of his works. In September 1876, Stevenson was introduced to the American short-story writer Fanny Van de Grift Osbourne (1840-1914). She had separated from her unfaithful husband, and lived with her daughter in France. Fanny remained in his thoughts for months, and they became lovers in 1877. They parted ways in August 1878, when she decided to move back to San Francisco.
In August 1879, Stevenson decided to travel to the United States in search of Fanny. He arrived to New York City with little incident. The journey from New York City to California negatively affected his health, and he was near death by the time he arrived in Monterey, California. He and Fanny reunited in December 1879, but she had to nurse him to recovery. His father cabled him money to help in his recovery.
Stevenson and Fanny married in May 1880. Th groom was 29-years-old, and the bride was 40-years-old. They spend their honeymoon at an abandoned mining camp on Mount Saint Helena. The couple sailed back to the United Kingdom in August 1880. Fanny helped Stevenson to reconcile with his father.
Stevenson and his wife moved frequently from place to place in the early 1880s. In 1884, they settled in their own home in the seaside town of Bournemouth, Dorset. Stevenson named their new residence "Skerryvore". He used the name of a lighthouse which his uncle Alan had constructed. In 1885, Stevenson reacquainted himself to his old friend, the novelist Henry James (1843-1916). James had moved to Bournemouth to care for his invalid sister. Stevenson and James started having daily meetings to converse over various topics. Stevenson wrote several of his popular works while living in Bournemouth, though he was frequently bedridden.
In 1887, Thomas Stevenson died. Stevenson felt that nothing tied him to the United Kingdom, and his physician had advised him that a complete change of climate might improve his health. Stevenson and much of his surviving family (including his widowed mother) traveled to the state of New York. They spend the winter at a cottage in the Adirondacks, with Stevenson starting to work on the adventure novel "The Master of Ballantrae" (1889).
In June 1888, Stevenson chartered the yacht "Casco" to transport him and his family to San Francisco. The sea air helped restore his health for a while. Stevenson decided to spend the next few years wandering in the Pacific islands. He visited the Hawaiian Islands, and befriended the local monarch Kalakaua (1836-1891, reigned 1874-1891) and his niece Ka'iulani (1875-1899). Stevenson's other voyages took him to the Gilbert Islands, Tahiti, New Zealand and the Samoan Islands.
In December 1889, Stevenson and his family at the port of Apia in the Samoan islands. He decided to settle in Samoa. In January 1890, he purchased an estate on the island. He started building Samoa's two-story house, and also started collecting local folktales. He completed an English translation of the moral fable "The Bottle Imp".\
Stevenson grew concerned with the ongoing rivalry between Britain, Germany and the United States over their influence in Samoa. He feared that the indigenous clan society would be displaced by foreigners. He published various texts in defense of the Polynesians and their culture. He also worked on "A Footnote to History: Eight Years of Trouble in Samoa" (1892), a detailed chronicle of the Samoan Civil War (1886-1894) and the international events leading up to it.
Stevenson's last fiction writings indicated his growing interest in the realist movement, and his disdain for colonialism. In December 1894, Stevenson suffered a stroke while conversing with his wife. He died hours later, at the age of 44. The local Samoans provided a watch-guard to protect his body until a tomb could be prepared for it. Stevenson was buried at Mount Vaea, on a spot overlooking the sea. A requiem composed by Stevenson himself was inscribed on the tomb.
Stevenson was seen as an influential writer of children's literature and horror fiction for much of the 20th century, but literary critics and historians had little interest in his works. He was re-evaluated in the late 20th century "as an artist of great range and insight", with scholarly studies devoted entirely to him. The Index Translationum, UNESCO's database of book translations, has ranked him as the 26th most translated writer on a global level. Stevenson ranked below Charles Dickens (25th) in the index, and ahead of Oscar Wilde (28th). His works have received a large number of film adaptations.- Writer
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Anne Rice began life in New Orleans as Howard Allen O'Brien, named after her father, as the second of four daughters of Howard and Katherine Allen O'Brien. She decided to call herself "Anne" when she enrolled in first grade at the Redemptorist Catholic School. Her mother (who had long suffered from alcoholism) died when Anne was nearly fifteen. Her father remarried and soon relocated the family to Richardson (suburb of Dallas), Texas. She graduated in 1959 and entered Texas Woman's University where she completed two years of school in one. In 1960, Anne moved to San Francisco, where she took a furnished apartment in the Haight-Ashbury district. In 1961, Anne married Stan Rice (whom she had met in High School and who had proposed by telegram from Texas) and, in 1962, they were both living in Haight-Ashbury. They graduated from San Francisco State in 1964, she in political science, he in creative writing. Their daughter, Michele, was born on September 21, 1966. In 1969, they moved to Berkeley. There, she wrote a short story, "Interview With the Vampire". In 1970, Michele was diagnosed with leukemia. In 1972, Anne received her M.A. in creative writing; Michele died August 5. The next year, Anne turned "Interview" into a novel, and, over a year later, Knopf offered her a $12,000 advance for it. Christopher Rice was born on March 11, 1978. In 1980, they moved to San Francisco's Castro District. "The Vampire Lestat" brought a $100,000 advance from Knopf. In 1988, they moved to New Orleans and bought a mansion in the Garden District. Stan (who had chaired the creative writing program at S.F. State) turned to painting. "The Witching Hour" brought a $5 million advance. In 1994, "Interview" was very successfully released as a movie (amid much controversy -- some over content, mostly over casting) and Anne entered into a $17 million contract for three more Vampire Chronicles.- Mary Wollstonecraft Shelley (née Godwin; 30 August 1797 - 1 February 1851) was an English novelist, short story writer, dramatist, essayist, biographer, and travel writer, best known for her Gothic novel "Frankenstein: or, The Modern Prometheus" (1818). She also edited and promoted the works of her husband, the Romantic poet and philosopher Percy Bysshe Shelley. Her father was the political philosopher William Godwin, and her mother was the philosopher and feminist Mary Wollstonecraft.
