Encyclopedia of Literature: Honest Ulsterman to Douglas Hyde Biography
Literature Reference: American Literature, English Literature, Classics & Modern Fiction
Hugh Hood Biography - (1928–2000), Around the Mountain, The Fruit Man, the Meat Man and the Manager, Dark Glasses
Canadian novelist and short-story writer, born to English and French-Canadian parents in Toronto, educated at the University of Toronto. He became a professor of English in Connecticut and Montreal. His Catholicism informs his fiction, which habitually investigates issues of conscience and moral dualities. He first achieved recognition for a volume of Montreal sketches, Around the Mountain (1967).…
Jeremy Hooker (Peter Jeremy Hooker) Biography - (1941– ), (Peter Jeremy Hooker), The Elements, Soliloquies of a Chalk Giant, Solent Shore
British poet and critic, born in Warsash, Hampshire, educated at the University of Southampton. The prevailing concern in Hooker's verse with the interactions of man, place, and history was established in The Elements (1972) and Soliloquies of a Chalk Giant (1974), his first two collections of verse. Solent Shore (1978) explored the personal, familial, and communal significances of his native Hamp…
A. D. Hope (Alec Derwent Hope) Biography - (1907–2000), (Alec Derwent Hope), The Wandering Islands, Collected Poems: 1930–1965, Collected Poems: 1930–1970
Australian poet and critic, born in New South Wales, educated at Sydney and Oxford Universities. Indefatigable defender and articulator of the central role of poetry in life, Hope has also directed his erudite wit at individuals, institutions, and values which, he believed, threatened such vital elements. Hope's writing was first collected in The Wandering Islands (1955), by which time he already …
Christopher Hope Biography - (1941– ), A Separate Development, Kruger's Alp, The Hottentot Room, Black Swan, My Chocolate Redeemer
South African novelist and poet, born in Johannesburg, educated at the universities of Witwatersrand and Natal; he moved to London in 1976. Hope's first novel, A Separate Development (1981), which was banned in South Africa, fiercely ridiculed apartheid and satirized fears of miscegenation. It is narrated by the adolescent Harry Moto who, due to a sexual misdemeanour, is forced to disguise himself…
John Hopkins (John Richard Hopkins) Biography - (1931–98), (John Richard Hopkins), Z Cars, Talking to a Stranger, Smiley's People
British dramatist, born in London, educated at Cambridge University. He first came to notice for his work for television, which included no fewer than fifty-three scripts for the police series Z Cars between 1962 and 1965, several ?one-off? plays, and the critically admired tetralogy Talking to a Stranger (1966), which looked at the events of one painful and finally disastrous day from the stance …
Pauline Hopkins Biography - (1859–1930), Colored American Magazine
African-American novelist, short-story writer, and journalist, born in Portland, Maine, educated at the prestigious Girls' High School in Boston. In 1900 Hopkins co-founded the first US black press literary magazine, Colored American Magazine, which serialized three of her novels (Hagar's Daughter: A Story of Southern Caste Prejudice; Winona: A Tale of Negro Life in the South and Southwest; and Of…
Horizon - Criterion, London Mercury, New Verse, Horizon
a literary periodical founded by Cyril Connolly in association with Stephen Spender, who was assistant editor, and Peter Watson, who acted as art editor. Connolly intended it for readers formerly served by the Criterion, the London Mercury and New Verse, all of which had ceased publication in 1939. In the first issue of January 1940 he stated that ?Our standards are aesthetic and our politics are …
Frances Horovitz Biography - (1938–83), Poems, The High Tower, Water Over Stone, Snow Light, Water Light, Wall, Collected Poems
British poet, born in London, educated at the University of Bristol and the Royal Academy of Dramatic Art. In 1964 she married Michael Horovitz. She became a noted reader of poetry on radio and worked widely as a teacher of creative writing. Poems (1967) and The High Tower (1970), pamphlet editions of her verse, were followed in 1980 by Water Over Stone, a substantial collection drawing much of it…
