Outstanding people of Great Britain

Outstanding people

of Great Britain

Great Britain is known by the outstanding people. To them concern William Shakespeare, Charles Dickens, William Makepeace Thackeray, Charlotte Bronte etc.

William Shakespeare

William Shakespeare was one of the greatest and famous writers. He was born in 1564 in Stratford-on-Avon. It was a small English town. His father wanted his son to be an educated person and William was sent to the local grammar school. When the boy studied at school, he had no free time. When he had a rest, William liked to go to the forest and to river Avon.

At that time actors and actresses visited Stratford-on-Avon. William liked to watch them. He was fond of their profession and he decided to become an actor.

Then he moved to London. There he became an actor. He began to write plays and play supporting roles. Shakespeare was both an actor and a playwright. In his works he described important and dramatic events of life. His plays were staged in many theatres, translated into many languages and they made Shakespeare a very popular person.

The most famous plays of the writer are "Othello", "King Lear", "Hamlet", "Romeo and Juliet". Shakespeare would be well known for his poetry alone. His sonnets, full of music and harmony, praise love, friendship and beauty. His poetry is at the summit of human achievement.

William Shakespeare died in 1616. But his plays are popular now and millions of people admire them.

Charles Dickens

One of the greatest writers of this school of novelists was Charles Dickens. He was born in 1812 in the family of a small government official in the city of Portsmouth. There Charles first went to school. Never a strong child, he could not join his friends in games or any sports. He spent most of his free time reading various books.

In 1821 the family moved to London where his father was soon ruined. His father was thrown into a debtor's prison called Marshalsea and the whole family went to live there. For many years the dark buildings of the Marshalsea prison were the family's home. Charles though only ten years of age had to leave school and begin a long and hard struggle with poverty. In order to help the family in some way he went to work at a blacking factory. He worked from early morning till late at night. He suffered there so much that years later when he was at the height of his fame he never spoke of the time spent at the factory without pain.

Many years passed before Charles returned to school. When he graduated from school he became reporter on one of London's newspapers. He did his work so well that he was considered the best parliamentary reporter in London. The work of a reporter led him to journalism, and journalism led to novel-writing. In 1836 when only twenty-four years of age, Charles Dickens wrote his first book "Sketches by Boz". This book was followed by "The Posthumous Papers of the Pickwick Club" and in two years by "Oliver Twist". These novels brought him fame both in England and in other countries. From that time on Charles Dickens devoted himself to literature. His most famous novels are "Hard Times", "David Copperfield", "Domby and Son" and others. Charles Dickens died in 1870, at the age of fifty-eight.

In his books he protested against social injustice in bourgeois society, the work-houses, the debtor's prisons and the ruthless exploitation of children. It is this exposure of social injustice in bourgeois society that makes his books so important though he did not call for active struggle against the exploiting classes.

William Makepeace Thackeray

William Makepeace Thackeray was born in Calcutta, India, as the only son of Richmond Thackeray, a Collector in the East Indian Company's service. After his father died he was sent to home to England. He was educated at Charterhouse and at Trinity College, Cambridge. Thackeray abandoned his studies without taking a degree, having lost some of his inheritance of twenty thousand pounds through gambling. In the beginning of the 1830s he visited Germany, where he met Goethe.

During 1831-33 Thackeray studied law at the Middle Temple, London, but had little enthusiasm to continued his studies. In 1833 he brought with a large heritage the National Standard, but lost his fortune a year later in the Indian bank failures and other bad investments.

"Suppose in a game of life - and it is but a twopenny game after all - you are equally eager of winning. Shall you be ashamed of your ambition, or glory in it?" (from 'Autour de mon Chapeau', 1863)

After art studies in Paris, Thackeray returned in 1837 to London and started his career as a hard working journalist. Often he used absurd pen names such as George Savage Fitz-Boodle, Michael Angelo Titmarsh, Théophile Wagstaff, and C.J. Yellowplush, Esq. In 1836 he married a poor Irish girl, Isabella Shawe; they had three daughters. Their first child, Anne Thackeray Ritchie (1837-1919), became a writer - her impressionistic texts impressed Virginia Woolf, who drew a portrait of her in Night and Day as 'Mrs Hilbery'.

Thackeray began to contribute regularly to Fraser's Magazine, Morning Chronicle, New Monthly Magazine and The Times. His writings attracted first attention in Punch, where he satirized English snobbery. These sketches reappeared in 1848 as THE BOOK OF SNOBS, stating in it that "he who meanly admires mean things is a Snob." In 1840 Isabella Thackeray suffered a mental breakdown, from which she never recovered, through she survived Thackeray by thirty years. The author was forced to send his children to France to his mother. The children returned to England in 1846 to live with him.

In the 1840s Thackeray started to gain name as a writer. In Vanity Fair he gave a panoramic picture of high life in England, and created one of the most fascinating immoral female characters, Becky Sharp. "I think I could be a good woman if I had five thousand a year." (from Vanity Fair) The book brought him prosperity and made him established writer and popular lecturer in Europe and in the United States. His increasing love for Jane Brookfield, the wife of an old Cambridge friend, led to a rupture in their friendship. THE HISTORY OF HENRY ESMOND appeared in three volumes in 1852, and reflected the melancholic period in the life of the author. "'Tis strange what a man may do, and a woman yet think him an angel." By the end of his career, Thackeray's disillusionment with contemporary culture seems to have deepened. In THE ADVENTURES OF PHILIP (1862) the protagonist, Philip, is out of place in a world that does not accommodate his vision of masculinity.

Thackeray said that he couldn't start a novel until he knew every aspect of his characters. He called Victorian times "if not the most moral, certainly the most squeamish." Once, as an editor, he rejected an Elizabeth Barrett Browning poem because it employed the word harlot. Thackeray became in 1860 the first editor of the Cornhill Magazine, for which he wrote his raundabout papers, love the widower, the adventures of philip and the unfinished DENIS DUVAL. Less successful Thackeray was with his attempt to stand for Parliament. His contacts with friendly rival Charles Dickens ended in a quarrel. Thackeray died suddenly on Christams Eve 1863. He was buried in Westminster Abbey. Thackeray's bust was made by the Italian sculptor Marachetti. The poet's daughter was not satisfied with the work and let another sculptor to modify her father's stone sideburns until they were the right length.

Charlotte Bronte

Charlotte Bronte (1816-1855), English writer noted for her novel Jane Eyre (1847), sister of Anne Bronte and Emily Bronte. The three sisters are almost as famous for their short, tragic lives as for their novels. In the past 40 years Charlotte Brontл's reputation has risen rapidly, and feminist criticism has done much to show that she was speaking up for oppressed women of every age.