165 articles
Frank O'Connor
Frank O'Connor was the pen name of Michael Francis O'Donovan (1903–1966), an Irish writer from Cork best known for short stories and memoirs that established the Irish short story as a major genre.
George du Maurier
George du Maurier, born in Paris in 1834, was a British Punch cartoonist and novelist whose best-selling 1894 novel Trilby introduced the character Svengali to literature.
George Eliot
George Eliot, pen name of Mary Anne Evans (1819–1880), English Victorian novelist of Middlemarch, Adam Bede, and Daniel Deronda; also Westminster Review editor, translator of Strauss and Feuerbach, partner of George Henry Lewes.
George Gissing
George Gissing (1857–1903) was an English novelist who chronicled London poverty and the educated-but-poor lower middle class; his masterpiece is New Grub Street (1891), and he wrote 23 novels.
George Meredith
George Meredith (1828–1909) was a British novelist and poet whose psychologically dense fiction, including The Egoist and Diana of the Crossways, won him honors but few general readers.
George Moore (novelist)
George Moore, full name George Augustus Moore (1852–1933), was an Irish novelist who brought French naturalism into English and Irish fiction, best known for Esther Waters (1894).
George Orwell
George Orwell, pen name of Eric Arthur Blair (1903–1950), English novelist, essayist, and critic; author of Animal Farm (1945) and Nineteen Eighty-Four (1949) and a democratic socialist critic of totalitarianism.
Graham Greene
Graham Greene (Henry Graham Greene) was an English novelist, playwright, and screenwriter who combined Catholic themes with espionage, writing Brighton Rock, The Power and the Glory, and The Quiet American.
Hari Kunzru
Hari Kunzru (born 1969) is a British novelist and journalist, author of The Impressionist, Transmission, My Revolutions, Gods Without Men, White Tears, and Red Pill; a 2003 Granta Best Young British Novelist who refused the 2003 John Llewellyn Rhys prize and teaches at NYU.
Helen Dunmore
Helen Dunmore (1952–2017), British poet, novelist, and children's author; winner of the inaugural Orange Prize for A Spell of Winter (1996); wrote The Siege, The Betrayal, the Ingo series, and posthumous Costa-winning Inside the Wave.
Henry Fielding
Henry Fielding (1707–1754), English novelist and magistrate, author of Joseph Andrews, Tom Jones (1749), and Amelia; pioneer of the modern comic novel and founder of the Bow Street Runners.
Hugh Walpole
Hugh Walpole (1884–1941) was a New Zealand-born English novelist who published a novel almost yearly for three decades and is best remembered for his Herries Chronicle.
Iain Banks
Iain Banks (Iain Menzies Banks, 1954–2013), Scottish novelist; literary fiction as Iain Banks, science fiction as Iain M. Banks; The Wasp Factory (1984) and the nine-novel Culture series; died 9 June 2013.
Ian Maclaren
Ian Maclaren was the pen name of John Watson (1850–1907), a Scottish Free Church minister and novelist whose 1894 collection Beside the Bonnie Brier Bush sold over 750,000 copies.
Ian McEwan
Ian Russell McEwan (born 1948, Aldershot) is a British novelist, winner of the 1998 Booker Prize for Amsterdam, shortlisted five times more, famed for Atonement and the early 'Ian Macabre' works, and author of What We Can Know (2025).
Ignatius Sancho
Ignatius Sancho (c. 1729 – 1780) was a Black British writer, composer, and shopkeeper, the first known person of African descent to vote in a British parliamentary election.
Iris Murdoch
Iris Murdoch (1919–1999), Irish-born British novelist and philosopher, author of 26 novels including Booker winner The Sea, The Sea, and of The Sovereignty of Good; known for Platonic moral realism, attention, and unselfing.
Irvine Welsh
Irvine Welsh (born 1958, Leith, Edinburgh) is a Scottish novelist, author of Trainspotting (1993), Filth, Glue, and Skagboys; known for Edinburgh-dialect prose, the 1996 Danny Boyle film adaptation, and over 6 million books sold.
Israel Zangwill
Israel Zangwill (1864–1926) was a British novelist, playwright, and advocate of Jewish causes who led British Zionism, then broke with it in 1905 to found the Jewish Territorialist Organization.
J. L. Carr
J. L. Carr (Joseph Lloyd Carr, 1912-1994), English novelist and Quince Tree Press publisher; wrote eight novels including A Month in the Country, Guardian Fiction Prize winner and 1980 Booker shortlist.
J. M. Barrie
J. M. Barrie (1860–1937), Scottish novelist and playwright, creator of Peter Pan; born in Kirriemuir, guardian of the Llewelyn Davies boys, gave the Peter Pan copyright to Great Ormond Street Hospital.
J. P. Donleavy
J. P. Donleavy (1926-2017), American-born Irish novelist, author of The Ginger Man (1955), banned in Ireland and published by Olympia Press; won a 21-year legal battle with Maurice Girodias and bought the press, settling at Levington Park, Mullingar.
James Joyce
James Augustine Aloysius Joyce (1882-1941), Irish modernist novelist, short story writer, and poet; author of Dubliners, A Portrait of the Artist as a Young Man, Ulysses (1922), and Finnegans Wake (1939); lived in Trieste, Zurich, and Paris; Ulysses banned until the 1933 Woolsey decision.
Jane Austen
Jane Austen (1775–1817), English novelist of gentry life, author of six novels published 1811–1818 including Pride and Prejudice and Emma; pioneer of free indirect discourse, first published anonymously as "by a Lady".
Jean Rhys
Jean Rhys (Ella Gwendoline Rees Williams), Dominican-born modernist novelist (1890 or 1894–1979), author of Quartet, Voyage in the Dark, Good Morning, Midnight, and Wide Sargasso Sea (1966), the Jane Eyre prequel that restored her fame.
Jeanette Winterson
Jeanette Winterson (born 1959, Manchester) is an English novelist and author of Oranges Are Not the Only Fruit (1985), Whitbread first-novel winner, also known for The Passion, Written on the Body, and Frankissstein.
Jennifer Lash
Jennifer Lash (Jini Fiennes, 1938–1993), English novelist and painter, author of The Burial, The Climate of Belief, and the posthumous Blood Ties; mother of Ralph and Joseph Fiennes.
John Banville
John Banville (born 1945, Wexford, Ireland) is an Irish novelist who won the 2005 Booker Prize for The Sea and wrote crime novels as Benjamin Black, including the Quirke series, retiring that pseudonym in 2020.
John Boyne
John Boyne is an Irish novelist who has published 22 works in more than 30 years. He is most famous for The Boy in the Striped Pyjamas.
John Cowper Powys
John Cowper Powys (1872–1963) was a British novelist and itinerant lecturer in America who wrote Wolf Solent and A Glastonbury Romance, and is ranked among the great 20th-century novelists.