A distinguished English feminist, author, essayist, critic and publisher, Virginia Woolf is

regarded to be one of the significant figures of twentieth century modern literature.

Woolf is the author of well known books including Mrs Dalloway(1925), To the
Lighthouse (1927) and Orlando (1928) but her most famous work is the book-length
essay A Room of One’s Own (1929). The daughter of Sir Leslie Stephen, a literary critic
and editor and Julia Stephen, a well connected woman with a sound family background,
Adeline Virginia Stephen was born on 25 January, 1882 in London, England. Both her
parents had previously been married and widowed. They lived together in Kingston with
four children from their previous marriages and four from their marriage to each other.
Unlike the boys who were sent to Cambridge, Woolf and her sisters were mostly
educated at home by their parents under the Victorian influence of their literary circle.
Their education was supplemented by classic books and other English literature from the
vast in house library. The death of Woolf’s mother in 1895 was followed by the death of
her half sister Stella in 1897. The sudden deaths caused the first of several nervous
breakdowns Virginia had in her lifetime. However, she was able to collect herself enough
to attend courses to study Greek, Latin, German and history at the Ladies’ Department
of King’s College London between 1897 and 1901. It was here that Virginia was
introduced to reformers of women’s higher education such as Clara Peter and Lilian
Faithful. In 1904, the death of her father led to Virginia’s most terminal breakdown for
which she was institutionalized. When 22 Hyde Park was sold, Virginia’s siblings bought
a house at 46 Gordon Square in Bloomsbury, which became a significant place in the
history of literature. Here, many literary and artistic friends of Virginia and her siblings
formed the Bloomsbury group. It was a meeting place for scholars writers, artists, critics
to discuss and exchange views.

Woolf began her professional writing career in 1900. Her first novel The Voyage Out was
published in 1915 followed by many more novels and essays of immense literary
significance. On August 10, 1912, Virginia married writer Leonard Woolf. The couple
collaborated to form the Hogarth Press which published the works of Virginia and other
contemporary writers and artists. A severe spell of depression hit Woolf again after she
finished the manuscript of her last novel. On March 28, 1941, Woolf committed suicide
by drowning herself into a river by walking into it wearing an overcoat with pockets filled
with stones. Her body was found on April 18, 1941.

