J.R. Ackerley
Joe Randolph "J. R." Ackerley was a British writer and editor. Starting with the BBC the year after its founding in 1927, he was promoted to literary editor of The Listener, its weekly magazine, where he served for more than two decades.
He published many emerging poets and writers who became influential in Great Britain. He was openly gay, a rarity in his time when homosexuality was forbidden by law and socially ostracized.
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Tom Crewe
TOM CREWE was born in Middlesbrough in 1989. He has a PhD in nineteenth century British history from the University of Cambridge. Since 2015, he has been an editor at the London Review of Books, to which he contributes essays on politics, art, history and fiction.
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The New Life is his first novel. Crewe says:
'This is the book I knew I wanted to write long before I actually wrote it. I hope it reveals to readers an unfamiliar Victorian England that will surprise and provoke, inhabited by a generation in the process of discovering the nature and limits of personal freedom, struggling to create a better world as the twentieth century comes into view.' -
Freya Stark
Freya Stark was born in Paris, where her parents were studying art. Her mother, Flora, was an Italian of Polish/German descent; her father, Robert, an English painter from Devon.
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In her lifetime she was famous for her experiences in the Middle East, her writing and her cartography. Freya Stark was not only one of the first Western women to travel through the Arabian deserts (Hadhramaut), she often travelled solo into areas where few Europeans, let alone women, had ever been.
She spent much of her childhood in North Italy, helped by the fact that Pen Browning, a friend of her father, had bought three houses in Asolo. She also had a grandmother in Genoa. For her 9th birthday she received a copy of the One Thousand and One Nights, and became fas -
Maiga Doocy
Maiga Doocy lives in a house where the people are outnumbered by cats, has a serious tea habit, and loves sad songs. She likes to write stories that are full of bittersweet longing and as much unexplainable magic as she can get away with.
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Aster Glenn Gray
Aster Glenn Gray writes fantasies with a romantic twist, or romances with a fantastic twist. (And maybe other things too. She is still a work in progress.) When she is not writing, she spends much of her time haunting libraries, taking long walks, and doing battle with the weeds that seek to topple her tomato plants.
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Henry Adams
Librarian Note: There is more than one author in the GoodReads database with this name. See this thread for more information.
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Noted Henry Brooks Adams wrote his nine-volume History of the United States during the Administrations of Jefferson and Madison (1889-1891) and also The Education of Henry Adams , a famous autobiography, in 1918.
This oldest and most distinguished family in Boston produced John Adams and John Qunicy Adams, two American presidents, and thus gave Henry the opportunity to pursue a wide-ranging variety of intellectual interests during the course of his life. Functioning in the worlds of both practical men and affairs as a journalist and an assistant to his father, an American diplomat in Washington and London, and -
Forrest Reid
Forrest Reid was an Irish novelist, literary critic and translator. He was, along with Hugh Walpole and J.M. Barrie, a leading pre-war British novelist of boyhood. He is still acclaimed as the greatest of Ulster novelists and was recognised with the award of the 1944 James Tait Black Memorial Prize for his novel Young Tom.
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A.M. Woody
A. M. Woody is a queer nonbinary author based in metro-Detroit and represented by New Leaf Literary. Some of their book weaknesses include:
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Uncontrollable magic
Boys who fall in love
Girls with swords
Snarky banter
Eyes that glow
Chaotic queers
Dorks to lovers
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Chloe Michelle Howarth
Chloe Michelle Howarth was born in July 1996. She grew up in the West Cork countryside, which has served as an inspiration for her writing. She attended university at IADT in Dun Laoghaire, Dublin, where she studied English, Media and Cultural Studies. Chloe currently lives in Brighton. Sunburn is her debut novel.
