Authors, Poets & Novelists Posters & Prints, “Ol...-Ow...-”
for literature, language arts and social studies classrooms and home schoolers.

Margaret Oliphant
b. 4-4-1828; Wallyford, Scotland
d. 6-25-1897; Wimbledon, London

Mrs. Oliphant, widowed with three children supported her family with novels, books of travel and description, histories and volumes of literary criticism.

Margaret Oliphant quotes ~
• “Oh, never mind the fashion. When one has a style of one's own, it is always twenty times better.”
• “For everybody knows that it requires very little to satisfy the gentlemen, if a woman will only give her mind to it.”
• “Temptations come, as a general rule, when they are sought.”

Eugene O'Neill
b. 10-16-1888; NYC
d. 11-27-1953; Boston

Playwright Eugene O'Neill, the son of actors, was awarded the 1936 Nobel Prize for Literature “for the power, honesty and deep-felt emotions of his dramatic works, which embody an original concept of tragedy”.

O'Neill disowned his eighteen year old daughter Oona when she married Charlie Chaplin, age 54, in 1943.

Eugene O'Neill quotes ~
• “Curiosity killed the cat, but satisfaction brought it back.”
• “There is no present or future, only the past, happening over and over again, now.”
• “I knew it. I knew it. Born in a hotel room, and God damn it, died in a hotel room.”

• Eugene O'Neill: Complete Plays 1932-43

Amelia Opie
née Alderson
b. 11-12-1769; Norwich
d. 12-1-1852; Norwich

Writer Amelia Opie is noted for her radical principles. She was friends with Mary Wollstoncraft, Sarah Siddons and Madame de Stael, and joined the Society of Friends (Quakers) who are known for their social activism. She was married to the painter John Opie who encouraged her literary pursuits.

• Memorials of the life of Amelia Opie, selected and arranged from her letters, diaries, and other manuscripts

George Orwell
b. 6-25-1903; British India
d. 1-21-1950; London

George Orwell, the pen name for Eric Arthur Blair, was an author and journalist noted for his “awareness of social injustice, intense opposition to totalitarianism, ... and a belief in democratic socialism”.

“Man is the only creature that consumes without producing. He does not give milk, he does not lay eggs, he is too weak to pull the plough, he cannot run fast enough to catch rabbits. Yet he is lord of all the animals. He sets them to work, he gives back to them the bare minimum that will prevent them from starving, and the rest he keeps for himself. Our labour tills the soil, our dung fertilises it, and yet there is not one of us that owns more than his bare skin.” — Animal Farm

• "In the long run, a hierarchical society was only possible on a basis of poverty and ignorance." Nineteen Eight-Four

• George Orwell at Amazon.com
• more British Authors posters

Ovid
b. 43 BC, Sulmona, Italy
d. 17 AD

Publius Ovidius Naso, a Roman poet better known as Ovid in the English speaking world, was the medieval magister amoris, “master of love”. His most famous work was Metamorphoses, an epic poem drawing on Greek mythology, such as the story of crocus.

Ovid quotes ~
• “The sharp thorn often produces delicate roses.”
• “Nothing in the entire universe ever perishes, believe me, but things vary,
and adopt a new form. The phrase being born is used for beginning to be
something different from what one was before, while dying means ceasing to
be the same. Though this thing may pass into that, and that into this, yet
the sums of things remains unchanged.”

Wilfred Owen
b. 3-18-1893; Oswestry, Shropshire, England
d. 11-4-1918; Battle of the Sambre, France

Poet Wilfred Owen is regarded as one of the leading poets of the First World War. His poetry shocked readers with the realistic horrors of gas and trench warfare, in stark contrast to the patriotic verses of his contemporary Rupert Brooke. He died in battle one week before the Armistice.

Anthem For Doomed Youth

What passing-bells for these who die as cattle?
Only the monstrous anger of the guns.
Only the stuttering rifles' rapid rattle
Can patter out their hasty orisons.
No mockeries now for them; no prayers nor bells,
Nor any voice of mourning save the choirs, -
The shrill, demented choirs of wailing shells;
And bugles calling for them from sad shires.

What candles may be held to speed them all?
Not in the hands of boys, but in their eyes
Shall shine the holy glimmers of goodbyes.
The pallor of girls' brows shall be their pall;
Their flowers the tenderness of patient minds,
And each slow dusk a drawing down of blinds.