After Wollstonecraft's death less than a month after her daughter Mary was born, Mary was raised by Godwin, who was able to provide his daughter with a rich, if informal, education, encouraging her to adhere to his own liberal political theories. When Mary was four, her father married a neighbor, with whom, as her stepmother, Mary came to have a troubled relationship.
In 1814, Mary began a romance with one of her father's political followers, the then married Percy Bysshe Shelley. Together with Mary's stepsister Claire Clairmont, Mary and Shelley left for France and traveled through Europe. Upon their return to England, Mary was pregnant with Percy's child. Over the next two years, she and Percy faced ostracism, constant debt, and the death of their prematurely born daughter. They married in late 1816, after the suicide of Percy Shelley's first wife, Harriet.
In 1816, the couple famously spent a summer with Lord Byron, John William Polidori, and Claire Clairmont near Geneva, Switzerland, where Mary conceived the idea for her novel "Frankenstein". The Shelleys left Britain in 1818 for Italy, where their second and third children died before Mary Shelley gave birth to her last and only surviving child, Percy Florence Shelley. In 1822, her husband drowned when his sailing boat sank during a storm near Viareggio. A year later, Mary Shelley returned to England and from then on devoted herself to the upbringing of her son and a career as a professional author. The last decade of her life was dogged by illness, probably caused by the brain tumor that was to kill her at the age of 53.
Until the 1970s, Mary Shelley was known mainly for her efforts to publish her husband's works and for her novel "Frankenstein", which remains widely read and has inspired many theatrical and film adaptations. Recent scholarship has yielded a more comprehensive view of Mary Shelley's achievements. Scholars have shown increasing interest in her literary output, particularly in her novels, which include the historical novels "Valperga" (1823) and "Perkin Warbeck" (1830), the apocalyptic novel "The Last Man" (1826), and her final two novels, "Lodore" (1835) and "Falkner" (1837). Studies of her lesser-known works, such as the travel book "Rambles in Germany and Italy" (1844) and the biographical articles for Dionysius Lardner's "Cabinet Cyclopaedia" (1829-46), support the growing view that Mary Shelley remained a political radical throughout her life. Mary Shelley's works often argue that cooperation and sympathy, particularly as practiced by women in the family, were the ways to reform civil society. This view was a direct challenge to the individualistic Romantic ethos promoted by Percy Shelley and the Enlightenment political theories articulated by her father, William Godwin - Writer
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Bram Stoker was born in Dublin, Ireland, in 1847, and gained fame for his novel "Dracula" about an aristocratic vampire in Transylvania. The sequel, "Dracula's Guest," was not published for 17 years after the publication of "Dracula," two years after Stoker's death. Stoker also wrote "The Mystery of the Sea" and "Famous Imposters." He was the stage manager for actor Sir Henry Irving and wrote "Personal Reminiscences of Henry Irving," after Irving's death.- Writer
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Isabel Allende is one of today's most important voices of Southern America literature. She was born in Lima, Peru, in 1942, but at the age of 3 she moved to Chile with her mother and two brothers. She spent her childhood there, at her maternal grandparents'home, but she also traveled a lot and lived in different countries, because of the diplomatic career of her step-father. As an adult, she returned to Chile, where she married, had two children and worked as a journalist until 1973. After the military coup of Pinochet she moved to Venezuela and, later, to United States; now she lives in San Rafael, California, with her second husband. Her books are translated in many languages. She writes mostly narrative, but she also wrote short stories for children, humor books, theater plays. Among her books: "The house of the spirits" (adapted into the movie The House of the Spirits (1993)), "Of Love and Shadows" (adapted into the movie Of Love and Shadows (1994)), "Eva Luna", "the Infinite Plain", "Paula" (a book of memories, written during a tragic period, the illness and death of her daughter), and the trilogy of books for young adults, "The City of the Beasts", "Kingdom of the Golden Dragon" and "Forest of the Pygmies", which are in talks to be adapted for the big screen.- Writer
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Margaret Mitchell was an American historical novelist and a journalist. She published only one completed novel in her lifetime, "Gone with the Wind" (1936), which covered a woman's struggle for survival through the American Civil War and the Reconstruction Era. The novel won the Pulitzer Prize for Fiction in 1937, and it was the top American fiction bestseller in 1936 and 1937. Mitchell had completed the romance novella "Lost Laysen" in her adolescence, but it was only published posthumously in 1996. A collection of Mitchell's newspaper articles was published under the title ""Margaret Mitchell: Reporter" (2000). Several of her writings from her early life have been published under the title "Before Scarlett: Girlhood Writings of Margaret Mitchell." (2000).
In 1900, Mitchell was born in Atlanta, Georgia. Her father was Eugene Mitchell (1866-1944), a prominent lawyer, politician, and historian. He served a term as the President of the Atlanta Board of Education (1911-1912), and co-founded the Atlanta Historical Society. Mitchell's mother was Maybelle Stephens Mitchell (1872-1919), a prominent suffragist leader, and a co-founder of both the League of Women Voters in Georgia and the Catholic Layman's Association of Georgia. Mitchell's paternal ancestors were Scottish-Americans, and her maternal ancestors were Irish-Americans.
During her early childhood, Mitchell lived with her family at a Jackson Street mansion, east of downtown Atlanta. The mansion was owned by Miitchell's maternal grandmother, Annie Stephens (d. 1934) , who lived with them. Stephens was reportedly a tyrant to her family, and had a somewhat adversarial relationship with her granddaughter. But Mitchell went on to interview her for "eye-witness information" about the effects of the Civil War and Reconstruction in Atlanta. Stephen's memories were one of the primary sources for "Gone with the Wind" .
