Booth Tarkington (1869-1946)

The prolific writings of American author Newton Booth Tarkington (1869-1946) include the novels "Penrod" and "Seventeen" and many successful Broadway plays.

Booth Tarkington was born on July 29, 1869, the second child of lawyer John S. Tarkington and Elizabeth Booth Tarkington, in Indianapolis, Ind., a city which was always his home. His childhood was as happy and secure as his doting, well-educated, church-going, and prosperous parents could make it. He showed an early interest in writing and, like his fictional Penrod, produced his plays in the family hayloft. After mediocre achievement in high school he was sent to Phillips Exeter Academy.

The family suffered financial difficulties, so Tarkington entered first a local business college and then Purdue University to study art. When family fortunes revived, his mother insisted on sending him to Princeton, from which he could not receive a degree because he lacked the requisite classics background, but where he acquired a broad education and formed many associations which served him well during his life. He left Princeton in 1893 and spent the next 5 years writing, without much success in publishing his work. After McClure's Magazine serialized The Gentleman from Indiana in 1899, his novels and short stories appeared regularly in it and other magazines. In 1902 he married Louisa Fletcher and served one term in the Indiana Legislature as a conservative Republican. In 1903 he made his first trip to Europe, to which he returned regularly. A daughter was born in 1906.

From 1907 to 1910 Tarkington spent his time writing plays, mostly comedies such as Your Humble Servant and Springtime (both 1909), many in collaboration with Harry Wilson and Julian Street. Between 1914 and 1924 he wrote some plays and a trilogy of novels chronicling the rise and fall of family fortunes in midwestern industrial society. One of these, The Magnificent Ambersons (1918), was awarded the Pulitzer Prize in 1919. His best novel, Alice Adams (1920), also received the Pulitzer Prize. During these years he produced his famous characters modeled on his own boyhood, the title character of Penrod (1914) and Penrod and Sam (1916) and Willie Baxter of Seventeen (1916). During both world wars he devoted much effort to writing Allied propaganda.

In 1911 his first wife divorced him, and in 1912 he married Susanah Robinson. They had no children; his daughter, Laurel, died in 1923. Tarkington began losing his eyesight in the late 1920s, and he was blind in his later years. He learned to dictate and continued to write. On May 19, 1946, he died in Indianapolis.

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Alexis de Tocqueville (1805-1859)

The French statesman and writer Alexis Charles Henri Maurice Clérel de Tocqueville (1805-1859) was the author of "Democracy in America, " the first classic commentary on American government written by a foreigner.

Alexis de Tocqueville was born in Paris on July 29, 1805, of an aristocratic Norman family. He studied law in Paris (1823-1826) and then was appointed an assistant magistrate at Versailles (1827).

The July 1830 Revolution which, with middle-class support, put Louis Philippe on the throne, required a loyalty oath of Tocqueville as a civil servant. He was suspect because his aristocratic family opposed the new order and was demoted to a minor judgeship without pay. Tocqueville and another magistrate, Gustave de Beaumont, asked to study prison reform in America, then an interest of the French government. Granted permission but not funds (their families paid their expenses), Tocqueville and Beaumont spent from May 1831 to February 1832 in the United States. Their travel and interviews resulted in On the Penitentiary System in the United States and Its Application in France (1832). Then followed Tocqueville's famous Democracy in America (vol. 1, 1835; vol. 2, 1840), an immediate best seller. By 1850 it had run through 13 editions.

Tocqueville was elected to the Chamber of Deputies in 1839. He opposed King Louis Philippe but after the Revolution of 1848 again served as a deputy. Tocqueville was foreign minister for a few months in 1849 and retired from public affairs at the end of 1851. During his last years he wrote The Old Regime and the French Revolution (1856). He died in Cannes on April 16, 1859.


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Beatrix Potter (1866-1943)

* Born: 28 July 1866

* Birthplace: London, England

* Died: 22 December 1943

* Best Known As: Creator of the Peter Rabbit children's books

Name at birth: Helen Beatrix Potter

Beatrix Potter was the author and illustrator of a popular series of children's books that includes The Tale of Peter Rabbit (1902), The Tailor of Gloucester (1903) and The Tale of the Flopsy Bunnies (1909). Illustrated with watercolors, her simple and unsentimental stories for children involved the adventures of Peter Rabbit, Benjamin Bunny, the hedgehog Mrs. Tiggy-Winkle and others. Between the 1890s and 1920s she published more than a dozen books, and sets of her small books have remained popular for more than a century and sold millions of copies. She bought farmland and cared for her aging parents until she was in her 40s, then married the lawyer William Heelis in 1913 and devoted her later years to breeding sheep and fighting for land conservation.

From the age of 15 until she was past 30, Potter kept a journal written in a secret code, a code not broken until nearly 20 years after her death... For more than ten years Potter worked on scientifically accurate paintings of various types of fungi.

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Tanizaki Jun'ichiro (1886-1965)

(born July 24, 1886, Tokyo, Japan — died July 30, 1965, Yugawara) Japanese novelist. Though his earliest short stories have affinities with those of Edgar Allan Poe and the French Decadents, Tanizaki later turned to exploring more traditional Japanese ideals of beauty. His novels include Some Prefer Nettles (1928 – 29), which tells of marital unhappiness that is in fact a conflict between the new and the old, with the implication that the old will win; and his masterpiece, The Makioka Sisters (1943 – 48; film, 1983), which describes, in the leisurely style of classical Japanese literature, the inroads of the harsh modern world on traditional society. His writings are characterized by eroticism and ironic wit.

Junichiro Tanizaki is a Japanese novelist who lived from 1886 to 1965. He is one of Japan's most famous authors, and his work is widely read all over the world. Junichiro Tanizaki is well known for his experimental writing style paired with very traditionally formatted Japanese narrative. His work is characterized by very strange and often tormented characters who struggle with the clash between Westernization and traditional Japanese values, much like Junichiro Tanizaki himself. Many of his novels are also frankly erotic, although the eroticism tends to take a nontraditional and sometimes non-consensual form. Several of Tanizaki's books were later adapted into films as well.

Junichiro Tanizaki was born into a wealthy merchant family in Tokyo, and in his early years, he was fascinated by Westernization and modernism, living for some time in a Western style house in Yokohama, a very bohemian section of Tokyo, with his wife and child. Junichiro Tanizaki also briefly attended Tokyo University, leaving in 1910 with his fees unpaid. There is some debate over Tanizaki's nonpayment of his University fees, with some biographers arguing that he chose not to pay them as a personal protest, and others suggesting that he was not financially able to continue his studies. Tanizaki published several short stories during his time in Yokohama, including The Tattooer, which hints at the unique macabre style that Junichiro Tanizaki would later develop.

The life of Junichiro Tanizaki took a radical turn with the Kanto earthquake in 1923. His home in Yokohama was leveled, and he ended up leaving his wife and child and moving to Kyoto, traditionally a very old fashioned city that placed a high value on Japanese culture before Westernization. Junichiro Tanizaki himself began to change, and he fed his interest in Japanese history and culture, leading to the production of some of the finest Japanese novels of the 20th century.

Naomi (1924), Tanizaki's first novel from this period, is the story of a very traditionally raised engineer who falls in love with a young Japanese woman who has embraced modern culture. He continued the theme of clashes between traditionalism and modernism in Some Prefer Nettles (1929), a novel about a man who ultimately commits suicide when he decides he cannot survive in the modern world, despite his earlier love of the modern life. Junichiro Tanizaki wrote a number of books about this struggle between values, and they are all characterized by sad, strange characters who leave the reader with an oddly uncomfortable feeling.