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Rose Allatini
Rose Allatini (1890-1980) was born in Vienna to an Italian-Jewish businessman/diplomat and an Austro-Polish mother. Brought up in London, she studied music and wrote three well-received romantic novels before her best-known work, Despised and Rejected, was published in May 1918 under the pseudonym A.T. Fitzroy. 800 copies were sold before the book was deemed 'morally unhealthy and most pernicious' and the publisher CW Daniel, a pacifist and Tolstoyan, was put on trial, fined and ordered to surrender the remaining 200.
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In 1921 Rose Allatini married the composer Cyril Scott, a fellow Occultist, and for the next few years worked closely with him and had two children in 1923 and 1926. In the 1930s she published short stoires as Mrs Cyril Scott a -
C.G. Drews
CG Drews is the award-winning author of The Boy Who Steals Houses and NYT Bestseller Don’t Let The Forest In, which is also a Junior Library Guild Gold Standard Selection, Indie Next Pick, and Barnes & Noble YA Book Club Pick. Their next YA horror, Hazelthorn, is out October 28th, 2025, with debut adult horror, You Did Nothing Wrong, coming in 2026. Their work has been translated into six languages, received a nomination for the 2020 CILIP Carnegie Medal, and won the 2020 CBCA Honour Award. CG lives in Australia, never sleeps, and is forever buried under a pile of unread books. Find on Instagram as @paperfury, TikTok as @cgdrews, and at cgdrews.com.
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K. Ancrum
K. Ancrum, is an author of award winning speculative contemporary YA notably THE WICKER KING, DARLING and most recently the critically acclaimed ICARUS. K. is a Chicago native passionate about diversity and representation in young adult fiction. She currently writes most of her work in the lush gardens of the Chicago Art Institute.
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Cat Sebastian
Cat Sebastian has written sixteen queer historical romances. Cat’s books have received starred reviews from Kirkus, Publishers Weekly, Library Journal, and Booklist.
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Before writing, Cat was a lawyer and a teacher and did a variety of other jobs she liked much less than she enjoys writing happy endings for queer people. She was born in New Jersey and lived in New York and Arizona before settling down in a swampy part of south. When she isn’t writing, she’s probably reading, having one-sided conversations with her dog, or doing the crossword puzzle.
The best way to keep up with Cat’s projects is to subscribe to her newsletter. -
K.J. Charles
KJ is a writer of romance, mostly m/m, historical or fantasy or both. She blogs about writing and editing at http://kjcharleswriter.com.
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She lives in London, UK, with her husband, two kids, and a cat of absolute night.
Bluesky @kj_charleswriter.com
Join the lively Discord group at https://discord.gg/fmPTWSZfT6
Sign up to the (infrequent) newsletter at http://kjcharleswriter.com/newsletter
Please **do not** message me on Goodreads as I no longer check the inbox due to unwanted messages. -
C.S. Pacat
C.S. Pacat is the USA-Today best-selling author of Dark Rise, the Captive Prince trilogy, and the GLAAD-nominated graphic novels Fence.
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Born in Australia and educated at the University of Melbourne, C.S. Pacat has lived in a number of cities, including Tokyo and Perugia, and currently resides and writes in Melbourne. -
Robert Graves
Robert von Ranke Graves was an English poet, soldier, historical novelist and critic. Born in Wimbledon, he received his early education at King's College School and Copthorne Prep School, Wimbledon & Charterhouse School and won a scholarship to St John's College, Oxford. While at Charterhouse in 1912, he fell in love with G.H. Johnstone, a boy of fourteen ("Dick" in Goodbye to All That) When challenged by the headmaster he defended himself by citing Plato, Greek poets, Michelangelo & Shakespeare, "who had felt as I did".
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At the outbreak of WWI, Graves enlisted almost immediately, taking a commission in the Royal Welch Fusiliers. He published his first volume of poems, Over the Brazier, in 1916. He developed an early reputation as a war poet -
Mary Borden
Mary Borden (1886–1968) was an early 20th-century, Anglo-American novelist.
