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SUMMARY: Sir Winston Churchill (30 November 1874 – 24 January 1965) British politician
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Often described as “the greatest living Englishman” during his life, Sir Winston Churchill was a British war leader, Prime Minister, author, and Nobel Prize winner.

Military and political career
Sir Winston Churchill’s military career is extensive. Born Winston Leonard Spencer Churchill on November 30, 1874 in Blenheim Palace, Oxfordshire, England, Churchill’s military career began with his attendance of the Royal Military College in Sandhurst. He was commissioned in the Forth Hussars in 1895 and was in the Battle of Omdurman, later discussed in an essay. He left the British Army in 1899, then worked as a war correspondent during the Boer War, during which he was captured and subsequently escaped.

Churchill had a great presence during both World Wars. He joined the War Council in 1914, and then served as the Minister of Munitions during the last year of war, overseeing the production of tanks, guns, and other sources of artillery. Later, from 1919-1920, he served as the Minister of War and Air.

When World War II began, Churchill was called as the First Lord of the Admiralty then later went on to be the chairman of the Military Coordinating Committee in 1940. In the midst of World War II, on May 10, 1940, Churchill was appointed Prime Minister. While Prime Minister, he was often criticized for “meddling” in military affairs; however, he proved to be a great inspiration to the British people in their war-torn country. He also helped to form strong allies with the United States, working closely with President Roosevelt after Pearl Harbor, and with the Soviet Union.

Writing career
Churchill also had an impressive literary career, and won the Nobel Prize for Literature in 1953. He started by writing military reports in the late 1800s for the army. The Story of the Malakand Field Force was published in 1898 and discussed campaigning in the Sudan and The River War, published in 1899, discussed the Battle of Omdurman. He also wrote a novel in 1900, called Savrola.

He also wrote biographies; in fact, what is considered to be his first major work was a biography of his father, the aristocrat Lord Randolph Churchill. He also wrote a biography about the Duke of Marlborough, who was a distant ancestor of his. This was published in four separate volumes. In 1930, he published his own autobiography of his childhood and youth, My Early Life.

Churchill also wrote extensively about the World Wars. His account of the first World War was entitled The World Crisis (written and published from 1923-1929) and spanned four volumes. His recollections of his experiences in World War II were comprised of six volumes (published in 1948-53). For these works, he won the Nobel Prize for Literature in 1953. In 1956-1958, he published a 12-volume set of speeches, the History of the English-speaking Peoples.

Churchill was also a painter and wrote a book entitled Painting as a Pastime, published in 1948.

Personal life
In 1908, Churchill married Clementine Ogilvy Hozier. His health began to deteriorate around 1946, when he suffered the first of a number of strokes. However, he was knighted in 1953, then retired completely from politics in 1955, although he still wrote a number of books. He died on January 24th, 1965.
Sir Winston Churchill was a brilliant military leader and author during both World Wars.

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SUMMARY: Robert Louis Stevenson (November 13, 1850 – December 3, 1894) Scotland novelist, poet, travel writer
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Robert Louis Stevenson was a diverse Scottish writer who authored a number of books, essays, poems, and children’s books. He is best known for such action books such as Treasure Island and Kidnapped.

Early life and education
Robert Louis Balfour Stevenson was born November 13, 1850, in Edinburgh, Scotland, the son of a prominent lighthouse engineer. As a child, Stevenson had tuberculosis and weakened lungs as a result.

When he was 17, he began college to study engineering, like his father. However, he soon determined that engineering was not something he was interested in. His father took him on a sea voyage, presumably to help him become interested in lighthouses. However, the voyage inspired him to want to write adventures about the coast and islands and instead decided to pursue a career in literature. His father eventually allowed this, but made him get a law degree too. He passed the bar exam at the age of 25.

Travels
After college, he began to travel abroad to find a climate that would agree better with his condition. He wrote about his travels in some of his earlier writings, including An Inland Voyage in 1878 and Travels with a Donkey in the Cevennes in 1879.

In 1876, Stevenson met his wife in France. However, she was married at the time. She returned to California a few months later, and he followed her. In 1879 he traveled from New York to California, where he met up with and married his wife Frances Obsourne, who was divorced by this time. He spent the last five years of his life in Samoa, before dying in Samoa in December of 1894.