Junichiro Tanizaki was also influenced by the years leading to the Second World War, turning away from modern Japanese militarism and looking back to other eras. The Secret History of the Lord Musashi (1935) and The Makioka Sisters (1948) both stem from Tanizaki's interest in Japanese history and culture. Both books were heavily researched and reflect a love and respect for previous eras in Japanese history, and the people who inhabit these stories seem more vivid and alive than Tanizaki's heavily Westernized characters.

As Junichiro Tanizaki neared the end of his life, his nostalgia and frustration with the turn away from traditional Japanese values colored much of his work. He played with themes of fabrication and fable telling, implying that modern Japanese culture was built more upon fiction than reality, in brutal novels such as The Key (1956) and Diary of a Mad Old Man (1961).

The work of Junichiro Tanizaki is haunting and compelling, and also brilliantly written. His craft as a storyteller makes him a beloved author, even if his books often state difficult truths and criticisms of the culture they were written in. The legacy of Junichiro Tanizaki lies in his unflinching look at the rapid changes Japan went through in the 20th century, as well his meditations on history and traditional values.


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Alexandre Dumas (1802-1870)

* Born: 24 July 1802

* Birthplace: Villers-Cotterets, France

* Died: 5 December 1870 (natural causes)

* Best Known As: The author of The Three Musketeers

Alexandre Dumas wrote the classic adventure novel The Three Musketeers and some of the most famous and popular stories in French literature. Beginning in 1844 he had a string of brilliantly successful books, publishing The Three Musketeers (1844, first printed in serial form) and following it with The Count of Monte Cristo (1845), Twenty Years After (1845) and The Black Tulip (1850), among many others. A great celebrity writer of the day, he was almost as famous for his reckless spending and lavish lifestyle, and he was frequently in debt. In his last days he was supported by his illegitimate son, the author Alexandre Dumas the Younger.

Dumas and his son are often referred to as Dumas peré (father) and Dumas fils (son)... Alexandre Dumas was one-quarter black; his grandfather had married a slave while serving as a government official in what is now Haiti.


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Robert Chambers (1802-1871)

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Robert Chambers was a prolific journalist of Edinburgh. A well-know literary and intellectual figure at his time, he is primarily remembered today as the then secret author of Vestiges of the Natural History of Creation (1844), a work which caused a great sensation in Victorian Britain. His circle of friends included the Combes brothers, Robert Cox, the journalist Alexander Ireland, and the Glasgow professor of astronomy J.P. Nichol. Chambers initially intended his book to be a "philosophy of phrenology".

Vestiges drew heavily on the naturalistic rhetoric and especially the doctrine of the natural laws from Combe's Constitution of Man. Vestiges took the phrenological doctrine of natural laws and brought it to cultural territory it might not otherwise have reached. Vestiges is now usually remembered for the controversy it initiated over transmutation (evolution).

Charles Darwin later remarked that Vestiges was important in preparing many people to accept his own theory of evolution. Reading the book in a post-Darwinian world often leads to the skewed representation of Vestiges as a flawed precursor of Darwin's Origin of Species (1859). However, during the 1840s and 1850s Vestiges was the only 'evolution' book readers in the English speaking world were familiar with. Rather than dismissing the book as flawed, we might be impressed by how remarkably modern the book reads today.

Vestiges argues for a general "development" theory. Although much of the critical invective directed against the book focused on the issue of speciation- readers of Vestiges found a grand tale of the "development" or progress of nature from swirling clouds of interstellar gas, to the geological ages of the Earth, to the increasing complexity of organic forms and the improvement of man. Only in 1884 (long after Chambers' death) with the publication of the 12th edition, was it revealed that Vestiges was written by Robert Chambers.

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Robert Chambers

Marcel Proust (1871-1922)

* Born: 10 July 1871

* Birthplace: Auteuil, France

* Died: 18 November 1922 (Pneumonia)

* Best Known As: Author of Remembrance of Things Past

From a well-to-do family, young Marcel Proust was a critic, translator and socialite in Paris at the turn of the century. After the deaths of his parents (in 1903 and 1905), Proust retreated from a busy social life to his notorious cork-lined room and worked the rest of his life on his masterpiece novel, A la Recherche du temps perdu (also known as Remembrance of Things Past, and more recently translated as In Search of Lost Time). The sprawling, autobiographical novel is considered one of the greatest works of French literature.

famous quotes by Marcel Proust

"There's nothing like desire to prevent the things one says from having any resemblance to the things in one's mind."

"We do not succeed in changing things according to our desire, but gradually our desire changes."

"All our final decisions are made in a state of mind that is not going to last."

"Impelled by a state of mind which is destined not to last, we make our irrevocable decisions"


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Dean Koontz (1945 )

* Born: Jul 09, 1945

* Occupation: Writer

* Active: '80s-2000s

* Major Genres: Horror, Science Fiction

* Career Highlights: Hideaway, Phantoms, The Servants of Twilight

* First Major Screen Credit: Demon Seed (1977)

* Birthplace: Everett, Pennsylvania

* Best Known As: The horror novelist who wrote Watchers

Dean Koontz has been a regular on American bestseller lists since the 1980s, famous for mainstream suspense novels such as Watchers (1987) and Midnight (1989). Koontz grew up in Pennsylvania and began writing at an early age. After college he worked in social services and as a high school English teacher before devoting himself to writing full-time. He published science fiction novels in the late 1960s and early '70s, then wrote novels in a variety of genres under several pseudonyms (achieving some popularity writing as Leigh Nichols). His 1980 novel Whispers became a bestseller and defined what would become a winning formula, a well-crafted suspense story with elements of horror and the supernatural. He has published dozens of novels, many of which have been bestsellers, including Hideaway (1992), Intensity (1996), Odd Thomas (2003) and Velocity (2005).

Many of Koontz's books have been made into movies, including Demon Seed (1977), Watchers (1988), Hideaway (1995, starring Jeff Goldblum) and Phantoms

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Robert Heinlein (1907-1988)

* Born: 7 July 1907

* Birthplace: Butler, Missouri

* Died: 8 May 1988

* Best Known As: The author of Stranger in a Strange Land

After leaving the U.S. Navy as a young lieutenant, Robert Anson Heinlein began writing science fiction stories and never looked back. He won four Hugo Awards for best science fiction novel during the 1950s and '60s, earning him the sobriquet of "The Dean of Science Fiction." Stranger in a Strange Land, his 1961 story of an empathetic Mars-born human who comes to live on Earth, is one of the best selling science fiction novels ever. Along with Isaac Asimov and Arthur C. Clarke, Heinlein is considered a father of modern science fiction. His other novels include The Puppet Masters (1951), Double Star (1956, Hugo winner for 1956), Starship Troopers (1959, Hugo winner for 1960), The Moon is a Harsh Mistress (1966, Hugo winner for 1967), Time Enough for Love (1973) and The Number of the Beast (1980).

Heinlein's name is pronounced hine-line... In Stranger in a Strange Land, Heinlein coined the term grok -- now defined by The American Heritage Dictionary as "To understand profoundly through intuition or empathy"... Starship Troopers was made into 1997 movie starring Casper Van Dien and Denise Richards and later became a popular video game series... Heinlein's date of birth can be written as 07-07-07.

Famous Quotes By Robert Heinlein

"Human beings hardly ever learn from the experience of others. They learn; when they do, which isn't often, on their own, the hard way."

"Always listen to experts. They'll tell you what can't be done and why. Then do it."

