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The
increasing ethnic diversity of British society means it is
difficult to define what makes someone British. |
Famous British Personalities
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Sir Francis Bacon
(1561 - 1626)
Profession: Writer
English Philosopher
Francis
Bacon is the Chief figure of the English Renaissance. His advocacy of "action
science" influenced the culture of the entire English speaking
world.
Francis Bacon studied law at Cambridge and became Lord Chancellor in 1618.
His 'Essays' has remained the most popular writing, his two |
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greatest
scientific works being 'Novum Organum' and 'The Advancement of Learning'
in which he pleaded for the recognition of science. He insisted on collecting
facts first, and then drawing theories from them - a method which is today
called "inductive" |
John Betjeman
(1906 - 1984)
Profession: Writer
English poet and essayist.
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He wrote a peculiarly English form of romantic and nostalgic light verse, as well as prose works on architecture and social history which reflect his interest in the Gothic Revival. His Collected Poems appeared 1958 and a verse autobiography, Summoned by Bells, 1960. He became poet laureate 1972.
Betjeman was born in London and educated at Oxford. During World War II
he had a post at the Admiralty, and after that worked for a time for the
British Council. He was a contemporary of W H Auden at Oxford, but he
had little in common with the poets of the 1930s. His verse is backward-looking,
traditional in
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form
- favouring iambic lines and a conversational clarity - and subject matter.
He recalls with great precision and affection details of his childhood
in N London and holidays in Cornwall. He also admires and champions Victorian
and Edwardian taste.
A Nip in the Air 1972 and High and Low 1976 are later collections of verse.
His books on architecture include Ghastly Good Taste 1933, A Pictorial
History of English Architecture 1972, and West Country Churches 1973.
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William Blake
(1757 - 1827)
Profession: Writer
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William Blake, the son of a draper from Westminster, was born on 28th November, 1757. At the age of eleven Blake entered Par's Drawing School in the strand. Three years later he was indentured as an apprentice to James Basire, engraver to the Royal Society of Antiquaries. After marrying Catherine Boucher on 18th August 1782, Blake became a freelance engraver. His main employer was the radical bookseller, Joseph Johnson, and publisher of works by Mary Wollstonecraft and William Godwin. Johnson, who been involved in establishing London's first Unitarian Chapel in 1774, also influenced Blake's religious views.
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Blake
began to experiment with a new method of engraving. The first of his illuminated
works, Natural Religion, appeared in 1788. The poetry and their illustrations
were drawn in reverse on copper plates in an impervious liquid, then the
plain parts eaten away with acid. After the prints were taken they were
coloured by hand. Natural Religion was followed by Songs of Innocence
(1789), Marriage of Heaven and Hell (1790) and Songs of Experience (1794),
a book that deals with topics of corruption and social injustice.
In his books The French Revolution (1791), America: A Prophecy (1793)
and Visions of the Daughters of Albion (1793), Blake developed his attitude
of revolt against authority, combining political belief and visionary
ecstasy. Blake feared government persecution and some of work such as
The French Revolution was printed anonymously and was only distributed
to political sympathisers.
In 1800 William Blake moved to Felpham in Sussex, where he was commissioned
by William Hayley to decorate his library with eighteen heads of poets.
Hayley also employed Blake to make the engravings for a Life of Cowper.
While at Felpham began work on his epic poems, Milton and Jerusalem. In
these poems Blake provides a complex mixture of prophecy, social criticism
and biblical legend.
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John Bunyan
(1628 - 1688)
Profession: Writer
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A
Baptist, he was imprisoned in Bedford in 1660-72 for unlicensed preaching
and wrote Grace Abounding in 1666, which describes his early spiritual
life. During a second jail sentence 1676-77 he started to write The Pilgrim's
Progress, the first part of which was published in 1678. This allegorical
story of Christian's spiritual quest is written in straightforward language
with fervour and imagination. Bunyan was born in Elstow, near Bedford.
At 16, he was drafted into the Parliamentary army to fight in the Civil
War. His military career was brief, and in 1647 he returned to Elstow.