Mitchell's mother had the habit of dressing her daughter in boys' pants, because she thought that they were safer than dresses. Mitchell continued dressing as a boy until she was 14, and her family nicknamed her "Jimmy" (after the comic strip character "Little Jimmy"). Mitchell was a tomboy in her childhood, and her favorite pastime was to ride her Texas plains pony. Aging Confederate soldiers tried to entertain the young girl by narrating to her gritty details of specific battles from the Civil War.
In 1912, the Mitchell family moved to a new residence at the east side of Peachtree Street. The house was located at a short distance from the Chattahoochee River. The family reportedly had concerns about the safety of their Jackson Hill home, due to its proximity to areas affected by the Atlanta Race Riot (1906). The Jackson Hill home was eventually destroyed in the Great Atlanta Fire of 1917.
By the early 1910s , Mitchell was an avid reader. Among her favorite writers were Edith Nesbit and Thomas Dixon. Mitchell started writing fairy tales and adventure stories as a hobby. Among her early works was "The Arrow Brave and the Deer Maiden" (1913), about a mixed-race "Indian" who has to endure pain to win over his love interest. Mitchell's mother kept her daughter's stories in white enamel bread boxes.
In 1914, Mitchell started attending Atlanta's Washington Seminary, a then-fashionable private girls' school. The school had over 300 students. Mitchell joined the school's drama club. She was still a tomboy, and she habitually played the male characters in performances of William Shakespeare's plays. She also joined the school's literary club, and had her stories published in the school's yearbook. Among her first published stories was the revenge-themed "Little Sister", where a little girl shoots her sister's rapist.
In 1918, Mitchell graduated and started preparing for a college education, at the insistence of her mother. Her mother chose which school Mitchell would attend, Smith College in Northampton, Massachusetts. At the time, it was reputedly "the best women's college in the United States". Before her college classes started, Mitchell was engaged to her first serious love interest, the army lieutenant Clifford West Henry. He was send to fight in France in July 1918, and was mortally wounded in October of the same year. Mitchell would continue mourning him for years.
In 1919, Mitchell' mother died from the flu. She was one of the many victims of a flu pandemic that had started in 1918. Mitchell arrived home from college, a day after her mother had died. She found that her mother left a short letter of advise for her, telling her to take care of herself before taking care of other causes.
Later in 1919, Mitchell dropped out of college. She did not excel in any area of academics, and her father expected her to take over the family's household. Mitchell had health problems of her own, and had an appendectomy in the autumn of 1919. Mitchell was feeling increasingly disappointed with her life's direction, as she wrote to a friend. In 1920, Mitchell made her Atlanta society debut. Shortly after, she started dressing as a flapper. In 1921, she shocked the Atlanta high society by performing an Apache dance in a charity ball, and kissing her male partner during the performance. She was consequently blacklisted from the Junior League.
In 1922, Mitchell started dating the bootlegger Berrien ("Red") Kinnard Upshaw (1901-1949). In September 1922. the couple were married against her family's wishes. They both moved in with Mitchell's father. Red was an alcoholic with a violent temper, and Mitchell suffered physical abuse at his hands. They agreed to a period of separation in December 1922, and their divorce was finalized in October 1924. In 1925, Mitchell married her second husband John Robert Marsh (1895-1952). He was Red's former roommate, and another love interest for Mitchell since 1922. Marsh had reportedly secured Mitchell's uncontested divorce, by giving Red a loan. Mitchell and her new husband set their residence at the Crescent Apartments in Atlanta, nicknaming their new home "The Dump". It would later become known as Margaret Mitchell House and Museum.
Between her two marriages, Mitchell had decided that she needed her own source of income. In 1922, she started working as a journalist for "The Atlanta Journal Sunday Magazine". Among her early successes was securing a 1923 interview with the then-popular actor Rudolph Valentino. She continued her journalistic career until May 1926. At the time of her resignation, Mitchell had suffered an ankle injury that would not heal properly. Her mobility problems prevented her from working on assignments.In her four years as a journalist, Mitchell wrote 129 feature articles, 85 news stories, and several book reviews.
Following her resignation from "The Atlanta Journal", Mitchell worked for a few months as a gossip columnist for the "Sunday Magazine". In 1926, Marsh asked his increasingly bored wife why she did not write a book of her own instead of reading thousands of them. By 1928, Mitchell started work on a historical novel of her own. In 1935, her novel was still unfinished. But the book editor Harold Latham of Macmillan read her manuscript and was convinced that it was a potential best-seller. Having secured a publisher, Mitchell spend 6 months in making revisions and checking the novel's historical references. "Gone with the Wind" was published in June 1936.
Her novel turned Mitchell into a literary celebrity, but she had no intention of writing further works. In September 1941, Mitchell christened the light cruiser USS Atlanta (CL-51). During World War II, Mitchell served as a volunteer for the American Red Cross. She raised money for the war effort by selling war bonds. In 1944, she christened the light cruiser USS Atlanta (CL-104).
On August 11, 1949, Mitchell crossed Peachtree Street with her husband. They were on their way to a movie theatre, when Mitchell was struck by a drunk driver. She was hospitalized at Grady Hospital. She died on August 16, without ever regaining consciousness. She was buried at Oakland Cemetery, Georgia. Her husband was buried by her side in 1952. Though Mitchell is long gone, her novel never went out of print. It remains popular into the 21st century. Mitchell was posthumously inducted into the Georgia Writers Hall of Fame in 2000.- Writer
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Arthur Conan Doyle was a British writer of Irish descent, considered a major figure in crime fiction. His most famous series of works consisted of the "Sherlock Holmes" stories (1887-1927), consisting of four novels and 56 short stories. His other notable series were the "Professor Challenger" stories (1912-1929) about a scientist and explorer, and the "Brigadier Gerard" stories (1894-1910) about a French soldier in the Napoleonic Wars. Doyle's literary works have frequently been adapted into film and television.
