Encyclopedia of Literature: William Hart-Smith Biography to Sir John [Frederick William] Herschel Biography

Literature Reference: American Literature, English Literature, Classics & Modern Fiction

Gwen Harwood (Gwendoline Nessie Harwood Biography - (1920–95), (Gwendoline Nessie Harwood, Poems, Poems: Volume Two, Selected Poems, Collected Poems

Australian poet, born in Brisbane. She studied music, which she later taught; her works include a number of librettos for contemporary Australian composers. Her first collection, Poems (1963), deals with themes of physical and emotional anguish, and includes the series of poems featuring ?Professor Eisenbart?, an ageing nuclear physicist who is, to some extent, perhaps, an ironic projection of her…

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Lee Harwood (Lee Travers Rafe Harwood) Biography - (1939– ), (Lee Travers Rafe Harwood), The White Room, H.M.S. Little Fox

British poet, born in Leicester, educated at Queen Mary College, University of London. He has worked as a librarian, bookseller, and post office worker and has lectured periodically at New College, San Francisco, since 1985. The White Room (1968) was his first substantial collection of poetry. Subsequent volumes include H.M.S. Little Fox (1975), All the Wrong Notes (1981), Monster Masks (1985), Ro…

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Ronald Harwood Biography - (1934– ), Country Matters, The Ordeal of Gilbert Pinfold, A Family, The Dresser, Tramway Road, Interpreters

South African playwright and novelist, born and educated in Cape Town; he trained for the stage at the Royal Academy of Dramatic Art, London. A prolific playwright, his first plays, Country Matters (1969, an adaptation of Evelyn Waugh's The Ordeal of Gilbert Pinfold (1977)%thin;) and A Family (1978), were followed by his best-known play, The Dresser (1980), a picture of life behind the scenes with…

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Nicholas Hasluck Biography - (1942– ), Quarantine, The Blue Guitar, The Hand that Feeds You, The Bellarmine Jug, Truant State

Australian poet and novelist, born in Canberra, educated at the University of Western Australia. His first novel, Quarantine (1978), was followed by The Blue Guitar (1980), which deals with moral confusion in the world of commerce. The Hand that Feeds You (1982) is a political satire about a future corrupt republican Australia to which an innocent expatriate writer returns and gets elected to Parl…

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Robert Hass Biography - (1941– ), Field Guide, Praise, Twentieth Century Pleasures: Prose on Poetry, Human Wishes, The Essential Haiku

American poet and editor, born in San Francisco, educated at St Mary's College, San Francisco and Stanford University. Hass is one of a group of younger American poets whose work came to critical attention in the early 1970s and who mark an important shift in poetic sensibility away from the confessional and post-confessional lyric mode that dominated American poetry in the 1950s and 1960s, and fr…

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Christopher Hassall (Christopher Vernon Hassall) Biography - (1912–63), (Christopher Vernon Hassall), Glamorous Night, Crisis, S.O.S.—Ludlow

British poet, librettist, and biographer, born in London, educated at Wadham College, Oxford; he subsequently became an actor. He produced highly accomplished lyrics for Ivor Novello's compositions, and gained financial success with their first musical, Glamorous Night (1939). His reputation as a poet increased with three sonnet sequences (Crisis, 1939; S.O.S.?Ludlow, 1940; and The Slow Night, 194…

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Michael Hastings (Michael Gerald Hastings) Biography - (1938– ), (Michael Gerald Hastings), Tom and Viv, Three Plays, Gloo Joo, For the West (Uganda)

British playwright and novelist, born in Lambeth, London, and brought up in Brixton; he was educated at Alleyn's School. He subsequently trained as an actor and writer at the Royal Court Theatre in London where many of his plays were produced. His interest in the dramatic presentation of biography is best displayed in Tom and Viv (1984), a haunting study of T. S. Eliot's marriage to his first wife…

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Epeli Hau'ofs Biography - (1939– ), Tales of the Tikongs, Kisses in the Nederends, Our Crowded Islands