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Mary Borden was born into a wealthy Chicago family. She attended Vassar College, graduating with a B.A. in 1907. In 1908 she married George Douglas Turner, with whom she had three daughters; Joyce (born 1909), Comfort (born 1910) and Mary (born 1914). She was living in England in 1914 at the outbreak of the war and used her own money to equip and staff a field hospital close to the Front in which she herself served as a nurse from 1915 until the end of the war. It was there she met Brigadier General Edward Louis Spears, who became her second husband, in 1918, following the dissolution of her first marriage. Despite her considerable social commitments as the wife of a -
Forrest Reid
Forrest Reid was an Irish novelist, literary critic and translator. He was, along with Hugh Walpole and J.M. Barrie, a leading pre-war British novelist of boyhood. He is still acclaimed as the greatest of Ulster novelists and was recognised with the award of the 1944 James Tait Black Memorial Prize for his novel Young Tom.
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R.C. Sherriff
Robert Cedric Sherriff was an English writer best known for his play Journey's End which was based on his experiences as a Captain in World War I. He wrote several plays, novels, and screenplays, and was nominated for an Academy Award for Best Writing (Adapted Screenplay) and two British Academy of Film and Television Arts.
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Edward Abbey
Edward Paul Abbey (1927–1989) was an American author and essayist noted for his advocacy of environmental issues, criticism of public land policies, and anarchist political views.
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Abbey attended college in New Mexico and then worked as a park ranger and fire lookout for the National Park Service in the Southwest. It was during this time that he developed the relationship with the area’s environment that influenced his writing. During his service, he was in close proximity to the ruins of ancient Native American cultures and saw the expansion and destruction of modern civilization.
His love for nature and extreme distrust of the industrial world influenced much of his work and helped garner a cult following.
Abbey died on March 14, 1989, due t -
J.L. Carr
Carr was born in Thirsk Junction, Carlton Miniott, Yorkshire, into a Wesleyan Methodist family. His father Joseph, the eleventh son of a farmer, went to work for the railways, eventually becoming a station master for the North Eastern Railway. Carr was given the same Christian name as his father and the middle name Lloyd, after David Lloyd George, the Liberal Chancellor of the Exchequer. He adopted the names Jim and James in adulthood. His brother Raymond, who was also a station master, called him Lloyd.
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Carr's early life was shaped by failure. He attended the village school at Carlton Miniott. He failed the scholarship exam, which denied him a grammar school education, and on finishing his school career he also failed to gain admission to t -
Henry Adams
Librarian Note: There is more than one author in the GoodReads database with this name. See this thread for more information.
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Noted Henry Brooks Adams wrote his nine-volume History of the United States during the Administrations of Jefferson and Madison (1889-1891) and also The Education of Henry Adams , a famous autobiography, in 1918.
This oldest and most distinguished family in Boston produced John Adams and John Qunicy Adams, two American presidents, and thus gave Henry the opportunity to pursue a wide-ranging variety of intellectual interests during the course of his life. Functioning in the worlds of both practical men and affairs as a journalist and an assistant to his father, an American diplomat in Washington and London, and -
Evelyn Waugh
Evelyn Waugh's father Arthur was a noted editor and publisher. His only sibling Alec also became a writer of note. In fact, his book “The Loom of Youth” (1917) a novel about his old boarding school Sherborne caused Evelyn to be expelled from there and placed at Lancing College. He said of his time there, “…the whole of English education when I was brought up was to produce prose writers; it was all we were taught, really.” He went on to Hertford College, Oxford, where he read History. When asked if he took up any sports there he quipped, “I drank for Hertford.”
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In 1924 Waugh left Oxford without taking his degree. After inglorious stints as a school teacher (he was dismissed for trying to seduce a school matron and/or inebriation), an appren -
Christopher Isherwood
English-born American writer Christopher William Bradshaw Isherwood portrayed Berlin in the early 1930s in his best known works, such as Goodbye to Berlin (1939), the basis for the musical Cabaret (1966). Isherwood was a novelist, playwright, screenwriter, autobiographer, and diarist.
