Christy Brown (1932 - 1981)

Artist, Author. His life was the subject of the 1989 motion picture “My Left Foot,” starring actor Daniel Day-Lewis.  Born in Crumlin, Dublin, Ireland, Christy Brown was the tenth of twenty-two children (only thirteen would survive) of a poor Catholic family whose father was a bricklayer and mother was a schoolteacher.  Born with a severe […]

Charles Brockden Brown (1771 - 1810)

Author. Charles Brockden Brown is regarded as America’s first professional author. Born in Philadelphia,  his ancestors were Quakers who came over from England on the same ship with William Penn, the founder of Pennsylvania. In 1797 he quit his law studies and moved to New York City,  where he hoped to make a living as […]

Joan Brossa (1919 - 1998)

For him, expression had priority over content, and Joan Brossa managed to give his poetry the appearance of plays on words. His lyrical work is connected with the theatre while the totality of his literature (more of 80 books, all written in the Catalan language) is impregnated with the theatrical dimension as he always employed […]

Hans Adolph Brorson (1694 - 1764)

Hans Adolph Brorson (20 June 1694, Randerup – 3 June 1764, Ribe) was a Danish Pietist bishop and hymn writer. Brorson belonged to a clerical family: both of this brothers were energetic and successful Pietist vicars. He began publishing hymns in 1732 while a pastor in southern Jutland. His most important work was Troens rare klenodie […]

Walter R. Brooks (1886 - 1958)

Author. He is best known for the “Freddy the Pig” children’s book series.

Van Wyck Brooks (1886 - 1963)

Author and Critic. Van Wyck Brooks received a Pulitzer Prize for his literary history “The Flowering of New England.” He was the son of Charles Brooks, a New York stock broker and Sarah Ames Brooks lived in Plainfield, New Jersey.  He graduated from Harvard in 1908 after completing the four year course of studies in […]

Juanita Leone “Pulsipher” Leavitt Brooks (1898 - 1989)

Author. A native of Bunkerville, Nevada, she was a historian whose expertise was the American West and Mormon history. A lifetime member of the Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-Day Saints, she was a graduate of the BYU and Columbia University. She later served as a member on the Board of Directors for the Utah […]

Gwendolyn Elizabeth Brooks (1917 - 2000)

Gwendolyn Elizabeth Brooks (June 7, 1917 – December 3, 2000) was an American poet and teacher. She was the first African-American woman to win a Pulitzer when she was awarded the Pulitzer Prize for Poetry in 1950, for her second collection, Annie Allen. Throughout her career Brooks received many more honors. She was appointed Poet Laureate […]

Rupert Chawner Brooke (1887 - 1915)

Rupert Chawner Brooke made friends among the Bloomsbury group of writers, some of whom admired his talent while others were more impressed by his good looks. Virginia Woolf boasted to Vita Sackville-West of once going skinny-dipping with Brooke in a moonlit pool when they were in Cambridge together. Brooke belonged to another literary group known as […]

Charlotte Bronte (1816 - 1855)

British Novelist and Poet. Charlotte Bronte was the oldest of the three Bronte sisters who became renowned authors, the others being Emily and Anne Bronte. Additionally, she was also an accomplished artist. She was born the fourth of six children in Thornton, West Riding of Yorkshire, England, the daughter of Patrick and Marie Bronte. Her […]

Anne Bronte (1820 - 1849)

British Novelist and Poet. Anne Bronte was one of the three Bronte sisters who became renowned authors, the others being Charlotte and Emily Bronte. Even though she wrote and published only two novels, she would become a major literary figure in her own right. She was born the youngest of six children in Thornton, West […]

Louis Bromfield (1896 - 1956)

Author, FarmerBorn in Mansfield, Ohio to a third-generation farmer, Louis Bromfield went to school in Mansfield and spent his boyhood working as a cub reporter for the Mansfield newspaper and working on his grandfather’s farm. He attended Cornell and Columbia Universities, majoring in agriculture and journalism. However, he left before graduation to serve in World […]

Richard Brome (1970 - 1652)

Dramatist. England’s last important comic playwright of the Jacobean period, he was one of the “Sons of Ben”, a group of followers of Ben Jonson. His finest plays are broad satires of middle-class life in London. They include “The City Wit” (1628), “The Northern Lass” (1629), “The Weeding of Covent Garden” (1632), “The Sparagus Garden” […]

Josef Brodsky (1940 - 1996)

Poet. Born a photographer’s son in Leningrad, Russia, although the family primarily lived on the income brought in by his mother. As a young child he and his family survived the Siege of Leningrad. After the war he began attending school, though he dropped out at the age of fifteen and began working at the […]

Fawn McKay Brodie (1915 - 1981)

Author,  Historian. One of the founders of the genre of history known variously as “psychohistory” or “psychobiography”. Fawn McKay was born into a respected, though poor, Mormon family. She demonstrated academic prowess from an early age, attended Weber College for two years, and received her B.A. in English from the University of Utah in 1934. […]

David Salzer Broder (1929 - 2011)

Journalist. In his time he was considered the dean of the Washington press corps, having written for the Washington Post since 1966. Broder covered every presidential race from Eisenhower to Obama, and won a 1973 Pulitzer Prize for commentary for his coverage of the Watergate scandal. He also taught at the University of Maryland’s school […]

Max Brod (1884 - 1968)

Close friend of Franz Kafka, he also served as an editor on all of Kafka’s  major works. He was also a novelist  and essayist in his own right (German language).

