help me chose an author

[Lassie]

hi!
I'm doing an english assignmen on 18-19th british writers and I'm supposed to choose a specific author to write an essay on. I would like to write about an author who isn't as well known as say Dickens or Wilde but still could be counted as more or less classical. any suggestions?

[mono]

Hello, Lassie, welcome to the forum. :)
You have quite a few British authors to choose from, even if you desire someone not as popular as Charles Dickens, for example. George Eliot (also known as Mary Anne Evans) had a very interesting life worth researching, and would recommend her, if you search for someone fascinating. Others worth looking into: Charles Kingsley, Anthony Trollope, or William Makepeace Thackeray.
Good luck!

[Whifflingpin]

C18th
Laurence Sterne - works include "Tristram Shandy," one of the funniest books written, as well as one of the most curiously constructed - well worth an essay.

Lady Mary Wortley Montagu - not a novelist, but certainly a writer - her collected letters are fascinating.

Toby Smollet

Henry Fielding

C19th

Sir Walter Scott - ughh - too well known, too little read.

W M Thackeray -

Anthony Hope - Apart from the well known and much filmed "Prisoner of Zenda" he wrote a number of romances (in the C19th meaning of the word) and social satires.

Mrs Craik (Dinah Mulock) - authoress of the once famed "John Halifax, Gentleman"

Charles Kingsley - Water Babies, Westward Ho!, etc

Henry Kingsley

RLS
A C-D

and so on, till "the Rudyards cease from kipling and the Haggards ride no more"

[Sabo]

Laurence Sterne is definitely worth attention. Some passages of Shandy made me lol.

Horace Walpole (1717-97), father of gothic novel, might be interesting if you want to take a less traditional classic.

[Charles Darnay]

I just started to ready The LIfe and Opinions of Tristram Shandy, Gentleman, and I agree that this would make for a most interesting essay.

If you're keen on doing someone not-so-known, you could try Ann Bronte (the forgotten sister), I've never read her work(s), are there more than one?

There is also Wilkie Collins - I think he's English

[mtpspur]

Hobby horse time---Henry Rider Haggard---do King Solomon's Mines or get gutsy and try She. Dismounting horse now.

[Daniel A. C.]

Just to add a few to the good list already mentioned:

You might take Mary Shelly (Frankenstein) or Jane Austen, perhaps if you wanted a female author.
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Mary_Shelly
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Jane_Austen

Lewis Carrol (Alice in Wonderland) or Daniel Defoe (Robinson Crusoe) might be interesting.
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Lewis_Carrol
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Daniel_Defoe