Although his work did not gain much recognition during his lifetime, Henry James now
has a standing amongst the most significant writers of the nineteenth century realism.
The Portrait of a Lady and Daisy Miller are his most widely read and best known works.
Henry’s critique, short stories and novels are heavily influenced by European history and
culture. His interest in Europe’s upper class and their formal traditions is evident in his
writing. Henry’s engaging stories of Americans exploring the prim and proper lifestyle of
the Europeans have gained him immense popularity. James has to his credit 22 novels,
more than a hundred short stories, autobiographical works, several plays and critical
essays. Henry James was born into a wealthy and educated family in New York on April
15, 1843. His father Henry James Sr. was a well known clergyman and a rich intellectual
having connections with some of the most influential and educated people of the time.
Education was of utmost importance to Henry’s family. Henry’s siblings like Henry were
also accomplished individuals in their own rights in life. His brother William James was a
philosopher while his sister Alice James, a diarist. Henry’s broadmindedness came from
his extensive traveling between America and Europe in his younger years. The exposure
he received at this time later reflected in his literary work. Also he was tutored by
different teachers in Geneva, London, Paris, Bologna, and Bonn. At the age of 19 Henry
attended Harvard Law School for a short period of time before quitting to pursue
studying literature. Although Henry wished to be a playwright and spent a large portion
of his literary career writing plays, his plays never gained the success his novels did and
he eventually stopped writing for the theater and even transformed some of his plays
into novels.
Critics and analysts have divided Henry’s work into three phases. The first phase
constitutes of his early work which is direct and simplistic. In the second stage of his
career, Henry James worked mainly on dramatics and short stories moving on to the
third phase where his work comprises of long extensively written novels. Henry James is
well known for his works such as Daisy Miller (1879), a story about a young American girl
who finds it difficult to fit in with the sophistication of European traditions. The Portrait
of a Lady (1881) is also another masterpiece focusing again on an American woman
traveling in Europe. The Bostonians (1886) depicts the rising of feminist movement.
What Maisie Knew (1897) is also about a young girl who makes a choice between her
parents and an old governess. The Wings of Dove (1902) a beautifully written love story
became a noted contribution of Henry James to American literature. However, he
considered The Ambassadors (1903) to be his best work. Another noted novella by
Henry James is The Turn of the Screw which is a ghost story. Some of these Henry
James’s novels have also been adapted to screen. The Wings of the Dove, Washington
Square, and The Portrait of a Lady are some popular movies based on his novels. On
February 28, 1916, Henry James departed this life due to pneumonia and a stroke he
suffered a few months earlier.
Seamus Heaney, a renowned playwright, poet and translator was born on 13th April
1939 in Ireland. His descent from a family that consisted of both the cattle herding
Gaelic parentage and the industrial revolution Ulster background shaped his personality
sparking within him an inner tension that gave birth to the poet in him. He gained his
early education from ‘Anahorish Primary School’, winning a scholarship to St. Columb’s
College at the age of twelve. He studied English Language and Literature from Queen’s
University Belfast. ‘Lupercal’ a poetry work of Ted Hughes (an English poet) inspired him
to start writing poetry himself. During a teachers training program Heaney had a close
acquaintance with Mr. McLaverty who was the school’s headmaster. He introduced
Heaney to poetry works of many famous poets. Heaney’s poetry started being published
in 1962 mostly in local magazines until Philip Hobsbaum, an English Lecturer at Queen’s
University, started taking interest in Heaney’s work. Hobsbaum introduced him to some
influential poets after which his first book ‘Eleven Poems’ was published in 1965. His first
major volume was titled ‘Death of a Naturalist’ was it was published in 1966 by Faber
and Faber, as was most of his work. This volume received immense acclamation winning
several awards including the ‘Gregory Award for Young Writers’ and ‘Geoffrey Faber
Prize’. During this time he taught at Queen’s University Belfast as a lecturer of Modern
English Literature. His second work was published in 1969 and was called ‘Door into the
Dark’. Along with his poetry Seamus Heaney taught at various universities and colleges.
In 1970 he was a guest lecturer at University of California. In 1972 he shifted to Dublin
and taught at Carysfort College. Meanwhile he worked on ‘Wintering Out’ that got
published in 1972 and ‘North’ which was his fourth volume got published in 1975. He
took the post of visiting Professor at Harvard University in 1981. He became member of
the permanent faculty in Harvard as Professor of Rhetoric and Oratory in 1985; a post he
remained at till 1997. He was also a ‘Poet in Residence’ at Harvard from 1998 to 2006.
Along with this position he was elected as the ‘Professor of Poetry’ at Oxford in 1989 till
1994.
Heaney’s poems include ‘Stations’ (1975), ‘Field Work’ (1979), ‘Station Island’ (1984),
‘The Haw Lantern’ (1987), ‘Seeing Things’ (1991), ‘The Spirit Level’ (1996), ‘Electric Light’
(2001), ‘District and Circle’ (2006) and ‘Human Chain’ (2010) which was his twelfth
collection. His main collections (Prose) are ‘Preoccupations: Selected Prose (1980), ‘The
Government of the Tongue’ (1988), ‘The Redress of Poetry: Oxford Lectures’ (1995) and
‘Finders Keepers’ (2002). Seamus Heaney is one of the most recognized and appreciated
