Gustave Flaubert was a French novelist. His most famous work is the novel Madame Bovary (1857), which describes discontented life of a provincial wife. Flaubert influenced many other writers, including Joseph Conrad and the Italian novelist Giovanni Verga. Flaubert developed a new school of writing known as realism. The author portrays real-life scenarios and does not judge the character, but leaves the reader to do so.
Gustave Flaubert was born on December 12, 1821, in Rouen into the family of doctors. His father was a successful surgeon. At the age of 15, Flaubert fell platonically in love with an older married woman, Elisa Schlesinger, and remembered her ever after as a pure and unsullied love.
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Heinrich Mann was a German novelist, essayist, and social critic. He achieved his greatest success with his critiques of German society. He was Thomas Mann’s elder brother.
Heinrich Mann was born on March 27, 1871 in northern Germany into a patriarchal merchant family. His father, Thomas Johann Heinrich Mann, became the owner of the trading firm Firma Joh. Siegm. Mann, Commissions- und Speditionsgeschäfte in 1882, after the death of his grandfather. His mother, Julia Mann, nee Silva-Bruns, came from a family with Brazilian roots. Heinrich had two brothers and two sisters: a brother, famous writer Thomas Mann (1875-1955), a younger brother Victor (1890-1949) and two sisters – Julia (1877-1927, suicide) and Karla (1881-1910, suicide).
After school Mann went to Dresden and a year later began working for a publishing house in Berlin. At first he wrote impressions, sketches, novelettes, and some poetry.
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Alphonse Daudet was the French novelist, dramatist, and short-story writer. He is remembered for his regionalist sketches of Provence and for his role in the evolution of 19th century theater.
Alphonse Daudet was born in 1840 in Nimes. His father was a silk manufacturer, who had to abandon business in 1849 and move the family to Lyons. In 1857 the Daudets lost everything and the family became scattered. His elder brother Ernest brought him to Paris and encouraged the boy’s literary talents. A collection of love verses, Les Amoureuses, represented debut for Alphonse.
In 1868 Daudet’s first long work, Le Petit Chose (The Little Good-for-nothing), was completed.
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Eugene Pottier was a French revolutionary, anarchist, author of the Internationale, member of the First International and member of the Paris Commune of 1871.
Eugene Edine Pottier was born on October 4, 1816 in Paris.
Eugene published his first collection of poems at the age of fourteen. The young poet responded to the events of the July Revolution of 1830. The poet took part in the June uprising of the Parisian proletariat. In the days of violent class battles, Pottier called for demolishing of the dilapidated building of the old society, declaring that the people themselves want to become the “masters of their destiny”.
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Alfred de Musset was a French poet, dramatist, and fiction writer. He was a major romantic poet. His powerful drama Lorenzaccio is perhaps the finest French play of the 19th century.
Louis Charles Alfred de Musset was born on December 11, 1810 in Paris. He was a brilliant student at the Lycee Henri IV. A clever young man was interested in Latin and history, philosophy and Roman poetry. However, Musset spent more time studying French literature. After graduating from lyceum, Alfred began to study medicine and law. There was a time when he wanted to become an artist. When the poet met Victor Hugo, there was a turning point in his creative activity. Victor Hugo introduced Musset to his friends, which was his first step on the thorny path.
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Poets call Daghestan the land of mountains. Situated in the eastern part of the Caucasus, it has 36 nationalities, some of them so tiny that they consist of the inhabitants of two or three villages. The largest of them all, the Avars (about 200,000), have produced two outstanding poets —Gamzat Tsadasa and his son, Rasul Gamzatov.
Gamzat Tsadasa was People’s poet of the Dagestan ASSR (1934), winner of the Stalin Prize of the second degree (1951).
Gamzat Tsadasa was born on August 9 (21), 1877 in the village of Tsada (now Khunzakh district of Dagestan) into the family of a poor peasant. His name Tsadas is a pseudonym and comes from the name of the village Tsada. He became an orphan very early, his father Yusupil Magoma died when he was 7 years old.
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Isaac Asimov was a scientist and science fiction writer, who made his reputation in both fields. He published over three hundred books and a lot of short stories, essays, and columns. Asimov also produced popular introductory texts and textbooks in biochemistry. Asimov is widely regarded as one of the masters of science fiction, along with Arthur C. Clarke and Robert A. Heinlein.
Isaac Asimov was born on January 2, 1920 in Petrovichi, Russia. His family moved to America when the boy was three years old. They settled in Brooklyn, New York, where they owned and operated a candy store. He studied at Boys High School of Brooklyn and then Seth Low Junior College. Later he entered Columbia University.
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