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Description: Short biographical
sketches of better known English and American authors up to 1910
Classification: Reference Guides
Publication Date: around 1910
Length: over 1600 entries
Illustrations: none
Book attributes: Printable / No code required to
open book
Book ID: GC-SBD-Cousin
Download Size: 1.3 MB
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INTRODUCTION
The primary aim of this book is to give as much information
about English authors, including under this designation American
and Colonial writers, as the prescribed limits will admit of.
At the same time an attempt has been made, where materials
exist for it, to enhance the interest by introducing such details
as tend to illustrate the characters and circumstances of the respective
writers and the manner in which they passed through
the world; and in the case of the more important, to give some
indication of the relative place which they hold and the leading
features of their work.
Including the Appendix of Living Writers, the work contains
upwards of 1600 names; but large as this number is, the number
of those who have contributed something of interest and value
to the vast store of English Literature is larger still, and any
attempt to make a book of this kind absolutely exhaustive
would be futile.
The word "literature" is here used in a very wide sense,
and this gives rise to considerable difficulty in drawing the line
of exclusion. There are very many writers whose claim to
admission may reasonably be considered as good as that of
some who have been included; but even had it been possible
to discover all these, their inclusion would have swelled the
work beyond its limits. A line had to be drawn somewhere,
and the writer has used his best judgment in making that line
as consistent as possible. It may probably, however, be safely
claimed that every department of the subject of any importance
is well represented.
Wherever practicable (and this includes all but a very few
articles), various authorities have been collated, and pains have
been taken to secure accuracy; but where so large a collection
of facts and dates is involved, it would be too sanguine to
expect that success has invariably been attained.
J.W.C.
January, 1910.
ALCOTT, LOUISA M. (1832-1888).
—Writer of juvenile and
other tales, dau. of Amos Bronson Alcott, an educational and social
theorist, lecturer, and author, was b. in Pennsylvania. During the
American civil war she served as a nurse, and afterwards attained
celebrity as a writer of books for young people, of which the best is Little Women (1868). Others are Little Men and Jo's Boys. She
also wrote novels, including Moods and Work.
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