165 articles
Thomasine Gyllembourg
Thomasine Gyllembourg, born Thomasine Buntzen, was a Danish writer who debuted at 53 in 1827 and wrote 24 tales and four plays anonymously as the author of En Hverdags-Historie.
Tobias Smollett
Tobias Smollett (1721–1771) was a Scottish novelist, surgeon, and editor best known for Roderick Random, Peregrine Pickle, and Humphry Clinker, published in the year of his death.
V. S. Naipaul
V. S. Naipaul (Vidiadhar Surajprasad Naipaul), Trinidadian-born British novelist and travel writer, Nobel laureate 2001 and Booker winner 1971 for In a Free State, author of A House for Mr Biswas.
Virginia Woolf
Virginia Woolf (Adeline Virginia Stephen, 1882–1941), English modernist novelist, essayist, and Hogarth Press co-founder; author of Mrs Dalloway, To the Lighthouse, Orlando, and A Room of One's Own; pioneer of stream-of-consciousness and free indirect discourse.
Vita Sackville-West
Vita Sackville-West (Victoria Mary Sackville-West, 1892–1962), English poet, novelist, and gardener; winner of the Hawthornden Prize twice (The Land, Collected Poems); author of The Edwardians and All Passion Spent, model for Woolf's Orlando, creator of Sissinghurst garden; distinguishable from other Sackville-West family members by her Knole inheritance and Virginia Woolf relationship.
W. Somerset Maugham
W. Somerset Maugham (1874–1965), British playwright, novelist, and short-story writer; author of Of Human Bondage, The Moon and Sixpence, and The Razor's Edge; four plays ran simultaneously in the West End in 1908; bequeathed copyrights to the Royal Literary Fund.
Will Self
Will Self (William Woodard Self), born 1961, is an English novelist and journalist known for satirical fiction; his novel Umbrella was shortlisted for the Booker Prize.
William Boyd (writer)
William Boyd (born 1952, Accra, Ghana) is a British novelist and screenwriter, author of A Good Man in Africa, An Ice-Cream War, Any Human Heart, Restless, and the 2013 James Bond novel Solo, known for whole-life fiction and the Nat Tate hoax.
William Carleton
William Carleton (1794–1869) was an Irish novelist and short-story writer, born to a Catholic tenant farmer in Prillisk, County Tyrone, best known for Traits and Stories of the Irish Peasantry.
William Golding
William Golding (1911–1993), British novelist, Nobel laureate 1983 and Booker winner 1980 for Rites of Passage; author of Lord of the Flies (1954), a rebuttal of The Coral Island that sold over fifty million copies.
William Makepeace Thackeray
William Makepeace Thackeray (1811–1863), English novelist born in Calcutta, author of Vanity Fair (1848), Barry Lyndon, and Henry Esmond; Dickens's great Victorian rival, first editor of Cornhill Magazine, died of a stroke in London.
William McIlvanney
William McIlvanney (1936–2015), Scottish novelist and poet from Kilmarnock, author of the Laidlaw trilogy and Docherty; called the godfather of tartan noir, Whitbread and CWA Silver Dagger winner.
William Plomer
William Plomer (1903–1973) was a South African-born British novelist, poet, and librettist whose debut novel Turbott Wolfe scandalized white South Africa; he later shaped London publishing at Jonathan Cape.
William Trevor
William Trevor (William Trevor Cox, 1928–2016), Irish short-story writer and novelist living in Devon, author of The Ballroom of Romance, Fools of Fortune, and Felicia's Journey; Hawthornden and Whitbread winner, four-time Booker shortlistee, knighted 2002.
Zadie Smith
Zadie Smith, born 1975 in Willesden, London, is a British novelist and essayist, author of White Teeth, On Beauty, NW, Swing Time, and The Fraud; Whitbread, Guardian First Book, Orange Prize, and Booker-shortlisted writer.