Michael Horovitz Biography - (1935– ), New Departures, Declaration, Nude Lines for Barking
British poet, born in Frankfurt, Germany; he grew up in London, and was educated at Brasenose College, Oxford. In 1959 he founded New Departures. His desire to reinstate poetry as a popular art form gave rise to Live New Departures, a touring company combining poetry with musical and theatrical activities. His early publications include Declaration (1963), Nude Lines for Barking (1965), and High N…
Attia Hosain Biography - (1913–98), Phoenix Fled, Sunlight on a Broken Column
Indian writer, born in Lucknow, India, educated at La Martini?re School and Isabella Thoburn College, Lucknow. Along with her liberal English education, she absorbed the courtly values and traditions of her aristocratic Muslim family, and studied Persian and Arabic as well as her native Urdu. Hosain moved to Britain in 1947, and worked for many years for the BBC. She has had considerable influence…
Janette Turner Hospital Biography - (1942– ), The Ivory Swing, The Tiger in the Tiger Pit, Borderline, Charades, The Lost Magician, Dislocations
Australian novelist and short-story writer, born in Melbourne, educated at the University of Queensland. She has travelled widely in America, Europe, and India; since 1971 she has lived mainly in Canada. Among other occupations she has worked as a librarian at Harvard, and as a lecturer in universities in Canada, America, and Australia. Her first novel, The Ivory Swing (1982), is a personal and ps…
Stanley Houghton Biography - (1881–1913), The Dear Departed, The Younger Generation, The Perfect Cure, Hindle Wakes
British playwright, born in Cheshire, educated at Manchester Grammar School. He went into his father's cotton business, hoping eventually to become a professional writer. Though he wrote a classic short play in The Dear Departed (1908), and though there is dramatic merit in the longer The Younger Generation (1909) and The Perfect Cure (1911), he did not achieve his ambition until the year before h…
House for Mr Biswas, A
a novel by V. S. Naipaul, published in 1961. Set against the backdrop of multiethnic Trinidad, it tells, in mock-epic mode, the story of the struggles of Mohun Biswas, a journalist of Indian origin, from his birth to his death (from a heart attack). The character of Biswas affords Naipaul an opportunity to portray the conflicts between resilience and hope on the one hand, and disappointments, drea…
House of Mirth, The
a novel by Edith Wharton, published in 1905, a social satire depicting manners in New York society. Lily Bart, despite her beauty and high social connections, remains unmarried at 29. Among her suitors are the rich financier Simon Rosedale, and Lawrence Selden, a lawyer, who is her real love but is without the means to support her. She unwittingly falls into the power of Gus Trenor in a gambling g…
A. E. Housman (Alfred Edward Housman) Biography - (1859–1936), (Alfred Edward Housman), A Shropshire Lad, Last Poems, Praefanda, The Name and Nature of Poetry
British poet, born near Bromsgrove, Worcestershire, educated at St John's College, Oxford, where, for reasons which remain unclear, he failed his final examinations. During the ten years of his subsequent employment in the Patents Office in London he published papers on Propertius, Juvenal, Ovid, and other classical authors, establishing the reputation that gained him the Chair of Greek and Latin …
Laurence Housman Biography - (1865–1959), An Englishwoman's Love Letters, Trimblerigg: A Book of Revelation
British writer, born near Bromsgrove, Worcestershire, the brother of A. E. Housman; he studied painting in London and became a highly regarded illustrator. His first successful publication was An Englishwoman's Love Letters (1900), an ingenious parody of romantic fiction. Trimblerigg: A Book of Revelation (1924), a comically effective political satire directed against Lloyd George, and The Duke of…
Chenjerai Hove Biography - (1956– ), Up in Arms, Red Hills of Home, Bones, Shadows, Shebeen Tales: Messages from Harare
