Yosa Buson (1970 - 1784)

Poet,  Painter. Along with Basho Matsuo and Issa Kobayashi, Yosa Buson is considered among the greatest poets of the Edo Period. He was born in the village of Kema in Settsu Province (now Kema-chô, Miyakojima Ward in the city Osaka). His real last name was “Taniguchi.” Around the age of 20, Buson moved to Edo […]

Horace Bushnell (1802 - 1876)

While in California in 1856, for the restoration of his health, Horace Bushnell took an active interest in the organization, at Oakland, of the College of California (chartered in 1855 and merged with the University of California in 1869), the presidency of which he declined. As a preacher, Dr Bushnell was very effective. Though not […]

Nancy Rachel Bush (1970 - 1970)

Writer and wife of composer Dr. Alan Bush. Wrote several books including a biography of Alan Bush, “Music, Politics and Life.” As well as being Alan Bush’s wife, she was also his artistic partner and wrote the lyrics of some of his songs and the libretti for three of his full length operas “Wat Tyler,” […]

Robert “Democritus Junior” Burton (1577 - 1640)

Author of the wonderfully learned, humorous and eccentric masterpiece ‘The Anatomy of Melancholy’, written under the pseudonym of Democritus Junior, which is repeated on the memorial above his tomb. According to his contemporary, the gossip Anthony a Wood, he had predicted the time of his death with the aid of astrology, and hanged himself so […]

Gaston Burssens (1896 - 1965)

Gaston Burssens (18 February 1896 – 29 January 1965) was a Belgian Expressionist poet. He studied in Flanders at the University of Ghent, at which, during World War I, the Germans introduced classes given in Dutch language. Like that of Paul van Ostaijen, during the 1920s his work evolved from humanitarian expressionism towards a more organic […]

(1970 - 1970)

Author. Also known as his pen name William Lee.  He was born to Laura Lee and Mortimer Burroughs. William was named after his famous grandfather, an inventor who was a pioneer in adding-machine technology. William attended prep schools and later studied English literature at Harvard University, where he graduated in 1936. He travelled to Europe […]

Edgar Rice Burroughs (1875 - 1950)

Author, Master of Adventure.  Tarzan began with one novel followed by twenty nine others which then transcended into some forty movies including a Disney animated cartoon classic, television programs, a Sunday comic strip, hundreds of comic books and the marketing of Tarzan merchandise… toys, wearing apparel and gasoline.  The list is endless.  Edgar Rice Burroughs […]

Robert Burns (1759 - 1796)

Poet. Born the eldest of seven children at Alloway, near Ayr, the son of William Burnes, a small farmer and gardener for the Provost of Ayr. Burns was educated briefly at John Murdoch’s school in Alloway but received most of his schooling at home. His first love, Nelly Kirkpatrick inspired him to try his hand […]

Olive Ann Burns (1924 - 1990)

Olive Ann Burns (July 17, 1924 – July 4, 1990) was an American writer from Georgia best known for her single completed novel, Cold Sassy Tree, published in 1984. Olive Ann Burns was born in Banks County, Georgia. Her father was a farmer but was forced to sell his farm in 1931 during the Great Depression. […]

John Horne Burns (1916 - 1953)

John Horne Burns was born in 1916 in Andover, Massachusetts. He was the eldest of seven children in an upper-middle-class Irish Catholic family. He was educated by the Sisters of Notre Dame at St. Augustine’s School and then Phillips Academy, where he pursued music. He attended Harvard, where he became fluent in French, German, and […]

Fanny Burney (1752 - 1840)

Novelist and diarist. Fanny Burney later (Madame D’Arblay) was born in King’s Lynn, Norfolk, to Esther Sleepe Burney and music historian of some distinction,  Dr. Charles Burney. In 1760, the family moved to Poland street in London where a brilliant social circle would frequent,  which included David Garrick, Samuel Johnson, James Boswell and Edmund Burke. […]

William Riley Burnett, II (1899 - 1982)

Author, screen writer.  William Riley (WR) Burnett wrote 36 novels and wrote or co-wrote 60 screenplays, dozens of magazine stories, short stories, plays and songs. Some of his more recognizable titles include “Little Caesar,” “Nobody Lives Forever,” and “The Dark Command.”  He collaborated with John Huston when working on the adaptation of his work, “High […]

Frances Eliza Hodgson Burnett (1849 - 1924)

Author. Born Francis Eliza Hodgson at Cheetham Hill, Manchester, England. Her father died in 1853, leaving a widow and five children. Mrs. Hodgeson tried to continue running her husband’s wholesale firm but ultimately failed in part due to the effects of the American Civil War. With the promise of support from a maternal uncle, the […]

Gordon Burn (1948 - 2009)

Gordon Burn (16 January 1948 – 17 July 2009) was an English writer born in Newcastle upon Tyne and the author of four novels and several works of non-fiction. Burn’s novels deal with issues of modern fame and faded celebrity as lived through the media spotlight. His novel Alma Cogan (1991), which imagined the future life […]

Carmen de Burgos (1867 - 1932)

Author, Journalist. She was born in Rodalquivir, Almería (Andalucía, Spain). Married at young age, she divorced and moved to Madrid with her child. She was a pioneer women in the fight of feminism, the sufragism and the republican ideas. She worked for several magazines and newspapers such as “La España Artística,” “La Educación,” “El País,” […]

