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The Diary of a Nobody is an English
comic novel written by the brothers
George and
Weedon Grossmith, with illustrations by the latter. It originated as an intermittent serial in
Punch magazine in 1888–89 and first appeared in book form, with extended text and added illustrations, in 1892. The
Diary records the daily events in the lives of a London clerk,
Charles Pooter, his wife Carrie, his son Lupin, and numerous friends and acquaintances over a period of 15 months.
Although its initial public reception was muted, the Diary came to be recognised by critics as a classic work of humour, and it has never been out of print. It helped to establish a genre of humorous popular fiction based on lower or lower-middle class aspirations, and was the forerunner of numerous fictitious diary novels in the later 20th century. The Diary has been the subject of several stage and screen adaptations, including Ken Russell's "silent film" treatment of 1964, a four-part TV film scripted by Andrew Davies in 2007, and a widely praised stage version in 2011, in which an all-male cast of three played all the parts.
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Image 1Robert Marshall (January 2, 1901 – November 11, 1939) was an American
forester, writer and wilderness
activist who is best remembered as the person who spearheaded the 1935 founding of the
Wilderness Society in the United States. Marshall developed a love for the outdoors as a young child. He was an avid hiker and climber who visited the
Adirondack Mountains frequently during his youth, ultimately becoming one of the first
Adirondack Forty-Sixers. He also traveled to the
Brooks Range of the far northern
Alaskan wilderness. He wrote numerous articles and books about his travels, including the bestselling 1933 book
Arctic Village.A scientist with a
PhD in
plant physiology, Marshall became independently wealthy after the death of his father in 1929. He had started his outdoor career in 1925 as forester with the U.S. Forest Service. He used his financial independence for expeditions to Alaska and other wilderness areas. Later he held two significant public appointed posts: chief of
forestry in the
Bureau of Indian Affairs, from 1933 to 1937, and head of recreation management in the
Forest Service, from 1937 to 1939, both during the administration of President
Franklin D. Roosevelt. During this period, he directed the promulgation of regulations to preserve large areas of roadless land that were under federal management. Many years after his death, some of those areas were permanently protected from development, exploitation, and mechanization with the passage of the
Wilderness Act of 1964. (
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Amir Hamzah,
c. 1928–1937 (February 1911 – 20 March 1946) was an Indonesian poet and
National Hero of Indonesia. Born into a
Malay aristocratic family in the
Sultanate of Langkat in
North Sumatra, he was educated in both
Sumatra and
Java. While attending senior high school in
Surakarta around 1930, Amir became involved with the
nationalist movement and fell in love with a
Javanese schoolmate, Ilik Sundari. Even after Amir continued his studies in legal school in
Batavia (now
Jakarta) the two remained close, only separating in 1937 when Amir was recalled to Sumatra to marry the sultan's daughter and take on responsibilities of the court. Though unhappy with his marriage, he fulfilled his courtly duties. After
Indonesia proclaimed its independence in 1945, he served as the government's representative in Langkat. The following year he was killed in
a social revolution led by the PESINDO (
Pemuda Sosialis Indonesia), and buried in a mass grave.
Amir began writing poetry while still a teenager: though his works are undated, the earliest are thought to have been written when he first travelled to Java. Drawing influences from his own Malay culture and Islam, as well as from Christianity and Eastern literature, Amir wrote 50 poems, 18 pieces of lyrical prose, and numerous other works, including several translations. In 1932 he co-founded the literary magazine
Poedjangga Baroe. After his return to Sumatra, he stopped writing. Most of his poems were published in two collections,
Nyanyi Sunyi (1937) and
Buah Rindu (1941), first in
Poedjangga Baroe then as stand-alone books. (
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Image 3Sir Hugh Seymour Walpole,
CBE (13 March 1884 – 1 June 1941) was an English novelist. He was the son of an
Anglican clergyman, intended for a career in the church but drawn instead to writing. Among those who encouraged him were the authors
Henry James and
Arnold Bennett. His skill at scene-setting and vivid plots, as well as his high profile as a lecturer, brought him a large readership in the United Kingdom and North America. He was a best-selling author in the 1920s and 1930s but has been largely neglected since his death.