Irish writers of all time. He has received many honorary doctorates and awards. He was
given the ‘Whitbread Book of the Year Award’ for his 1996 offering ‘The Spirit Level’.
‘District and Circle’ won the ‘T.S Eliot Prize’ in 2006 and ‘Human Chain’ received the
‘Forward Prize for The Best Collection’. ‘The Observer’ titled him as ‘Britain’s top 300
intellectuals’ in 2011. Heaney’s work makes up two thirds of the book sales of living
poets. He was awarded the Nobel Prize in 1995 for, as worded by the Nobel Committee
‘works of lyrical beauty and ethical depth, which exalt everyday miracles and the living
past’.
Edward Morgan Forster was the only child of Edward Morgan Llewellyn Forster who was
an architect by profession and Alice Clara Lily. He was born in January 1879 in London.
Both his parents died in his childhood leaving him with a legacy of 8000 Pounds. This
money helped him in his livelihood and enabled him to follow his ambition of becoming
a writer. His schooling was done at Tonbridge School in Kent where the theater got
named after him. He attended Cambridge University where his intellect was well
groomed and he was exposed to the Mediterranean culture which was much freer in
comparison to the more unbending English way of life. After graduating he started his
career as a writer; his novels being about the varying social circumstances of that time.
In his first novel ‘Where Angels Fear to Tread’, which was published in 1905, he showed
his concern that people needed to stay in close contact with their roots. The same
pattern of theme was followed in ‘The Longest Journey’ (1907) and ‘Howards End’
(1910) which is a motivating story about two sisters Margaret and Helen who live in a
house called Howards End. Margaret marries Henry Wilcox, a businessman and brings
him back to Howards End. Howards End was the first successful novel by Forster. He also
wrote a comic novel named ‘A Room with a View’ in 1908. This was the most optimistic
of all his novels and was also made into a film in 1985. In 1911 Forster also published
several short stories with a rustic and unpredictable writing tone. These include ‘The
Celestial Omnibus’ and ‘The Eternal Moment’. During 1912 and 1913 he traveled to India
with his close friend Syed Ross Masood. His novel ‘Maurice’ was written in 1913; its
subject matter revolved around a homosexual theme as he himself was a non declared
homosexual. However this book was published after his death nearly sixty years after he
wrote it. Many of his books had a similar theme but this one did raise suspicions as his
sexuality was not open to the public. Forster visited India again in the early 1920s where
he was the private secretary to Tukojirao III, the Maharajah of Dewas. In his novel ‘The
Hill of Devi’ he tells a non-fictional version of his trip. His book ‘A Passage to India’ was
published in 1924 receiving great appreciation. Forster was also awarded the ‘James Tait
Black Memorial Prize’ following this successful novel.
Apart from homosexuality, another notable factor in Forster’s writing is symbolism as a
technique and mysticism. In his book ‘Howards End’ there is a certain tree and in ‘A
Passage to India’ the characters have this ability to connect to unknown people. He also
wrote for many magazines like ‘The Athenaeum’. He was against filming books. In his
opinion a film or stage performance did not do justice to a literary piece of work. Despite
that many of his works were adapted to films which were highly praised. In 1946 Forster
was voted as an honorary ‘Fellow’ of King’s College. He was presented knighthood in
1949; an offer he declined. He was made a ‘Companion of Honor’ in 1953 and in 1969 a
member of the ‘Order of Merit’. Forster continued to write till his death on 7th June
1970 due to a stroke.
The Irish legend, George Bernard Shaw was a dramatist and a literary critic in addition to
being a socialist spokesman. His valuable contributions to literature won him the Nobel
Prize for literature in 1925. While Shaw accepted the honor, he refused the money.
George Bernard Shaw was a free spirit and a freethinker who advocated women’s rights
and equality on income. George Bernard Shaw was born in Dublin on July 26, 1856. His
father, George Carr Shaw was in the wholesale grain trading business and his mother,
Lucinda Elisabeth Shaw was the daughter of an impoverished landowner. A young
George led a distressed childhood. His alcoholic father remained drunk most of the time.
It was due to this that Shaw abstained from alcohol throughout his lifetime. During the
course of schooling Shaw attended Wesleyan Connexional School, Dublin’s Central
Model School and Dublin English Scientific and Commercial Day School where he ended
his education. He first began working as a junior clerk at the age of 15. In 1876, Shaw
went to live with his mother and sister in London. He did not return to Ireland for almost
30 years. Shaw turned to literature and began his career by writing theatre, criticism,
music and novels one of which was the semi-autobiographical, Immaturity. However, his
early efforts gained neither recognition nor success. From 1885 to 1911, Shaw served on
the executive committee of the Fabian Society, a middle class socialist group. 1895
onwards, Shaw’s work began appearing in significant publications. He wrote drama
criticism for the Saturday Review. These pieces were later compiled in the collection Our
Theatres In The Nineties published in 1932. In addition to being a drama critic, George
Bernard Shaw also wrote criticism on music, drama and art in various publications such
as Dramatic Review (1885-1886), Our Corner (1885-1886), The Pall Mall Gazette (1885-
1888), The World (1886-1894), and The Star (1888-1890). His criticism on music has
been compiled in a number of collections such as Shaw’s Music appearing in 1981, The
Perfect Wagnerite (1898) and Caesar And Cleopatra published in 1901.