"When any government, or church for that matter, undertakes to say to it's subjects, this you may not read, this you must not see, this you are forbidden to know the end result is tyranny and oppression, no matter how holy the motive."

"A generation which ignores history has no past and no future."


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Nathaniel Hawthorne ( 1804 - 1864 )

* Born: 4 July 1804

* Birthplace: Salem, Massachusetts

* Died: 19 May 1864

* Best Known As: The author of The Scarlet Letter

One of the great American authors of the 19th century, Nathaniel Hawthorne grew up in New England and published his first novel, Fanshawe, in 1828. Though he went on to help lay the foundations of the American short story, Hawthorne is more widely known for his novels The Scarlet Letter (1850) and The House of Seven Gables (1851). (Hester Prynne, the heroine of The Scarlet Letter, is forced to wear the letter 'A' for adultery after she has an affair with the Puritan minister Arthur Dimmesdale.) Hawthorne's other books include Twice-Told Tales (1837) and The Marble Faun (1860). From 1853 to 1859 Hawthorne lived in England and in Italy, but returned to the United States and died in 1864.

Hawthorne was good friends with Herman Melville, author of Moby-Dick... Hawthorne also knew President Franklin Pierce and wrote a biography of Pierce for his campaign in 1852.

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M F K Fisher (1908 -1992 )

Mary Frances Kennedy Fisher (July 3, 1908 - June 22, 1992) was a prolific and well-respected writer, writing more than 20 books during her lifetime and also publishing two volumes of journals and correspondence shortly before her death in 1992. Her first book, Serve it Forth, was published in 1937. Her books dealt primarily with food, considering it from many aspects: preparation, natural history, culture, and philosophy. She understood that eating well was just one of the arts of life, always her second theme, and she wrote with the pacing and precision of a first rate essayist or short story writer.

She was an American culinary writer. Raised in California, Fisher lived in France for three years, where she was inspired by Brillat-Savarin's philosophy of life and translated his The Physiology of Taste (1949).

Her writings are more than just recipes; they are culinary essays written in a distinctively graceful literary style that also offer philosophical reflections, reminiscences, and anecdotes. Her books include

Serve It Forth (1937),
How to Cook a Wolf (1942),
The Gastronomical Me (1943),
Time-Life's The Cooking of Provincial France (1968), and With Bold Knife and Fork (1979).
Fisher's posthumously published trilogy of reminiscences are To Begin Again (1992), Stay Me, Oh Comfort Me (1993), and Last House (1995).

Famous Quotes by Mary Frances Kennedy Fisher

"Sharing food with another human being is an intimate act that should not be indulged in lightly."

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Franz Kafka (1883-1924)

* Born: 3 July 1883

* Birthplace: Prague, Bohemia (Czechoslovakia)

* Died: 3 June 1924 (tuberculosis)

* Best Known As: Author of The Trial and The Metamorphosis

Franz Kafka was a writer famous for stories of bewildered individuals betrayed by an irrational and pointless society. The son of German-Jewish parents, he was raised in Prague, where he earned a law degree and worked for an insurance firm while writing mostly short fiction on the side. He began publishing stories in 1907, but what are now considered his major works appeared posthumously. Kafka left instructions after his death that his writings should be destroyed. His friend, author Max Brod, instead edited and published his writings in the 1930s, including The Trial, The Castle and The Metamorphosis. Kafka's work, with its themes of alienation from society and a general anxiety over just being alive, influenced European intellectuals and is considered representative of existential literature from the period between World War I and World War II.

"It is not necessary that you leave the house. Remain at your table and listen. Do not even listen, only wait. Do not even wait, be wholly still and alone. The world will present itself to you for its unmasking, it can do no other, in ecstasy it will writhe at your feet."

"My fear... is my substance, and probably the best part of me."

"From a certain point onward there is no longer any turning back. That is the point that must be reached."

"In theory there is a possibility of perfect happiness: To believe in the indestructible element within one, and not to strive towards it."

"My guiding principle is this: Guilt is never to be doubted."


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Ridley Pearson (1953)

Ridley Pearson is a novelist, writing mostly suspense and thrillers. His books include Undercurrents (1988), The Angel Maker (1993), No Witnesses (1994), Chain of Evidence (1995), Beyond Recognition (1997), and The Body of David Hayes (2004). Pearson became the first American to receive the Raymond Chandler-Fulbright Fellowship at Oxford University in 1991. Many of his stories are set in the neighborhoods in and around Seattle, Washington, many featuring the Seattle Police detective Lou Boldt and forensic psychologist Daphne Mathews.

After his daughter asked him how Peter Pan met Captain Hook, Pearson teamed up with his long-time friend Dave Barry to co-author a prequel to Peter Pan, Peter and the Starcatchers which is published in the US by Disney and by Walker Books in the UK. A further prequel, Peter and the Shadow Thieves is now available. Pearson has since been employed again by Disney to author a novel set inside the Magic Kingdom theme park in Lake Buena Vista, Florida. Named The Kingdom Keepers, it features Disney characters coming to life and Walt Disney leaving clues for a lost treasure in the park.

He is also the author of The Diary of Ellen Rimbauer: My Life at Rose Red—adapted as the film The Diary of Ellen Rimbauer (2003)—and three mysteries featuring Chris Klick, under the pseudonyms of Joyce Reardon, Ph.D., and Wendell McCall, respectively.

He was raised in Riverside, Connecticut, and currently lives in Kirkwood, Missouri, with his wife, Marcelle, and their two daughters, Paige and Storey. Ridley was educated at the Pomfret School, The University Of Kansas, and Brown University.

He also plays bass guitar and sings for the Rock Bottom Remainders.

Born on March 13, 1953 in Glen Cove, New York.


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Jerzy Kosinski (1933-1991)

Polish-American writer Jerzy Kosinski (1933 - 1991) authored three of the most widely read novels of the 1960s and 1970s: "The Painted Bird, Steps", and "Being There", the last of which also became a hit film.

Polish-born U.S. writer. He claimed that his horrific experiences as a Jew in World War II Poland and Russia caused him to be mute for much of his childhood. He studied political science and became a professor of sociology before immigrating to the U.S. in 1957. His novel The Painted Bird (1965) is a graphic, surrealistic tale of the horrors surrounding the war. Other successful novels were Steps (1968) and the satiric fable Being There (1970; film, 1979). After his suicide, it was revealed that much of his past had been fabricated.





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Mahatma Gandhi ( 1869 - 1948 )

Born: 2 October 1869

Birthplace: Porbandar, India

Died: 30 January 1948 (assassination)

Best Known As: Non-violent leader of Indian independence - Mahatma Gandhi

Mohandas Karamchand Gandhi (1869-1948) was an Indian revolutionary religious leader who used his religious power for political and social reform. Although he held no governmental office, he was the prime mover in the struggle for independence of the world's second-largest nation

Revered in India as the "Father of the Nation," Mohandas K. Gandhi is also a worldwide icon of non-violent political resistance. Gandhi was born in India and studied law in England, then spent 20 years defending the rights of immigrants in South Africa. He returned to India in 1914, eventually becoming the leader of the Indian National Congress. At the time, India was part of the British Empire, and Gandhi urged non-violence and civil disobedience as a means to independence. His public acts of defiance landed him in jail many times as the struggle continued through World War II. In 1947 he participated in the postwar negotiations with Britain that led to Indian independence. He was shot to death by a Hindu fanatic the next year. An advocate of simple living, Gandhi ate a vegetarian diet and made his own clothes; the spinning wheel became a symbol of his uncluttered lifestyle. His autobiography, The Story of My Experiments With Truth, was published in 1927. His birthday, October 2nd, is a national holiday in India.

