Haydn - Forgotten Books Author:James Cuthbert Hadden Haydn was of humble family, perhaps unusually so for a famous composer. His parents were working people (his mother Anna Maria was a former cook, his father Mathias a master wheelwright). They dwelt in an obscure rural village, and had no musical training. This is not to say they were unmusical, however. Mathias was evidently a folk musician; ac... more »cording to Haydn's own reminiscences in old age, his father 'played the harp without reading a note of music', having taught himself the instrument while a journeyman. According to the oldest biographies of Haydn (written with the help of interviews with the composer), the Haydn family frequently sang together as well as with their neighbors. The early Haydn biographer Georg August Griesinger, based on interviews with the composer, wrote (Quote from wikipedia.org)
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Charles John Huffam Dickens (1812 - 1870)
Charles John Huffam Dickens, (7 February 1812 - 9 June 1870), pen-name "Boz", was the foremost English novelist of the Victorian era, as well as a vigorous social campaigner. Considered one of the English language's greatest writers, he was acclaimed for his rich storytelling and memorable characters, and achieved massive worldwide popularity in his lifetime.
Later critics, beginning with George Gissing and G. K. Chesterton, championed his mastery of prose, his endless invention of memorable characters and his powerful social sensibilities, but fellow writers such as George Henry Lewes, Henry James and Virginia Woolf fault his work for sentimentality, implausible occurrence and grotesque characters.
The popularity of Dickens' novels and short stories has meant that not one has ever gone out of print. Dickens wrote serialised novels, the usual format for fiction at the time, and each new pa« less