Author profiles

A B C D E F G H I J K L M N O P Q R S T U V W Y

Isabella Lickbarrow

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IL , an obscure local poet writing in the early nineteenth century, nevertheless tackled national issues in her poetry as well as landscape description, tales, songs, and personal tributes.

J. S. Anna Liddiard

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JSAL was an Irish poet of the early nineteenth century, whose subjects touch on landscape, human relations, Irish history and culture, and patriotism both Irish and British. She also wrote translations and a masque.

Elizabeth Clinton Countess of Lincoln

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ECCL published her sole text in the earlier seventeenth century: an unusual advice-manual which handles in very personal terms the topic of a woman's religious and maternal duty to breast-feed her own children, even if...

Ling Shuhua

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A writer and visual artist active primarily between the 1920s and 1950s, LS published short stories, essays, translations, and a memoir whose reception was shaped by frequently restrictive expectations for women writers of her time...
Ling Shuhua Somewhat blurry black and white photograph of Shuhua Ling, leaning back in a chair, holding an open book with large pages. Her hair is straight, jaw-length, and brushed back; she is wearing a pleated dress with a high neck.

Mary Linskill

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ML was a regional novelist, short-story writer, and occasionally a poet, whose fiction is shaped by the Yorkshire port of Whitby: by the place of its abbey in religious history and of its fishing...

Eliza Lynn Linton

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ELL was a Victorian novelist and memoirist whose historical importance rests largely on her pioneering role as a professional journalist who blazed a trail for her sex. She both held and promoted radical views early...
Eliza Lynn Linton Photo of a carbon print of Eliza Lynn Linton by W. and D. Downey, published by Cassell, 1890. She sits at a small chinoiserie table with lattice-style legs, as if paused in the act of writing on a sheaf of papers. Her right hand holds a pen; her chin rests on her left. She has a broad face with wire spectacles perched on her nose, and wears a white cap and a dark (black?) dress in several layers, with lace at the wrists and a good deal of dark decoration including jet beads sewn on. She has a metal cuff bra

Anne Lister

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Antiquarians and local historians have for generations known AL as an early nineteenth-century diarist and have made use of her diary (which amounts to about four million extant words in twenty-four quarto volumes, a sixth...
Anne Lister Photograph of a painting of Anne Lister by an unidentified artist; it hangs at Lister's estate, Shibden Hall. She is shown from the waist up against the background of a gold curtain, wearing a high-collared maroon jacket. Her jaw-length dark hair, smoothly parted in the middle, is curly around her face.

Janet Little

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JL , an eighteenth-century Scottish proletarian poet, was fully aware of the obstacles placed in her way by her gender, class, and nationality. She freely admits the audacity of writing poetry from her class and...

Penelope Lively

PL , who published her first book in 1970, began writing for children before moving on to adult novels, stories, a non-fictional account of landscape as record of history, and to memoirs in which, again...
Penelope Lively Colour photo, half-length, of Penelope Lively talking at a microphone, with a water carafe and tumblers in front. She is wearing tortoiseshell glasses, a blue jacket over black, a scarf, and a silver chain. Her grey hair is jaw-length.

Liz Lochhead

LL , a contemporary Scottish poet and dramatist, has written a number of sketches, monologues, revues, and full-length plays (some of them adapted from canonical works of the past). She names the Glasgow poet Edwin Morgan
Liz Lochhead Portrait photo of Liz Lochhead. She is wearing a beige blazer and a turqoise beaded necklace. Her white hair is cut short and she is standing against a blue/grey backdrop.

Anne Locke

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AL was a translator, during the sixteenth-century Reformation, of two Protestant texts from French into English. Her dedications to these works discuss the current state of the reformed religion to which they contribute. She also...

John Locke

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John Locke Portrait of John Locke by Sir Godfrey Kneller, 1697. Locke has a thin face and grey hair, and wears a white shirt and brown mantle.

Norah Lofts

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Throughout her long and prolific career, NL published meticulously researched her popular historical novels, short stories, historical biographies, crime and mystery novels, children's books, magazine pieces, and non-fictional works about history and superstitions.. Lofts varies...
Norah Lofts Black-and-white photo of Norah Lofts sitting at a desk for a book signing. Behind her are stacks of bookstore shelves. She has cat-eye glasses and wears a floral dress. People are gathered around her holding her books out to be signed.

Deborah Norris Logan

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DNL , an American woman active at the end of the eighteenth century and into the early decades of the nineteenth, was a diarist, a poet, and a writer of family and national history. Her...

Maria Theresa Longworth

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Novelist and travel writer MTL began her writing career following the findings of the infamous Yelverton Marriage Case, which left her without fortune because of legal expenses, and without a husband because of the...
Maria Theresa Longworth Black and white photograph of Maria Theresa Longworth, seated in a high-backed upholstered chair. She is wearing a simple, long, dark dress with a white lace collar, and her dark hair is pulled into a neat bun.

Roxburghe Lothian

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RL 's oeuvre consists of two major works: a historical fiction published shortly before her death in 1876, and an autobiographical romance that appeared posthumously. She may have also produced some unpublished poetry and an...

Jane Loudon

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While still an adolescent JL published tales and verse; next, in 1827, came a highly unusual science-fiction horror novel. After marrying a horticulturalist she participated in his writing career with work on his gardening magazine...
Jane Loudon Black and white photograph of an oval painting of Jane Loudon, shown from the waist up. She is wearing a simple dress with dark bodice and light skirt, a light cape patterned with flowers, and a lace collar. Slender chains lie around her neck and in her dark, neatly piled hair.

Marie Belloc Lowndes

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During a career that spanned nearly fifty years from 1889, MBL published journalism, biography, a guidebook, history for children, novels (mostly romances or thrillers), a book about actual crimes, and four late volumes of autobiography...
Marie Belloc Lowndes Photograph of the cover of "The Chink in the Armour" by Marie Belloc Lowndes, 1912. It is orange with black lettering ("Mrs. Belloc Lowndes"), and a large background circle of little red balls or beads.

Mina Loy

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ML is best known for her formally and thematically innovative free verse, which appeared in little magazines in the 1910s and 1920s. She later distanced herself from this free verse movement, with which she was...

Margaret Bingham Countess Lucan

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MBCL , eighteenth-century London miniature-painter, wit, and minor bluestocking, seems to have written verse all her life. Her writing would not be remembered if it were not for her strong political poem protesting against Britain's...
Margaret Bingham, Countess Lucan Mezzotint of Margaret Bingham, Countess Lucan, by James Watson after a painting by Angelica Kauffmann, published 1776. Lucan wears a laurel wreath (as a painter, not a poet) above her simple robe and dark mantle. She is sitting on a velvet, tasselled stool leaning on a carved table and gesturing towards a large book of art works. A classical column stands in the background.