Zimbabwean poet and novelist, born near Zvishavane in central Zimbabwe, educated at the University of Zimbabwe. He was Chairman of the Zimbabwe Writers' Union. In the late 1970s, he taught at rural schools and witnessed horrific aspects of the war of liberation, an experience registered in the anger and compassion pervading Up in Arms (1982), his first collection of poetry. In Red Hills of Home (1…
Elizabeth Jane Howard Biography - (1923– ), The Beautiful Visit, The Long View, The Sea Change, After Julius, Something in Disguise
British novelist, born in London; she originally trained as an actress, but left the repertory circuit to work as a model, secretary, book reviewer, editor, and finally a full-time writer. Her first novel, The Beautiful Visit (1950), introduces one of Howard's central themes: an intelligent woman's search for the security denied her in a painfully inadequate childhood. The Long View (1956) is a we…
Richard Howard Biography - (1929– ), Quantities, Damages, Untitled Subjects, Findings, Two-Part Inventions, Fellow Feelings, Misgivings, Lining Up
American poet and translator, born in Cleveland, Ohio, educated at Columbia University and the Sorbonne. After working as a lexicographer, he became a freelance translator and critic in 1958; in 1988 he became Rhodes Professor of Comparative Literature at the University of Cincinnati. Quantities (1962) and Damages (1967), his first two collections of poetry, displayed his characteristic virtuosity…
Howards End - Howards End
a novel by E. M. Forster, published in 1910. It is an ambitious, multi-layered novel, which indicates its message through its epigraph, ?only connect?: class conflicts can be sublimated in personal relationships. Forster's goal is to examine the ?State of the Nation? of England; this he does on a variety of levels. On the social level, the relationships of the urban intellectual Schlegel sisters w…
Susan Howatch Biography - (1940– ), Penmarric, Cashelmara, The Sins of the Fathers, Glittering Images, Glamorous Powers, Ultimate Prizes, Scandalous Risks
British novelist, born in Surrey; she studied law but turned to writing, achieving success with her first novel, Penmarric (1971), a family saga set in Cornwall, which utilizes the ?double? technique she has used elsewhere, particularly in her historical fiction, relocating the story of Henry II to a different time and place. Cashelmara (1974), similarly, incorporates two different historical peri…
Irving Howe Biography - (1920–93), Dissent, The UAW and Walter Reuther, Sherwood Anderson: A Critical Biography
American historian and literary critic, born in New York City, educated at the City College of New York. Howe enjoyed a distinguished career as a critic, historian, and anthologist as well as being one of the leading intellectual figures on the American left for much of the latter half of the twentieth century (he was for many years co-editor of the socialist quarterly Dissent). His first book was…
Susan Howe Biography - (1937– ), Hinge Picture, My Emily Dickinson, The Birth Mark, A Secret History of the Dividing Line
American poet, born in Ireland, raised in Cambridge, Massachusetts; she became a visual artist in New York in the 1960s, working increasingly with texts, until a decision in the early 1970s to concentrate on poetry culminating in her first volume, Hinge Picture (1974). Since then she has emerged as one of the most original and widely praised of the Language Poets, although her work significantly d…
Tina Howe Biography - (1937– ), The Nest, In Birth and After Birth, Museum, The Art of Dining, Painting Churches
American playwright, born in New York, educated at Sarah Lawrence College, Columbia University, and the University of Chicago. Her early one-act plays, The Nest (1969) and In Birth and After Birth (1973), were followed by Museum (1976), in which several characters wander round a museum discussing the exhibits and the role of women in the arts, a theme also explored in The Art of Dining (1979), whi…
William D. Howells (William Dean Howells) Biography - (1837–1920), (William Dean Howells), Atlantic Monthly, Ohio State Journal, Modern Italian Poets, The Nation