In 1859, Doyle was born in Edinburgh, Scotland to an Irish Catholic family. His father was Charles Altamont Doyle (1832 - 1893), a professional illustrator and water-colorist who is primarily remembered for fantasy-style paintings. Doyle's mother was Mary Foley (1837-1920). Through his father, Doyle was a nephew of the antiquarian James William Edmund Doyle (1822 - 1892), the illustrator Richard Doyle (1824-1883), and the gallery director Henry Edward Doyle (1827 -1893). Doyle's paternal grandfather was the political cartoonist and caricaturist John Doyle (1797-1868).
During his early years, Doyle's family had financial problems due to his father's struggles with depression and alcoholism. They received financial support from affluent uncles, who also financed Doyle's education. From 1868 to 1870, Doyle was educated at Hodder Place, a Jesuit preparatory school located at Stonyhurst, Lancashire. From 1870 to 1875, Doyle attended Stonyhurst College, a Roman Catholic boarding school. He disliked the school due to its rather limited curriculum, and the constant threats of corporal punishment and ritual humiliation used to discipline students.
From 1875 to 1876, Doyle received further education at Stella Matutina, a Jesuit school located at Feldkirch, Austria. His family wanted him to perfect his use of the German language, but this school offered a wider range of study subjects. Stella Matutina attracted student from many countries, and was more cosmopolitan in nature than Doyle's previous schools.
Doyle decided to follow a medical career. From 1876 to 1881, Doyle studied medicine at the University of Edinburgh Medical School. He also took botany lessons at the Royal Botanic Garden in Edinburgh. During his university years, Doyle started writing short stories. He had trouble finding a publisher, and "Blackwood's Magazine" (1817-1980) rejected his submitted work. Doyle's first published short story was "The Mystery of Sasassa Valley" (1879), featuring a demon in South Africa. That same year, Doyle published his first academic article in a science journal. The article examined the uses of the flowering plant Gelsemium as a poison. As an experiment, Doyle self-administrated doses of the poison and recorded the symptoms.
In 1880, Doyle worked for a while as a doctor in the whaling ship "Hope". In 1881, following his graduation from medical school, Doyle served as a ship's surgeon on the SS Mayumba. In 1882, Doyle and a former classmate established a medical practice in Plymouth, Devon. Their partnership failed, and Doyle soon started his own practice in Southsea, Hampshire. He did not have many patients, so he decided to resume writing fiction to supplement his income.
In 1886, Doyle created the character of Sherlock Holmes. He loosely based his creation on his former college teacher Joseph Bell (1837 - 1911), inspired by Bell's emphasis on the importance of "deduction and inference and observation". Doyle completed the first Holmes novel, "A Study in Scarlet" (1887), and sold the rights to the publishing house "Ward, Lock & Co." (1854-1964). The novel's publication was delayed until November, 1887, but it was well-received by professional critics.
Doyle next completed the sequel novel "The Sign of the Four" (1890), commissioned from the American literary magazine Lippincott's Monthly Magazine (1868-1915). He started writing short stories about Holmes for the British literary magazine "The Strand Magazine" (1891-1950).
Besides Holmes stories, Doyle wrote seven historical novels between 1888 and 1906. He wrote "Micah Clarke" (1889), as a fictionalized account of the Monmouth Rebellion (1685) and its consequences. The novel also voices Doyle's arguments against religious extremism. He wrote "The White Company" (1891) to examine the role of mercenaries in 14th-century warfare, depicting the campaigns of Edward the Black Prince (1330-1376) in the Kingdom of Castile. He wrote "The Great Shadow" (1892) to feature the experiences of soldiers in the Battle of Waterloo (1815). He wrote "The Refugees" (1893) to examine the fates of Huguenot refugees who were fleeing 17th-century France to escape religious persecution by Louis XIV (1638-1715, reigned 1643-1715). He wrote "Sir Nigel" (1906) to examine the early phases of the Hundred Years' War (1337 - 1453). He regarded these novels to be his best literary work, though they were never as popular as his crime novels.
In 1900, Doyle served as a volunteer doctor in the Second Boer War in South Africa (1899-1902), though he had no previous military experience. He was stationed at a field hospital at Bloemfontein. At about this time, Doyle wrote the non-fiction book "The Great Boer War" (1900), which covered in detail the early phases of the war. He also wrote the companion work "The War in South Africa: Its Cause and Conduct" in order to defend the British Empire from accusations of misconduct in its military efforts. These works were translated in multiple languages, and were appreciated by the British government. For his services to the British Empire, Doyle was knighted in 1902. In 1903, Doyle became a knight of the Order of Saint John, a British royal order of chivalry that was based on the original Knights Hospitaller.
In 1906, Doyle was involved in efforts to exonerate the lawyer George Edalji, a mild-mannered man who had been convicted of animal mutilations on insufficient evidence. Doyle helped publicize other instances of miscarriages of justice, and convinced the public that there was need of reforms in the legal system. In 1907, British authorities reacted to this campaign by establishing the Court of Criminal Appeal.
In 1909, Doyle wrote the non-fiction work "The Crime of the Congo" (1909). In the book, Doyle denounced the human rights abuses in the Congo Free State, and claimed that the Belgian colonial forces had enslaved the local population. He quoted testimonies from many witnesses and tried to convince the public of a need to intervene in the area.