Papua New Guinean novelist and short-story writer, born in Salamo, Papua New Guinea, educated at the University of New South Wales, McGill University, Montreal, and the Australian National University, Canberra. Following a succession of university appointments and a period as the deputy private secretary to the King of Tonga, he became Professor of Sociology at the University of the South Pacific,…

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Jacquetta Hawkes Biography - (1910–96), A Land, Archaeology of Jersey, Early Britain

English archaeologist and novelist, born in Cambridge, educated at Newnham College, Cambridge. She worked for UNESCO during 1943?8 and 1964?79. She was particularly well known for her popular books on archaeological topics. Notable among these is A Land (1951, with colour plates by Henry Moore), which she described as ?the story of the creation of what is at present Britain?; other works in this v…

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John Hawkes (John Clendennin Burne, Jr Hawkes) Biography - (1925–98), (John Clendennin Burne, Jr Hawkes), The Cannibal, The Beetle Leg, The Lime Twig

American novelist, born in Connecticut, educated at Harvard; he spent his formative years in Alaska. His experience as an ambulance driver in Italy and Germany during the Second World War was to mark his early fiction, including the novel The Cannibal (1949), which was viewed by many critics as an allegory of German fascism. Hawkes is often compared to the masters of avant-garde and post- modernis…

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Hawksmoor

a novel by Peter Ackroyd, published in 1985. The double narrative of this combination of suspense, horror, and social history unfolds in the early eighteenth century and in the present day. The chapters set in the skilfully evoked London of the past are narrated by an architect named Nicholas Dyer, whose mastery of his craft is accompanied by a fervent belief in the esoteric and the supernatural. …

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Robert Hayden Biography - (1913–80), The Armistad, Heart-Shape in the Dust, Figures of Time: Poems

African-American poet, born in Detroit, educated at Wayne State University and the University of Michigan; he taught English at Fisk University before returning to the University of Michigan in 1968. In 1976 Hayden became the first African-American to be appointed Consultant in Poetry to the Library of Congress. He worked as a researcher for the Federal Writers Project of the Works Progress Admini…

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Shirley Hazzard Biography - (1931– ), New Yorker, Cliffs of Fall and Other Stories

Australian writer, born and educated in Sydney. Since leaving Australia at the age of 16 she has travelled to Hong Kong, New Zealand, Europe, and America. She married Francis Steegmuller, became an American citizen, and divides her time between the USA and Italy. In 1976 she wrote an influential account of Australia for the New Yorker, for which she had also written short stories, later collected …

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Bessie Head Biography - (1937–86), Drum, When the Clouds Gather, Maru, A Question of Power

South African novelist, born in Pietermaritzburg, and educated at a mission school. She worked as a teacher, and as a journalist for Drum magazine in South Africa, before she moved to Botswana due to political pressures associated with the trial of a friend. The pain of exile and alienation permeates her first three novels, all set in Botswana. They are also infused with the tensions between rural…

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Seamus Heaney (Seamus Justin Heaney) Biography - (1939– ), (Seamus Justin Heaney), Death of a Naturalist, Door into the Dark, Wintering Out, North, Stations

Irish poet and critic, born in Castledawson, Co. Derry, educated at Queen's University, Belfast, where he began lecturing in 1966. During the early 1960s he was part of the Belfast writers' group run by Philip Hobsbaum and was closely associated with the emergence of Ulster poetry. He moved to Glanmore in Country Wicklow in 1972 to devote himself to writing. Following a succession of visiting appo…

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John Hearne Biography - (1926–95), Voices Under the Window, Stranger at the Gate, The Faces of Love, The Autumn Equinox

Jamaican novelist, born in Montreal, Canada, but brought up in Jamaica; educated at Jamaica College and the University of Edinburgh. He has been a teacher and journalist, and a researcher working for Prime Minister Michael Manley of Jamaica. Conservative in outlook, his novels are notable for their depiction of the Jamaican professional classes, and antagonisms based on racial and class difference…

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Heartbreak House

a play by G. B. Shaw, published in 1919 and performed in 1920, though it was probably written in 1916?17, largely in response to the Great War, an event addressed in an unwontedly sombre preface. The plot to this ?fantasia in the Russian manner on English themes? is given a semblance of unity through the character Ellie Dunn, daughter of the idealistic Mazzini Dunn. She is invited to the household…

