Biography – Page 5 – Interesting Literature

A Very Short Biography of Sir John Suckling

By Dr Oliver Tearle (Loughborough University)

Sir John Suckling (1609-42) was a minor poet who nevertheless made his mark on the literature of his era. In this post we offer a very brief biography of John Suckling, covering the most interesting aspects of his life and work.

John Suckling was born in 1609 in Middlesex, England; his father, Sir John Suckling, was Secretary of State under King James I and, for the last two years of his life, Comptroller of the Household of King Charles I. At the age of eighteen, Suckling inherited his father’s estate when Sir John Senior died in 1627.

A Very Short Biography of M. R. James

By Dr Oliver Tearle (Loughborough University)

Many people regard M. R. James (1862-1936) as the finest writer of ghost stories in the English language. How did he come to write such highly regarded tales? In this post we offer a very short biography of M. R. James, focusing on the most curious or eye-catching aspects of his life.

A Very Short Biography of Anne Locke

By Dr Oliver Tearle (Loughborough University)

Anne Locke (c. 1530-c. 1590) is not a well-known figure in the annals of English poetry, yet she has an important and interesting – not to mention little-known – claim to literary fame, so her biography is worth dwelling on. As we discuss in our new book about obscure and forgotten books, The Secret Library: A Book-Lovers’ Journey Through Curiosities of History, Locke was not only the first Englishwoman to write a sonnet sequence, but the first English poet of either gender to do so.

A Very Short Biography of George Herbert

By Dr Oliver Tearle (Loughborough University)

George Herbert (1593-1633) was one of the greatest poets of the seventeenth century, one of the greatest devotional poets in the English language, and one of a group that Samuel Johnson identified as the ‘Metaphysical poets’. Yet his poems almost died with him in 1633, and it was only thanks to his friend’s sound judgment that they saw the light of day. In this post we sketch out a very brief biography of George Herbert: one of the greatest religious poets of any age.

George Herbert was born in Powys, Wales, in 1593, into a wealthy and artistically gifted family. He studied at Westminster School, being taught by Lancelot Andrewes, influential bishop and one of the masterminds on the committee which translated the King James Version of the Bible.

Five Fascinating Facts about Samuel Pepys

By Dr Oliver Tearle (Loughborough University)

1. Samuel Pepys’ celebrated diary was only deciphered in the early nineteenth century, over a century after his death.

The diary wasn’t written in code but in a form of shorthand called tachygraphy. It took a reverend several years to decipher the diary – and this wasn’t done until the 1820s. Partly what makes the diary so entertaining is Pepys’s personality: his confession of his own weaknesses, his refreshing frankness. But the diary is also the chronicle of a busy decade in English history.

It’s well-known that Pepys (1633-1703) documents the Great Plague, the Great Fire of London, and the Dutch invasion, but it’s often the little day-to-day details that make the diary so interesting. Among other things, Pepys’s diary contains one of the first references to a Punch and Judy show in England, and even the earliest known reference to someone in England having a cup of tea.