World War I (1914-1918) was a difficult time for Doyle , as several of his relatives and friends died due to the war. Doyle's son Kingsley was seriously wounded in the Battle of the Somme (1916), and never fully recovered. Kingsley died of pneumonia in 1918, while still hospitalized. Doyle's brother, Brigadier-general Innes Doyle, died of pneumonia in 1919. Doyle's brother-in-law, the famous author E. W. Hornung, died of pneumonia in 1921. The series of deaths led Doyle to further embrace Spiritualism, and that faith's claims about existence beyond the grave. He spend much of the 1920s as a missionary of Spiritualism, and investigated supposed supernatural phenomena. He also wrote many non-fiction spiritualist works. In 1926, Doyle financed the construction of a Spiritualist Temple in Camden, London.
In July 1930, Doyle suffered a heart attack while staying in his then-residence, Windlesham Manor, in Crowborough, Sussex. He spend his last moments in reassuring his wife Jean Leckie that she was wonderful. He was 71-years-old at the time of his death. He was survived by two sons and two daughters. His daughter Jean Conan Doyle (1912 - 1997) was the copyright holder of much of her father's works until her own death.
Since Doyle was no longer a Christian at the time of his death, his family declined giving him a Christian burial place. Doyle was buried in Windlesham Manor's rose garden. His remains were later re-interred in Minstead churchyard, New Forest, Hampshire. His wife's remains were buried beside him. His gravestone epitaph described him as "Steel true/Blade straight/Arthur Conan Doyle/Knight/Patriot, Physician and man of letters".
Doyle is long gone, but his works have remained popular into the 21st century. Doyle has been cited as an influence on later crime writers, and Agatha Christie's earliest novels were strongly influenced by Sherlock Holmes' stories. His life's events have inspired several biographies, and a number of fictionalized accounts.- Writer
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A gifted poet, playwright and wit, Oscar Wilde was a phenomenon in 19th-century England. He was illustrious for preaching the importance of style in life and art, and of attacking Victorian narrow-mindedness.
Wilde was born in Dublin, Ireland, in 1854. He studied at Trinity College in Dublin before leaving the country to study at Oxford University in England when he was in his early 20s. His prodigious literary talent was recognized when he received the Newdegate Prize for his outstanding poem "Ravenna". After leaving college his first volume of poetry, "Patience", was published in 1881, followed by a play, "The Duchess of Padua", two years later. It was around this time that Wilde sparked a sensation.
On his arrival to America he stirred the nation with his flamboyant personality: wearing long silk stockings--an unusual mode of dress--long, flowing hair that gave the impression to many of an effeminate and a general air of wittiness, sophistication and eccentricity. He was an instant celebrity, but his works did not find recognition until the publication of "The Happy Prince and Other Tales" in 1888. His other noted work was his only novel, was "The Picture of Dorian Gray" (1890), which caused controversy as the book evidently attacked the hypocrisy of England. It was later used as incriminating evidence at Wilde's trial, on the basis of its obvious homosexual content.
Wilde was a married man with children, but his private life was as a homosexual. He had an affair with a young snobbish aristocrat named Lord Alfred Douglas. Douglas' father, the Marquess of Queensberry, did not approve of his son's relationship with the distinguished writer, and when he accused Wilde of sodomy, Wilde sued the Marquess in court. However, his case was dismissed when his homosexuality--which at the time was outlawed in England--was exposed. He was sentenced to two years hard labor in prison. On his release he was a penniless, dejected man and soon died in Paris. He was 46.
Wilde is immortalized through his works, and the stories he wrote for children, such as "The Happy Prince" and "The Selfish Giant", are still vibrant in the imagination of the public, especially "The Picture of Dorian Gray", the story of a young handsome man who sells his soul to a picture to have eternal youth and beauty, only to face the hideousness of his own portrait as it ages, which entails his evil nature and degradation. The book has been interpreted on stage, films and television.- Arthur Machen was born on 3 March 1863 in Caerleon, Wales, UK. He was a writer, known for Hill of Dreams. He was married to Dorothie Purefoy Hudleston and Amelia Hogg. He died on 30 March 1947 in England, UK.
- Edward John Moreton Drax Plunkett, 18th Baron of Dunsany; 24 July 1878 - 25 October 1957), was an Anglo-Irish writer and dramatist; his work, mostly in the fantasy genre, was published under the name Lord Dunsany. More than ninety books of his work were published in his lifetime and both original work and compilations have continued to appear. Dunsany's oeuvre includes many hundreds of published short stories, as well as plays, novels and essays. He achieved great fame and success with his early short stories and plays, and during the 1910s was considered one of the greatest living writers of the English-speaking world; he is today best known for his 1924 fantasy novel The King of Elfland's Daughter.
Born and raised in London, to the second-oldest title (created 1439) in the Irish peerage, Dunsany lived much of his life at what may be Ireland's longest-inhabited house, Dunsany Castle near Tara, worked with W. B. Yeats and Lady Gregory, received an honorary doctorate from Trinity College, Dublin, was chess and pistol-shooting champion of Ireland, and traveled and hunted extensively. He died in Dublin after an attack of appendicitis.
Writers influenced by Dunsany (Removed from Wikipedia)
H. P. Lovecraft was greatly impressed by Dunsany after seeing him on a speaking tour of the United States, and Lovecraft's "Dream Cycle" stories, his dark pseudo-history of how the universe came to be, and his god Azathoth all clearly show Dunsany's influence. Lovecraft once wrote, "There are my 'Poe' pieces and my 'Dunsany' pieces-but alas-where are my Lovecraft pieces?"
Robert E. Howard included Dunsany in a list of his favorite poets in a 1932 letter to Lovecraft. Lovecraft also wrote a poem about Dunsany.