George Bernard Shaw married Charlotte Payne-Townshend in 1898. Charlotte was a

wealthy woman from an upper class background. The couple settled in Hertfordshire
village of Ayot St. Lawrence in 1906. Although Shaw was occasionally linked with other
women, he remained with Charlotte until her death. One of Shaw’s known linkage to
other women include a series of passionate correspondences with the widowed actress
Mrs. Patrick Campbell. Most of Shaw’s early plays described the problems of capitalism
and explored existing moral and social problems. One of these plays is the Widower’s
Houses (1892). Unfortunately, these early efforts were not very well received. Some later
following works such as Candida and John Bull’s Other Island (1904) and Major Barbara
proved to be in better interest of Shaw. His much famous work, Pygmalion was originally
written for Mrs. Patrick Campbell. Pygmalion was later adapted into two films and a
musical. In 1914, Shaw’s popularity declined significantly when he wrote the essay
Common Sense about The War which was considered unpatriotic. However, he was
accepted once again with the publication of Saint Joan in 1924. An author to more than
50 plays, George Bernard Shaw died on November 2, 1950 in Ayot St. Lawrence,
Hertfordshire.
Julian Barnes, one of the greatest contemporary English writers was born on January 19,
1946 in Leicester, England. Six week after birth, his family moved to outer suburbs of
London where he studied at the City of London School (1957 to 1964). Then at
Magdalen College (Oxford), he graduated in modern languages with honors in 1968.
After completing his graduation he got hired as a lexicographer at Oxford English
Dictionary for their supplement and worked with them for three years. Later on, he
worked as reviewer and also as a literary editor for British political magazine, “The New
Statesman” and the “New Review”. He then began working as a television critic with
“The New Statesman” as well as with newspaper “The Observer”. Barnes has been very
a creative and challenging writer. He wrote his first novel “Metroland” for which he won
Somerset Award in 1981. Barnes’s breakthrough novel Flaubert’s Parrot won him two
exclusive awards Geoffrey Memorial Prize (1985) and Prix Médicis (1986). He has been
the name behind some very fine contributions to European literature for which he has
earned numerous awards. He also translated a French book by author Alphonse Daudet
as well as Volker Kriegel’s collection of German cartoons. From 1986 to 1988 he won E.
M. Forster Award (American Academy and Institute of Arts and Letters), Gutenberg Prize,
Grinzane Prize (Italy) each year respectively. He has been made Chevalier de l’Ordre des
Arts et des Lettres in 1988, Officier de l’Ordre des Arts et des Lettres in 1995 and
Commandeur de l’Ordre des Arts et des Lettres in 2004 by the French Minister of
Culture. In 1991 he published “Talking It Over” which earned him Prix Femina in 1992
making him the only English writer who has won two awards in France. In addition to
the above, he won the Shakespeare Prize from FVS Foundation in 1993 and the Austrian
State Prize (European Literature) in 2004. Then in 2011 he got the David Cohen Prize for
his services to literature. Along with all the above mentioned work, Barnes earned the
reputation of a very fine crime fiction writer with the pen name “Dan Kavanagh”. He
wrote four crime novels titled as: Duffy -1980; Fiddle City-1981; Putting the Boot In
(1985); Going to the Dogs -1987. All four novels were well received by the crime fiction
lovers.
Julian Barnes’s latest successful novel, “The Sense of an Ending” finally made won him
“Man Booker Prize” in 2011 after being shortlisted for his three renowned novels in
previous years (Flaubert’s Parrot 1984, England, England 1998, and Arthur & George
2005). His other well know works include “Staring at the Sun”, “A History of the World in
10½ Chapters” and “Cross Channel” to name a few.

