William Shakespeare

- is one of the worlds well-known playwrights, he wrote historical plays, comedies and
tragedies, his sonnets are well-known as well
- was born in Stratford-upon-Avon in 1564
- he left his family and travelled to London to become a playwright
- he started there very successful career as an actor and writer
- he even opened his own theatre called the Globe and thats the reason why he became so
famous playwright
- when he retired and moved back to Stratford, he was rich and successful man
- he died in 1616 and is buried at Trinity Church of course in Stratford
- his plays are often divided into two periods
- in the first which ends in year 1600, he wrote mainly comedies, but there is also one
tragedy which knows everybody called Romeo and Juliet, comedies are for example: The
Taming of the Shrew, A midsummer Nights dream, As you like it, The Merchant of Venice
- in the second period, he wrote only tragedies and they are the most famous, I can name for
example Hamlet, Othello and Macbeth

American literature - poetry

Edgar Allan Poe
- poet and short writer, the founder of science-fiction and the detective story
- he is considered to be a part of the American Romantic Movement
- is the author of many horror stories and a famous poem called The Raven - on a stormy
night a tired student who has lost his love asks if he will ever meet her again in some other
world, his doubts are underlined by the ravens repetition of Nevermore
Walt Whitman
- one of the gratest American poets of 19th century
- he introduced free verse, celebrates nature and human-self
- collection Leaves of Grass meant big progress in the development of American poetry
Sylvia Plath
- in the postwar period, a number of poets used a very personal, confessional style, for
example Sylvia Plath, he was the most famous female poet of this period with her collection
Ariel
Allen Ginsberg
- is one of the beat generation - these writers focused on individualism as the supreme
human goal and denounced the life of Middle-class Americans as morally decadent
- is famous for his book The Howl and other poems

American prose writers

Herman Melville
- in most of his works there is a struggle between good and evil, his heroes seek the thruth
of life
- Moby Dick is a famous symbolic novel about chasing a whale and fight between and
obssesed man and an animal, in Captain Ahabs mind there are clashing positive and
negative sides, the negative won and the Captain killed Moby Dick (which stands for God or
Fate) and sank with his boat
Mark Twain
- he belongs to the most popular American writers ever
- the most famous works are: The Adventurous of Huckleberry Finn and The Adventurous of
Tom Sawyer
- he depicted critical insights into American society of that time
Francis Scott Fitzgerald
- one of the writers called the Lost Generation
- he expressed disappointment and the crash of the American Dream in modern America in
the novel Great Gatsby
Ernest Hemingwey
- he also depicted what Lost Generation felt
- was awarded the Nobel Prize for his story The Old Man and the Sea which is about human
strength - A man can be destroyed but not defeated
John Steinbeck
- in his novels, he combines a naturalistic view of the world with deep sympathy for people
- his best novel The Grapes of Wrath is the story of Joads, an Oklahoma farm family heading
for California hoping for better life in the Great Depression of 1930s - working as a fruit
pickers they faced the hatred of Californian landowners

British prose writers

Daniel Defoe
- journalist who became famous for his novel Robinson Crusoe - the story about a castaway
on a deserted island
Jonathan Swift
- wrote satirical prose
- he was especially popular among childrens for his Gulliver Travels, in part one the hero
comes to the Land of Lilliput where only very tiny people live, next tells about his life among
giants, then Gulliver is faced with the absurd lives of the people of the flying island of Laputa
- these pictures symbolized rulers ingnoring everyday lives of their serfs
Charles Dickens
- was a representative of critical realism
- in his novels he depicted the life of the poor in 19th century
- his humour made him different from other critical realists

- a novel called Oliver Twist shows the negative side of the developing industrial British
Empire
George Orwell
- he lived in the poorest parts of London and Paris
- this gave him inspiration for his own works
- Animal Farm is an allegory of politics of the Soviet Union
- 1984 is an anti-utopian novel which is considered one of the most successful novels of the
century
Agatha Christie
- known as the Queen of Detective Fiction
- she wrote about 100 detective stories, novels and plays
- she created amazing detectives - Ms Jane Marple, a woman of intunition who knows well
the people and the habits of a small town, and Hercule Poirot, a Belgian-born detective, now
retired, speaking bad English