tales from Shakespeare

Around the world, England is known as ‘the home of the Bard’. Of course we’ll start with Shakespeare, but our country has produced many of the world’s most renowned writers through the last few centuries, up to the present day. And many of them focus mostly on the natural world, as most creatives do.

Shakespeare (England’s Greatest Ever Playwright)

Shakespeare for every day of the year

William Shakespeare is always cited as England’s greatest ever playwright, and despite the stories of other people writing some of his plays, Shakespeare Birthplace Trust refutes this. Some believe that Edward de Vere (the Earl of Oxford) wrote them.

We do know that Shakespeare was a wealthy property developer (with left-wing political views) who has no direct descendants, as his closest relatives all died, with no living children.

After London, the Warwickshire town of Stratford-Upon-Avon is England’s most visited tourist destination, especially for Americans who love their literary history.

Shakespeare's first folio

Shakespeare’s First Folio is a beautifully illustrated hardback gift book, containing all 36 of William Shakespeare’s plays. Ideal for children or adults alike.

George Eliot (a scandalous history!)

George Eliot

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George Eliot (born Mary Ann Evans) wrote the well-known book Middlemarch, described as one of the best novels of all time. Her private life was like a book of its own.

Cut off from her family for a ‘scandalous affair’ with George Henry Lewes (already in an open marriage), they remained together for 25 years until his death. Two years later, she married a man 20 years her junior.

During their honeymoon, he leapt from the hotel balcony and ‘sailed over gondolas’, before being rescued from the Grand Canal. George Eliot then became ill and died 6 months later.

England’s Biggest-Selling Crime Writer

Agatha Christie

Dame Agatha Christie created the characters of Miss Marple and Hercules Poirot, and her books remain best-sellers to this day (and of course wonderfully portrayed on TV by Joan Hickson and David Suchet).

She also had a controversial life, going missing once for 11 days, during an episode of intense stress before her marriage breakdown. She eventually turned up, and lived at Greenway in Devon (she grew up in nearby Torquay), describing her home (now owned by the National Trust) as ‘the loveliest place in the world’.

A Writer Campaigning for Social Justice

a Christmas carol

Charles Dickens grew up in the harbour city of Portsmouth, and was passionate about better living standards for everyday people (his own father had gone to prison, for being in debt). Oliver was made into a successful musical film). A Christmas Carol was so influential that soon after publication, real-life ‘scrooges’ began to make charitable donations.

When he became a rich man, he founded a refuge for ‘fallen women’, where they learned to read and write, and often emigrated to start new lives. He personally interviewed each women before admittance, insisting that each was ‘be treated with the greatest kindness’.

Memories of College ‘Olde English?’

the Canterbury tales

Geoffrey Chaucer is known as ‘the father of English literature’ (many of us remember A-levels trying to fathom out Olde English in his Canterbury Tales – stories of pilgrims travelling to the ancient city). He’s buried in Poets’ Corner in Westminster Abbey.

Bath’s Beloved Literary Daughter

pride and prejudice

Jane Austen only wrote six novels, but her humorous observations on middle-class England still make her one of our most read authors. She was born in Hampshire but spent much of her life in Bath, before dying in Winchester. Despite one proposal of marriage which would have seen her financially secure for life, she refused (some believe, because it would have be meant she had to give up writing):

Three Literary Sisters from Yorkshire

children of the Moors

The Brontë sisters were all writers, living in the town of Haworth in Yorkshire. Their brother was also a writer. All four died young (and two other children died too), with their widowed father outliving them all.

A Bloomsbury Writer (from Sussex)

Bloomsbury group

Amanda White

In Sussex is the home of Virginia Woolf, who was part of the so-called Bloomsbury set. A gifted writer, she suffered greatly with depression. She ended her life by walking into a local pond, after stuffing her pockets with stones.

An Irish Playwright (who adored animals)

Pygmalion

George Bernard Shaw was an Irish playwright (who lived with his wife in Hertfordshire), who wrote over 60 plays (including Pygmalion, which later was made into the film My Fair Lady with Audrey Hepburn).

Known for his strong political views (he was against organised religion), he was a vegetarian passionate about animal welfare. He also was teetotal, did not smoke, nor even drink tea or coffee!

Animals are my friends. And I don’t eat my friends. George Bernard Shaw

Nature Writers of Modern Times

the lost words

Robert Macfarlane is a fellow of Emmanuel College (Cambridge) and has written phenomenal books on nature including Underland and The Lost Words (a giant book recounting lost words of nature, alongside Welsh artist Jackie Morris).

the starling

Stephen Moss is is a natural historian who teaches writing at Bath University, and is best known for producing TV programs featuring bird-watching Bill Oddie.

Paul Kingsnorth has been called ‘England’s greatest living writer’ even though he now lives in western Ireland. A former deputy editor of The Ecologist magazine, his book Real England looked at how globalisation was destroying orchards to village pubs.

Today he has converted from ‘eco paganism’ to find peace as an Orthodox Christian, and strongly believes that faith and religion are the way to find our way back, to protecting the planet. His recent profiles of lives of the wild saints is soon to be published as a book.

You’ll never see a bee who seems lost, never see a bee who doesn’t seem at home in this world. It is only humans who aren’t at home here. Paul Kingsnorth

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