Shakespeare in Love

British literature has a long history, and many of the best known stories of all times originated on the British Isles. This time, however, we are after the lesser known authors for this year’s final 10 gems from our catalogue.

For almost 200 years, Thomas Kyd had fallen into obscurity, even though the playwright from the 1580s was among the most important figures of Elizabethan drama. Here, we present his most famous play The Spanish Tragedy, where a man (or rather: a ghost) takes revenge…

Winston S. Churchill also saw many people die – he was British Prime Minister during WWII. Besides that, he was a renowned writer of nonfiction and even received the Nobel Prize for Literature in 1953. During his long term in parliament, he had to give many public addresses, some of which are collected in Selected House of Common Speeches.

Being the British Prime Minister does not seem to hinder one’s private pursuits. Another one – Benjamin Disraeli – was a well known literary figure and is credited with the invention of the political novel. One of his best known is Sibyl, or the Two Nations, tracing the plight of the working classes in England.

Definitely not working class was Charlotte Yonge. She was homeschooled by her father, and started writing in 1848. She wrote about 160 novels in her life time, many of them with a historical theme that she painstakingly researched. Her book The Litte Duke is based on the life of Richard, Duke of Normandy.

Samuel Pepys had a number of highborn family members, but he spent his childhood in relative poverty. Only through fastidious studying, which earned him a scholarship at Cambridge, did he climb the ranks and finally became Chief Secretary to the Admiralty. He is best known for The Diary of Samuel Pepys, which he kept from 1660 – 1669.

Rita (pen name of Eliza M. Humphreys) on the other hand, received little education. Even so, she became a famous author and wrote 120 novels – one of them even sold 160,000 copies! In The Mystery of a Turkish Bath the guests of an exclusive Hampshire hotel witness the strange and dangerous display of occult powers…

Marie Corelli, an illegitimate child, started writing in 1886 and became the most widely read author of fiction of her time. She even outsold A. Conan Doyle, but was always belittled by critics. In The Secret Power, the female inventor of an airship and the male holder of destructive powers get involved romantically – but question marks remain for both of them.

No question marks are there about the new teacher at Dr. Wortle’s School: It is clear that she is a bigamist. The religious school deals with it in the style of Anthony Trollope. He was one of the most renowned authors of Victorian England, and is best known for the Chronicles of Barsetshire.

Also from the Victorian era hails Sir Henry W. Lucy, a political journalist. He taught himself shorthand and French and worked as a reporter from 1864 for a number of different newspapers. Faces and Places is a collection of articles on travels he made in various countries.

Dora Sigerson Shorter was an Irish Poet and a major figure of the Irish Literary Revival. Sadly, she died at only 51 years of age. The Sad Years is a collection of her poetry concerning WWI, from 1914 – 1918.

Enjoy discovering new British authors!