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Heart of Darkness - Blackwood's Magazine, Nellie, Congo Diary, Heart of Darkness, Apocalypse Now

a novel by Joseph Conrad, published in 1902 together with ?Youth? and ?The End of the Tether? (serialized in Blackwood's Magazine, 1899). The framing narrative is set on board the Nellie, on the lower reaches of the Thames, where Charlie Marlow is relating an episode from his earlier life to professional companions, a Director of Companies, an Accountant, a Lawyer, and the anonymous narrator who o…

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Heart of the Matter, The - Heart of Darkness, The Heart of the Matter, A Bishop among the Bantus

a novel by Graham Greene, published in 1948, set in West Africa, where Greene worked for British Intelligence during the Second World War. Greene's title echoes Joseph Conrad's Heart of Darkness, though his novel shows Africa not as a dark continent so much as one suffused with the greyness he sees as universally part of human nature. Its stale, sticky background of vultures, rats, and cockroaches…

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Heat and Dust - Heat and Dust

a novel by Ruth Prawer Jhabvala, published in 1975, and winner of the Booker Prize. It tells the interlocked stories of two Englishwomen, divided by time and era, but related by family ties and by their experience of India. An unnamed narrator?whose diary part of the novel purports to be?travels to India in search of the elusive Olivia, her grandfather's first wife (whose life is revealed in fragm…

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Roy Heath Biography - (1926– ), A Man Came Home, The Murderer, From the Heat of the Day, One Generation, Genetha

Guyanese novelist, born in British Guiana where he attended Central High School, and worked as a civil servant, before emigrating to England in 1950. Although he was called to the English Bar in 1964 Heath never practised law, but worked as a schoolteacher in London. His first novel, A Man Came Home (1974), is concerned with the day-to-day activities of the urban, middle-class Guyanese who form th…

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John Heath-Stubbs (John Francis Alexander Heath-Stubbs) Biography - (1918–2006), (John Francis Alexander Heath-Stubbs), Wounded Thammuz, The Charity of the Stars

British poet, born in London, educated at Worcester College for the Blind and at Queen's College, Oxford, where he formed a close friendship with Sidney Keyes. He has held a succession of visiting posts at universities in Britain and overseas. Wounded Thammuz (1942), his first collection of verse, was followed by numerous volumes, which include The Charity of the Stars (1949), The Watchman's Flute…

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Heat of the Day, The

a novel by E. Bowen, set in wartime London between 1942 and 1944, published in 1949. Stella Rodney, an attractive widow in her forties, is having a passionate wartime affair with Robert Kelway, who works at the War Office. Stella is approached by the sinister Harrison, a secret agent of sorts, who has come into his own in this ?crooks' war?. He tells her that Robert is a spy, selling secrets to th…

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Anthony Hecht (Anthony Evan Hecht) Biography - (1923–2004), (Anthony Evan Hecht), A Summoning of Stones, The Seven Deadly Sins, A Bestiary

American poet, born in New York, educated at Bard College and Columbia University. Having held a succession of posts at various American universities, including Kenyon College, where he worked with John Crowe Ransom, he became Professor of Poetry and Rhetoric at Rochester University in 1967. His early collections of poetry, which display his considerable accomplishment in traditional verse forms, …

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Ben Hecht Biography - (1894–1964), Chicago Literary Times, fin de siècle, The Front Page, Twentieth Century, His Girl Friday

American novelist and dramatist, born in New York and brought up in Wisconsin. Hecht eventually settled into a bohemian orthodoxy in the literary world of Chicago after the First World War where he edited the Chicago Literary Times (1923?4), a little magazine that espoused a fin de si?cle aestheticism in a spirit of modernist iconoclasm. He wrote numerous plays of which the best known are two grit…

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Robert A. Heinlein (Robert Anson Heinlein) Biography - (1907–88), (Robert Anson Heinlein), The Past through Tomorrow, Stranger in a Strange Land, Starship Troopers