Gandhi is often called Mahatma -- the Hindu term for "great soul"... His middle name was Karamchand... Gandhi wed Kasturba Makhanji in 1883, in an arranged marriage; he was 13 at the time. They had five children and remained married for nearly 61 years, until her death in 1944... Among his many famous quotes is the saying, "An eye for an eye will make the whole world blind"... Gandhi was played by Ben Kingsley in the 1982 film Gandhi. The film won eight Academy Awards, including best film and best actor for Kingsley.

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John Ruskin (1819-1900)

The English critic and social theorist John Ruskin (1819-1900) more than any other man shaped the esthetic values and tastes of Victorian England. His writings combine enormous sensitivity and human compassion with a burning zeal for moral value.

Art and social critic John Ruskin was born in 1819 in London, and died at Brantwood in the Lake District on Jan. 20, 1900.

The only child of a well-to-do Scottish couple, Ruskin grew up in a cultured household in which both his father’s artistic leanings and his mother’s fervent Evangelical faith were central themes. Ruskin pere’s profitable sherry business enabled the family to make annual pilgrimages to Italy, France and the Alps where, from a young age, Ruskin’s aesthetic appetites were nourished on a broad exposure to European architecture, painting, and the watercolors and drawings of Turner his father collected.

An accomplished draftsman himself, even as a child, Ruskin recorded a lifetime of impressions in a vast output of drawings and watercolors of architecture, plant life, atmospheric effects, geological formations and other natural phenomena.

His art critical acumen was also on early display. He had published three essays – one “an inquiry into the color of the Rhine,” a spirited defense of Turner for Blackwood’s and an article on the “poetry of architecture” – before he was eighteen. While at Oxford, he won the Newdigate Prize for poetry in 1839.

At age 24, Ruskin published the first volume of the work that would make him famous: Modern Painters, a seminal defense of Turner that, as novelist Charlotte Bronte later wrote, taught a generation how to see.

Between the years 1843 and 1860, Ruskin wrote, in addition to installments of Modern Painters, The Seven Lamps of Architecture, and The Stones of Venice – books that influenced 19th and 20th century aesthetic trends from the Pre-Raphaelites, plein-air landscape painting, and the Arts and Crafts movement to Frank Lloyd Wright. With his championing of early Italian “primitives,” Gothic architecture, “truth” in the depiction of nature, and “organic” architecture, Ruskin, as one art critic writes, “shaped a whole sensibility.”

These years also witnessed Ruskin’s ill-fated marriage to Effie Gray, who later married the painter (and Ruskin protégé) John Everett Millais in 1854.

While Ruskin never stopped writing and lecturing about art, by 1860, his focus had shifted to social criticism. Increasingly tormented by the poverty and squalor he saw around him in Victorian Britain, Ruskin began to challenge, in vivid, passionate language, the political, economic and ethical assumptions of industrialized society, and to propose a radical link between art and social reform. In works from Unto This Last (1860) to Fors Clavigera (1871-1884), his series of ninety-six letters to the workers of Great Britain, Ruskin laid out a visionary program that would, increasingly, bewilder, and finally alienate much of his conventional audience. Ruskin’s ideas, however, would go on to animate trade unionists and labor leaders in Britain and America, leaders of the growing Arts and Crafts movement, modernist designers and prove life-changing for figures as diverse as Marcel Proust, William Morris, Leo Tolstoy, Bernard Shaw and Mahatma Gandhi.

Acting on his own critique, Ruskin taught drawing free of charge at the Working Men’s College in London, enlisted his students in building projects in slums, endowed schools and museums in working-class areas, supported a small retinue of artists and founded a craft-based community, St. George’s Guild, into which he poured his considerable fortune.

In the 1870s and ‘80s, “Ruskin societies” sprang up in Britain and America to advance the master’s vision of the unity of life and art. The Ruskin Art Club, founded in Los Angeles in 1888, is a living example of that impulse.

For Ruskin, himself, however, these were troubled years. By the 1880s, Ruskin’s life alternated between a series of mental breakdowns and lonely, desperate attempts to influence what he perceived as an increasingly indifferent public. That struggle culminated in the hauntingly beautiful, and unfinished memoir Praeterita, and, in 1889, with a mental collapse from which he never recovered.

John Ruskin died at his Brantwood estate in 1900.

Mahatma Gandhi was very much influenced by one of his book Called " Unto This Last "


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Samuel Taylor Coleridge, (1772-1834)

Born: 21 October 1772

Birthplace: Devonshire, England

Died: 25 July 1834 (heart attack)

Best Known As: The author of The Rime of the Ancient Mariner

English romantic poet, philosopher and critic. His works include Poems on Various Subjects (1796), Lyrical Ballads (1798) written with Wordsworth and which includes The Rime of the Ancient Mariner, conversation poems Fears in Solitude, Frost at Midnight, This Lime-Tree Bower My Prison, The Nightingale and the "dream" poem Kubla Khan (1797-8). His love poems include Love (1799); Dejection: an Ode (1902) was about his addiction to opium. Sibylline Leaves (1817) was the first of his collected works. His major work the Biographia Literaria was written after his rediscovery of Christianity and Aids to Reflection (1825) and Church and State (1830) are religious prose. Along with Wordsworth, Coleridge was one of the founders of the Romantic movement. Other romantic poets include Byron, Keats, Burns and Wordsworth.

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Ian Fleming (1908 - 1964)

Born: 28 May 1908

Birthplace: London, England

Died: 12 August 1964 (pleurisy and internal bleeding)

Best Known As: The creator of James Bond 007

Writer Ian Fleming (1909-1964) created the character of James Bond 007, Ian Fleming is the creator of the fictional superspy James Bond. Bond is a suave, lady-killing British agent who travels the globe, battles super-villains bent on world domination, and famously prefers his vodka martinis "shaken, not stirred.". Ian Fleming debuted in the 1952 novel Casino Royale. After publishing his first Bond adventure, Casino Royale, in 1953, Fleming wrote one Bond book each year until his death. The stories spawned a highly profitable movie series which continued into the 21st century, with Sean Connery and Roger Moore the most famous actors to play Bond. Fleming also wrote a series of travel books and the popular children's story Chitty Chitty Bang Bang. . Ian Fleming lived a remarkably uncompromising life in a world full of compromises

Ian Fleming, creator of James Bond, leaves a legacy as one of the most influential writers of the 20th century. Fleming's contribution to popular literature and post-war Western culture cannot be overstated

Fleming single-handedly transformed popular detective and spy fiction from the dark, middle-class heroes of Dashiell Hammett, Raymond Chandler and Sapper, to the elegant world of his own, seen through the eye of James Bond, secret agent 007. Bond grew from the literary world of Edgar Allan Poe, Ambrose Bierce, E. Phillips Oppenheim, John Buchan and Sax Rohmer.

Fleming argued that he created Bond as "an interesting man to whom extraordinary things happen." Fleming appropriated the name "James Bond" from the author of Birds Of The West Indies because he felt the name suitably "dull" and "anonymous."

In contrast to Fleming's desire, Bond's skill at high-stakes gambling (Casino Royale), his easy of knowledge of the best wines, champagnes, automobiles, and cigarettes made 007 an icon of class. From Dom Perignon to Morland's cigarettes, from Bentleys to Aston Martins, James Bond defines a certain elegant taste (Bond's original Bentley was a nod to Bulldog Drummond's identical car).

