Authors, Poets & Novelists Posters & Prints, "A-B", pg 1/11

Edwin Abbott
b. 12-20-1838; England
d. 10-12-1926

Edwin Abbott, a teacher and author of Flatland: A Romance of Many Dimensions, is a math satire and religious allegory of a two dimensional world where the square narrator guides readers through some of the implications of life in two dimensions. Isaac Asimov said in the Foreword that "The best introduction one can find into the manner of perceiving dimensions."

• more Flatland book cover print
• more computer posters

Joseph Addison, poet and essayist
b. 5-1-1672; England
d. 6-17-1719

• Cato: A Tragedy and Selected Essays by Joseph Addison

Aeschylus
b. c, 525 BC, Greece
d. c. 456 BC

Aeschylus is often recognized as the father of tragedy, the earliest of the three Greek tragedians whose plays survive (along with Sophocles and Euripdes). His inspiration to create plays came from Dionysus in a dream. Aeschylus also was a soldier in the Battle of Marathon against Persian King Darius.

• The Oresteia: Agamemnon; The Libation Bearers; The Eumenides

Maxwell Anderson
b. 12-15-1888; Pennsylvania
d. 2-28-1959

• Dramatist in America: Letters of Maxwell Anderson, 1912-1958

Guillaume Apollinaire
b. 8-26-1880; Rome
d. 11-9-1918; France (Spanish Flu Pandemic victim)

• Calligrammes: Poems of Peace and War (1913-16), Apollinaire
• WWI posters

Lucius Apuleius of Madaura
b. c. 123 AD, Africa
d. 180 AD

Lucius Apuleius of Madaura was a writer and philospher born in North Africa. His The Golden Ass tells of the adventures of an aristocrat, Lucius, whose enthusiasm for magic, and lack of skill as a magician, causes his transformation into an ass. As a beast of burden Lucius is privy to seeing the world from another point of view. Shakespeare used elements of Apuleius' The Golden Ass in "A Midsummer Night's Dream".

Antonin Artaud, playwright, actor & director
b. 9-4-1896; Marseille
d. 3-4-1948; Paris

• The Theater and Its Double, Artaud

W. H. Auden
b. 2-21-1907; England
d. 9-29-1973; Vienna

• Voice of the Poet: W.H. Auden

Felipe Guaman Poma de Ayala
b. c. 1550; Peru
d. after 1616

Felipe Guaman Poma de Ayala, also known as Guaman Poma or Human Poma, was the son of an indigenous noble Peruvian. He served as a translator and wrote and illustrated the 1200 page The First New Chronicle and Good Government between 1600 and 1615, addressed to King Philip III.

Honoré de Balzac
b. 5-20-1799; France
d. 8-18-1850

Balzac suffered from many health problems including tuberculosis.

• Short Stories of Honore de Balzac

Pedro Calderon de la Barca, Spanish Poet and Playwright
b. 1-17-1600; Madrid
d. 5-25-1681

• Life is a Dream, Pedro Calderon de la Barca

J. M. Barrie
b. 5-9-1860; Scotland
d. 6-19-1937

Sir James Matthew Barrie, was the author of the play Peter Pan, or The Boy Who Wouldn't Grow Up.

• Maude Adams as Peter Pan
• Pauline Chase, actress noted for her characterization of Peter Pan.
• Mary Martin, Broadway

Charles Baudelaire
b. 4-9-1821; Paris, France
d. 8-31-1867

Baudelaire was an influential French poet and critic, as well as translator of the works of American writer Edgar Allan Poe. (Poe wrote about a raven, Baudelaire wrote about an albatross.)

• Flowers of Evil and Other Works/Les Fleurs du Mal Et Oeuvres Choisies : A Dual-Language Book, Charles Baudelaire
• Baudelaire letter to Richard Wagner print
• Baudelaire drawing of Jeanne Duval

Pierre Augustin Caron de Beaumarchais
b. 1-24-1732; Paris, France
d. 5-17-1799

• The Figaro Trilogy: The Barber of Seville, The Marriage of Figaro, The Guilty Mother
• The Marriage of Figaro posters
• The Barber of Seville posters
• Voltaire portrait - Beaumarchais was responsible for preserving Voltaire's later work.

Jacinto Benavente y Martinez
b. 8-12-1866; Madrid, Spain
d. 7-14-1954

Jacinto Benavente y Martinez, a Spanish dramatist, was awarded the 1922 Nobel Prize for Literature "for the happy manner in which he has continued the illustrious traditions of the Spanish drama."

Giovanni Boccaccio
b. 6-16-1313; Tuscany
d. 12-21-1375

• The Decameron
• Black Dealth poster

James Boswell
b. 10-29-1740; Scotland
d. 5-19-1795

• The Life of Samuel Johnson, James Boswell

Book Burning
“You don’t have to burn books to destroy a culture. Just get people to stop reading them.”
Ray Bradbury, author of Fahrenheit 451
b. 8-22-1920; Waukegan, Illinois

• Banned Books posters

Bertolt Brecht
b. 2-10-1898; Germany
d. 8-14-1956

Brecht, poet, playwright, and theatre director, was a Marxist committed to the theatre as a stage for political and social ideals. His work "The Threepenny Opera" is a socialist view of the capitalist world, written with composer Kurt Weill, and based on the 1728 John Gay work, "The Beggar's Opera".

One of Brecht's most performed plays is about the 16th century physicist Galileo and explores the themes of dogmatism, scientific evidence, and "constancy in the face of oppression."

• Bertolt Brecht: His Life, His Art and His Times, by Bertolt Brecht

Elizabeth Barrett Browning
b. 3-6-1806; England
d. 6-29-1861; Italy -tuberculosis

• Sonnets from the Portuguese, Elizabeth Barrett Browning

Robert Browning
b. 5-7-1812; England
d. 12-12-1889; Italy

• Robert Browning's the Pied Piper of Hamelin

William Jennings Bryan
b. 3-19-1860; Illinois
d. 7-26-1925

• Nebraska posters
• America in the 20th C. posters
• Darwin posters
• Woodrow Wilson posters
• Memoirs of William Jennings Bryan

John Bunyan
b. 11-28-1628; England
d. 8-31-1688

• The Pilgrim's Progress from This World, To That Which Is to Come, John Bunyan
• Christianity posters

Robert Burns
b. 1-25-1759; Scotland
d. 7-21-1796

Robert Burns was the Scottish National Poet. Burns suffered from tuberculosis.

• The Complete Works of Robert Burns

William S. Burroughs,
b. 2-5-1914; Missouri
d. 8-2-1997; Kansas

• Naked Lunch: The Restored Text
• more book cover posters

Lord Byron
b. 1-22-1788; London, England
d. 4-19-1824; Greece (malaria)

• The Love Poems of Lord Byron: A Romantic's Passion, George Gordon Byron
• poetry forms posters
• Lord Byron's daughter, Ada Lovelace, author of the first computer program