Blixen [née Dinesen], Karen Christenze [pseud. Isak Dinesen] (1885–1962), autobiographer and short-story writer, was born on 17 April 1885 in Rungstedlund, near Copenhagen, Denmark, the second of five children of Wilhelm Adolph Dinesen (1845–1895) and his wife, Ingeborg Westenholz (1856–1940). Thomas...
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Carlyle, Alexander (1722–1805), Church of Scotland minister and memorialist, was born on 26 January 1722, the eldest child of the Revd William Carlyle (1689–1765) and Janet Robeson (1700–1779). He was descended on his father's side from a distinguished Cumberland family who had long before crossed over the Scottish border and established themselves in ...
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John Ure
Fermor, Sir Patrick Michael [Paddy] Leigh (1915–2011), special operations officer and author, was born on 11 February 1915 at 20 Endsleigh Gardens, Bloomsbury, London, the younger child and only son of Sir Lewis Leigh Fermor (1880–1954), geologist, and his first wife, Muriel Aileen (otherwise Eileen or Æileen), ...
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L. C. Sanders
revised by H. C. G. Matthew
Gower, (Edward) Frederick Leveson- (1819–1907), politician and autobiographer, the third son of Granville Leveson-Gower, first Earl Granville (1773–1846), diplomat, and his wife, Lady Henrietta, or Harriet, Cavendish (1785–1862) [see Gower, Henrietta Elizabeth Leveson-], daughter of the fifth duke of Devonshire, was born on 3 May 1819. He was always called by his second forename and usually ...
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Jenkins, Roy Harris, Baron Jenkins of Hillhead (1920–2003), politician and author, was born at Greenlands, Snatchwood Road, Abersychan, Monmouthshire, on 11 November 1920, the only child of Arthur Jenkins (1882–1946), assistant miners' agent, and his wife, Harriet (Hattie), née Harris (1886–1953), music shop assistant and subsequently magistrate and county councillor....
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Lockhart, George, of Carnwath (1681
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Roger T. Stearn
Lomax, Eric Sutherland (1919–2012), prisoner of war and author, was born on 30 May 1919 at 11 Bedford Terrace, Portobello, Edinburgh, the only child of John Lomax (1878–1950), post office clerk, later post office manager, formerly a Stockport pawnbroker's assistant, and his wife, ...
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Vincent Carretta
Marrant, John (1755–1791), missionary and autobiographer, was born in New York on 15 June 1755. When he was four he moved with his mother to Florida after his father's death. There he learned to read, continuing his education in Georgia until the age of eleven, when they moved to ...
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Linda A. Pollock
Mildmay [née Sharington], Grace, Lady Mildmay (c. 1552–1620), memoirist and medical practitioner, was the second daughter of Sir Henry Sharington (d. 1581), of Lacock Abbey, Chippenham, Wiltshire, and his wife, Anne (d. 1607), daughter of Robert Paget, alderman of London...
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Michael Ratcliffe
Osborne, John James (1929–1994), playwright and autobiographer, was born on 12 December 1929 at 2 Crookham Road, Fulham, west London, the only son of Thomas Godfrey Osborne (d. 1942), a commercial artist and advertising copywriter, and Nellie Beatrice Grove.
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Emma Plaskitt
Phillips [married name Muilman], Teresia Constantia (1709–1765), courtesan and memoirist, was born on 2 January 1709 at 'West-Chester' (Phillips, Apology, 1.20), part of Chester in Cheshire, the daughter of Thomas Phillips, a captain in the Grenadier Guards. According to her ...
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Robert DeMaria, jun.
Psalmanazar, George (1679–1763), impostor and author, was born in southern France under a name that is now unknown and to parents whose names, like that of his place of birth, he does not mention in his Memoirs (published posthumously in 1764), the only source of information about his early life. For an important and lengthy period of his life he claimed to be a native of ...
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Sage [née Stockton], Lorna (1943–2001), literary critic and author, was born on 13 January 1943 at Clifton Nursing Home, Dodington, Whitchurch, Shropshire, the eldest child of Eric Price Stockton, a haulage contractor, then serving as a second lieutenant in the Royal Welch Fusiliers...
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Emma Plaskitt
Vane [née Hawes; other married name Hamilton], Frances Anne, Viscountess Vane (bap. 1715, d. 1788), memoirist, was probably born at her father's house in Winchester Street, London, and was baptized on 14 January 1715 at St Peter-le-Poer, Old Broad Street, London, the daughter of ...
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Geoffrey Wheatcroft
Waugh, Auberon Alexander [Bron] (1939–2001), journalist and author, was born on 17 November 1939 at Pixton Park, Dulverton, Somerset, the country house of his mother's family, the second of six surviving children and eldest of three sons of Evelyn Arthur St John Waugh (1903–1966)...
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Whithorne, Thomas (c. 1528–1596), composer and autobiographer, was a son of John Whithorne and his wife, Joan, daughter of William Cabell, of Ilminster, Somerset. He was born in Somerset, probably in Ilminster, where the previous three generations of his family were settled; his sisters ...