Click here for The James Bond Novels and Stories

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R. K Laxman (1924)

Rasipuram Krishnaswamy Laxman (b. 23-10-1924) is an Indian cartoonist, illustrator and humorist. He is widely regarded as India's greatest-ever cartoonist and is best known for his creation The Common Man.

R. K. Laxman was born in Mysore, now a part of the South Indian state of Karnataka. His father was a headmaster and Laxman was the youngest of six boys. One of his elder brothers, Rasipuram Krishnaswami Ayyar Narayanaswami, went on to become one of India's best known English language novelists.

Laxman was engrossed by the illustrations in magazines such as Strand Magazine, Punch, Bystander, Wide World and Tit-Bits, even before he could read. Soon he was drawing on his own, on the floors, walls and doors of his house and doodling caricatures of his teachers at school; praised by a teacher for his drawing of a peepal leaf, he began to think of himself as an artist in the making. Another early influence on Laxman were the cartoons of the world-renowned British cartoonist, Sir David Low (whose signature he misread as "cow" for a long time) that appeared now and then in The Hindu.Laxman notes in his autobiography, The Tunnel of Time:

Laxman was the captain of his local "Rough and Tough and Jolly" cricket team and his antics inspired the stories "Dodu the money maker" and "The Regal Cricket Club" written by his brother, Narayan. Laxman's idyllic childhood was shaken for a while when his father suffered a paralytic stroke and died around a year later, but the elders at home bore most of the increased responsibility, while Laxman continued with his schooling.


After high school, Laxman applied to the JJ School of Arts, Bombay hoping to concenterate on his lifelong interests of drawing and painting, but the dean of the school wrote to him that his drawings lacked, "the kind of talent to qualify for enrollment in our institution as a student", and refused admission. He finally graduated with a Bachelor of Arts from the University of Mysore. In the meantime he continued his freelance artistic activities and contributed cartoons to Swarajya and an animated film based on the mythological character, Narada.

Books

* The Eloquent Brush: A Selection of Cartoons from Nehru to Rajiv
* 50 Years of Independence through the eyes of R.K.Laxman
* The Best of Laxman series
* Hotel Riviera
* The Messenger
* Servants of India
* The Tunnel of Time (autobiography)


Click here to see the Best of R. K Laxman

Click Here to see his More Cartoons

Anita Desai (1937 )

Anita Desai was born in Mussoorie, a hill station north of Delhi, as the daughter of a D.N. Mazumdar, a Bengali businessman, and the former Toni Nime, of German origin. She grew up speaking German at home and Bengali, Urdu, Hindi and English at school and in the city streets. She has said that she grew up surrounded by Western literature and music, not realizing until she was older that this was an anomaly in her world where she also learned the Eastern culture and customs. She married a businessman at twenty-one and raised several children before becoming known for her writing. Her first book, Cry,the Peacock was published in England in 1963, and her better known novels include In Custody (1984) and Baumgartner's Bombay (1988). She once wrote: "I see India through my mother's eyes, as an outsider, but my feelings for India are my father's, of someone born here" (Griffiths).

Anita Desai was born June 24, 1937 in India to a German mother and an Indian father. Although she now resides in South Hadley, Massachusetts, teaching writing at Mount Holyoke College, she is a member of the Advisory Board for English in New Delhi. Desai writes in English, saying, "I first learned English when I went to school. It was the first language that I learned to read and write, so it became my literary language. Languages tend to proliferate around one in India, and one tends to pick up and use whatever is at hand. It makes one realize each language has its own distinct genius." Her family spoke German at home and Hindi to their friends.

Desai's work is part of a new style of writing to come out of India which is not nearly as conservative as Indian writing has been in the past. One concern that is part of her work, especially the novel Baumgartner's Bombay, is that about foreignness and dividedness. Desai grew up during World War II and could see the anxiety her German mother was experiencing about the situation and her family in Germany. After the war when she realized the Germany she had known was devasted, her mother never returned there, nor had any desire to return. Anita herself did not visit until she was an adult.

She never considered trying to first publish in India because there was no publisher in India who would be interested in fiction by an Indian writer (Jussawalla) and it was first in England that her work became noticed. U.S. readers were slower to discover her, due, she believes to England's natural interest in India and the U.S.'s lack of comprehension regarding the foreignness of her subject.

But Desai only writes in English. This, she has repeatedly said,was a natural and unconscious choice for her: "I can state definitely that I did not choose English in a deliberate and conscious act and I'd say perhaps it was the language that chose me and I started writing stories in English at the age of seven, and have been doing so for thirty years now without stopping to think why "(Desai).

She is considered the writer who introduced the psychological novel in the tradition of Virginia Woolf to India. Included in this, is her pioneer status of writing of feminist issues. While many people today would not classify her work as feminist, she believes this is due to changing times: "The feminist movement in India is very new and a younger generation of readers in India tends to be rather impatient of my books and to think of them as books about completely helpless women, hopeless women. They find it somewhat unreal that the women don't fight back, but they don't seem to realize how very new this movement is" (Jussawalla).

Also, she says, her writing is realistic: "Women think I am doing a disservice to the feminist movement by writing about women who have no control over their lives. But I was trying, as every writer tries to do, even in fiction, to get at the truth, write the truth. It would have been really fanciful if I had made [for example, in Clear Light of Day] Bim and Tara modern-day feminists "(in Griffiths).

Desai considers Clear Light of Day, her most autobiographical book, because she was writing about her neighborhood in Delhi, although the characters are not based on her brothers and sisters. What she was exploring in this novel, she has said, was the importance of childhood and memories as the source of a life. She had wanted to start the book at the end and move backwards, into the characters' childhood and further, into the childhood of their parents etc., but in the end: "When I had gone as far back as their infancy the book just ground to a halt; it lost its momentum. It told me that this was done, that I couldn't carry it further. But I still have a sense of disappointment about that book, because the intention had been different" (Jussawalla). The character of Raja is identified with her in the sense that he is so immersed in all different types of literature and culture, and is so concerned with protecting the multicultural heritage of India. His worries about the Muslim neighbor family is not just about them particularly, but rather worry about the loss of all that the Muslim culture and literature contributes to India.

While Desai has taught for years at Mount Holyoke and MIT, and spends most of the year outside of India, she does not consider herself part of the Indian Diaspora. Although she does not fit in the Indian box anymore (Griffiths) as she said, she considers herself lucky for having not left India until late in her life, because she feels that she has been drifting away from it ever since: "I can't really write of it with the same intensity and familiarity that I once had." Yet she cannot feel at home in any other place or society (Griffiths).

Selected works:

* The Peacock, 1963
* Voices in the City, 1965
* Bye-Bye, Blackbird, 1971
* The Peacock Garden, 1974
* Where Shall We Go This Summer?, 1975
* Cat on a Houseboat, 1976
* Fire on the Mountain, 1977
* Games at Twilight and Other Stories, 1978
* Clear Light of Day, 1980
* Village by the Sea, 1982
* In Custody, 1984 - film 1993, dir. by Ismail Merchant, starring Shashi Kapoor, Shabana Azmi, Om Puri, screenplay by Anita Desai
* Baumgartner's Bombay, 1988
* Journey to Ithaca, 1996
* Fasting, Feasting, 1999
* Diamond Dust, 2000
* The Zigzag Way: A Novel, 2004


Click Here to download selecetd works By Anita Desai

Vikram Seth (1952)

Born in 1952 in Calcutta, India, Vikram Seth was educated at Corpus Christi College, Oxford, Stanford University and Nanjing University. He has travelled widely and lived in Britain, California, India and China. His first novel, The Golden Gate: A Novel in Verse (1986), describes the experiences of a group of friends living in California. His acclaimed epic of Indian life, A Suitable Boy (1993), won the WH Smith Literary Award and the Commonwealth Writers Prize (Overall Winner, Best Book). Set in India in the early 1950s, it is the story of a young girl, Lata, and her search for a husband. An Equal Music (1999), is the story of a violinist haunted by the memory of a former lover.