American writer, born in Missouri, educated at the University of Missouri and at Annapolis. After naval service was brought to an end by illness, he began writing science fiction; within a few years of publishing his first story in 1939 he became widely known, and for fifty years his work dominated American science fiction. His many novels and stories generally featured a series of ?Competent Men?…

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Lyn Hejinian Biography - (1941– ), Poetics Journal, Writing Is an Aid to Memory, My Life

American poet, born in San Francisco. She taught herself letterpress printing and edited the Tuumba series of chapbooks in which many of the Language poets appeared. Since then she has been an editor of Poetics Journal with Barrett Watten. She is best known for her longer book-length works, Writing Is an Aid to Memory (1978), My Life (1980/1987), Oxota: A Short Russian Novel (1991), and The Cell (…

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Joseph Heller Biography - (1923–99), Time, Look, Catch-22, Something Happened, Good as Gold, God Knows, No Laughing Matter

American novelist, born in Brooklyn, educated at New York, Columbia, and Oxford Universities. Heller published short stor?es, becoming a full-time writer in 1961 after having worked for Time and Look magazines. His experiences in the US Army Air Force during the Second World War led to his first novel and major success with Catch-22 (1961), which depicted the absurdity and chaos of warfare through…

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Lillian Hellman Biography - (1905?–84), The Children's House, Days To Come, The Little Foxes, petit bourgeois

American playwright and memoirist, born in New Orleans, Louisiana, educated at the Universities of New York and Columbia. Her first play, The Children's House (1934), written under the tutelage of her companion Dashiell Hammett, was the sensitive account of two teachers accused by a malicious student of concealing a lesbian relationship; the play had allusions to the misuse of power which acquired…

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David Helwig Biography - (1938– ), Atlantic Crossings, A Book of the Hours, The Sign of the Gunman

Canadian writer, born in Toronto, educated at the Universities of Toronto and Liverpool. Helwig first attracted attention as a poet whose work moved between domestic themes and a concern with violent, anti-social behaviour. His long poem Atlantic Crossings (1974) offers an individual perspective on Canadian history through an examination of four archetypal journeys to the Americas. A Book of the H…

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Ernest Hemingway (Ernest Miller Hemingway) Biography - (1899–1961), (Ernest Miller Hemingway), Star, Star's, Three Stories and Ten Poems, In Our Time

American novelist and short-story writer, born in Oak Park, Illinois. Whilst refusing to become a doctor like his father, Hemingway nevertheless took to his father's love of outdoor pursuits. After an education in various public schools, he began work as a reporter on the Kansas City Star, where he received a valuable vocational training. He volunteered as an ambulance driver in the First World Wa…

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Henderson the Rain King

a novel by Saul Bellow, published in 1959. The novel opens with Eugene Henderson, a New England millionaire playboy in a state of torment despite his prosperous background, explaining the abandonment of his fortune due to his embroilment in social, domestic, and personal problems. The novel depicts a desperate hero in a world where the dissolution of the family and other economic factors have enfo…

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A. L. Hendriks (Arthur Lemière Hendriks) Biography - (1922– ), (Arthur Lemière Hendriks), On This Mountain, These Green Islands, The Islanders, The Naked Ghost

Jamaican poet, born in Kingston, Jamaica, educated at Jamaica College and Ottershaw College, Surrey. After working as General Manager of the Jamaica Broadcasting Company he became a television director in London. He became a freelance writer in 1971. His early collections of verse, which include On This Mountain (1965) and These Green Islands (1971), made use of rigorously economical forms to fram…

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J. F. Hendry (James Findlay Hendry) Biography - (1912–86), (James Findlay Hendry), The New Apocalypse, The White Horseman, The Crown and the Sickle

British poet, born in Glasgow, educated at the Universities of Paris and Glasgow. After military service from 1939 to 1946, he worked as a translator and became Professor of Modern Languages at Laurentian University, Ontario, in 1965. He edited The New Apocalypse (1939), an anthology of poetry, stories, and criticism announcing the identically named literary movement, which was sustained by two fu…

