Marguerite Duras

Marguerite Duras (1914-1996)

French Novelist, Screenwriter and Playwright 

French writer Marguerite Duras wrote more than numerous novels, screenplays and plays. She is best-known for her prize-winning novel, The Lover, and her experimental works that place great emphasis on innovations regarding style. Her theme mainly explores the challenges of love in a world that affects it.

Early Life of Marguerite Duras

Duras was born Marguerite Donnadieu on April 4, 1914 in Giadinh, French Indochina, now Vietnam. Her father died when she was four, and her mother, a teacher, struggled to bring up three children.

Read more — Marguerite Duras Biography

Lope de Vega

Lope de Vega (1562-1635)

Spanish Writer – Playwright, Author and Poet

Lope de Vega, a Spanish playwright and poet, is regarded as the father of Spanish national theatre or “comedia.” He popularized this dramatic form, the three-act plays in verse, which appealed to the public despite the fact that they broke all the classical rules.

Read more … Biography of Spanish Writer Lope de Vega

 

George Sand

George Sand (1804-1876)

French Novelist and Playwright

 

George Sand was the most celebrated female French novelist of the 19th century, also famous as an early feminist and for her many love affairs.

Early life of George Sand

French writer George Sand was born Amandine Aurore Lucile Dupin, in Paris on July 1, 1804. She grew in Nohant, in a family estate there. It was a small village in central France. She married when she was 18 but grew bored with her husband. At 27-years-old, she went to live in Paris with her two children.

Read more … George Sand Brief Biography

 

Maurice Maeterlinck

Maurice Maeterlinck (1862-1949)

Belgian Playwright, Poet, Essayist

Maurice Maeterlinck was a Belgian playwright, poet and essayist who became involved with Symbolism, a French literary movement which uses symbols to represent ideas and emotions. He was awarded the Nobel Prize for literature in 1911.

Maurice Polydore Marie Bernard, Count Maeterlinck, was born in Ghent, Belgium on August 29, 1862. He studied law at the University of Ghent where he was profoundly influenced by Symbolism. His early works were not in plays but poetry. He published his first poem, The Rushes, when he was a 21-year-old university student.

Read more…  Maurice Maeterlinck Brief Biography

 

Works by Maurice Maeterlinck

• The Rushes, 1883
• Hot Houses, 1889
• The Princess Maleine, 1889, play
• The Blind, 1891, play
• Pelléas and Mélisande, 1892, play
• Aglavaine and Selysette, 1896
• Ariadne and Bluebeard, 1901
• Sister Beatraice, 1902
• Monna Vanna, 1902, play
• The Blue Bird, 1908
• The Burgomaster of Stilmonde, 1918

Bertolt Brecht

Bertolt Brecht (1898 – 1956)

German Playwright and Poet

Bertolt Brecht was a German writer who had great success as a playwright. He developed a form of drama called epic theatre in which ideas, rather than characters, are important. Considered his best known play was Mother Courage and her Children.

Early Life of Bertolt Brecht

Bertolt Brecht was born on February 10, 1898, in Augsburg, Germany. When he was 19, he enrolled to study medicine at Munich University, but was unable to pursue it as he was conscripted into the army.

Read more — Bertolt Brecht Biography

Works by Bertolt Brecht

• Baal, 1918
• Drums in the Night, 1922
• The Threepenny Opera, 1928
• The Rise and Fall of the City of Mahogany, 1930
• Fear and Misery of the Third Reich, 1938
• Mother Courage and Her Children, 1939
• Poems in Exile, 1942
• Life of Galileo, 1943
• Mother Courage and her Children, 1939
• The Good Woman of Setzuan, 1943
• The Caucasian Chalk Circle, 1948

Sophocles

Sophocles (c. 496 BC – c. 406 BC)

Greek Playwright

As one of the greatest playwrights of ancient Greece, Sophocles, best-known for Oedipus and Antigone, developed the art of tragic drama from the work of the first tragic playwright, Aeschylus.

Nutshell Biography of Sophocles

Sophocles was born c. 496 B.C. into a wealthy family at Colonus, near the city of Athens. He was well-educated and socialized with some to the most powerful and prominent figures of his day.

Read more — Sophocles Brief Biography 

Link to Operas:

• Elektra by Richard Strauss
• Oedipus Rex Opera

Works by Sophocles

• Ajax, c. 450 BC
• Antigone, c. 442
• Oedipus Rex (Oedipus the King), c.430 BC
• Women of Trachis, c. 420 BC
• Electra, c. 413 BC
• Philoctetes, 409 BC
• Oedipus at Colonus, 401 BC, Published after his death

Edna Ferber

Edna Ferber (1885-1968)

American Novelist, Short-Story Writer, Playwright

Ferber is the author of Show Boat, the title of her 1926 blockbuster classic novel. The book was turned into a popular musical that brought her much money she called “oil well.” She won the Pulitzer Prize for So Big, a year earlier in 1925.

Edna Ferber Life in a Nutshell

Edna Ferber was born in Kalamazoo, Michigan on August 15, 1885, into a Jewish family. She got a job on a local newspaper when she finished secondary school.

Read more — Edna Ferber Biography

Books by Edna Ferber

• Dawn O’Hara, 1911
• Roast Beef, Medium, 1913
• Emma McChesney and Co., 1915
• Fanny Herself, 1917
• So Big, 1924
• Show Boat, 1926
• Cimarron, 1930
• A Peculiar Treasure, 1939
• Saratoga Trunk, 1941
• Giant, 1952
• Ice Palace, 1958

Pierre Augustin Caron de Beaumarchais

Beaumarchais (1732-1799)

French Playwright

Beaumarchais was one of the greatest comic French playwrights best-known as the author of The Barber of Seville (Le Barbier de Séville) and its sequel, The Marriage of Figaro (Le Mariage de Figaro).

The two plays were adapted into even more famous operas, with The Barber of Seville (Il barbiere di Siviglia) composed by Gioachino Rossini, and The Marriage of Figaro (Le Nozze di Figaro) by Wolfgang Amadeus Mozart. Both are typical light comedies popular in Europe in the 18th century classical music repertoire.

Read more… Beaumarchais Biography

Books by Beaumarchais

• Eugénie 1767
• The Two Friends, 1770
• Memoirs of Sir Beaumarchais, 1774-1778
• The Barber of Seville or The Useless Precaution, 1775 (Il barbiere di Siviglia)
• The Marriage of Figaro or A Mad Day, 1784 (Le Nozze di Figaro)
• Tarare, 1787
• The Guilty Mother, 1792