About the Book
A short biographical dictionary of English literature [1910]
The primary aim of this book is to give as much information about English authors, including under this designation American and Colonial writers, as the prescribed limits will admit of. At the same time an attempt has been made, where materials exist for it, to enhance the interest by introducing such details as tend to illustrate the characters and circumstances of the respective writers and the manner in which they passed through the world; and in the case of the more important, to give some indication of the relative place which they hold and the leading features of their work.
Including the Appendix of Living Writers, the work contains upwards of 1600 names; but large as this number is, the number of those who have contributed something of interest and value to the vast store of English Literature is larger still, and any attempt to make a book of this kind absolutely exhaustive would be futile.
About the Author
John William Cousin, 1849-1910
John William Cousin (1849–December 1910) was a British writer, editor and biographer. He was one of six children born to William and Anne Ross Cousin, his mother being a noted hymn-writer, in Scotland.[1] A fellow of the Faculty of Actuaries[2] and secretary of the Actuarial Society of Edinburgh,[3] he revised and wrote the introduction for Henry Wadsworth Longfellow's Evangeline in 1907.
However, he is best known as the editor of A Short Biographical Dictionary of English Literature, a collection of biographical entries on numerous authors and literary figures, originally published in 1910 for J.M. Dent's "Everyman Library" series.[1] The bulk of his work was later used by David Clayton Browning to compile the Everyman's Dictionary of Literary Biography which was released in 1958 and subsequently reprinted during the 1960s and 70s.