Julian Barnes had the family who were highly dedicated to literature services. Both his
parents were French teachers. His elder brother Jonathan Barnes is a philosopher
specializing in ancient philosophy. His wife Pat Kavanagh was a British literary agent until
her death on 20 October 2008. Barnes now lives in London. The author has earned
himself extensive fame and respect because of the nature of his writing dealing with
history, truth and love.
Aldous Huxley was an English literary author who is renowned for his novel, Brave New
World, which was published in 1931. Apart from writing novels, he also wrote a few
travel books, poems, plays and several essays on religion, art and sociology. He was born
in Godalming on 26th July, 1894 in an upper scale family. He came from a literary
background, his father also being a biographer, editor and poet. Huxley was educated at
Eton College in Berkshire from 1908-1913. When he was just fourteen years old, his
mother died. During his teenage years, he also suffered from an attack of Keratitis
Punctata and thus became blind for about eighteen months, but then by wearing some
special kind of glasses, he was able to recover his eye-sight a little and at least read, but
consequently also learned Braille. Even though he had frequent conditions of near
blindness, Huxley went on relentlessly with his studies at Balliol College in Oxford, where
he received his B.A in English. He was confused whether to pursue his career as a
scientist or take part in the World War. Since, he was unable to decide, he took up
writing.

He wrote several poems, which appeared in 1916 and the second volume, which
appeared in 1920. Huxley’s novel, Crome Yellow came in 1921, which blended criticism,
dialogue, wit and satire and also established Huxley as one of the most important
literary authors of the decade. Within a period of 8 years, Huxley had written several
books. Amongst these novels, the most notable ones are Point Counter Point published
in 1928 and Do What You Will published in 1929.

During the year of 1920, Huxley also developed a very strong association with D.H.
Lawrence, and he also traveled to Italy and France with him. He stayed in Italy for a
couple of years until 1930 when he moved to Sanary, which also inspired him to write his
novel, Brave New World, a take on the dark aspects of technology flourishing in society.
Huxley also developed a keen interest in the Peace Pledge Union around that time. Later
in 1937, Huxley traveled to the U.S.A with the belief that the Californian climate would
aid in improving his eye-sight, which was being a major burden. This also proved to be
the turning point in his life, because Huxley gave up on writing fiction and chose essays
as the tool for expressing his ideas.
David Herbet Lawrence was a poet, short story writer and novelist, born in Nottingham
in 1885. He was best known for being a novelist. Lawrence published his initial works in
1909, which included a collection of poems, many of them were representations of
nature and have since then become immensely famous and widely read, and have also
influenced a lot of the contemporary poets. His primary collections have a lot of
inspiration drawn from the Imagist and the Ezra Pound movement, which later reached
its maximum in the 20th century. Even though Pound endeavoured to make Lawrence a
part of his writer-followers, Lawrence on the other hand wanted to seek a more
autonomous path. Lawrence wrote poetry that had profound and elusive themes, and
were also very true to the forces, which inspired it. The most renowned of his works deal
with the physical and inner life of living things such as animals and plants. Some of them
have a bitter and satirical tone, which show his fury at the pretence and Puritanism of
the typical Anglo-Saxon society. He was also a rebellious writer, harbouring radical
perceptions, who considered sex to be the most rudimentary subconscious and also
regarded nature to cure the evils of the advanced industrialized society. His work was
extremely creative, although the quality would be a little irregular and he was also very
controversial, continuously engaged in censorship cases, which received a great amount
of publicity, particularly for his novel, Lady Chatterley’s Lover, which was published in
1928. He has a vast collection of poetry to his credit, which includes the likes of Look!
We Have Come Through which was published in 1917, and also poems about his wife –
Birds, Beasts and Flowers published in 1923 and Pansies in 1929, which was banned at
the time of publication in England.