After his
first novel,
The Wooden Horse, in 1909, Walpole wrote prolifically, producing at least one book every year. He was a spontaneous story-teller, writing quickly to get all his ideas on paper, seldom revising. His first novel to achieve major success was his third,
Mr Perrin and Mr Traill, a tragicomic story of a fatal clash between two schoolmasters. During the First World War he served in the
Red Cross on the
Russian-Austrian front, and worked in British propaganda in
Petrograd and London. In the 1920s and 1930s Walpole was much in demand not only as a novelist but also as a lecturer on literature, making four exceptionally well-paid tours of North America. (
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Image 4Lie Kim Hok (
Chinese:
李金福;
pinyin:
Lǐ Jīnfú;
Pe̍h-ōe-jī:
Lí Kim-hok; 1 November 1853 – 6 May 1912) was a
peranakan Chinese teacher, writer, and
social worker active in the
Dutch East Indies and styled the "father of
Chinese Malay literature". Born in Buitenzorg (now
Bogor),
West Java, Lie received his formal education in missionary schools and by the 1870s was fluent in
Sundanese,
vernacular Malay, and
Dutch, though he was unable to understand
Chinese. In the mid-1870s he married and began working as the editor of two periodicals published by his teacher and mentor D. J. van der Linden. Lie left the position in 1880. His wife died the following year. Lie published his first books, including the critically acclaimed
syair (poem)
Sair Tjerita Siti Akbari and grammar book
Malajoe Batawi, in 1884. When van der Linden died the following year, Lie purchased the printing press and opened his own company.
Over the following two years Lie published numerous books, including
Tjhit Liap Seng, considered the first Chinese Malay novel. He also acquired printing rights for
Pembrita Betawi, a newspaper based in Batavia (now
Jakarta), and moved to the city. After selling his printing press in 1887, the writer spent three years working in various lines of employment until he found stability in 1890 at a rice mill operated by a friend. The following year he married Tan Sioe Nio, with whom he had four children. Lie published two books in the 1890s and, in 1900, became a founding member of the Chinese organisation
Tiong Hoa Hwee Koan, which he left in 1904. Lie focused on his translations and social work for the remainder of his life, until his death from
typhus at age 58. (
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Image 5Mário Raul de Morais Andrade (
Portuguese pronunciation: [ˈmaɾiu ʁaˈu dʒi moˈɾajs ɐ̃ˈdɾadʒi]; October 9, 1893 – February 25, 1945) was a Brazilian poet, novelist,
musicologist,
art historian and
critic, and
photographer. He wrote one of the first and most influential collections of modern Brazilian poetry,
Paulicéia Desvairada (
Hallucinated City), published in 1922. He has had considerable influence on modern
Brazilian literature, and as a scholar and essayist—he was a pioneer of the field of
ethnomusicology—his influence has reached far beyond Brazil.
Andrade was a central figure in the
avant-garde movement of
São Paulo for twenty years. Trained as a musician and best known as a poet and novelist, Andrade was personally involved in virtually every discipline that was connected with São Paulo modernism. His photography and essays on a wide variety of subjects, from history to literature and music, were widely published. He was the driving force behind the
Modern Art Week, the 1922 event that reshaped both literature and the
visual arts in Brazil, and a member of the avant-garde "Group of Five". The ideas behind the Week were further explored in the preface to his poetry collection
Pauliceia Desvairada, and in the poems themselves. (
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Image 7Ezra Weston Loomis Pound (30 October 1885 – 1 November 1972) was an
American poet and critic, a major figure in the early
modernist poetry movement, and a
collaborator in
Fascist Italy and the
Salò Republic during
World War II. His works include
Ripostes (1912),
Hugh Selwyn Mauberley (1920), and
The Cantos (
c. 1915–1962).
Pound's contribution to poetry began in the early 20th century with his role in developing
Imagism, a movement stressing precision and economy of language. Working in London as foreign editor of several American literary magazines, he helped to discover and shape the work of contemporaries such as
H.D.,
Robert Frost,
T. S. Eliot,
Ernest Hemingway, and
James Joyce. He was responsible for the 1914 serialization of Joyce's
A Portrait of the Artist as a Young Man, the 1915 publication of Eliot's "
The Love Song of J. Alfred Prufrock", and the serialization from 1918 of Joyce's
Ulysses. Hemingway wrote in 1932 that, for poets born in the late 19th or early 20th century, not to be influenced by Pound would be "like passing through a great blizzard and not feeling its cold". (
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Image 8Ezra Morgan Meeker (December 29, 1830 – December 3, 1928) was an
American pioneer who traveled the
Oregon Trail by ox-drawn wagon as a young man, migrating from Iowa to the
Pacific Coast. Later in life he worked to memorialize the Trail, repeatedly retracing the trip of his youth. Once known as the "
Hop King of the World", he was the first mayor of
Puyallup, Washington.