Writing
Stevenson was a diverse author and wrote a wide range of things, from poems to children’s books to novels. He is perhaps most famous for his adventure novels and stories, many of which include shipwrecks, stolen inheritances, and other such excitement. In 1883 Treasure Island was published, about a young boy who travels with pirates in search of buried treasure. In 1886, both The Strange Case of Dr. Jekyll and Mr. Hyde and Kidnapped were published, then The Black Arrow in 1888 and the Master of the Ballantrae in 1889. These were his most famous adventure stories.

He also wrote essays and criticisms, which were also very well-received. These include Virginibus Puerisque (1881), Familiar Studies of Men and Books (1882), and Memories and Portraits (1887). In addition to this, he wrote a number of travel pieces based on his own adventures and travels. These include The Silverado Squatters (1883), which recounts his visit to a mining camp in California, as well as Across the Plains (1892) and In the South Seas (1896).

In addition to this, he also wrote poetry for children. A Child’s Garden of Verses (1885) is perhaps his most famous, even today. Other poetry collections include Underwoods (1887) and Ballads (1890). He also wrote a number of short stories that were published in his books The New Arabian Nights (1882) and Island Nights’ Entertainments (1893).

Stevenson’s stepson, Lloyd Osbourne, was also a writer. Together, the two collaborated and wrote the novels The Wrong Box (1891) and The Wrecker (1892).

Robert Louis Stevenson was a gifted writer who authored a wide range of books, poems, and literary works that are still enjoyed today.

Filed Under: Biography

SUMMARY: Robert Browning (May 7, 1812–December 12, 1889) British poet, playwright
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When studying famous poets, the name of British poet Robert Browning is sure to be mentioned. He wrote a number of famous works throughout his life.

Life and poetry of Robert Browning

Born May 7,1812, in Camberwall, England (close to London), Robert Browning was the son of an accomplished pianist and a clerk at the Bank of England. From an early age, Robert Browning was exposed to literature and poetry. His father was an avid reader and very well read, and had a library of over 6000 books and volumes.

Robert Browning himself was also well-read and very educated, mostly as a result of his family. An avid reader as well, Robert was also gifted in his studies and learned Latin, Greek, French, and Italian by the time he was fourteen years old. In 1828, at the age of 16, he attended the University of London but dropped out soon after to study what he wanted at his own pace.

As a writer, Browning began with writing verses for stage after meeting William Macready, an actor on British stage. Browning began writing dramatic monologues. He received good reviews of his monologue Paracelsus, written in 1935, and much poorer reviews for Sordello, written in 1840. Many critics complained that his references and meanings were much too obscure to be understood and enjoyed.

Browning married fellow British poet Elizabeth Barrett after reading some of her poems and sending her a letter declaring his love for her and desire to meet her in 1844. They courted via letters until they eventually married in 1846, when she was 38 years old and he was 34, and later eloped to Italy. Together, they had a son, named Robert and nicknamed Pen, in 1849.

Their union and love for each other was the inspiration for a number of both of their poems, although Elizabeth was the more popular of the two poets at the time. He dedicated his collection of works Men and Women, which is said to hold his best works, to her in She also wrote a number of poems to him in her famous Sonnets from the Portuguese.

Elizabeth Barrett Browning died in 1861, and it wasn’t until a few years after that that Robert’s work became much more well-known and successful and he became more widely known as a poet. Some of the works he wrote around this time included Dramatis Personae (1864), The Ring and the Book, a poem consisting of 21,000 lines, Balaustion’s Adventure (1871), Fifine At The Fair (1872), Red Cotton Night-Cap Country (1873), including The Inn Album (1875) and Pacchiarotto and How He Worked in Distemper (1876), Certain People of Importance in Their Day (1887), and the anthology The Agamemnon of Aeschylus (1877). Asolando: Fancies and Facts (1889) was actually published the same day he died.

Browning’s popularity as a poet was evident with the 1881 founding of the Robert Browning Society, developed by fans in England and the US.

Robert Browning died on December 12, 1889, in Italy in his son’s house. He wanted to be buried by Elizabeth in Florence, but the cemetery wasn’t taking new burials at the time. Instead, he is buried in Poet’s Corner in Westminster Abbey, London, England, not far from Lord Alfred Tennyson.

