Burroughs, Edgar Rice 1875 1950 en 68 217562 Edgar Rice Burroughs (September 1, 1875 – March 19, 1950) was an American author, best known for his creation of the jungle hero Tarzan, although he also produced works in many genres. Source: Wikipedia Sabatini, Rafael 1875 1950 en 19 39251 Rafael Sabatini was born in Jesi, Italy to an English mother and Italian father. His parents were opera singers who became teachers. At a young age, Rafael was exposed to many languages, living with his grandfather in England, attending school in Portugal and, as a teenager, in Switzerland. By the time he was seventeen, when he returned to England to live permanently, he was the master of five languages. He quickly added a sixth language — English — to his linguistic collection. He consciously chose to write in his adopted language, because, he said, "all the best stories are written in English." After a brief stint in the business world, Sabatini went to work as a writer. He wrote short stories in the 1890s, and his first novel came out in 1902. It took Sabatini roughly a quarter of a century of hard work before he attained success with Scaramouche in 1921. This brilliant novel of the French Revolution became an international best-seller. It was followed by the equally successful Captain Blood in 1922. All of his earlier books were rushed into reprints, the most popular of which was The Sea Hawk from 1915. Sabatini was a prolific writer; he produced a new book approximately every year. While he perhaps didn't achieve the mammoth success of Scaramouche and Captain Blood, nonetheless Sabatini still maintained a great deal of popularity with the reading public through the decades that followed. The public knew that in picking up a Sabatini book, they could always count upon a good read, and his following was loyal and extensive. By the 1940s, illness forced the writer to slow his prolific method of composition. However, he did write several additional works even during that time. He died February 13, 1950 in Switzerland. He is buried at Adelboden, Switzerland. On his head stone his wife had written, "He was born with a gift of laughter and a sense that the world was mad," the first line of his best-known work, Scaramouche. He is best known for his world-wide bestsellers: * The Sea Hawk (1915), a tale of the Spanish Armada and the pirates of the Barbary Coast; * Scaramouche (1921), a tale of the French Revolution in which a fugitive hides out in a commedia dell'arte troupe; * Captain Blood (1922), in which the title character is admiral of a fleet of pirate ships (Sabatini also wrote two sequels); and * Bellarion the Fortunate (1926), about a cunning young man who finds himself immersed in the politics of fifteenth-century Italy. The first three of these books have been made into notable films in the sound era -- in 1940, 1952, and 1935, respectively. However, the silent films of his novels, less well known, are also notable. His second novel was made into a famous "lost" film, Bardelys the Magnificent, directed in 1926 by King Vidor with John Gilbert in the lead, and long viewable only in a fragment excerpted in Vidor's silent comedy Show People. A few intact reels have recently been discovered in Europe. Two silent adaptations of Sabatini novels which do survive intact are Rex Ingram's Scaramouche (1923) starring Ramon Novarro, and The Sea Hawk (1924) directed by Frank Lloyd and starring Milton Sills. This is actually a more faithful adaptation than the 1940 remake with Errol Flynn. A 1924 silent version of Captain Blood, starring J. Warren Kerrigan, is partly lost, surviving only in an incomplete copy in the Library of Congress. In all, he produced thirty one novels, eight short story collections, six nonfiction books, numerous uncollected short stories, and a play. Source: Wikipedia Stapledon, William Olaf 1886 1950 en 15 20565 He was born in Seacombe, Wallasey, on the Wirral peninsula near Liverpool, the only son of William Clibbert Stapledon and Emmeline Miller. The first six years of his life were spent with his parents at Port Said. He was educated at Abbotsholme School and Balliol College, Oxford, where he acquired a BA in Modern History in 1909 and a Master's degree in 1913[citation needed]. After a brief stint as a teacher at Manchester Grammar School, he worked in shipping offices in Liverpool and Port Said from 1910 to 1913. During World War I he served with the Friends' Ambulance Unit in France and Belgium from July 1915 to January 1919. On 16 July 1919 he married Agnes Zena Miller (1894-1984), an Australian cousin whom he had first met in 1903, and who maintained a correspondence with him throughout the war from her home in Sydney. They had a daughter, Mary Sydney Stapledon (1920-), and a son, John David Stapledon (1923-). In 1920 they moved to West Kirby, and in 1925 Stapledon was awarded a PhD in philosophy from the University of Liverpool. He wrote A Modern Theory of Ethics, which was published in 1929. However he soon turned to fiction to present his ideas to a wider public. Last and First Men was very successful and prompted him to become a full-time writer. He wrote a sequel, and followed it up with many more books on subjects associated with what is now called Transhumanism. In 1940 the family built and moved into Simon's Field, in Caldy. After 1945 Stapledon travelled widely on lecture tours, visiting the Netherlands, Sweden and France, and in 1948 he spoke at the Congress of Intellectuals for Peace in Wrocl/aw, Poland. He attended the Conference