In 1649 he married a religious woman. One of the books she
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brought
with her, The Plaine Mans Path-way to Heaven, exerted a powerful influence on
Bunyan; the origin of specific images, such as the Man with the Muck Rake in
The Pilgrim's Progress, have been traced to it. At this period Bunyan experienced
religious doubts and struggles. He suffered a strong conviction of sin, which
attached itself to his mild vices of swearing, dancing, and Sunday games, but
after his conversion experience and joining the Baptists 1653 he became more
cheerful and began preaching in neighbouring villages and publishing religious
pamphlets.
In 1660 he was committed to Bedford county jail for unlawful preaching, where
he remained for 12 years, refusing all offers of release conditional on his
not preaching again. Set free 1672, he was elected pastor of the Bedford congregation,
but in 1676 he was again arrested and imprisoned for six months in the jail
on Bedford Bridge, where he began The Pilgrim's Progress. The book was an instant
success, and a second part followed 1684. Other works include The Life and Death
of Mr Badman 1680 and The Holy War 1682.
George Gordon (Lord Byron)
(1788 - 1824)
Profession: Writer
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The son of Captain John Byron and Catherine Gordon, was born in London in 1788. Born with a club-foot, he spent the first ten years in his mother's lodgings in Aberdeen. Although originally a rich women, her fortune had been squandered by her husband.
In 1798 George succeeded to the title, Baron Byron of Rochdale, on the death of his great-uncle. Money was now available to provide Lord Byron with an education at Harrow School and Trinty College, Cambridge.
Lord Byron's first collection of poems, Hours of Idleness, appeared in
1807. The poems were savagely attacked by Henry
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Brougham
in the Edinburgh Review. Byron replied with the publication of his satire,
English Bards and Scotch Reviewers (1809).
In 1809 Byron set on his grand tour where he visited Spain, Malta, Albania
and Greece. His poetical account of this grand tour, Childe Harold's Pilgrimage
(1812) established Byron as one of England's leading poets.
Byron attending the House of Lords where he became a strong advocate of
social reform. In 1811 he was one of the few men in Parliament to defend
the actions of the Luddites and the following year spoke against the Frame
Breaking Bill, by which the government intended to apply the death-penalty
to Luddites. Byron's political views influenced the subject matter of
his poems. Important examples include Song for the Luddites (1816) and
The Landlords' Interest (1823). Byron also attacked his political opponents
such as the Duke of Wellington and Lord Castlereagh in Wellington: The
Best of the Cut-Throats (1819) and the The Intellectual Eunuch Castlereagh
(1818).
In 1815 Byron married Anne Isabella Milbanke but the relationship came
to an end the following year. Byron moved to Venice where he met the Countess
Teresa Guiccioli, who became his mistress. Some of Byron's best known
work belongs to this period including Don Juan. The last cantos of Don
Juan is a satirical description of social conditions in England and includes
attacks on leading Tory politicians.
In 1822 Byron, Leigh Hunt, and Percy Bysshe Shelley travelled to Italy
where the three men published the political journal, The Liberal. By publishing
in Italy they remained free from the fear of being prosecuted by the British
authorities. The first edition was mainly written by Leigh Hunt but also
included work by William Hazlitt, Mary Shelley and Byron's Vision of Judgement
sold 4,000 copies. Three more editions were published but after the death
of Shelley in August, 1822, the Liberal came to an end.
For a long time Lord Byron had supported attempts by the Greek people
to free themselves from Turkish rule. This included writing poems such
as The Maid of Athens (1810). In 1823 he formed the Byron Brigade and
joined the Greek insurgents who had risen against the Turks. However,
in April, 1824, Lord Byron died of marsh fever in Missolonghi before he
saw any military action.
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Charles Lutwidge Dodgson (Lewis Carroll)
(1832 - 1898)
Profession: Writer
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English author of the children's classics Alice's Adventures in Wonderland in 1865 and its sequel Through the Looking-Glass, and What Alice Found There in 1872. Among later works was the mock-heroic narrative poem The Hunting of the Snark in 1876. He was fascinated by the limits and paradoxes of language and thought, the exploration of which leads to the apparent nonsense of Alice's adventures. He was a lecturer at Oxford and also published mathematical works.