American novelist, critic, essayist, and editor, born in Martin's Ferry, Ohio. He came to have a profound impact upon the growing, serious middle-class American readership of the late nineteenth and early twentieth centuries. By 1860 Howells had published two books, a poem entitled ?Poems of Two Friends? (1860) with J. J. Piatt, and was contributing to the Atlantic Monthly. He worked for the Ohio …
Howl - Howl and Other Poems, Howl
a long poem by Allen Ginsberg, forming the title work of Howl and Other Poems (1956), his first collection of verse, for which William Carlos Williams supplied an enthusiastic foreword. The poem is chiefly written in long free-verse lines whose duration is intended to correspond to the individual breaths of the reader. The compellingly incantational effects produced suggest similarities with the w…
W. H. Hudson (William Henry Hudson) Biography - (1841–1922), (William Henry Hudson), The Purple Land that England Lost, The Crystal Age, Argentine Ornithology
British naturalist and novelist, born of American parents at Quilmes, near Buenos Aires, Argentina; he spent much of his boyhood working on his father's farm, where he developed his abiding interest in ornithology. Left unfit for farming by a serious illness, he began writing and moved to London in 1874. The Purple Land that England Lost (two volumes, 1885), a collection of exotic stories with Sou…
David Hughes (David John Hughes) Biography - (1930–2005), (David John Hughes), Isis, Memories of Dying, The Imperial German Dinner Service, The Pork Butcher
English novelist, born in Alton, Hampshire, educated at Christ Church, Oxford, where he edited Isis. Hughes served in the Royal Air Force (1949?50), worked as an editor in London, wrote film scripts in Sweden (his first wife was the Swedish actress Mai Zetterling), and lived in France for several years. He has also been a film critic and a regular reviewer of fiction. In his own fiction war and it…
Glyn Hughes Biography - (1935– ), Neighbours, Rest the Poor Struggler, Alibis and Convictions
British poet and novelist, born in Middlewich, Cheshire, educated at the Regional College of Art, Manchester. He worked as an art teacher from 1956 to 1973, when he became a full-time writer. His principal collections of verse are Neighbours (1970), Rest the Poor Struggler (1972), Alibis and Convictions (1978), and Best of Neighbours: New and Selected Poems (1979). His poetry, like much of his fic…
Langston Hughes (James Mercer Hughes) Biography - (1902–67), (James Mercer Hughes), The New Negro, Crisis, Opportunity, The Weary Blues
African-American writer, born in Joplin, Missouri, educated at Columbia and Lincoln Universities. Hughes was an important figure in the Harlem Renaissance, who sought to capture the dominant oral and improvisatory traditions of black culture in written form. In the 1920s he drifted around Europe and North America with a variety of jobs; he wrote and published poetry continuously, including eleven …
Richard Hughes (Richard Arthur Warren Hughes) Biography - (1900–76), (Richard Arthur Warren Hughes), Gipsy Night, The Sisters' Tragedy
British novelist, playwright, and poet, of Welsh descent, born in Weybridge, Surrey, educated at Oriel College, Oxford. Living mainly in Wales from 1923, he was Vice-President of the Welsh National Theatre (1924?36). As an undergraduate he produced a volume of poems, Gipsy Night (1922), and his first play, The Sisters' Tragedy (1922), which anticipates later work in its theme of the destruction of…
Robert Hughes Biography - (1938– ), The Art of Australia, Heaven and Hell in Western Art, Time
Australian art critic and writer, born in Sydney, educated at Sydney School of Architecture. He published The Art of Australia (1966) and Heaven and Hell in Western Art (1969), and in 1970 became art critic for Time magazine. The Shock of the New: Art and the Century of Change (1980) was based on a successful BBC television series. The Fatal Shore (1988) was a vivid, at times rather over-written, …
Ted Hughes (Ted Edward James Hughes) Biography - (1930– ), (Ted Edward James Hughes), The Hawk in the Rain, Lupercal, Wodwo, Crow, Gaudete