Vikram Seth is also the author of a travel book, From Heaven Lake: Travels Through Sinkiang and Tibet (1983), an account of a journey through Tibet, China and Nepal that won the Thomas Cook Travel Book Award, and a libretto, Arion and the Dolphin: A Libretto (1994), which was performed at the English National Opera in June 1994, with music by Alec Roth. His poetry includes Mappings (1980), The Humble Administrator's Garden (1985), winner of the Commonwealth Poetry Prize (Asia), and All You Who Sleep Tonight: Poems (1990). His children's book, Beastly Tales from Here and There (1992), consists of ten stories about animals told in verse.

Vikram Seth's latest work is Two Lives (2005), a memoir of the marriage of his great uncle and aunt.
Vikram Seth was paid $430,000 by the British publishers Orion for his second novel A Suitable Boy. The 1,349 page novel is considered to be the longest novel in a single volume.

Bibliography

Mappings Writer's Workshop (Calcutta) (re-issued Viking 1994), 1980
From Heaven Lake: Travels Through Sinkiang and Tibet Chatto & Windus, 1983
The Humble Administrator's Garden Carcanet, 1985
The Golden Gate: A Novel in Verse Faber and Faber, 1986
All You Who Sleep Tonight: Poems Faber and Faber, 1990
Beastly Tales from Here and There (illustrated by Ravi Shankar, re-issued Phoenix House 2002) Phoenix House, 1992
Three Chinese Poets: Translations of Poems by Wang Wei, Li Bai and Du Fu Faber and Faber, 1992
A Suitable Boy Phoenix House, 1993
Arion and the Dolphin: A Libretto Phoenix House, 1994
An Equal Music Phoenix House, 1999
Two Lives Time Warner, 2005

Click Here for works of Vikram Seth

R. K. Narayan (1906 -2001)

R. K. Narayan (Rasipuram Krishnaswami Ayyar Naranayanaswami) was born in Madras in 1906 and educated there and at Maharajah's College in Mysore. He has lived in India ever since, apart from his travels. Most of his work, starting from his first novel Swami and friends (1935) is set in the fictional town of Malgudi which at the same time captures everything Indian while having a unique identity of its own. After having read only a few of his books it is difficult to shake off the feeling that you have vicariously lived in this town. Malgudi is perhaps the single most endearing "character" R. K. Narayan has ever created.

He has published numerous novels, five collections of short stories (A Horse and Two Goats, An Astrologer's Day, Lawley Road, Malgudi Days, and The Grandmother's Tale), two travel books (My Dateless Diary and The Emerald Route), four collections of essays (Next Sunday, Reluctant Guru, A Writer's Nightmare, and A Story-Teller's World), a memoir (My Days), and some translations of Indian epics and myths (The Ramayana, The Mahabharata, and Gods, Demons and Others).

In 1980, R. K. Narayan was awarded the A.C. Benson award by the Royal Society of Literature and was made an Honorary Member of the American Academy and Institute of Arts and Letters. In 1989 he was made a member of the Rajya Sabha (the non-elective House of Parliament in India). He received the Sahitya Akademi Award for The Guide (1958).

R. K. Narayan's full name is Rasipuram Krishnaswami Ayyar Naranayanaswami. In his early years he signed his name as R. K. Narayanaswami, but apparently at the time of the publication of Swami and Friends, he shortened it to R. K. Narayan on Graham Greene's suggestion."(from R. K. Narayan:
a Profile)

Novels

* Swami and Friends (1935)
* The Bachelor of Arts (1937)
* The Dark Room (1938)
* The English Teacher (1945)
* Mr. Sampath - The Printer of Malgudi (1949)
* The Financial Expert (1952)
* Waiting for the Mahatma (1955)
* The Guide (1958)
* The Man-Eater of Malgudi (1961)
* The Vendor of Sweets (1967)
* The Painter of Signs (1976)
* A Tiger for Malgudi (1983)
* Talkative Man (1986)
* The World of Nagaraj (1990)
* A Grandmother's Tale (1994)

Collections

* The World of Malgudi (2000)
* Salt and Sawdust: Stories and Table-Talk

Short Story Collections

An asterisk indicates a collection published only in India.

* Dodu and Other Stories (1943)*
* Cyclone and Other Stories (1945)*
* An Astrologer's Day and Other Short Stories (1947)
* Lawley Road and Other Stories (1956)*
* A Horse and Two Goats (1970)
* Malgudi Days (1982)
* Under the Banyan Tree and Other Stories (1985)
* The Grandmother's Tale and Selected Stories (1993)
* The Watchman
* Fruition at Forty

Non-Fiction

* Next Sunday (1960)
* My Dateless Diary (1964)
* My Days (1974)
* The Emerald Route (1980)
* A Writer's Nightmare (1988)
* Like The Sun

Mythology

* Gods, Demons and Others (1965)
* The Ramayana (1972)
* The Mahabharata (1972)

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M. T. Vasudevan Nair (15 July 1933)

M. T. Vasudevan Nair was born in Kudallur, a small village in Palakkad district, in the Indian state of Keral, in July 15, 1933. His first short stories, written in his native language, Malayalam, were published in several magazines while he was a youth.The young author’s first volume of narratives came out in 1952. His debut novel Nalukettu (1958; Eng. The Ancestral House,1959) won him the Kerala Sahitya Akademi Award in 1959. The National Book Trust made it possible for him to have the book translated into all the official languages of India. M. T. Vasudevan Nair lives in Calicut/Kerala, India.

M. T. Vasudevan Nair, popularly known as MT, is a renowned Malayalam author, screenplay writer and film director. He was born on , 1933 in Kudallur, a. He is one of the most prolific and versatile writer of modern Malayalam literature. His novels, short stories and screenplays speak of the pain and anguish of the Kerala society in the post independence India.

The essence of his work is self-suffering and its emotional intensity hold the readers captivated. The story of Koodalloor village and Bharathapuzha are the most repeated and favourite theme. He explores the silences in life, in the folk tales of forgotten heroes and in the legends of warriors from epics forever retold. MT, as Vasudevan Nair is more popularly known, makes heroes out of villains and winners out of losers. The man who sourced stories in silences agrees that his tales will leave behind silences too. He was married twice

Major works

Novels

* Manju (Mist)
* Kalam (Time)
* Nalukettu (Ancestral House)
* Asuravithu (Seed of the Demon)
* Vilapayathra (The Funeral Procession)
* Pathiravum Pakalvelichavum (Midnight and Daylight)
* Arabipponnu (The Gold of Arabia, written with N.P. Muhammed)
* Randamoozham (Second Turn)
* Varanasi (Benares)

Stories

* Iruttinte Atmavu
* Olavum Theeravum
* Kuttyedathi
* Varikkuzhi
* Pathanam
* Bandhanam
* Swargam Thurakkunna Samayam
* Ninte
* Vanaprastham
* Dar-es-salam
* Raktham Puranda Mantharikal
* Veyilum Nilavum
* Kaliveedu
* Vedanayude Pookkal
* Sherlock