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With W.H. Auden he wrote three plays— The Dog Beneath the Skin (1932), The Ascent of F6 (1936), and On the Frontier (1938). Isherwood tells the story in his first autobiography, Lions and Shadows .
After Isherwood wrote joke answers on his second-year exams, Cambridge University in 1925 asked him to leave. He briefly attended medical school and progressed with his first two novels, All the Conspirators (1928) and The Memorial (1932) -
Virginia Woolf
(Adeline) Virginia Woolf was an English novelist and essayist regarded as one of the foremost modernist literary figures of the twentieth century.
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During the interwar period, Woolf was a significant figure in London literary society and a member of the Bloomsbury Group. Her most famous works include the novels Mrs. Dalloway (1925), To the Lighthouse (1927), and Orlando (1928), and the book-length essay A Room of One's Own (1929) with its famous dictum, "a woman must have money and a room of her own if she is to write fiction." -
Jorge Luis Borges
Jorge Francisco Isidoro Luis Borges Acevedo was an Argentine short-story writer, essayist, poet and translator regarded as a key figure in Spanish-language and international literature. His best-known works, Ficciones (transl. Fictions) and El Aleph (transl. The Aleph), published in the 1940s, are collections of short stories exploring motifs such as dreams, labyrinths, chance, infinity, archives, mirrors, fictional writers and mythology. Borges's works have contributed to philosophical literature and the fantasy genre, and have had a major influence on the magic realist movement in 20th century Latin American literature.
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Born in Buenos Aires, Borges later moved with his family to Switzerland in 1914, where he studied at the Collège de Genèv -
Sophia Alice Callahan
Sophia Alice Callahan (1 January 1868 – 7 January 1894) was a novelist and teacher of Muscogee heritage. Her novel, Wynema, a Child of the Forest (1891) is thought "to be the first novel written by a Native American woman."
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Source: Wikipedia -
James Vance Marshall
Pseudonym of Donald Gordon Payne.
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Donald Gordon Payne was an English author of adventure novels and travel books.
Donald Gordon Payne was born in Denmark Hill in South East London in January 1924. His father, Francis, was a New Zealander, who served in the First World War with the ANZACS. His mother was Evelyn Rodgers, a nurse during the Great War.
He was educated at Dulwich College Preparatory School and then at Charterhouse School. As a child he travelled with his parents to New Zealand and parts of the East coast of Australia – an experience which left him with a lifelong affection for these countries.
Deferring his place at Corpus Christi College Oxford, he enlisted in the Fleet Air Arm in 1943. After training at Sealand, near Liverpool, an -
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Russell Baker
On August 14, 1925, US journalist, humorist and biographer Russell Baker was born in Loudoun County, Virginia. His father died early on and his hard-working mother reared him and his sisters during the Great Depression. Baker managed to get himself into Johns Hopkins University, where he studied journalism.
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Baker’s wit as a humorist has been compared with that of Mark Twain. “The only thing I was fit for was to be a writer,” wrote Baker, “and this notion rested solely on my suspicion that I would never be fit for real work, and that writing didn’t require any.” In 1979, Baker received his first Pulitzer Prize for distinguished commentary in his “Observer” column for the New York Times (1962 to 1998). His 1983 autobiography, Growing Up earned -
Rose Allatini
Rose Allatini (1890-1980) was born in Vienna to an Italian-Jewish businessman/diplomat and an Austro-Polish mother. Brought up in London, she studied music and wrote three well-received romantic novels before her best-known work, Despised and Rejected, was published in May 1918 under the pseudonym A.T. Fitzroy. 800 copies were sold before the book was deemed 'morally unhealthy and most pernicious' and the publisher CW Daniel, a pacifist and Tolstoyan, was put on trial, fined and ordered to surrender the remaining 200.
Buy books on Amazon
In 1921 Rose Allatini married the composer Cyril Scott, a fellow Occultist, and for the next few years worked closely with him and had two children in 1923 and 1926. In the 1930s she published short stoires as Mrs Cyril Scott a