British poet, born in Mytholmroyd in West Yorkshire, an area drawn upon in much of his poetry; he was educated at Pembroke College, Cambridge. In 1956 he married Sylvia Plath, with whom he spent two years in the USA. He returned to Britain in 1959 and eventually settled in Devon, where he has latterly divided his time between writing and farming. The hyperbolic vigour and innate accomplishment evi…
Richard Hugo (Richard Franklin Hugo) Biography - (1923–82), (Richard Franklin Hugo), A Run of Jacks, The Death of the Kapowsin Tavern
American poet, born in an impoverished district of Seattle; he saw wartime service in the US Air Force then studied at the University of Washington with Theodore Roethke, an important early influence. After working for the Boeing Company, Hugo became director of the Writing Program at the University of Montana from 1964 until his death. Very much a regionalist, whether writing of his native Pacifi…
Hull Poets: - A Rumoured City, Bicycle Tyre in a Tall Tree, Sampler, Bête Noire
a group of poets active in that city between 1975 and 1981; their work was collected in Douglas Dunn's edition of A Rumoured City (1982), for which Philip Larkin wrote a foreword. Dunn was closely involved in the emergence of much of their writing. Of the poets featured in A Rumoured City, Tony Flynn and Peter Didsbury had published substantial collections shortly before the anthology's appearance…
Keri Hulme Biography - (1947– ), Silences Between: Moeraki Conversations, The Bone People, The Windeater/TeKaihau, Lost Possessions, Strands
New Zealand writer of Maori, Scots, and English ancestry, born in Christchurch, educated at Canterbury University. Among other employment she has worked in the postal service and as a director for New Zealand television. Silences Between: Moeraki Conversations (1982) was a collection of poetry and prose. Hulme achieved international fame with The Bone People (1983; Booker Prize), a dazzlingly powe…
T. E. Hulme (Thomas Ernest Hulme) Biography - (1883–1917), (Thomas Ernest Hulme), New Age, Introduction to Metaphysics, Criterion, Speculations, Notes on Language and Style
British philosopher and aesthetician, born at Endon, Staffordshire, educated at St John's College, Cambridge, from which he was sent down in 1904. He subsequently studied privately in London and Belgium. In 1909 he convened meetings of a group of poets which included Ezra Pound and F. S. Flint. Hulme's rejection of Romanticism and his emphasis on clarity and precision in poetic imagery provided th…
Human Factor, The - The Human Factor, Our Man in Havana, The Confidential Agent
a novel by Graham Greene, published in 1978. A return late in Greene's career to the genre of spy fiction, The Human Factor partly resembles Our Man in Havana (1958). ?We have our own country?, remarks Maurice Castle's black South African wife, Sarah: as in the earlier novel, Secret Service chiefs appear cynical, absurd Machiavels, and it is love and loyalty to individuals, rather than states or s…
Humboldt's Gift
a novel by Saul Bellow, published in 1975, winner of the Pulitzer Prize. Set in the affluent suburbs of Chicago where even the wives of mafiosi are taking Ph.D.s, the book places two generations of writers at its centre. One is represented by the anguished modernist, Von Humboldt Fleischer, an intellectually omnivorous poet who dies in poverty. The other is exemplified by his disciple Charlie Citr…
Emyr Humphreys Biography - (1919– ), The Little Kingdom, A Toy Epic, The Waves, A Man's Estate
Welsh novelist, poet, and critic, born in Prestatyn, the son of a Flintshire schoolmaster, educated at the University of Aberystwyth. In 1939 he signed on as a conscientious objector to work on farms in Pembrokeshire and North Wales. Later he worked as a teacher, drama producer, and lecturer. His first novel, The Little Kingdom (1946), established the grave, inquiring, yet often lyrical tone of la…
Violet Hunt (Isobel Violet Hunt) Biography - (1866–1942), (Isobel Violet Hunt), The Flurried Years, I Have This To Say, The Good Soldier
