Isaac Newton, the English genius, made his greatest contributions to original thought before the age of twenty-five, while at home in Lincolnshire escaping the great plague of 1665, a period of which he wrote: \"I was in the prime of age for invention....

Alexander Pushkin is considered by many to be Russia’s greatest poet, and through his poems as well as his experimentation with other genres—dramas, short stories, prose novels—he influenced generations of Russian and international writers....

Born to Jewish parents in mid-19th-century Austria, Sigmund Freud is a controversial figure needing no introduction, yet his reputation owes as much to myth as to the facts of his life and his work....

Born in central Russia in 1828, Tolstoy saw action as a soldier before becoming a writer. His two novels, War and Peace and Anna Karenina, are among the best loved in world literature. Anthony Briggs compares these works and describes many others....

Born in Hampshire in 1775, Jane Austen was one of seven children and began writing at an early age. In this new biography, leading Austen scholar Fiona Stafford offers a fresh perspective on the life and times of one of England’s most beloved authors.......