The Bill Howard Collection contains over 200 titles that include many English authors from the 19th Century. Below are brief biographies of some of the authors.
John Clare (1793-1864)
John Clare was an English poet, born the son of a farm labourer who came to be known for his celebratory representations of the English countryside and his lamentation of its disruption. His poetry underwent a major re-evaluation in the late 20th century and he is often now considered to be among the most important 19th-century poets. His biographer Jonathan Bate states that Clare was "the greatest labouring-class poet that England has ever produced. No one has ever written more powerfully of nature, of a rurual childhood, and of the alienated and unstable self.
Source: Wikipedia
Robert Browning (1812-1889)
Browning in 1865
Robert Browning was an English poet and playright whose mastery of dramatic verse, especially dramatic monologues, made him onf of the form. To the great majority of readers, probably, Browning is best known by some of his short poems, such as Rabbi Ben Ezra, How they brought the good News to Aix, Evelyn Hope,The Pied Piper of Hammelin, A Grammarian's Funeral, A Death in the Desert.
Source: Wikipedia
Charles James Lever (1806-1872)
Charles James Lever was a born raconteur, and had in perfection that easy flow of light description which without tedium or hurry leads up to the point of the good stories of which in earlier days his supply seemed inexhaustible. With little respect for unity of action or conventional novel structure, his brightest books, such as Lorrequer, O'Malley and Tom Burke, are in fact little more than recitals of scenes in the life of a particular "hero," unconnected by any continuous intrigue.
Source: Wikipedia
Rudyard Kipling (1865-1936
Kipling in 1914
Rudyard Kipling was an English poet, short-story writer, and novelist chiefly remembered for his celebration of British imperialism, tales and poems of British soldiers in India, and his tales for children. Kipling received the Nobel Prize for Literature in 1907. Kipling is best known for his works of fiction, including The Jungle Book (1894) (a collection of stories which includes "Rikki-Tikki-Tavi"), Kim (1901) (a tale of adventure), many short stories, including "The Man Who Would Be King" (1888); and his poems, including Mandalay (1890), Gunga Din (1890), The White Man's Burden (1899) and If—(1910). He is regarded as a major "innovator in the art of the short story"; his children's books are enduring classics of children's literature; and his best works are said to exhibit "a versatile and luminous narrative gift".
Source: Wikipedia
Alfred, Lord Tennyson (1809-1892)
Tennyson in 1869
More than any other Victorian writer, Tennyson has seemed the embodiment of his age, both to his contemporaries and to modern readers. In his own day he was said to be--with Queen Victoria and Gladstone--one of the three most famous living persons, a reputation no other poet writing in English has ever had. As official poetic spokesman for the reign of Victoria, he felt called upon to celebrate a quickly changing industrial and mercantile world with which he felt little in common, for his deepest sympathies were called forth by an unaltered rural England; the conflict between what he thought of as his duty to society and his allegiance to the eternal beauty of nature seems peculiarly Victorian. Even his most severe critics have always recognized his lyric gift for sound and cadence, a gift probably unequaled in the history of English poetry, but one so absolute that it has sometimes been mistaken for mere facility.
Source: Wikipedia
Thomas Moore (1779-1852)
Thomas Moore was an Irish poet, singer, songwriter, and entertainer, now best remembered for the lyrics of The Minstrel Boy and The Last Rose of Summer. He was responsible, with John Murray, for burning Lord Byron's memoirs after his death. In his lifetime he was often referred to as Anacreon Moore. Moore is considered Ireland's National Bard and is to Ireland what Robert Burns is to Scotland.
Source: Wikipedia