English novelist and biographer, born in Durham. The daughter of the minor painter William Albert Hunt, she studied art, and grew up among the Pre-Raphaelites of the ?Rossetti circle?. A renowned society hostess, who encouraged D. H. Lawrence among others, and a friend of H. G. Wells and Henry James, she wrote much literary journalism and later campaigned actively for women's suffrage. Her close f…
Zora Neale Hurston Biography - (1901–60), Their Eyes Were Watching God, Fire!, Mules and Men, Tell My Horse
American novelist and folklorist, born in the all-black township of Eatonville, Florida, which was to provide a basis for episodes in her best-known work, Their Eyes Were Watching God (1937). Hurston left home in her teens and worked as a maid and wardrobe girl for a touring Gilbert and Sullivan troupe before becoming a part-time student at Howard University. During her twenties she published seve…
Pearse Hutchinson (William Patrick Henry Pearse Hutchinson) Biography - (1927– ), (William Patrick Henry Pearse Hutchinson), Tongue Without Hands, Faoistin Bhacach, Expansions, Watching the Morning Grow
Irish poet, born in Glasgow of Irish parents; he grew up in Dublin, where he was educated at University College. In 1951 he became a translator with the International Labour Organization, and was a drama critic for Irish radio and television from 1957 to 1968. His first collection of poetry, Tongue Without Hands (1963), was followed by a volume of poems in Irish entitled Faoistin Bhacach (1969; li…
Aldous Huxley (Aldous Leonard Huxley) Biography - (1894–1963), (Aldous Leonard Huxley), The Burning Wheel, The Athenaeum, Vanity Fair, Limbo, Mortal Coils, Crome Yellow
English novelist, essayist, and short-story writer, born in Godalming, Surrey, into a family distinguished by scientific and literary attainments; Matthew Arnold was a great-uncle, T. H. Huxley his grandfather, the novelist Mrs Humphry Ward an aunt, and the biologist Julian Huxley his brother. He was educated at Eton and at Balliol College, Oxford, where, in spite of severely restricted vision, he…
Elspeth Huxley (Elspeth Josceline Huxley) Biography - (1907–97), (Elspeth Josceline Huxley), Love among the Daughters
British writer, born in London, brought up mainly in Kenya; her studies at the universities of Reading and Cornell were recorded in Love among the Daughters (1968). She has served on the Empire Marketing Board and the BBC Advisory Council and travelled widely in Africa and America with her husband, Gervas Huxley (a cousin of Aldous Huxley). Among her many books on African history, politics, and ag…
David Henry Hwang Biography - (1957– ), F. O. B, The Dance and The Railroad, Family Devotions, Sound and Beauty
American playwright and screenwriter, born in Los Angeles, educated at Stanford University. His first play, F. O. B (1979), which won an Obie Award for the best Off-Broadway play of 1980?1, was followed by The Dance and The Railroad (1980), concerning a strike by Chinese railroad labourers in 1867, and Family Devotions (1981), which satirizes dogmatic religious faith in its portrayal of a wealthy,…
Douglas Hyde Biography - (1860–1949), Leabhar Sgeulaigheachta, Beside the Fire, Love Songs of Connacht, The Story of Early Gaelic Literature
authority on Gaelic and leader of the Irish Revival, born near Castlerea, Co. Roscommon, where he learned Gaelic as a youth; he was educated at Trinity College, Dublin. His early publications include the Gaelic miscellany Leabhar Sgeulaigheachta (lit. ?the book of story-telling?) (1889) and Beside the Fire (1890), his translations of traditional stories. He was the principal founder in 1893 of the…
Robin Hyde, pseudonym of Iris Guiver Wilkinson Biography - (1906–39), pseudonym of Iris Guiver Wilkinson, Passport to Hell, Nor the Years Condemn
New Zealand novelist and poet, born in Cape Town, South Africa, shortly before her parents settled in Wellington, New Zealand, where she was educated at Wellington Girls' College. Her novels Passport to Hell (1936) and Nor the Years Condemn (1938) are sharp historical portraits of New Zealand life in the early twentieth century, and Check to Your King (1936) is a remarkable recreation of the life …