Thornton Waldo Burgess (1874 - 1965)

Thornton Waldo Burgess (January 14, 1874 – June 5, 1965) was a conservationist and author of children’s stories. Burgess loved the beauty of nature and its living creatures so much that he wrote about them for 50 years in books and his newspaper column, Bedtime Stories. He was sometimes known as the Bedtime Story-Man. By […]

Anthony Burgess (1917 - 1993)

Anthony Burgess, FRSL (/ˈbɜːrdʒəs/; 25 February 1917 – 22 November 1993) – who published under the pen name Anthony Burgess – was an English writer and composer. From relatively modest beginnings in a Catholic family in Manchester, he eventually became one of the best known English literary figures of the latter half of the twentieth […]

John Bunyan (1628 - 1688)

Author, Nonconformist preacher. The son of a Bedfordshire tinker, John Bunyan had little education, and at first followed his father’s trade. He served for three years in the Parliamentary Army during the Puritan Revolution, but saw little fighting. In about 1649 he married a pious Anglican, and embraced her religion; soon he had an intense […]

Luis Buñuel (1900 - 1983)

Luis Buñuel; 22 February 1900 – 29 July 1983) was a Spanish filmmaker who worked in Spain, Mexico and France. When Luis Buñuel died at age 83, his obituary in the New York Times called him “an iconoclast, moralist, and revolutionary who was a leader of avant-garde surrealism in his youth and a dominant international […]

Ned Buntline (1821 - 1886)

American publisher, journalist and writer. Best known for his dime novels and the Colt Buntline Special he invented. Born Edward Zane Carroll Judson in Harpersfield near Stamford, New York, he moved with his family to Pennsylvania at age 8 and by age 12 had run away from home. Passionate about travel and writing; one of […]

Basil Bunting (1900 - 1985)

Born into a Quaker family in Scotswood-on-Tyne, Northumberland, Basil Bunting studied at two Quaker schools: from 1912 to 1916 at Ackworth School in the West Riding of Yorkshire and from 1916 to 1918 at Leighton Park School in Berkshire. His Quaker education strongly influenced his pacifist opposition to the First World War, and in 1918 […]

Paul Delmont Bunker (1881 - 1943)

Paul Delmont Bunker (May 7, 1881 – March 16, 1943) was an American football player and soldier. Bunker attended the U.S. Military Academy and became the first football player at West Point to be selected as a first-team All-American by Walter Camp. Bunker was chosen as an All-American at the tackle position in 1901 and […]

Ivan Bunin (1870 - 1953)

In May 1887 Ivan Bunin published his first poem “Village Paupers” (Деревенские нищие) in the Saint Petersburg literary magazine Rodina (Motherland). In 1891 his first short story “Country Sketch (Деревенский эскиз) appeared in Nikolay Mikhaylovsky-edited journal Russkoye Bogatstvo. In Spring 1889, Bunin followed his brother to Kharkov, where he became a government clerk, then an […]

Sir Edward George Earle Lytton Bulwer-Lytton (1803 - 1873)

Author. He was the author of “The Caxtons”, “The Last Days of Pompeii” and many other novels. He was also a member of Parliament for St. Ives and Lincoln.

Carlos Bulosan (1913 - 1956)

Carlos Bulosan was born to Ilocano parents in the Philippines in Binalonan, Pangasinan. There is considerable debate around his actual birth date, as he himself used several dates, but 1911 is generally considered the most reliable answer, based on his baptismal records, but according to the late Lorenzo Duyanen Sampayan, his childhood playmate and nephew, […]

Harvey Reade Bullock (1921 - 2006)

Television Screenwriter and Producer. He was a graduate of Duke University and a veteran of the United States Navy during the Second World War. He was one of the head writers for the “Andy Griffith Show” from 1960 to 1965. In addition to the Griffith show, he also was one of the top creative writers […]

Clyde Robert Bulla (1914 - 2007)

Clyde Robert Bulla (born January 9, 1914, near King City, Missouri, United States, d. May 23, 2007, Warrensburg, Missouri) was the author of over fifty books for children. His first book, The Donkey Cart, was published in 1946.  He captivated readers for over six decades with his stories of historical figures and contemporary tales for children […]

Mikhail Bulgakov (1891 - 1940)

After illness Mikhail Bulgakov abandoned his career as a doctor for that of a writer. In his autobiography, he recalled how he started writing: “Once in 1919 when I was traveling at night by train I wrote a short story. In the town where the train stopped, I took the story to the publisher of […]

Charles Bukowski (1920 - 1994)

Author, Poet. Born in Germany, he was a prolific underground writer who used poetry and prose to depict the depravity of urban life in American society. He came to the United States with his parents at the age of two and detailed his coming of age in the autobiographical novel, “Ham on Rye” (1982). He […]

Antonio Buero Vallejo (1916 - 2000)

Author. One of the most importants dramatist in the 20th Century, he won the Cervantes Award. He is remembered for his books “Historia de una Escalera,” “La Erdiente Oscuridad,” “La Tejedora de Sueños,” “El tragaluz,” “La Llegada de los Dioses,” “Jueces en la Noche” and “La Fundación.” (bio by: José L Bernabé Tronchoni)