Photo: Ola Erikson / Forflex
Sample of authors
Eco, Umberto
Umberto Eco was an Italian author, literary scholar, historian and philosopher born in Alessandria in Piedmont. His surname may refer to the fact that his grandfather was a foundling at a time when children were sometimes registered in church records as "Ex Caelis Oblatus", which can be translated as "offered by the heavens".
His father was a clerk and his mother’s maiden name was Giovanna B...
Photo: Ulf Andersen / Hulton Archive via Getty Images (1987)
Sample of authors
Fowles, John
John Robert Fowles was born in a middle-class family in the Essex town of Leigh-on-Sea. His father, Robert Fowles, dreamt of a career in the legal profession, but when the First World War broke out he was instead forced to take over the family's tobacco business. His mother, Gladys May, was a housewife. Fowles grew up in the security of a terraced housing estate, but later in life he confessed...
