Gordon Burn (1948 - 2009)

Gordon Burn (16 January 1948 – 17 July 2009) was an English writer born in Newcastle upon Tyne and the author of four novels and several works of non-fiction. Burn’s novels deal with issues of modern fame and faded celebrity as lived through the media spotlight. His novel Alma Cogan (1991), which imagined the future life […]

Carmen de Burgos (1867 - 1932)

Author, Journalist. She was born in Rodalquivir, Almería (Andalucía, Spain). Married at young age, she divorced and moved to Madrid with her child. She was a pioneer women in the fight of feminism, the sufragism and the republican ideas. She worked for several magazines and newspapers such as “La España Artística,” “La Educación,” “El País,” […]

Thornton Waldo Burgess (1874 - 1965)

Thornton Waldo Burgess (January 14, 1874 – June 5, 1965) was a conservationist and author of children’s stories. Burgess loved the beauty of nature and its living creatures so much that he wrote about them for 50 years in books and his newspaper column, Bedtime Stories. He was sometimes known as the Bedtime Story-Man. By […]

Anthony Burgess (1917 - 1993)

Anthony Burgess, FRSL (/ˈbɜːrdʒəs/; 25 February 1917 – 22 November 1993) – who published under the pen name Anthony Burgess – was an English writer and composer. From relatively modest beginnings in a Catholic family in Manchester, he eventually became one of the best known English literary figures of the latter half of the twentieth […]

John Bunyan (1628 - 1688)

Author, Nonconformist preacher. The son of a Bedfordshire tinker, John Bunyan had little education, and at first followed his father’s trade. He served for three years in the Parliamentary Army during the Puritan Revolution, but saw little fighting. In about 1649 he married a pious Anglican, and embraced her religion; soon he had an intense […]

Luis Buñuel (1900 - 1983)

Luis Buñuel; 22 February 1900 – 29 July 1983) was a Spanish filmmaker who worked in Spain, Mexico and France. When Luis Buñuel died at age 83, his obituary in the New York Times called him “an iconoclast, moralist, and revolutionary who was a leader of avant-garde surrealism in his youth and a dominant international […]

Ned Buntline (1821 - 1886)

American publisher, journalist and writer. Best known for his dime novels and the Colt Buntline Special he invented. Born Edward Zane Carroll Judson in Harpersfield near Stamford, New York, he moved with his family to Pennsylvania at age 8 and by age 12 had run away from home. Passionate about travel and writing; one of […]

Basil Bunting (1900 - 1985)

Born into a Quaker family in Scotswood-on-Tyne, Northumberland, Basil Bunting studied at two Quaker schools: from 1912 to 1916 at Ackworth School in the West Riding of Yorkshire and from 1916 to 1918 at Leighton Park School in Berkshire. His Quaker education strongly influenced his pacifist opposition to the First World War, and in 1918 […]

Paul Delmont Bunker (1881 - 1943)

Paul Delmont Bunker (May 7, 1881 – March 16, 1943) was an American football player and soldier. Bunker attended the U.S. Military Academy and became the first football player at West Point to be selected as a first-team All-American by Walter Camp. Bunker was chosen as an All-American at the tackle position in 1901 and […]

Ivan Bunin (1870 - 1953)

In May 1887 Ivan Bunin published his first poem “Village Paupers” (Деревенские нищие) in the Saint Petersburg literary magazine Rodina (Motherland). In 1891 his first short story “Country Sketch (Деревенский эскиз) appeared in Nikolay Mikhaylovsky-edited journal Russkoye Bogatstvo. In Spring 1889, Bunin followed his brother to Kharkov, where he became a government clerk, then an […]

Sir Edward George Earle Lytton Bulwer-Lytton (1803 - 1873)

Author. He was the author of “The Caxtons”, “The Last Days of Pompeii” and many other novels. He was also a member of Parliament for St. Ives and Lincoln.

Carlos Bulosan (1913 - 1956)

Carlos Bulosan was born to Ilocano parents in the Philippines in Binalonan, Pangasinan. There is considerable debate around his actual birth date, as he himself used several dates, but 1911 is generally considered the most reliable answer, based on his baptismal records, but according to the late Lorenzo Duyanen Sampayan, his childhood playmate and nephew, […]

Harvey Reade Bullock (1921 - 2006)

Television Screenwriter and Producer. He was a graduate of Duke University and a veteran of the United States Navy during the Second World War. He was one of the head writers for the “Andy Griffith Show” from 1960 to 1965. In addition to the Griffith show, he also was one of the top creative writers […]

Clyde Robert Bulla (1914 - 2007)

Clyde Robert Bulla (born January 9, 1914, near King City, Missouri, United States, d. May 23, 2007, Warrensburg, Missouri) was the author of over fifty books for children. His first book, The Donkey Cart, was published in 1946.  He captivated readers for over six decades with his stories of historical figures and contemporary tales for children […]

Mikhail Bulgakov (1891 - 1940)

After illness Mikhail Bulgakov abandoned his career as a doctor for that of a writer. In his autobiography, he recalled how he started writing: “Once in 1919 when I was traveling at night by train I wrote a short story. In the town where the train stopped, I took the story to the publisher of […]

