Karl Hans Strӧbl was born in Jihlava, Moravia in the Czech Republic, then part of the Austro-Hungarian Empire, on the 18th of January 1877.His education finished with his studies at the University of Prague, where he became involved in nationalist student politics, a precursor to his later right-wing and anti-semitic viewpoints.In 1910 he wrote an apocalyptic novel ‘Eleagabal Kuperus’, which was later adapted into a silent film.His literary output was prolific and r...

The bookshelves of British literature are incredible collections that have gathered together centuries of very talented authors. From these Isles their fame spread and whilst among their number many are now forgotten or neglected their talents endure. Among them is the Suffragette Sarah Grand.

Writing can be a lonely art. Distractions and writers block are just two of the many impediments to a burnished stream of prose. But sometimes two heads really can be better than one. When one author decides to team up with another, either occasionally or full time, their new creations seem to amplify and encourage the words and ideas of each writer, helping to create narratives that are both new, and perhaps beyond the scope of just one of them. Collaborating and sounding off of one anoth...

Richard Barham Middleton was born on the 28th October 1882 in Staines, Middlesex.His education was primarily at Cranbrook School in Kent before he began work as a clerk, in 1901, at the Royal Exchange Assurance Corporation in London. There he struggled with constraints and boundaries and by night he took to a bohemian lifestyle.Middleton moved into rooms in Blackfriars and joined the New Bohemians club where his literary contacts grew.He became an editor at Vanity F...

The bookshelves of British literature are incredible collections that have gathered together centuries of very talented authors. From these Isles their fame spread and whilst among their number many are now forgotten or neglected their talents endure. Among them is J J Bell.

Charles Dickens was born on the 7th February 1812, in Portsmouth, England, the second of eight children. The family endured many financial struggles and, when he was just 12, his father was sent to Marshalsea debtors' prison, the result of which was Dickens finished his education and went to work in a rat-infested boot-blacking factory to help pay off the debt. These experiences of neglect and hardship were to later provide themes in his books such as ‘Little Dorrit’ and ‘David Copperfield...

To be a woman is to be half the world’s population but, in many countries, unfortunately still now and for most of history, women were decidedly second class, normally no more than chattels and the bearers and nurturers of children. As society involved into a complex and overlapping system where education and equality begin to seek space things began to change. In this volume our authors describe and reveal how life actually felt for almost all women before the recent past.

Throughout the long centuries of human history is the want, and the need, to share information, to exchange ideas and for that knowledge and experience, for curiosity and learning, to be the basis of a civil society.In literature the ambition is much narrower. In order to be known, to be popular, you had to be published. And for that people had to know you existed and your ideas worth reading. Obviously for most of humanity’s time people couldn’t read and texts couldn’t be publishe...

Throughout the long centuries of human history is the want, and the need, to share information, to exchange ideas and for that knowledge and experience, for curiosity and learning, to be the basis of a civil society.In literature the ambition is much narrower. In order to be known, to be popular, you had to be published. And for that people had to know you existed and your ideas worth reading. Obviously for most of humanity’s time people couldn’t read and texts couldn’t be publishe...

The bookshelves of British literature are incredible collections that have gathered together centuries of very talented authors. From these Isles their fame spread and whilst among their number many are now forgotten or neglected their talents endure. Among them is Walter Besant.

An author’s talents may seem obvious and indisputable as they move words and ideas into gathered phrases and stories.But where do these ideas and stories come from? A lonely thought that suddenly gathers form? An inspiration from a Muse? A suggestion from an everyday event?Perhaps in the case of their darker, more malevolent stories, other forces are at work. They help to nourish single words into sentences and paragraphs that ease themselves from the shadows and are sudden...

Ferguson Wright Hume was born in Powick, Worcestershire on the 8th July 1859.When he was three the family emigrated to Dunedin in New Zealand. Here he started his education at the Otago Boys' High School before studying law at the University of Otago. Hume was admitted to the New Zealand bar in 1885.He moved to become a barrister’s clerk to Melbourne and once there also began writing plays. The local theatres were not interested in his works, and it was only after one was s...