Screenplays

* Olavum Theeravum
* Murappennu
* Nagarame Nanni
* Asuravithu
* Pakalkkinavu
* Iruttinte Atmavu
* Kuttiyedathi
* Oppol
* Edavazhiyile Poocha Mindapoocha
* Evideyo Oru Shatru
* Ennu Swantham Janakikkuttikku (based on the short story Cheriya cheriya bhookampangal)
* Vellam
* Panchagni
* Nakhakshatangal
* Amritam Gamaya
* Aaroodam
* Allkottathil Thaniye
* Adiyozhukkukal
* Uyarangalil
* Rithubhedam
* Vaishaali
* Oru Vadakkan Veeragatha
* Perunthachan
* Sukrutham
* Parinayam
* Teerthadanam (based on his story Vanaprastham)
* Aaranyakam

Films and Documentaries

* Nirmalyam (Offerings, 1973)
* Mohini Attam (Documentary, 1977)
* Bandhanam (Bounding Ties, 1978)
* Manju (Mist, 1982)
* Varikuzhy (The Trap, 1982)
* Kadavu (Ferry, 1991)
* Oru Cheru Punchiri (A slender smile, 2000)
* Thakazhi (Documentary on Malayalam writer Thakazhi Sivasankara Pillai)


Download Works By M T Vasudevan Nair

To read English version of RANDAMOOZHAM (SECOND TURN ) - CLICK HERE

Ayyappa Panicker (1930 -2006)

Dr. K. Ayyappa Panicker (September 12, 1930 in Kavalam near Alappuzha - August 23, 2006 in Thiruvananthapuram) was a Malayalam poet, critic and a scholar, has been the pioneer of modernism in Kerala. His influence has been quite profound and far-reaching in the entire cultural and intellectual life of the Malayalee. If in poetry Paniker could be seen as the harbinger of a new voice, in the field of literary criticism he ushered in a paradigm shift towards a radically newer awareness.

His influence on modern Malayalam theatre and on new playwrights has been of equal importance G.Sankara Pillai, Kavalam Narayana Paniker and Narendra Prasad have all come under his sphere of thinking at one time or other. Similar has been the case with film and filmmakers like G.Aravindan, John Abraham and actors like Bharat Gopi and Nedumudi Venu. Among the visual artists Paniker's influence is evidenced by his long standing association with M.V.Devan, Paris Viswanathan and others.

Above all Ayyappa Paniker has come to be regarded as an icon of modernist culture and thinking. A widely travelled scholar and poet of international renown, he is a unique instance of creative and intellectual genius.

Paniker published his first poem at the age of 16. After graduating from University of Kerala, he took his doctorate from Indiana University and did post-doctoral research in Yale and Harvard University.

Dr. Paniker is a recipient of a number of honours including the Padmashree, Kerala Sahitya Akademi award for poetry and criticism, Kendra Sahitya Akademi award for poetry, Saraswathi Samman, Distinguished Teacher award, Mahakavi Ulloor award for poetry, Kabir Samman, International man of the year (IBC, Cambridge, UK), Indira Gandhi memorial fellowship, Gangadhar Meher National award for poetry, Asan prize and Jana Sanskriti award (Abu Dhabi), Vayalar award, and Vallathol award.

Paniker joined CMS College, Kottayam as a lecturer of English in 1951 and later became a Professor at the Institute of English and Head of the department in University of Kerala.

Books written By Ayyappa Panicker

Malayattoor Ramakrishnan (1927-1997)

Born in 1927 at Kalpathi in Palakkad, K V Ramakrishna Iyer was to become famous later as Malayattoor Ramakrishnan. He worked as sub editor in Free Press Journal in Mumbai. This was a brief dalliance with journalism. He later entered the judicial service and was a magistrate for sometime.

Malayattoor entered the Indian Administrative Service (IAS) in 1957. His long career as a bureaucrat is narrated in his work The Service Story. He was a member of the Revenue Board and chairman of Lalitha Kala Akademi for seven years. He had interacted with a lot of ministers belonging to different political hues, most of whom later became his friends. In fact, Malayattoor was one writer who had friends everywhere.

He resigned from the IAS in 1981 to devote himself fully to writing.

Malayattoor's Verukal had won the Kerala Sahitya Akademi award. Among his other famous novels are Yakshi, Yantram, Nettoor Mathom and Amritham Thedi.He had also published a series of books revolving around the character Brigadier, a tough as nails ex-soldier who is a hard drinker and also a rascal to boot. His novel Yantram had bagged the Vayalar award. Malayattoor had also translated the Sherlock Holmes novels and Bram Stoker's Dracula to Malayalam. He was also an impulsive artist and drew hundreds of cartoons and sketches of his friends. Though some of his writings do have autobiographical strains, he also wrote some autobiographical works including Service Story and Ente IAS Dinangal which was serialised by a newspaper.

Malayattoor had also authored scripts for several films. The most famous of these were Yakshi, starring Sathyan and Iyer The Great starring Mammootty.

He had also directed a film Odukkam Thudakkam. Quite recently he was involved in a litigation with actress Hema Malini, who had made a Hindi version of Yakshi.

He was also one of those rare writers who was comfortable in both English and Malayalam.

Malayattoor, author of more than a dozen novels and a number of short stories was a multifaceted personality. He was a well-known cartoonist and painter also. He had also done scripts for films. His Brigadier Stories had broken fresh ground in Malayalam humour literature.

Works by Malayattoor Ramakrishnan

O N V Kurup (May 27, 1931)

O. N. V. Kurup (Ottaplavil Neelakandan Velu Kurup) born on May 27, 1931 at Chavara , a coastal village in Kerala is one of the greatest poets Kerala has seen. He spent his childhood in an environment where a peaceful agrarian culture was in constant confrontation with industrialisation.

Poetry, according to O N V, was a drop of light that came to him in the dark solitude of his childhood. His first published poem was 'Munnottu' (Forward) which appeared in a local weekly in 1946. It was only an outburst of his exuberant patriotic sentiments, but it marked the beginning of a long poetic career.

In every poem, the poet assumes the role of the spokesman of millions who are languishing in darkness and poses questions to the reader. He is not bothered about 'isms' in literature, but he writes poetry as it comes to him. His poems purveys the message to fight the battle of life against tyranny, desecration and destruction.


POETRY (Malayalam)

1. Dahikunna Panapatram
2. Marubhumi
3. Nilakkannukal
4. Mayilppili
5. Oru Tulli Velicham
6. Agni Salabhangal
7. Aksaram
8. Karutta pakshiyude pattu
9. Uppu
10. Bhumikku Oru Charamagitam
11. Sarngakappakshikal
12. Mrgaya
13. Tonniaksharangal
14. Aparahnam
15. Ujjayini
16. Veruthe
17. Swayamvaram
18. Bhairavante Thudi
19. Oyenviyude Ganangal (Collection of 1500 songs)
20. Valappottukal (childrens poems)

PROSE

1. Kavitayile Samantara Rekhakal
2. Kavitayile Pratisandhikal
3. Ezhuthachan - Oru Padanam
4. Patheyam
5. Kalpanikam
6. Pushkin - Swatantrya Bodhatinte Durantagatha

To Buy Books written O N V Kurup

S. K. Pottekkatt (1913 - 1982)

Sankaran Kutty Pottekkat (March 14 1913–August 6 1982) was an author from Kerala state of south India, whose work Oru Desattinte Katha (The Story of a Land) fetched him the Jnanpith Award in 1980.