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Beth Henley Biography - (1952– ), Crimes of the Heart, The Miss Firecracker Contest, The Wake of Jamey Foster

American dramatist, born in Mississippi, educated at Southern Methodist University and the University of Illinois. Henley achieved instant success with her first full-length play, Crimes of the Heart (1978; Pulitzer Prize), which was first performed by the Actors' Theatre of Louisville, Kentucky; a tale of three distressed sisters in a Mississippi family down on its luck, the play is clearly influ…

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Adrian Henri (Adrian Maurice Henri) Biography - (1932–2000), (Adrian Maurice Henri), Mersey Sound, New Volume, I Want, Eric the Punk Cat, Rhinestone Rhino

British poet and painter, born in Birkenhead. He settled in Liverpool in 1957 where he, Roger McGough, and Brian Patten became prominent as The Liverpool Poets in the 1960s and 1970s. His poetry was influenced at various times by popular and rock music (from 1967 to 1970 he was the leader of the poetry/rock group ?The Liverpool Scene?), American beat culture and jazz, and absurdist and other art a…

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O. Henry, pseudonym of William Sidney Porter Biography - (1862–1910), pseudonym of William Sidney Porter, The Rolling Stone, Cabbages and Kings, The Four Million

American short-story writer, born in Greensboro, North Carolina. Following his mother's death in his early childhood, he was brought up by his grandmother and aunt, before going to Texas at the age of 19. After a series of jobs, he began a newspaper called The Rolling Stone in 1894, which embraced political satire, ethnic humour, and parody of small-town life. The paper collapsed after a year and …

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Xavier Herbert Biography - (1901–84), Capricornia, Seven Emus, Poor Fellow My Country, Soldiers' Women, Larger than Life, Disturbing Element

Australian novelist, born in Port Hedland, Western Australia. After working in a pharmacy and studying medicine in Melbourne he led a varied existence in Australia, the Pacific, and Britain. His novel Capricornia (1938) was a vivid portrait of the Northern Territory; completed in 1932, it was an indictment of white Australians' abuse of land and of the Aboriginal peoples from the 1880s to the 1930…

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Josephine Herbst (Josephine Frey Herbst) Biography - (1897–1969), (Josephine Frey Herbst), Smart Set, The American Mercury, Nothing is Sacred, Money for Love

American novelist, born in Sioux City, Iowa, educated at the University of California at Berkeley. Herbst worked in New York as an editorial reader for the influential literary magazines Smart Set and The American Mercury, and lived for three years in Europe. In 1925 she married the left-wing writer John Herrmann (they were divorced in 1940) and in the early years of the Depression she became an i…

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Joseph Hergesheimer Biography - (1880–1954), The Lay Anthony, The Saturday Evening Post, Java Head, Linda Condon, Cytherea, The Presbyterian Child

American novelist, born in Philadelphia, educated at the Pennsylvania Academy of Fine Arts in Philadelphia. He studied art in Italy before writing his first novel, The Lay Anthony (1914), and between 1915 and 1938 he was a regular contributor to The Saturday Evening Post. His early novels were historical romances, often with an exotic setting as, for example, in Java Head (1919), but later works e…

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Hermeneutics - The Genesis of Secrecy, S/Z

is the study of the art of interpretation, evolved as a separate object of interest through German theology and philosophy towards the end of the nineteenth century. The leading figure in this movement was Wilhelm Dilthey (1833?1911); distinguished later theorists are Paul Ricoeur and Hans Georg Gadamer, and Frank Kermode makes a subtle contribution to the debate in The Genesis of Secrecy (1979). …

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Robert Herrick (Robert Welch Herrick) Biography - (1868–1938), (Robert Welch Herrick), Literary Love Letters and Other Stories, The Gospel of Freedom

American novelist and educator, born in Cambridge, Massachusetts, educated at Harvard. Among several academic posts he was Professor of English at the University of Chicago from 1905 to 1923. He published his first book, Literary Love Letters and Other Stories, in 1897, but it was his third work, The Gospel of Freedom (1898), which revealed Herrick's strengths as a progressive critic of commercial…

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