Novelist, son of a Dean of the Episcopal Church of Ireland, and grand-nephew of Richard Brinsley Sheridan, was educated at Trinity College, Dublin, and became a contributor and ultimately proprietor of the Dublin University Magazine, in which many of his novels made their first appearance. Called to the Bar in 1839, he did not practise, and was first brought into notice by two ballads, Phaudrig Croohoore and Shamus O’Brien, which had extraordinary popularity. His novels, of which he wrote 12, include The Cock and Anchor [1845], Torlough O’Brien [1847], The House by the Churchyard [1863], Uncle Silas (perhaps the most popular) [1864], The Tenants of Malory ...

One of the major German-language novelists and short story writers of the 20th century, whose unique body of writing — most of it published posthumously despite his wish that it be destroyed — has become iconic in Western literature.
He is best known for the creation of Gregor Samsa in Die Verwandlung (The Metamorphosis), published in 1915, and Joseph K. in Der Prozess (The Trial), published in 1925, which explore the idea of the individual's alienation from his surroundings, his society, and from himself. The adjective "kafkaesque" has entered the language to express the absurd, surreal, and terrifying world that Kafka's work ...