Charles Bukowski (1920 - 1994)

Author, Poet. Born in Germany, he was a prolific underground writer who used poetry and prose to depict the depravity of urban life in American society. He came to the United States with his parents at the age of two and detailed his coming of age in the autobiographical novel, “Ham on Rye” (1982). He […]

Antonio Buero Vallejo (1916 - 2000)

Author. One of the most importants dramatist in the 20th Century, he won the Cervantes Award. He is remembered for his books “Historia de una Escalera,” “La Erdiente Oscuridad,” “La Tejedora de Sueños,” “El tragaluz,” “La Llegada de los Dioses,” “Jueces en la Noche” and “La Fundación.” (bio by: José L Bernabé Tronchoni)

Algis Budrys (1931 - 2008)

Called “AJ” by friends, Budrys was born Algis Budrys in Königsberg in the then East Prussia, to a family which considered itself Lithuanian rather than German. In 1936, when Budrys was five years old, his father Jonas Budrys was appointed as the Lithuanian consul general in New York. Jonas Budrys continued to hold that position, […]

Sergei Budantsev (1896 - 1938)

Author. His work often dealt with feminism, corruption, and intellectuals coming to grips with communism, hot topics in the Soviet Union during the 1920’s but later considered suspect under Stalinism. In his famous novel “Locusts” (1927),  a plague of the insects symbolizes malevolent forces trying to stop the Russian people from building a new society. […]

William Frank Buckley, Jr (1925 - 2008)

Author and conservative commentator. Born in New York City, he was recruited into the CIA in 1951, the same year his first book, God and Man at Yale, was published. Soon founded the National Review in 1955, which he used as a forum to mobilize support for Barry Goldwater’s presidential bid. In 1964 helped form […]

Dr Ernest Redmond Buckler (1908 - 1984)

Canadian novelist and short story writer. Buckler wrote two of the most carefully crafted novels in English-Canadian literature, “The Mountain and the Valley” (1952), and “The Cruelest Month” (1963).  (bio by: Manley Bennett)

T. Nash Buckingham (1880 - 1971)

Sportsman, Author. Born in Memphis, he was an athlete, noted sportsman, field trial judge, pioneering conservationist, accomplished raconteur, and author. His books include “De Shootinest Gent’man and Other Tales” (1934), “Mark Right! Tales of Shooting and Fishing” (1936), “Ole Miss’” (1937), “Blood Lines, Tales of Shooting and Fishing” (1938), “Tattered Coat” (1944), “Game Bag, Tales […]

Pearl S. Buck (1892 - 1973)

Author, humanitarian, philanthropist. Winner of the Nobel Prize for Literature in 1938. She was born Pearl Sydenstricker in Hillsboro, West Virginia. Her parents were missionaries and she spent her youth in China. She learned to speak Chinese before she could speak English. After being educated by her mother and by a Chinese, Buck was sent […]

Lucy Rebecca Buck (1845 - 1918)

Civil War Diarist, author of “Sad Earth, Sweet Heaven,” the diary of Lucy Rebecca Buck during the War between the States, Front Royal, Virginia – December 25, 1861 – April 15, 1865, and “Shadows of My Heart,” the Civil War diary of Lucy Rebecca Buck of Virginia. Lucy was only 18 when the Civil War […]

Frank Buck (1884 - 1950)

Professional Outdoor Adventurer, Filmmaker. He was born on March 17, 1884, in Gainesville, Texas. When Frank Buck was five, his family moved to Dallas,Texas. After attending public schools there, he left home at the age of eighteen to take a job handling a trainload of cattle being sent to Chicago. In 1911 he made his […]

Charles Lunsford Neville Buck (1879 - 1957)

American Author. A writer of 24 novels, nine of his books were made into movies during the silent screen era.  He was at the pinnacle of his career from 1910-1935.  He then faded into obscurity after 1935, only to find a new audience in recent years.  Many of his books were being published again after […]

Art Buchwald (1925 - 2007)

Humorist, Journalist and Author. Art Buchwald is best remembered for his long running political satire and commentary column that he wrote for the Washington Post newspaper.  He won a Pulitzer Prize for outstanding commentary in 1982.  Born Arthur Buchwald in Mount Vernon, New York, he was the son of a drapery salesman.  Soon after he […]

Georg Buchner (1813 - 1837)

Playwright.  Although Georg Buchner died at the age of 23,  leaving only three plays and an unfinished novella,  his influence has vastly execeeded his slender output.  He has been hailed as a forerunner of such literary movements as Naturalism,  Metaphysical Symbolism,  Expressionism,  the Epic Theatre of Bertolt Brecht,  and the Theatre of the Absurd. His […]

George Buchanan (1506 - 1582)

Scholar, poet, author, and humanist. Born in Stirlingshire, Scotland, one of eight children of a small farmer who died when George Buchanan was 7, leaving the family in poverty. George received a grammar school education before being sent by his uncle to study at the University of Paris when he was 14. Returning to Scotland, […]

William Buchan (1970 - 1805)

Medical Pioneer. Author of the first-ever book of home medicine, ‘Domestic Medicine’, which sold over 80,000 copies in his lifetime. (bio by: David Conway)