Born at a time when serious poetry was produced across the Channel, Chaucer would live to put the English language on the literary map. He began with the spoken word, pioneering the use of English in the royal court in a time when French was the tongue of choice. In the transition to writing, Chaucer

Charming, Funny, Gritty, Medieval fiction, Medieval poetry, Playful, Whimsical, Witty

Dark, Gritty, Pathos, Political, Realist fiction, Sincere, Urban, Victorian

Hanif Kureishi was born in Bromley, Kent, in 1954, the son of a "Subcontinental" father (read: Pakistani) and an English mother. Growing up in the suburbs, he watched his father's obsessive efforts to write his way out of discrimination and obscurity -- efforts that went unrecognized outside the fami

Cool, Gritty, Post-colonial literature, Quirky, Urban

With titles like "Flower, Fist, and Bestial Wail," "Erections, Ejaculations, Exhibitions, and General Tales of Ordinary Madness," and "Notes of a Dirty Old Man," Charles Bukowski's work is still the stuff that teenage poet-boys read on the bus. Bukowski is a movement-less poet: not a Beat or a Confes

Beat poetry, Beats, Gritty, In-your-face, Masculine, Minimal, Smoky, Wise assy