Robert Browning was a famous British poet known for his dramatic monologues and his love for his wife, fellow poet Emily Barrett Browning.

Filed Under: Biography

SUMMARY: James Thurber (December 8, 1894–November 2, 1961) American humorist and cartoonist.
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James Grover Thurber was born on December 8, 1894 in Columbus, Ohio. His father, Charles L. Thurber, was a clerk and minor politician, who went through many periods of unemployment. Mary Thurber, his mother, was a strong-minded woman and a practical joker. He became known as both a humorist and cartoonist throughout the United States. Thurber was best known for his contributions (both cartoons and short stories) that often appeared in The New Yorker magazine.

When his brother William shot an arrow at him Thurber was partially blinded by the childhood accident. Since he was unable to participate in games and sports with other children, he developed a rich fantasy life, which found its outlet in his writings. Thurber began writing during his years at secondary school. Due to his poor eyesight, he was exempt from serving in World War I, but instead studied between 1913 and 1918 at Ohio State University. He also worked as a code clerk in Washington, D.C. and at the United States embassy in Paris. In the early 1920s he began his career as a journalist while working for several newspapers. He also wrote for the Chicago Tribune while living in Paris.

Thurber married Althea Adams in 1922. The marriage was unhappy most of the time and ended in divorce in 1935. After moving to New York City in 1926 Thurber joined Harold Ross’s newly established The New Yorker, where he found his clear, concise precise style.

Thurber worked hard throughout the 1920s, both in the United States and in France, to establish himself as a professional writer. He became unique among major American literary figures, for his simple, surrealistic drawings and cartoons. Both his writing and drawing skills were helped along by the support of, and collaboration with, fellow New Yorker staff member E. B. White. It was White who insisted that Thurber’s sketches could stand on their own as artistic expressions which prompted Thurber to go on to draw six covers and numerous classic illustrations for the New Yorker.

Until the 1930’s he was able to sketch out his cartoons in the usual fashion but then his failing eyesight later required him to draw them on very large sheets of paper using a thick black crayon (also, on black paper using white chalk, from which they were photographed and the colors reversed for publication). Regardless of whatever method, he used his cartoons became as notable as his writings; they possessed an eerie, wobbly feel that seems to mirror Thurber’s idiosyncratic view on life. The last drawing Thurber was able to complete was a self-portrait done in yellow crayon on black paper, which appeared on the cover of the July 9, 1951, edition of Time Magazine.

Thurber eventually married again and had one daughter. In his later years he lived with his wife Helen Wismer, who was a magazine editor, from West Cornwall, Connecticut. He suffered greatly from alcoholism and depression, but Helen’s devoted nursing enabled him to maintain his literary production. Thurber died of a blood clot on the brain on November 2, 1961, in New York at the age of 67.
A list of his works includes:

• Is Sex Necessary? Or, Why You Feel the Way You Do, 1929
• The Owl in the Attic and Other Perplexities, 1931
• The Seal in the Bedroom and Other Predicaments, 1932
• My Life and Hard Times, 1933
• The Middle-Aged Man on the Flying Trapeze, 1935
• Let Your Mind Alone! and Other More Or Less Inspirational Pieces, 1937
• The Last Flower, 1939
• The Male Animal (stage play), 1939 (with Elliot Nugent)
• Fables for Our Time and Famous Poems Illustrated, 1940
• My World–and Welcome To It, 1942
• Many Moons, (children) 1943
• Men, Women, and Dogs, 1943
• The Great Quillow, (children) 1944
• The Thurber Carnival (anthology), 1945,
• The White Deer, (children) 1945
• The Beast in Me and Other Animals, 1948
• The 13 Clocks, (children) 1950
• The Thurber Album, 1952
• Thurber Country, 1953
• Thurber’s Dogs, 1955
• Further Fables For Our Time, 1956
• The Wonderful O, (children) 1957
• Alarms and Diversions (anthology), 1957
• The Years With Ross, 1959
• A Thurber Carnival (stage play), 1960
• Lanterns and Lances, 1961

Filed Under: Biography

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