Clark Ashton Smith was familiar with Dunsany's work, and it had some influence on his own fantasy stories.
J. R. R. Tolkien, according to John D. Rateliff's report,[28] presented Clyde S. Kilby with a copy of The Book of Wonder as kind of a preparation to his auxiliary role in the compilation and development of The Silmarillion during the Sixties.[29] Tolkien's letters and divulged notes made allusions to two of the stories found in this volume, "Chu-Bu and Sheemish" and "The Distressing Tale of Thangobrind the Jeweller."
Dale J. Nelson has argued in Tolkien Studies 01 that Tolkien may have been inspired by another of The Book of Wonder's tales, "The Hoard of the Gibbelins," while writing one of his poems, "The Mewlips," included in The Adventures of Tom Bombadil.
Guillermo Del Toro, the filmmaker, has cited Dunsany as an influence.
Neil Gaiman has expressed admiration for Dunsany and has written an introduction to a collection of his stories. Some commentators have posited links between The King of Elfland's Daughter and Gaiman's Stardust (book and film), a connection seemingly supported by a comment of Gaiman's quoted in The Neil Gaiman Reader.
Jorge Luis Borges included Dunsany's short story "The Idle City" in Antología DE la Literatura Fantástica (1940, revised 1976), a collection of short works Borges selected and provided forewords for. Borges also, in his essay "Kafka and His Precursors," included Dunsany's story "Carcassonne" as one of the texts that presaged, or paralleled, Kafka's themes.
Donald Wandrei, in a 7 February 1927 letter to H.P. Lovecraft, listed Dunsany's The King of Elfland's Daughter among his collection of "weird books" that Wandrei had read.
Talbot Mundy greatly admired Dunsany's "plays and fantasy", according to Mundy biographer Brian Taves.
C. M. Kornbluth was an avid reader of Dunsany as a young man, and mentions Dunsany in his short fantasy story "Mr. Packer Goes to Hell" (1941).
Arthur C. Clarke enjoyed Dunsany's work and corresponded with him between 1944 and 1956. Those letters are collected in the book Arthur C. Clarke & Lord Dunsany: A Correspondence. Clarke also edited and allowed the use of an early essay as an introduction to one volume of The Collected Jorkens and that essay acknowledges the link between Jorkens and Tales from the White Hart. Clarke states, humorously, that any reader who sees a link between the two works will *not* be hearing from his solicitors.
Manly Wade Wellman esteemed Dunsany's fiction.
Margaret St. Clair was an admirer of Dunsany's work, and her story "The Man Who Sold Rope to the Gnoles" (1951) is a sequel to Dunsany's "How Nuth Would Have Practised His Art Upon the Gnoles".
Evangeline Walton stated in an interview that Dunsany inspired her to write fantasy.
Jack Vance was a keen reader of Dunsany's work as a child.
Michael Moorcock often cites Dunsany as a strong influence.
Peter S. Beagle also cites Dunsany as an influence, and wrote an introduction for one of the recent reprint editions.
David Eddings once named Lord Dunsany as his personal favorite fantasy writer, and recommended aspiring authors to sample him.
Gene Wolfe used one of Dunsany's poems to open his bestselling 2004 work The Knight.
Fletcher Pratt's 1948 novel The Well of the Unicorn was written as a sequel to Dunsany's play King Argimenes and the Unknown Warrior. Ursula K. Le Guin, in her essay on style in fantasy "From Elfland to Poughkeepsie", wryly referred to Lord Dunsany as the "First Terrible Fate that Awaiteth Unwary Beginners in Fantasy", alluding to the (at the time) very common practice of young writers attempting to write in Lord Dunsany's style.
M. J. Engh has acknowledged Lord Dunsany as an influence on her work.
Welleran Poltarnees, an author of numerous non-fantasy "blessing books" employing turn-of-the-century artwork, is a pen name based on two of Lord Dunsany's most famous stories.
Gary Myers's 1975 short story collection The House of the Worm is a double pastiche of Dunsany and Lovecraft.
Álvaro Cunqueiro openly admitted the influence of Lord Dunsany on his work. - Agatha was born as "Agatha Mary Clarissa Miller" in 1890 to Frederick Alvah Miller and Clara Boehmer. Agatha was of American and British descent, her father being American and her mother British. Her father was a relatively affluent stockbroker. Agatha received home education from early childhood to when she turned 12-years-old in 1902. Her parents taught her how to read, write, perform arithmetic, and play music. Her father died in 1901. Agatha was sent to a girl's school in Torquay, Devon, where she studied from 1902 to 1905. She continued her education in Paris, France from 1905 to 1910. She then returned to her surviving family in England.
As a young adult, Agatha aspired to be a writer and produced a number of unpublished short stories and novels. She submitted them to various publishers and literary magazines, but they were all rejected. Several of these unpublished works were later revised into more successful ones. While still in this point of her life, Agatha sought advise from professional writer Eden Phillpotts (1862-1960). Meanwhile she was searching for a suitable husband and in 1913 accepted a marriage proposal from military officer and pilot-in-training Archibald "Archie" Christie. They married in late 1914. Her married name became "Agatha Christie" and she used it for most of her literary works, including ones created decades following the end of her first marriage.
During World War I, Archie Christie was send to fight in the war and Agatha joined the Voluntary Aid Detachment, a British voluntary unit providing field nursing services. She performed unpaid work as a volunteer nurse from 1914 to 1916. Then she was promoted to "apothecaries' assistant" (dispenser), a position which earned her a small salary until the end of the war. She ended her service in September, 1918.