Dodgson lectured in mathematics at Oxford 1855-81. There he first told
his fantasy stories to Alice Liddell and her sisters,
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daughters
of the dean of Christ Church. Dodgson was a prolific letter writer and
one of the pioneers of portrait photography - his sitters included John
Ruskin, Alfred Tennyson, and D G Rossetti, as well as children. He was
also responsible, in his publication of mathematical games and problems
requiring the use of logic, for a general upsurge of interest in such
pastimes. He is said to be, after Shakespeare, the most quoted writer
in the English language.
Dodgson was born in Daresbury, Cheshire, and studied mathematics and classics
at Oxford. He was ordained a deacon 1861. In 1867 he visited Russia. His
two Alice books brought ` nonsense´ literature to a peak of excellence,
and continue to be enjoyed by children and adults alike. The reasons for
their success include the delightful illustrations of John Tenniel, the
eminently quotable verse, and the combination of exciting adventures,
imaginative punning, and humorous characters, such as the White Rabbit,
the Mad Hatter, and White Knight, with a more sophisticated level of ingenious
imagination which parodies everything from mathematical to literary theories.
His other major works of fiction, Sylvie and Bruno 1889, which combined
a children's story with religious instruction, and Sylvie and Bruno Concluded
1893, were less successful.
Number games and mathematical works Interested in the use of number games
that called for general intelligence to solve the problems, rather than
specialized knowledge, he saw their potential as teaching aids. His books
in this field include A Tangled Tale 1885, The Game of Logic 1886, and
Pillow Problems 1893. The chessboard featured in some of these games.
Several of his books of puzzles suggest an awareness of the theory of
sets - the basis on which most modern mathematical teaching is founded
- which was then only just being formulated by German mathematician Georg
Cantor. Dodgson also wrote mathematical textbooks for the general syllabus,
quite a few books on historical mathematics (particularly on Euclid and
his geometry), and a number of specialized papers.
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Geoffrey Chaucer
(1343 - 1400)
Profession: Writer
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The
son of a prosperous London wine merchant and one of the greatest English
poets, whose masterpiece, The Canterbury Tales, was one of the most important
influences on the development of English literature. Chaucer greatly increased
the prestige of English as a literary language and extended the range
of its poetic vocabulary. His life is known primarily through records
pertaining to his career as a courtier and civil servant under the English
kings Edward III and Richard II.
After his death, he was buried in Westminster Abbey (an honor for a commoner),
in what has since become the Poets' Corner.
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Charles John Huffam Dickens
(1812 - 1870)
Profession: Writer
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English novelist and one of the most popular writers in the history of literature. In his enormous body of works, Dickens combined masterly storytelling, humor, pathos, and irony with sharp social criticism and acute observation of people and places, both real and imagined.
Dickens was born February 7, 1812, in Portsmouth and spent most of his
childhood in London and Kent, both of which appear frequently in his novels.
He started school at the age of nine, but his education was interrupted
when his father, an amiable but careless minor civil servant, was imprisoned
for debt in 1824. The boy was then forced to support himself by working
in a shoe-
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polish
factory. A resulting sense of humiliation and abandonment haunted him
for life, and he later described this experience, only slightly altered,
in his novel David Copperfield. From 1824 to 1826, Dickens again attended
school. For the most part, however, he was self-educated.
The success of his first novel made Dickens famous. At the same time it
influenced the publishing industry in Great Britain, being issued in a
rather unusual form, that of inexpensive monthly installments; this method
of publication quickly became popular among Dickens's contemporaries.
Dickens subsequently maintained his fame with a constant stream of novels.
A man of enormous energy and wide talents, he also engaged in many other
activities. In 1843 he published A Christmas Carol, an ever-popular children's
story. As Dickens matured artistically, his novels developed from comic
tales based on the adventures of a central character, like The Pickwick
Papers and Nicholas Nickleby (1837-1838), to works of great social relevance,
psychological insight, and narrative and symbolic complexity. Among his
fine works are Bleak House (1852-1853), Little Dorritt (1855-1857), Great
Expectations (1860-1861), and Our Mutual Friend (1864-1865). Dickens's
major writings include Oliver Twist (1837-1839), The Old Curiosity Shop
(1840-1841), Barnaby Rudge (1841), Martin Chuzzlewit (1843-1844), Dombey
and Son (1846-1848), Hard Times (1854), A Tale of Two Cities (1859), and
The Mystery of Edwin Drood (unfinished, 1870).