Hermann Broch (1886 - 1951)

Hermann Broch was born in Vienna to a prosperous Jewish family and worked for some time in his family’s factory, though he maintained his literary interests privately. He was predestined to work in his father’s textile factory in Teesdorf, therefore, he attended a technical college for textile manufacture and a spinning and weaving college. In 1909 […]

Thomas Broadhurst (1970 - 1936)

Playwright. He wrote the plays ‘Evangeline'(1913) and ‘Pleasant Sins’ (1919), which was made into the movie “Damaged Love”(1931).  (bio by: Ginny M)  Family links:  Spouse:  Iva Broadhurst (1875 – 1949)* *Calculated relationship

Ivana Mazuranic Brlic (1874 - 1938)

Author. Known as the “Croatian Hans Christian Andersen,” she was born into privilage at Ogulin, Croatia to the famous Mazuranic family whose noted members were historians, politicians, writers and poets. Her grandfather was Ivan Mazuranic, “Viceroy” in the Austro-Hungarian empire and the author of many Croatian epic poems. At the age of eighteen, she married […]

Vera Brittain (1893 - 1970)

British pacifist, feminist, poet, and novelist. She was born at Newcastle under Lyme, Staffordshire. Her father, Thomas Brittain, was a wealthy paper manufacturer, and her mother Edith Bervon. Vera was educated at home by a governess, then at a boarding school in Surrey and finally at Somerville College, Oxford. In 1914 Vera met and fell […]

Arthur Brisbane (1863 - 1936)

In 1882, Arthur Brisbane began work as a newspaper reporter and editor in New York City, first at the Sun and later Joseph Pulitzer’s New York World. Hired away from Pulitzer by William Randolph Hearst, he became editor of the New York Journal and Hearst’s close friend. His syndicated editorial column had an estimated daily […]

William Clark Brinkley (1917 - 1993)

Writer and Journalist. He was an American writer and journalist, best known for his novels Don’t Go Near the Water (1956), which Metro-Goldwyn-Mayer adapted to an eponymous 1957 film, and The Last Ship (1988), which TNT adapted as an 2014–2015 television series. After graduating from the University of Oklahoma in 1940, Brinkley went on to […]

Francis Brinkley (1841 - 1912)

Diplomat, educator and writer. Francis Brinkley first went to Japan in 1867 as assistant attache to the Japanese Legation. He and his son, Jack Ronald, greatly contributed to the culture and education in Japan. Brinkley was born at Leinster, Ireland. His grandfather was a bishop and professor of astronomy in Dublin University. Brinkley studied at […]

Andre Brink (1935 - 2015)

Andre Brink was born in Vrede, in the Free State. Brink moved to Lydenburg, where he matriculated at Hoerskool Lydenburg in 1952 with seven distinctions, the second student from the then Transvaal to achieve this feat and studied Afrikaans literature in the Potchefstroom University of South Africa. His immense attachment with literature carried him to […]

John Brimhall (1928 - 2003)

John Brimhall (November 22, 1928 – December 2, 2003) was an American musical arranger and author of books on music composition, theory, and performance. Brimhall is perhaps best known for his easy arrangements of classical and American popular music for piano students. He studied at Loyola University, the University of San Francisco and Stanford University. Brimhall is […]

Leighton Brill (1893 - 1977)

American screenwriter of the 1940s. (bio by: A.J. Marik) Cause of death: Pneumonia

Dr Rużar Briffa (1906 - 1963)

Poet. Considered to this day as a major figure in Maltese literature, Rużar Briffa was born in Valletta in 1906 and received his first education at St. Elmo’s Elementary State School and the Valletta Lyceum. Obtaining the matriculation certificate, in 1923 he started teaching at elementary schools, however a year later he decided to further […]

Robert Seymour Bridges (1844 - 1930)

Poet Laureate. He was born in Walmer, Kent and was educated at Eton and Corpus Christi College, Oxford. He went on to study medicine at St. Bartholomew’s Hospital which he later practised. In 1882 he abandoned medical practice to devote himself to writing.  Two years later, on September 3, 1884, he married Monica Waterhouse. They […]

Clemens von La Roche Brentano (1778 - 1842)

Author and one of the major poets of late romanticism. Many of his poemswere made into folk songs and he collaborated with his brother-in-law Achim von Arnim in a compilation of folk songs which was called “Des Knaben Wunderhorn” (The boy’s miracle horn) and has remained well known until today