Agatha wrote "The Mysterious Affair at Styles", her debut novel ,in 1916, but was unable to find a publisher for it until 1920. The novel introduced her famous character Hercule Poirot and his supporting characters Inspector Japp and Arthur Hastings. The novel is set in World War I and is one of the few of her works which are connected to a specific time period.
Following the end of World War I and their retirement from military life, Agatha and Archie Christie moved to London and settled into civilian life. Their only child Rosalind Margaret Clarissa Christie (1919-2004) was born early in the marriage. Agatha's debut novel was first published in 1920 and turned out to be a hit. It was soon followed by the successful novels "The Secret Adversary" (1922) and "Murder on the Links" (1923) and various short stories. Agatha soon became a celebrated writer.
In 1926, Archie Christie announced to Agatha that he had a mistress and that he wanted a divorce. Agatha took it hard and mysteriously disappeared for a period of 10 days. After an extensive manhunt and much publicity, she was found living under a false name in Yorkshire. She had assumed the last name of Archie's mistress and claimed to have no memory of how she ended up there. The doctors who attended to her determined that she had amnesia. Despite various theories by multiple sources, these 10 days are the most mysterious chapter in Agatha's life.
Agatha and Archie divorced in 1928, though she kept the last name Christie. She gained sole custody of her daughter Rosalind. In 1930, Agatha married her second (and last) husband Max Mallowan, a professional archaeologist. They would remain married until her death in 1976.Christie often used places that she was familiar with as settings for her novels and short stories. Her various travels with Max introduced her to locations of the Middle East, and provided inspiration for a number of novels.
In 1934, Agatha and Max settled in Winterbrook, Oxfordshire, which served as their main residence until their respective deaths. During World War II, she served in the pharmacy at the University College Hospital, where she gained additional training about substances used for poisoning cases. She incorporated such knowledge for realistic details in her stories.
She became a Commander of the Order of the British Empire in 1956 and a Dame Commander of the same order in 1971. Her husband was knighted in 1968. They are among the relatively few couples where both members have been honored for their work. Agatha continued writing until 1974, though her health problems affected her writing style. Her memory was problematic for several years and she had trouble remembering the details of her own work, even while she was writing it. Recent researches on her medical condition suggest that she was suffering from Alzheimer's disease or other dementia. She died of natural causes in early 1976. - Born in Providence, Lovecraft was a sickly child whose parents died insane. When he was 16, he wrote the astronomy column in the Providence Tribune. Between 1908 and 1923, he wrote short stories for Weird Tales magazine and others. He died in Providence, in poverty, on March 15, 1937. His most famous novel is considered to be "At the Mountains of Madness", about an expedition to the South Pole, which discovers strange creatures beneath a mountain.
- Jonathan Swift (30 November 1667 - 19 October 1745) was an Anglo-Irish satirist, author, essayist, political pamphleteer (first for the Whigs, then for the Tories), poet, and Anglican cleric who became Dean of St Patrick's Cathedral, Dublin, hence his common sobriquet, "Dean Swift".
Swift is remembered for works such as A Tale of a Tub (1704), An Argument Against Abolishing Christianity (1712), Gulliver's Travels (1726), and A Modest Proposal (1729). He is regarded by the Encyclopædia Britannica as the foremost prose satirist in the English language, and is less well known for his poetry. He originally published all of his works under pseudonyms-such as Lemuel Gulliver, Isaac Bickerstaff, M. B. Drapier-or anonymously. He was a master of two styles of satire, the Horatian and Juvenalian styles.
His deadpan, ironic writing style, particularly in A Modest Proposal, has led to such satire being subsequently termed "Swiftian". - Writer
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Sir Walter Scott was born August 15, 1771, in Edinburgh, Scotland, as the ninth child (and the fourth surviving) of Walter Scott, a solicitor, and his wife Anne Rutherford. Polio, contracted when he was two, resulted in a crippled left leg, but even this illness did not prevent Scott from growing into a tall and energetic man.
Raised on the old Border tales and ballads that would later influence his historical novels, Scott was a clever and active child. Unfortunately, poor health interrupted his studies at Edinburgh University, and after being apprenticed to his father's legal firm for a year, Scott decided to study law. While visiting the Highlands on business in 1786 and 1787, he met not only Alexander Stewart of Invernahyle (who once fought a duel with Rob Roy MacGregor) but also the famous Scottish poet Robert Burns.
After his first love broke his heart by marrying another man, Scott married a Frenchwoman, Charlotte Charpentier, on Christmas Day, 1797, after a whirlwind romance. They remained happily married until her death in 1826.
Scott began writing poetry at an early age, and so distinguished himself in this that he was offered the Poet Laureateship in 1813, which he turned down. He published his first novel, "Waverley," in 1814, and it quickly became one of the most successful English language novels ever published. Scott chiefly concentrated on novels in his latter years, putting aside his poetry to publish "Ivanhoe" in 1819 and "Rob Roy" in 1817.
After suffering a stroke and apoplectic paralysis in 1831, Scott died on 21 September 1832.- Writer
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Writer, born in Bromley, Kent. He was apprenticed to a draper, tried teaching, studied biology in London, then made his mark in journalism and literature. He played a vital part in disseminating the progressive ideas which characterized the first part of the 20th-c. He achieved fame with scientific fantasies such as The Time Machine (1895) and War of the Worlds (1898), and wrote a range of comic social novels which proved highly popular, notably Kipps (1905) and The History of Mr Polly (1910). Both kinds of novel made successful (sometimes classic) early films. A member of the Fabian Society, he was often engaged in public controversy, and wrote several socio-political works dealing with the role of science and the need for world peace, such as The Outline of History (1920) and The Work, Wealth and Happiness of Mankind- Writer
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Richelle Mead is known for Vampire Academy (2014), Vampire Academy (2016) and Vampire Academy (2022).- Writer
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Chris Claremont was born on 25 November 1950 in Ealing, London, England, UK. He is a writer and actor, known for X-Men: Days of Future Past (2014), X-Men: The Last Stand (2006) and X-Men: Dark Phoenix (2019).- Writer
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Born under the name Georges Remi on May 22, 1907 in Brussels, Belgium. As a child, Herge had a gift for drawing but never had any formal training in the visual arts. He attended both school and the boy scouts during the World War 1 and post-World War 1 Era. After he finished school Herge published his first ever cartoon: "The Adventures of Totor" for Le Boy-Scout Belge (a scouting magazine).
