Medailonky autorů
Washington, Booker T. (1856 - 1915).
L i f e
- son of a black slave and an unknown white slave-owning father
- given his owner's surname (Taliaferro) as a middle name, adopted his stepfather’s 1st name as a surname
- sought to educate himself and...
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West, Nathanael. (1903 - 1940).
L i f e
- born Nathan Weinstein, son of Lithuanian-Jewish parents, later adopted the half-biblical and half-American name Nathanael West
- divided between the two worlds without belonging anywhere really:...
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Wharton, Edith. (1862 - 1937).
L i f e
- born into ‘old money’, never experienced economic deprivations (x T. Dreiser & other naturalists)
- educated in foreign languages and an European outlook
- needed a cosmopolitan setting for her...
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Wheatley, Phillis. (ca 1753 - 1784).
L i f e
- born in Africa, brought to America when she was eight, and sold to the Boston merchant Wheatley
- quickly learnt to read and write in English, encouraged by her owner to write poetry
-...
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Whitman, Walt. (1819 - 1892).
L i f e
- apprenticed in a printing shop (<=> like Benjamin Franklin, Mark Twain, and William Dean Howells) = the poor-boy’s college > acquainted with miscellaneous lit. and intellectual...
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Whittier, John Greenleaf. (1807 - 1892).
L i f e
- son of devout and industrious Quaker farmers
- unable to afford college education
> sympathised with honourable labour and enforced poverty
W o r k
A b o l i t i o n i s t W r i t i n g...
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Wilder, Thornton. (1897 - 1975).
W o r k
- a novelist and playwright with a classical background: often charged for plagiarism
- received the Pulitzer Prize 3x: for the novel The Bridge of San Luis Rey (1927), and plays Our Town (1938), and...
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Williams, William Carlos. (1883 - 1963).
L i f e
- born into a cultured family
- read Afro-American poets (P. L. Dunbar), English Romantic poets (J. Keats), and English Victorian poets
- followed two full-time careers: a New Jersey physician and...
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Wilson, Harriet E. (ca 1828 - ca 1863).
Life
- born Harriet Adams, a daughter of Afro-American father and white mother, abandoned by her mother after her father's death
- married Harriet Wilson, abandoned by her husband who died soon...
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Winthrop, John. (1588 - 1649).
L i f e
- a leader in the Puritan colonial life, the 1st governor of the Massachusetts Bay Colony, re-elected twelve times
- father of John Winthrop Jr, later the governor of Connectitut
-...
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Wolfe, Thomas. (1900 - 1938).
L i f e
- born in a small town in North Carolina > portrayed in his fiction under the name Altamont
- after taking a university degree travelled widely both US and Europe and wrote
W o r k
- concerned...
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