Other than his perpetual trouble with the censors, Lawrence was maltreated even
during the time of World War 1 due to the supposed pro-German sympathies of his wife,
Frieda. Consequently, he left England and then traveled relentlessly across Germany,
Italy, Australia, Ceylon, Tahiti, New Zealand, Mexico, The French Riviera and the United
States, fruitlessly in the search of a new homeland. While he was in Taos, New Mexico,
he became the fascination of a group of females, who began to consider themselves as
his disciples and vied to get his attention, which became a major literary legend.
Lawrence suffered from tuberculosis all his life and finally succumbed to the disease at
the age of 44 in France.
James Joyce is undoubtedly the most influential writer of the early 20th Century. A
master of the stream of consciousness technique, Joyce’s career defining work was the
Ulysses (1922), a modern version of Homer’s Odyssey with three main characters similar
to the ones in Odyssey. Ulysses has gained the reputation of being amongst the finest
novels ever written. Belonging to a big family, James Augustine Aloysius Joyce was born
in Dublin, Ireland on February 2, 1882. He was the eldest son of John Stanislaus Joyce
and Marry Murray Joyce who had 9 more children. His father was a singer whose
disinterest and drinking led the Joyces to live in tight financial conditions. An exceptional
child, James was very fond of writing and exploring literature. Not wanting to waste his
talents, Joyce’s family encouraged him to get an education. He attended the Irish schools
of Clogowes Wood College and Belvedere College moving on to earning a Bachelor of
Arts degree majoring in modern languages from the Royal University in Dublin. Joyce
moved to Paris in 1902 where he pursued journalism and teaching. However, he
returned to Dublin a year later upon receiving a telegram informing him of his mother’s
critical condition but left again after her death, this time with Nora Barnacle, who would
later become his wife. They settled in Trieste, Italy. He made a living by teaching English,
one of the 17 languages he spoke.

Joyce’s first book entitled Dubliners (1914) was a collection of 15 short stories. Portrait
of the Artist as a Young Man, his second publication two years later was a novel.
Although the books did not gain much recognition, they were noticed by American poet,
Ezra Pound who acknowledged the author’s avant-garde style. Joyce started developing
the foundation of his masterpiece Ulysses in the onset of World War I when he moved to
Zürich with his family. The book was first published in France and was banned in the US
and UK due to censorship rules where it became legally available in 1933 after much
struggle and debate which only added to the hype of the book.

The publication of Ulysses ended the struggling days of Joyce and he moved to Paris with
his family. In 1923 Joyce started work on his next famous work, Finnegans Wake. It was
during this time that Joyce developed an eye condition due to glaucoma that would
cause him to go near blind for some years. The first part of the novel was published in
Madox Ford’s transatlantic review in April 1924 and was referred to as Work in Progress.
The second and final part appeared in 1939. While some people called it a masterpiece,
others criticized it for being a very difficult read. However, the book became popular and
earned the title of book of the week both in the US and UK. Joyce spent the last days of
his life in Zürich where he moved after the collapse of France in World War II. He died on
January 13, 1941. Today, the contribution of James Joyce to literature is celebrated every
year on June 16 in Dublin where a statue of Joyce also stands on North Earl Street. The
library at the University College in Dublin is also named after James Joyce.

Famous for writing nautical novels, Joseph Conrad, the Polish born English novelist is
considered to be an asset to English literature. Although some of his works fall in the
romanticism category of literature, he is widely known to be a modernist. His intense
writing style and accounts of actual and fictional adventures of dangerous, exotic places
earned him the reputation of being a remarkable storyteller.
Joseph Conrad was born on December 3, 1857 in Berdichev, Ukraine. His father, Apollo
Korzeniowski was an aristocrat, a poet and a literature lover. As a child, Joseph read
Polish and French versions of English novels. Joseph was sent to live with his uncle,
Tadeusz Bobrowski in Switzerland when both his parents had died by 1869 from
tuberculosis. Bobrowski left Conrad a huge sum of £1,600 when he died in 1894. Conrad
gained his initial education in Kraków and later went out to the sea by joining the French
merchant marine as an apprentice in the 1870s making three memorable voyages to
West Indies during 1875 and 1878. He remained in the British Merchant Navy for 16
years earning the rank of first mate and eventually commanding his own ship after
obtaining the master mariner’s certificate in 1886. He was also given a British nationality
in the same year.

Before settling down in Kent Count, England to pursue his literary career, Conrad had
sailed to many places around the world including various ports of Indian Ocean, South
America, Australia, Borneo, Gulf of Siam, South Pacific Island and the Malay States. His
trip to Africa through the Congo River became and inspiration and a rich source of
information for his famed novel, Heart of Darkness. The East Indies in particular
attracted Conrad greatly, becoming the backdrop for many of his works.