In 1928, he became in charge of the producing material for Le Petit Vingtieme (The Little Twentieth) a youth supplement newspaper. He began illustrating "The Adventures of Flup", "Nenesse", "Poussette", "Cochonnet", etc. January 10, 1929, Herge introduced a cartoon about a traveling Belgium reporter (Tintin) accompanied by his fox terrier (Snowy) traveling the Soviet Union. By 1930, Herge published the very first Tintin book: "Tintin in the Land of the Soviets". Tintin soon became Herge's "ligne claire" (French for clear line) legacy.
The later adventures of Tintin involved other locations of the world from China all the way to America. Within the next 50 years Tintin became one of the most popular European comics of the 20th century, due to its well-researched plots, appealing characters, humor, political thrillers, & real world settings. After completing 23 books, Herge passed away on March 3, 1983, leaving "Tintin and Alph-Art" (the 24th book) unfinished. Despite Herge not being able to give his Tintin series the proper end, all of his works along with Tintin will continue to inspire artists and enchant readers from the years to come.- Writer
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René Goscinny was a French comic book writer, of Polish-Jewish descent. His parents were Stanislaw Simkha Goscinny and Anna "Hanna" Beresniak-Goscinna. The family name Goscinny means "hospitable" in the Polish language. Stanislaw was a chemical engineer from Warsaw, and Anna was from a small village called Chodorków, in the vicinity of Zhytomyr. Warsaw is currently part of Poland, and Zhytomyr part of Ukraine.
Both of Goscinny's parents were born in the Russian Empire, but migrated to the French Third Republic prior to the end of World War I. They met each other in Paris, and were married there in 1919. René was born in Paris in 1926, as the second son of the couple. He received French citizenship at birth.
In 1928, the Goscinny family migrated to Buenos Aires, Argentina, as Stanislaw had found employment there. René was primarily raised in Buenos Aires, where he attended French-speaking schools. He reportedly a shy boy, but often acted as the "class clown" to seek attention. He enjoyed reading illustrated stories, and practiced drawing as a hobby.
In 1943, Stanislaw Goscinny suffered from cerebral hemorrhage and died. René was forced to quit school and find a job. He first worked as an assistant accountant, then as an illustrator in an advertising agency. In 1945, René migrated from Argentina to New York City, United States, to join his older brother who lived there. In 1946, René returned to France for his mandatory military service. He served in the 141st Alpine Infantry Battalion, and was discharged with the rank of a senior corporal.
In the late 1940s, Goscinny returned to New York City to seek employment there. He worked in various small studios, but managed to befriend a number of comics writers and artists who worked in the City at that time. Among them were Joseph Gillain (pen-name Jije, 1914-1980), Maurice De Bevere (pen-name Morris, 1923-2001), Will Elder (1921-2008), Jack Davis (1924-2016), and Harvey Kurtzman (1924-1993).
In 1951, artist and publisher Georges Troisfontaines hired Goscinny to head the Paris office of the "World Press" agency. In his new position, Goscinny met and befriended a French-artist of Italian descent, Albert Uderzo (1927-). The two collaborated in a number of early comics works, most notably the comedy-adventure series "Jehan Pistolet ". It featured a good-natured French privateer leading a crew of misfits into adventure.
During the 1950s, Goscinny collaborated with various writers and artists in producing new series of comics and children's books. He created characters like "Le Petit Nicolas" (a mischievous schoolboy) and "Oumpah-pah" (a heroic Native American caught up in 18th-century warfare), and took over the writing or older series like "Lucky Luke". However, few of his creations were particularly popular.
In 1959, Goscinny and Uderzo co-created the new series "Asterix" and its main characters. Featuring heroic Gauls fighting in the historic Gallic Wars (58-50 BC), the series mixed historical fiction with fantasy elements and satire. It soon became one of the most popular European comics, and Goscinny continued writing the series until his death.
In the 1960s, Goscinny became one of the most prolific writers of French comics. In 1962, he had a second major hit when collaborating with Jean Tabary (1930-2011) for the series "Iznogoud". The series features a villain-protagonist, the evil vizier Iznogoud who serves in the royal court of the Abbasid Caliphate (750-1258) in Baghdad, and spends most of his life trying to depose and replace the incompetent Caliph.
In 1967, Goscinny married Gilberte Pollaro-Millo. In 1968, they had their only daughter, Anne Goscinny. She would grow up to become a professional writer, following her father's footsteps.
In 1977, Goscinny was going through a routine stress test at the office of his doctor, when he suffered a cardiac arrest. He died instantly. He was only 51-years-old. His main legacy remains with his most popular series: "Asterix", "Iznogoud", "Lucky Luke", and "Le Petit Nicolas", which have all received several adaptations.- Writer
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Frank Herbert was born on 8 October 1920 in Tacoma, Washington, USA. He was a writer, known for Dune (2021), Dune (1984) and Dune: Part Two (2024). He was married to Theresa Shackleford, Beverley Ann Stuart and Flora Parkinson. He died on 11 February 1986 in Madison, Wisconsin, USA.- Additional Crew
Rachael Harris is known for The Crazies (2010).- Additional Crew
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