Sankarankutty or S.K. Pottakkat as he is best known by his readers, was born at Kozhikode as the son of Kunchiraman Pottakkat, an English schoolteacher. After graduating from Zamorin’s College, Kozhikode he went on to work as a teacher in a Gujarati local school for a year. It was at this time as if bitten by the travel bug that Pottakkat began his great odyssey that would ultimately take him to many parts of the globe including destinations in Asia, Africa and Europe.

As a first step he traveled to Bombay in 1939 where he worked for some years punctuated by extensive travels across the country. Providentially, this Bombay trip (described in his travelogue and memoir Ente Vazhiyambalangal) broadened his mental horizons and in effect was a turning point in his literary life. While in Bombay, and even before that, he involved himself in the India’s freedom struggle and worked alongside with patriots like Mathai Manjooran.

In 1939 he wrote his first novel Naadanpremam while he was in Bombay which was followed by Yavanikakku Pinnil (a collection of short stories) in 1940, followed by the second novel Vishakanyaka which bagged the prize of Madras government in 1949.

As an aside to his extensive travels and literary works,Pottakkat dallied with politics. In 1957 he contested for the parliamentary election from Tellicherry but lost by just 1000 votes. However, in 1962 he won a thumping victory with a majority of 66,000 votes from the same constituency against his fellow littérateur Sukumar Azhikode.

His novel Oru Theruvinte Katha swept off the Kerala Sahithya Academy Award. Then finally came the novel Oru Desattinte Katha which bagged both the Kerala Sahithya Academy in 1972 and the Kendra Sahithya Academy Award in 1977.

Then finally in 1980, two years before his death, as a fitting finale to the vocation of a great writer Pottakkat was awarded the prestigious Jnanpith Award.

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Vaikom Muhammed Basheer (1908 - 1994 )

Vaikom Muhammad Basheer (born. at Thalayolaparambu in Vaikom, 21 January 1908; died. at Beypore in Calicut, 5 July 1994) was a Malayalam fiction writer. He was a humanist, freedom fighter, novelist and short story writer. He was awarded the prestigious Padma Sri in 1982

Malayalam writer Vaikom Mohammed Basheer's stories take us to the magic world. Basheer wrote short stories, novels, skits and even an occasional play. The really unusual thing about his stories is that they are funny, but in a lingering sad way. Basheer wrote with great sympathy about Christians, Muslims and people of the lower castes in Kerala. His writings were very powerful for upon reading them people changed their opinion of the way various communities, like the Mappila Muslims of Malabar spoke Malayalam. It was earlier thought of as vulgar, but Basheer made it charming.

His style was open and simple. But above all, anyone reading his stories would immediately be able to imagine the picture in their minds. And his stories were full of sharp observation and fine details:

Me Grandad 'Ad an Elephant (1951) is one of Basheer's best works. It is the tale of the pretty, pampered Muslim girl Kunjupattumma whose rich granddad owned a big elephant.

Kunjupattumma was always beautifully dressed in silks and jewels, and had proposals of marriage coming to her one after another. She was lucky in all but one respect. She wasn't allowed to talk to her neighbours' children...

Basheer's writing style was such that it inspired an entire generation of visual artists. These artists went on to illustrate storybooks using his style.

Basheer was a tall, bald and lanky man with deep set eyes and a furrowed forehead. He was born on July 10, 1908, to a lower middle class Muslim family in Vaikom, a province in what was then the princely state of Travancore (now Kerala).

He led an interesting life full of events. As a teenager, he ran away from school to Malabar. The reason: he wanted to take part in the Indian freedom movement. He played an active role in the struggle and even went to jail for it.

Basheer was a great wanderer. He lived life as a beggar, porter and errand boy to support himself. Once, he even smuggled into a steamer and visited some Gulf countries. When he returned to his hometown he again jumped into the freedom movement. Prison became home several times again. This part of his life was to help him in his writing later: he described the misery of the prison in many stories.

One of his stories, 'Walls', was made into an acclaimed film by well-known Malayalam filmmaker, Adoor Gopalakrishnan some years ago.

After India gained independence in 1947, Basheer immersed himself fully in writing. His creativity was at its peak. But the Malayalam publishing scene was in a sad state. So he often starved. He kept on writing though, and was always encouraged by his numerous friends and admirers.

In 1950, his friends found for him the perfect soulmate in young Fatima Beevi. They married and settled down on the banks of river Beypore, in Kozhikode. They had one son and one daughter.

Basheer, who authored 34 books, died when he was over eighty. Many of his works have been translated into Indian and foreign languages. Translation has helped to spread Basheer's reputation as the master who raised Malayalam fiction to international standards.

He won many awards in his lifetime. But the greatest reward has been conferred on this great writer by fellow Malayali themselves. His characters and phrases are today a part of everyday Malayali conversation.

Published works

Novels

1. Premalekhanam [The love letter] (1943).
2. Baalyakaalasakhi [Childhood friend] (1944).
3. Shabdangal [Voices] (1947).
4. Ntuppuppaakkoraanaendaarnnu [Me gran'dad 'ad an elephant] (1951).
5. Maranaththinte Nizhalil [In the shadow of death] (1951).
6. Muchcheettukalikkaarante Makal [The daughter of the card-shark] (1951).
7. Sthalaththe Pradhaana Divyan [The principal divine of the place] (1953).
8. Aanavaariyum Ponkurishum [Elephant scooper and Golden cross] (1953).
9. Jeevithanizhalppaadukal [The shadows of life] (1954).
10. Paaththummaayude Aadu [Paaththumma's goat] (1959).
11. Mathilukal [Walls] ( basis for a film (1989) by Adoor Gopalakrishnan) (1965).
12. Thaaraa Specials (1968).
13. Maanthrikapoochcha [The magic cat] (1968).

Short Stories

1. Janmadinam [Birthday] (1945).
2. Ormakkurippu [Jottings from memory] (1946).
3. Anargha nimisham [Invaluable instant] (See Anal Haq) (1946).
4. Viddikalude Swargam [Fools' paradise] (1948).
5. Paavappettavarudaey Vaeshya [The courtesan of the poor] (1952).
6. Vishwavikhkhyaathamaaya Mookku [The world-renowned nose] (1954).
7. Vishappu [Hunger] (1954).
8. Oru Bhagavadgeethayum Kuraey Mulakalum [A Bhagavadgeetha and some breasts] (Short stories) (1967).
9. Aanappooda [Elephant-hair] (1975).
10. Chirikkunna Marappaava [The laughing wooden doll] (1975).
11. Bhoomiyudaey Avakaashikal [The inheritors of the earth] (1977).
12. Shinkidimunkan (1991).
13. Yaa Ilaahi! [Oh God!] (published posthumously) (1997).

Others

1. Kathaabeejam [Story seed] (Play) (1945).
2. Nerum Nunayum [Truth and lie] (Commentary and letters) (1969).
3. Ormmayudaey Arakal [The cells of memory] (Commentary and reminiscences) (1973).
4. Anuraagaththintaey Dhinangal [The days of desire] (Diary; originally titled Kaamukantaey diary [The diary of the paramour] and changed later on the suggestion of M. T. Vasudevan Nair) (1983).
5. Bhaargavinilayam [The house named Bhaargavi] (Screenplay for a film (1964) by A. Vincent which is credited as the first horror cinema in malayalam; adapted from the short story Neelavelichcham [The blue glow]) (1985).
6. M. P. Paul (Reminiscences of his friendship with M. P. Paul) (1991).
7. Cheviyorkkuka! Anthimakaahalam!! [Hark! The final clarion-call!!] (Speech) (1992).

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