Maxim Gorky | Guy Portman's Blog

10 Famous Self-Educated Authors

Jun 26 2015

This week sees the latest instalment in my famous author series. It is dedicated to famous authors who received little or no formal education.

The following 10 authors were largely self-taught:

Jane Austen(December 16th 1775 – July 18th 1817)

Jane Austen lived in an era when women’s education was not viewed as a priority. In addition to her own self-education in the form of voracious reading, she received some tuition from her father and older brothers. By her teenage years Austen was experimenting with different literary forms.

Mark Twain(November 30th 1835 – April 21st 1910)

Mark Twain once famously said, ‘I have never let my schooling interfere with my education.’ The iconic author and humorist was forced to leave school and find a job at the age of 12 following the death of his father. Twain found employment as an apprentice at the Hannibal Courier.

Jack London(January 12th 1876 – November 22nd 1916)

Jack London received little in the way of formal schooling. He started working odd jobs when he was 10. At 13 he was working 12 to 18 hour days at Hickmott’s Cannery. London credited the Victorian novel Signa, which he found and read when he was 9, as sowing the seed for his later literary success.

Charlotte Perkins Gilman(July 3rd 1860 – August 17th 1935)

The father of writer and feminist Charlotte Perkins Gilman left when she was a small child, leaving her family destitute. Gilman taught herself to read at the age of 5. Later she frequented public libraries. Gilman also attended a number of schools, in addition to studying via correspondence, but only up to the age of 15.

Maxim Gorky(March 28th 1868 – June 18th 1936)

Iconic Russian author Maxim Gorky was brought up in relative poverty by his grandmother after being orphaned at a young age. At the age of 12 he ran away from home and travelled across the Russian Empire for 5 years, living as a tramp for much of this time.

H.P. Lovecraft(August 20th 1890 – March 15th 1937)

Renowned horror writer H.P. Lovecraft suffered from ill health as a child, resulting in him rarely attending school until the age of 8, and missing a considerable amount of school after that. Lovecraft used the time to read prodigiously, as well as studying astronomy and chemistry.

Edith Wharton(January 24th 1862 – August 11th 1937)

Pulitzer Prize-winning American novelist and short story writer received little formal education. She started writing poetry at a young age and even tried to write a novel when she was only 11. At the age of 15 her translation of the German poem Was die Steine Erzählen earned her $50.

H.G. Wells(September 21st 1866 – August 13th 1946)

Wells left school when he was only 11. This was because his professional cricket playing father had fractured his thigh. The loss of income meant Wells had to take an apprenticeship, which he despised. The experience inspired 2 of his novels, The Wheels of Chance and Kipps.

George Bernard Shaw(July 26th 1856 –November 2nd 1950)

Dublin born playwright and critic George Bernard Shaw attended school irregularly as a child. By the age of 15 he had quit and was working as a junior clerk. He once said, ‘Schools and schoolmasters, as we have them today, are not popular as places of education and teachers, but rather prisons and turnkeys in which children are kept to prevent them disturbing and chaperoning their parent.’

Doris Lessing(October 22nd 1919 – November 17th 2013)

British novelist, poet, playwright and short story writer Doris Lessing was awarded the Nobel Prize in Literature in 2007. She attended an all-girls school in Salisbury (now Harare) until the age of 14. The following year she left home and found work as a nursemaid. During this time she continued her self-education and started writing.

7 Politically Inclined Authors

May 08 2015

This is a post that I wrote a while back about famous authors who held strong political opinions.

The following 7 authors were all politically inclined:

Hunter S. Thompson

(July 18th 1937 – February 20th 2005)

The father of Gonzo journalism was an iconic figure in the counter-culture. Despite his love of firearms and ardent support of the Second Amendment, Thompson’s politics were firmly entrenched in the far-left. A sworn enemy of Richard Nixon, he was vociferous in his support of George McGovern in the 1972 presidential election. He covered the election in dispatches for Rolling Stone, which laid the foundation for his book Fear and Loathing on the Campaign Trail ‘72.

Click here to read my review of Fear and Loathing in Las Vegas.

John Steinbeck

(February 27th 1902 – December 20th 1968)

John Steinbeck was a prolific novelist and short-story writer, and one of the most acclaimed literary figures America has ever produced. The author was very critical of capitalism and a supporter of unionisation, recurring themes in many of his books. His most famous work, The Grapes of Wrath, was viewed as so controversial at the time of its publication due to its criticism of the nation’s economic plight that it was burned on 2 separate occasions in the author’s hometown of Salinas.

Click here to read my review of In Dubious Battle.

Zora Neale Hurston

(January 7th 1891 – January 28th 1960)

Zora Neale Hurston was an American folklorist, anthropologist and author, who wrote 4 novels and more than 50 short stories, plays and essays. Her most famous novel, Their Eyes Were Watching God, was published in 1937. The highly opinionated Hurston could probably best be described as a conservative libertarian. Unlike many of her Soviet sympathising colleagues in the Harlem Renaissance, Hurston, a staunch patriot, was vehemently anti-Communist. She often referred to them as ‘commies’ and ‘reds’ in her writing.

Maxim Gorky

(March 28th 1868 – June 18th 1936)

Maxim Gorky is one of Russia’s most popular authors. His opposition to the Tsarist regime led to him being arrested on numerous occasions. Gorky, who associated with many revolutionaries, became a friend of Lenin. Later he provided financial support to the Russian Social Democratic Labour Party. Widely accepted as being the first famous Russian writer to emerge from the proletariat, Gorky is remembered as being a lifelong supporter of the Bolshevik cause and the founder of the Socialist realism literary method.