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Arthur Conan Doyle
(1859 - 1930)
Profession: Writer
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Arthur Conan Doyle, the son of Charles Doyle and Mary Foley, was born in Edinburgh on 22nd May 1859. Arthur's father was an alcoholic and the family was always short of money. At school, Arthur developed a strong interest in the books written by Sir Walter Scott and Edgar Allan Poe.
Conan Doyle studied at Edinburgh University and helped to fund his course
by working as a surgeon on Hope, a 400 ton whaler on a seven month voyage
to the Arctic. The following year he worked on Mayumba, a passenger ship
bound for West Africa. On this voyage Conan Doyle nearly died of typhoid.
On his return,
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Conan
Doyle set up as a doctor in Southsea, a suburb of Portsmouth. With very
few patients, Conan Doyle attempted to make money by writing detective
stories. His main character, Sherlock Holmes, was based on Dr. Joseph
Bell, a surgeon and criminal psychologist, who lectured at Edinburgh Infirmary.
In 1891 Conan Doyle published six Sherlock Holmes stories in the Strand
Magazine. The following year he was paid £1,000 for a whole series on
Sherlock Holmes. Conan Doyle really wanted to write historical novels
like his hero, Sir Walter Scott, and in 1893 decided to kill off Sherlock
Holmes in the story, The Final Problem. However, after coming under considerable
pressure from his fans, he returned to write his best known detective
story, The Hound of the Baskervilles (1902).
Conan Doyle served as a doctor in the Boer War (1899-1902) and wrote The
War in South Africa (1902), where he attempted to justify Britain's actions
during the war.
On 2nd September, 1914, soon after the start of the First World War, the
Liberal politician, Charles Masterman, the head of the War Propaganda
Bureau, organised a secret meeting of Britain's leading writers. to discuss
ways of best promoting Britain's interests during the war. Those who attended
to discuss the best way of promoting Britain's interests during the war
included Conan Doyle, Arnold Bennett, John Masefield, Ford Madox Ford,
William Archer, G. K. Chesterton, Sir Henry Newbolt, John Galsworthy,
Thomas Hardy, Rudyard Kipling, Gilbert Parker, G. M. Trevelyan and H.
G. Wells.
All the writers present at the conference agreed to the utmost secrecy,
and it was not until 1935 that the activities of the War Propaganda Bureau
became known to the general public. Several of the men who attending the
meeting agreed to write pamphlets and books that would promote the government's
view of the situation.
In 1914 Conan Doyle wrote the recruiting pamphlet, To Arms!. The WPB arranged
for Conan Doyle to go the Western Front and his pamphlet, A Visit to the
Three Fronts was published in 1916. During the war Doyle also wrote his
six volume history, The British Campaign in France and Flanders. Conan
Doyle also wrote on the First World War for the Daily Chronicle.
Although fifty-five when the war Conan Doyle also joined the Crowborough
Company of the Sixth Royal Sussex Volunteer Regiment and served as a private
throughout the war. His son,Kingsley Conan Doyle, joined the British Army
and was wounded at the Somme. He died in October, 1917, after developing
pneumonia.
After the war Conan Doyle wrote several books on spiritualism including
The New Revelation (1918) and The History of Spiritualism (1926). Arthur
Conan Doyle died at Crowborough on 7th July 1930.
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Samuel Johnson
(1709 - 1784)
Profession: Writer
English lexicographer, author, and critic
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Dr
Johnson was a brilliant conversationalist and the dominant figure in 18th-century
London literary society. His Dictionary, published 1755, remained authoritative
for over a century, and is still remarkable for the vigour of its definitions.
In 1764 he founded the Literary Club, whose members included the painter
Joshua Reynolds, the political philosopher Edmund Burke, the dramatist
Oliver Goldsmith, the actor David Garrick, and James Boswell, Johnson's
biographer.
Born in Lichfield, Staffordshire, the son of a bookseller, Johnson was
educated at Pembroke College, Oxford, where he distinguished himself but
was prevented by lack of money from taking a degree. He is buried in Westminster
Abbey and his
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house
in Gough Square, London, is preserved as a museum.
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