Meeker was born in
Butler County, Ohio, to Jacob and Phoebe Meeker. His family relocated to Indiana when he was a boy. He married Eliza Jane Sumner in 1851; the following year the couple, with their newborn son and Ezra's brother, set out for the
Oregon Territory, where land could be claimed and settled on. Although they endured hardships on the Trail in the journey of nearly six months, the entire party survived the trek. Meeker and his family briefly stayed near
Portland, then journeyed north to live in the
Puget Sound region. They settled at what is now Puyallup in 1862, where Meeker grew hops for use in brewing beer. By 1887, his business had made him wealthy, and his wife built a large mansion for the family. In 1891, an infestation of
hop aphids destroyed his crops and took much of his fortune. He later tried his hand at a number of ventures, and made four largely unsuccessful trips to the
Klondike, taking groceries and hoping to profit from the gold rush. (
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Image 9Murasaki Shikibu (紫式部; [mɯ.ɾa.sa.kʲi ɕi̥.kiꜜ.bɯ, -ɕi̥ꜜ.kʲi-], c. 973 – c. 1014 or 1025), or
Shijo (紫女; [ɕiꜜ.(d)ʑo], lit. 'Lady Murasaki'), was a Japanese novelist,
poet and
lady-in-waiting at the
Imperial court in the
Heian period. She was best known as the author of
The Tale of Genji, widely considered to be one of the world's first
novels, written in Japanese between about 1000 and 1012. Murasaki Shikibu is a descriptive name; her personal name is unknown, but she may have been
Fujiwara no Kaoruko (藤原香子), who was mentioned in a 1007 court diary as an imperial lady-in-waiting.
Heian women were traditionally excluded from learning
Chinese, the written language of government, but Murasaki, raised in her erudite father's household, showed a precocious aptitude for the
Chinese classics and managed to acquire fluency. She married in her mid-to-late twenties and gave birth to a daughter,
Daini no Sanmi. Her husband died after two years of marriage. It is uncertain when she began to write
The Tale of Genji, but it was probably while she was married or shortly after she was widowed. In about 1005, she was invited to serve as a lady-in-waiting to
Empress Shōshi at the Imperial court by
Fujiwara no Michinaga, probably because of her reputation as a writer. She continued to write during her service, adding scenes from court life to her work. After five or six years, she left court and retired with Shōshi to the
Lake Biwa region. Scholars differ on the year of her death; although most agree on 1014, others have suggested she was alive in 1025. (
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Image 10William Shakespeare (
c. 23 April 1564 – 23 April 1616) was an English playwright, poet and actor. He is widely regarded as the greatest writer in the English language and the world's pre-eminent dramatist. He is often called England's
national poet and the "
Bard of
Avon" or simply "the Bard". His extant works, including
collaborations, consist of some
39 plays,
154 sonnets, three long
narrative poems and a few other verses, some of uncertain authorship. His plays
have been translated into every major
living language and are performed more often than those of any other playwright. Shakespeare remains arguably the most influential writer in the English language, and his works continue to be studied and reinterpreted.
Shakespeare was born and raised in
Stratford-upon-Avon, Warwickshire. At the age of 18, he married
Anne Hathaway, with whom he had three children:
Susanna, and twins
Hamnet and
Judith. Sometime between 1585 and 1592 he began a successful career in London as an actor, writer, and
part-owner ("sharer") of a
playing company called the
Lord Chamberlain's Men, later known as the
King's Men after the ascension of
King James VI of Scotland to the English throne. At age 49 (around 1613) he appears to have retired to Stratford, where he died three years later. Few records of Shakespeare's private life survive; this has stimulated considerable speculation about such matters as
his physical appearance,
his sexuality,
his religious beliefs and even certain
fringe theories as to whether the works attributed to him were
written by others. (
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An 1890 recording of Walt Whitman reading the opening four lines of his poem "America", from his collection
Leaves of Grass