This site continues to “Shelf Life”

Dear valued friends & visitors,

To consolidate efforts and time, “Authors Brief Biographies” blog has been merged with Books Shelf Life. New posts will be populated at Life Shelf.  This existing blog site, however, will remain available.

Thank you very much for understanding.

John Buchan

John Buchan (1875-1940)

Scottish Novelist and Playwright

John Buchan is best known for action adventure novels, especially The Thirty-Nine Steps and Prester John. He served as the 15th Governor-General of Canada. The Thirty-Nine Steps was made into a film by Alfred Hitchcock in 1935. Since then, there have been other adaptations.

Read more —  John Buchan Life and Works

Books by John Buchan

• Sir Quixote of the Moors, 1895
• Prester John, 1910
• The Thirty-Nine Steps, 1915
• Salute to Adventurers, 1915
• The Power House, 1916
• Greenmantle, 1916
• Mr. Standfast, 1919
• History of the Great War, 1921-1922
• The Dancing Hour, 1926
• Witch Wood, 1927, horror fiction
• Sir Walter Scott, 1932
• Pilgrim’s Way, 1940, published after he died
• Mountain Meadow, 1941, published after he died

Carl Sandburg

Carl Sandburg (1878-1967)
American Poet and Biographer of Lincoln, Pulitzer Prize Winner

American writer Carl Sandburg is best known for his poetry. He is often regarded as Walt Whitman’s successor in celebrating the American spirit. He won two Pulitzer Prizes, one for his poetry (Corn Huskers, 1919) and another for a biography of Abraham Lincoln.

Sandburg, the son of a Swedish immigrant, was born on January 6, 1878, in Galesburg, Illinois. At the age of 13, he left school and traveled around Kansas as a hobo.

Read more – Carl Sandburg, Poems and Biographies

Leo Tolstoy

Leo Tolstoy (1828-1910)

Russian Writer, Novelist, Moralist, Philosopher and Mystic

Leo Tolstoy (Count Leo Nikolayevich Tolstoy), was one of Russia’s greatest writers, best known for novels War and Peace and Anna Karenina, considered among the greatest books of all time. He was a contemporary of another famous Russian writer Fyodor Dostoyevsky.

Tolstoy was born on September 9, 1828, with wealthy landowner-parents. They lived on a huge estate, Yasnaya Polyana, near Moscow. However, his parents died when he was young, leaving his aunts to bring him up. He was privately educated at home, then at Kazan University where he studied law and Asian languages. From his writings, Tolstoy had a happy childhood. A dreamy young man, he failed to graduate and moved to Moscow where he lived a fairly wild life.

Read more — Leo Tolstoy Biography

Leo Tolstoy Major Works:

Books by Tolstoy

• 1851 Istoria vcherashchnevo dnya (Accounts of Yesterday)
• 1852 Childhood, Boyhood, Youth, an autobiographical trilogy
• 1855-56 Sevastapol Sketches
• 1865-69 War and Peace
• 1875-7 Anna Karenina
• 1884 My Confession
• 1886 How Much Land Does a Man Need?
• 1886 The Death of Ivan Ilyich
• 1895 Master and Man

James Boswell

Today, October 29 (1740), is the birthday of James Boswell, Scottish writer and biographer, a son of a judge who wanted him to study law.

So James Boswell passed his bar exams in Scotland. He didn’t like law, but he loved goodtime, traveling, and London. So he went to London and met his  hero, the 53-year-old Samuel Johnson. They became good friends. Over the next 20 years, Boswell followed Johnson around, constantly taking notes. After Johnson died, Boswell spent years writing a biography of his friend. In 1791, The Life of Samuel Johnson was published. There had never been a biography like it before.  It’s still considered one of the greatest biographies ever written.

He died at the age of 54, in 1795.