His first novel, Almayer’s Folly was published in 1895 followed by a number of noted
works for instance An Outcast of the Islands (1896), The Nigger of the ‘Narcissus’ (1897),
Tales of Unrest (1898), Lord Jim (1900), collaborations with Ford Madox Ford The
Inheritors (1901) and Romance (1903), Youth (1902), The End of the Tether (1902),
Typhoon (1903), Nostromo (1904), The Mirror of the Sea (1906, semi-autobiographical),
The Secret Agent (1907), A Set of Six (1908), and Under Western Eyes (1911).

Chance (1914) proved to be a turning point for Conrad before which he was faced with
financial difficulties despite receiving a pension and being a published author. He moved
to his house named Oswalds in Bishopsbourne, Canterbury. Conrad was offered
Knighthood in 1924 and honorary degrees from five universities, both of which he
declined. Continuing to write, Conrad published several more books including The Arrow
of Gold (1914), Victory (1915), The Shadow-Line (1917), The Rescue (1920), and The
Rover (1923). Many of Conrad’s books were adapted to screen of which some
distinguished ones are The Sabotage (1936) based on The Secret Agent, Lord Jim (1964)
and Apocalypse Now (1979) based on Heart of Darkness Conrad married an English
woman, Jessie Gorge in 1896 and had two sons, Borys and John. A heart attack became
the reason for Joseph Conrad’s death on August 3, 1924. He rests beside his wife in the
Westgate Court Avenue public cemetery in Canterbury, England.
Kazuo Ishiguro is a British author who was born in Nagasaki, Japan on 8th November
1954. He migrated to England with his family so his father, who was an oceanographer,
could work with the National Institute of Oceanography. He went to ‘Stoughton Primary
School’ and the ‘Woking County Grammar School’ in Surrey, England. During the gap
year that he took after school, Ishiguro wrote a journal and sent its tapes to various
record companies. In 1974, he enrolled in the University of Kent in Canterbury and
attained a degree of Bachelor of Arts with two majors; English and Philosophy. After his
graduation, Ishiguro started working on fiction novels for almost a year after which he
entered the University of East Anglia in 1980 for a master’s program in Creative writing.

Ishiguro’s novels are mainly historical in nature. ‘The Remains of the Day’ his novel
published in 1989 is set in a house of a wealthy man, a lord, and the incidents that take
place are immediately after the end of World War I. Similarly ‘Artist of the Floating
World’ is set in Nagasaki and shows the post war time period. This novel is written from
personal experience as Kazuo Ishiguro was born there. The dates mentioned in his
novels are correct and the atmosphere presented is very accurate. He writes in the first
person viewpoint and portrays the narrator to be human complete with flaws. For
example in his novel the ‘The Remains of the Day’ the character Stevens who is a butler
is caught up between his call of duty and a romantic allure of the housekeeper Miss
Kenton. Ishiguro leaves his reader with an unresolved end. His characters accept who
they are bringing an end to their mental torment.

Although Ishiguro was born in Japan and has a Japanese name, he left Japan when he
was only five and returned almost thirty years later in 1989, that also as a member of
the ‘Japan Foundation Short Term Visitors’ program. The setting of his first two novels
was in Japan however he bears no resemblance to the Japanese style of writing fiction.
Some of his novels include ‘The Unconsoled’ (1995), ‘When we were Orphans’ (2000)
and ‘Never Let Me Go’ (2005). His novels ‘The Remains of the Day’ and ‘Never Let Me
Go’ were adapted into films in 1993 and 2010 respectively. His short story collection
called ‘Noctures: Five Stories of Music and Nightfall’ was published in 2009. It also got a
nomination for the James Tait Back Memorial Prize. Ishiguro has also written screenplays
for ‘A Profile of Arthur J. Mason’ which aired in 1984 and ‘The Gourmet’ in 1986. He has
received immense appreciation with his work being translated in over thirty languages
and has been given many awards. Ishiguro is also a ‘Fellow of the Royal Society of
Literature’.

Kazuo Ishiguro is known as one of the greatest British authors. He has received 4 ‘Man
Booker Prize’ nominations. He has also won a prize for his novel ‘The Remains of the
Day’ in 1989. He was also ranked on number 32 on ‘The 50 greatest British writers since
1945’ by The Times. Ishiguro married Lorna MacDougal in 1986. They currently live in
London with their daughter Naomi.