for World Peace held in New York in 1949, the only Briton to be granted a visa to do so. In 1950 he became involved with the anti-apartheid movement; after a week of lectures in Paris, he cancelled a projected trip to Yugoslavia and returned to his home in Caldy, where he died very suddenly of a heart attack. Olaf Stapledon was cremated at Landican Crematorium; his widow Agnes and their children Mary and John scattered his ashes on the sandy cliffs overlooking the Dee Estuary, a favourite spot of Olaf's, and a location that features in more than one of his books. Source: Wikipedia Stephens, James 1882 1950 en 2 4313 James Stephens (February 9, 1882–December 26, 1950) was an Irish novelist and poet. Shaw, George Bernard 1856 1950 en 1 4118 George Bernard Shaw (26 July 1856 – 2 November 1950) was an Irish playwright. Although Shaw's first profitable writing was music and literary criticism, his talent was for drama, and he authored more than 60 plays. Nearly all of his writings deal sternly with prevailing social problems, but have a vein of comedy to make their stark themes more palatable. Shaw examined education, marriage, religion, government, health care, and class privilege and found them all defective. He was most angered by the exploitation of the working class, and most of his writings censure that abuse. An ardent socialist, Shaw wrote many brochures and speeches for the Fabian Society. He became an accomplished orator in the furtherance of its causes, which included gaining equal political rights for men and women, alleviating abuses of the working class, rescinding private ownership of productive land, and promoting healthful lifestyles. Shaw married Charlotte Payne-Townshend, a fellow Fabian, whom he survived. They settled in Ayot St. Lawrence in a house now called Shaw's Corner. Shaw died there, aged 94, from chronic problems exacerbated by injuries he incurred by falling. He is the only person to have been awarded both the Nobel Prize for Literature (1925) and an Oscar (1938). These were for his contributions to literature and for his work on the film Pygmalion, respectively. Shaw wanted to refuse his Nobel Prize outright because he had no desire for public honors, but accepted it at his wife's behest: she considered it a tribute to Ireland. He did reject the monetary award, requesting it be used to finance translation of Swedish books to English. From: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/George_Bernard_Shaw Cox, Erle 1873 1950 en 2 1792 Erle Cox (15 August 1873 – 20 November 1950) was an Australian journalist and science fiction writer. Cox was born at Emerald Hill, Victoria, an August 15th, 1873, the second son of Ross Cox, who had emigrated from his native Dublin as a youth during the early gold rush days of the 1850s. He was educated at Castlemaine Grammar School and Melbourne Grammar School. In 1921, Cox joined the editorial staff of The Argus newspaper as a writer of special articles and book reviewer; later he was the principle movie critic. In 1946 he joined the staff of The Age. Cox died in 1950 after a long illness. Source: Wikipedia Poole, Ernest 1880 1950 en 2 1510 Ernest Poole (1880 - 1950) was a U.S. novelist. He was born in Chicago, Illinois on 23 Jan 1880, and graduated from Princeton University in 1902. He worked as a journalist and was active in promoting social reforms including the ending of child labor. He was a correspondent for the Saturday Evening Post in Europe before and during World War I. His novel The Harbor has remained the work for which he is best known. It presents a strong socialist message, set in the industrial Brooklyn waterfront. It is considered one of the first fictional works to offer a positive view of unions. His portrait of a New York family titled His Family made him the first recipient of the Pulitzer Prize for the Novel in 1918. In 1917, for The New Republic magazine he went to Russia to report on the Russian Revolution. He died in Franconia, NH on 10 Jan 1950. Source: Wikipedia Birmingham, George A. 1865 1950 en 1 514 George A. Birmingham was the pen name of James Owen Hannay (16 July 1865 - 2 February 1950), Irish clergyman and prolific novelist. He was born in Belfast, ordained in 1889, as a Church of Ireland (Anglican) minister and served as rector of Holy Trinity Church, Westport in County Mayo. His early writings raised the ire of nationalist Catholics, and he withdrew from the Gaelic League in the wake of ongoing protests about the tour of his successful play General John Regan. He became rector of Kildare Parish from 1918 to 1920, and after serving as chaplain to Viceroy, he joined the British ambassadorial team in Budapest in 1922. He returned to officiate at Mells, Somerset from 1924 to 1934, after which he was appointed vicar of Holy Trinity Church in Kensington near London. He served there from 1934 to his death in 1950. Hichens, Robert Smythe 1864 1950 en 0 40 Robert Smythe Hichens (November 14, 1864 – July 20, 1950) was an English journalist and novelist. Born in Speldhurst in Kent, he was educated at Clifton College, the Royal College of Music, and the London School of Journalism. He wrote lyrics for music, stories, and collaborated in successful plays. He is best remembered now, perhaps, for his satire on Oscar Wilde, The Green Carnation (1894), his novels that were made into films — The Garden of Allah (pub. 1904) and The Paradine Case (pub. 1933) — and the story "How Love Came to Professor Guildea", which has been frequently anthologized. Source: Wikipedia