Click here to read my review of My Childhood.

Leo Tolstoy

(September 9th 1828 – November 20th 1910)

Russian novelist Count Lev Nikolayevich Tolstoy is widely regarded as being one of the greatest writers of all time. His most famous works are War and Peace and Anna Karenina. Tolstoy was a Christian Anarchist, who believed that non-resistance was the only way to achieve a Utopian society. His beliefs influenced Martin Luther King Jr. and Mahatma Gandhi. Tolstoy’s argument that peaceful anarchy could only be brought about by non-violent revolution is explained in his essay On Anarchy (1900).

Kurt Vonnegut

(November 11th 1922 – April 11th 2007)

Vonnegut was an American author, whose writing incorporated science fiction, black humour and satire. He was a pacifist intellectual and supporter of the American Civil Liberties Union. When he died in 2007 The New York Times described him as ‘the counterculture’s novelist’. His seminal work, Slaughterhouse-Five, is a satire about a survivor of the notorious firebombing of Dresden in World War II. Its anti-war rhetoric has resulted in it being banned by numerous US schools and libraries.

Click here to read my review of Slaughterhouse-Five.

George Orwell

(June 25th 1903 – January 21st 1950)

Author and journalist George Orwell was interested in social injustice, opposed to totalitarianism and committed to democratic socialism. So strongly was Orwell opposed to Fascism that he even volunteered to fight in The Spanish Civil War. His experiences there gave rise to his book, Homage to Catalonia (1938). Orwell’s most famous works, Nineteen Eighty-Four and Animal Farm, both warned of the dangers of totalitarianism. They were perceived as being a thinly disguised attack on Stalin and banned in the Soviet Union.

Click on the links to read my reviews of Down and Out in Paris and London and The Road to Wigan Pier.

7 Authors Who Overcame Adversity

Apr 10 2015

Earlier this week during a break from working on my third novel I took to thinking about famous authors who overcame adversity. Why, I don’t know why. Anyway, I thought it was a topic that would make a worthy addition to my popular famous author series of blog posts. Here are 7 authors who overcame varying degrees of adversity:

Maxim Gorky

(March 28th 1868 – June 18th 1936)

Iconic Russian author Maxim Gorky was brought up in relative poverty by his grandmother after being orphaned at a young age. During this period he suffered abuse from his grandfather. At the age of 12 he ran away from home and travelled across the Russian Empire for 5 years, living as a tramp for much of this time. Gorky went on to become one of Russia’s most popular authors ever and the founder of the Socialist realism literary method.

Click here to read my review of My Childhood

Victor Frankl

(March 26th 1905 – September 2nd 1997)

Austrian Jew Victor Frankl was a psychiatrist, neurologist and writer, who was imprisoned in several concentration camps during the WWII, including Auschwitz. Frankl’s wife, mother and brother died in the camps. The only immediate member of his family to survive the War was his sister Stella. Frankl went on to write a number of books, his most famous, Man’s Search for Meaning, had at the time of his death in 1997 sold 10 million copies and been translated into 24 languages.

Paulo Coelho

(Born: August 24th 1947)

Brazilian songwriter turned novelist Paulo Coelho was committed to a mental institution at the age of 17 by his parents, who were concerned about his introverted, non-conformist behavior. Coelho, who was fed tranquilizers and given electroshock treatments escaped several times before he was finally released at the age of 20. Today Coelho is the best-selling Portuguese language author of all time. His seminal work, The Alchemist, has been translated into 80 languages.

J.K. Rowling

(Born: July 31st 1965)

Listed by Forbes in 2004 as being the first person to become a U.S. dollar billionaire from writing books, the author of the Harry Potter series is one of the best selling authors of all time. Prior to her success Rowling went through a seven-year period that entailed divorcing her first husband, the death of her mother, existing on benefits as a single mother in Edinburgh, suffering from depression, and even considering suicide.

Janet Frame

(August 28th 1924 – January 29th 2004)

Novelist, poet, short story writer and essayist Janet Frame is widely considered to be one of New Zealand’s best ever authors. Frame’s traumatic childhood saw 2 of her sisters drowned. In 1945 she was diagnosed with schizophrenia and institutionalised. The author was saved from a lobotomy, when days prior to the procedure, she unexpectedly won a national literary contest. In 1961 her novel Faces in the Water was published. It went on to become a best seller in her native country.

Elizabeth Barrett Browning

(March 6th 1806 – June 29th 1861)

Elizabeth Barrett Browning was one of England’s most famous poets during the Victorian era. In addition to producing poetry at a prolific rate, she campaigned for the abolition of slavery and child labour reform. Browning suffered from extremely poor health from an early age. After suffering spinal and head pain aged 15 she was prescribed laudanum (tincture of opium). Browning became a lifelong opium addict, which no doubt contributed to her ongoing health problems.

Jean-Dominique Bauby

(April 23rd 1952 –March 9th 1997)

Jean-Dominique Bauby was a well-known French journalist and editor of the French fashion magazine Elle, who suffered a massive stroke at the age of 43, which left him speechless and paralysed. Bauby went on to write his memoir The Diving Bell and the Butterfly by blinking every time a person reciting the alphabet reached the required letter. Through this painstaking method Bauby successfully created and edited his book one letter at a time.