Between Frank Buck and Kingsley Amis, which novelist is considered to be the finest English comic novelist of the second half of the twentieth century?
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Kingsley Amis Sir Kingsley William Amis, CBE (16 April 1922 – 22 October 1995) was an English novelist, poet, critic, and teacher. He wrote more than 20 novels, six volumes of poetry, a memoir, various short stories, radio and television scripts, along with works of social and literary criticism. According to his biographer, Zachary Leader, Amis was "the finest English comic novelist of the second half of the twentieth century." He is the father of British novelist Martin Amis.
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Frank Buck (animal collector) Frank Howard Buck (March 17, 1884 – March 25, 1950) was an American hunter, animal collector, and author, as well as a film actor, director, and producer. Beginning in the 1910s he made many expeditions into Asia for the purpose of hunting and collecting exotic animals, bringing over 100,000 live specimens back to the United States and elsewhere for zoos and circuses and earning a reputation as an adventurer. He co-authored seven books chronicling or based on his expeditions, beginning with 1930's "Bring 'Em Back Alive" which became a bestseller. Between 1932 and 1943 he starred in seven adventure films based on his exploits, most of which featured staged "fights to the death" with various wild beasts. He was also briefly a director of the San Diego Zoo, displayed wild animals at the 1933–34 Century of Progress exhibition and 1939 New York World's Fair, toured with Ringling Bros. and Barnum & Bailey Circus, and co-authored an autobiography, 1941's "All in a Lifetime". The Frank Buck Zoo in Buck's hometown of Gainesville, Texas is named after him.
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Francis Edward Smedley Francis Edward Smedley, (4 October 1818 – 1 May 1864) was an English novelist. His name appears in print usually as Frank E. Smedley.
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Evelyn Waugh Arthur Evelyn St. John Waugh ( ; 28 October 1903 – 10 April 1966) was an English writer of novels, biographies and travel books. He was also a prolific journalist and reviewer of books. His most famous works include the early satires "Decline and Fall" (1928) and "A Handful of Dust" (1934), the novel "Brideshead Revisited" (1945) and the Second World War trilogy "Sword of Honour" (1952–61). Waugh is recognised as one of the great prose stylists of the English language in the 20th century.
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Bernard Hollowood Albert Bernard Hollowood (3 June 1910 – 28 March 1981) was an English writer, cartoonist and economist. He was editor of the humorous weekly magazine "Punch" from 1957 to 1968.
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Max Beerbohm Sir Henry Maximilian "Max" Beerbohm (24 August 1872 – 20 May 1956) was an English essayist, parodist, and caricaturist under the signature Max. He first became known in the 1890s as a dandy and a humorist. He was the drama critic for the "Saturday Review" from 1898 until 1910, when he relocated to Rapallo, Italy. In his later years he was popular for his occasional radio broadcasts. Among his best-known works is his only novel, "Zuleika Dobson", published in 1911. His caricatures, drawn usually in pen or pencil with muted watercolour tinting, are in many public collections.
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Basil Boothroyd John Basil Boothroyd (4 March 1910 – 27 February 1988) was an English humorous writer, best known for his long association with "Punch". As a young man he worked for a bank, but began contributing articles to "Punch", and became its assistant editor, a post in which he served for eighteen years. His career as a writer for "Punch" spanned the editorships of E. V. Knox to Alan Coren. Boothroyd’s chief literary work outside the comic essay was an official biography of Prince Philip undertaken at the request of its subject. Boothroyd also wrote for television and radio, and was a frequent broadcaster.
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The Poets' Corner The Poets' Corner is a book of twenty caricatures by English caricaturist, essayist and parodist Max Beerbohm. It was published in 1904 by William Heinemann, and was Beerbohm's second book of caricatures, the first being "Caricatures of Twenty-five Gentlemen" (1896).
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Morecambe and Wise Eric Morecambe (John Eric Bartholomew, 14 May 1926 – 28 May 1984) and Ernie Wise (Ernest Wiseman, 27 November 1925 – 21 March 1999), known as Morecambe and Wise (also Eric and Ernie), were an iconic British comic double act, working in variety, radio, film and most successfully in television. Their partnership lasted from 1941 until Morecambe's death in 1984. The show was a significant part of British popular culture, and they have been described as "the most illustrious, and the best-loved, double-act that Britain has ever produced".
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Perfect English Perfect English is the second blackly comic novel by British writer Paul Pickering. It is based on his own experience as an "Internationalista" in the war in Nicaragua against the Contras. The novel was long-listed for the Booker Prize and received very favourable reviews.
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Hugh Walpole bibliography Sir Hugh Seymour Walpole, a 20th-century English novelist, had a large and varied output. Between 1909 and 1941 he wrote thirty-six novels, five volumes of short stories, two original plays and three volumes of memoirs. His range included disturbing studies of the macabre, children's stories and historical fiction, most notably his "Herries" series, set in the Lake District.
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Watts Phillips Watts Phillips (16 November 1825 – 2 December 1874) was an English illustrator, novelist and playwright best known for his play "The Dead Heart" which served as a model for Charles Dickens' "A Tale of Two Cities".
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Harry Hargreaves (cartoonist) Harry Hargreaves (9 February 1922 Manchester - 12 November 2004 Yeovil, Somerset) was an English cartoonist, best remembered for "The Bird" which he produced for Punch and for "Hayseeds" in the London Evening News.
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Angus Wilson Sir Angus Frank Johnstone-Wilson, CBE (11 August 191331 May 1991) was an English novelist and short story writer. He was awarded the 1958 James Tait Black Memorial Prize for "The Middle Age of Mrs Eliot" and later received a knighthood for his services to literature.
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Bertie Wooster Bertram Wilberforce "Bertie" Wooster is a recurring fictional character in the "Jeeves" novels of British author P. G. Wodehouse. An English gentleman, one of the "idle rich", he appears alongside his valet, Jeeves, whose intelligence manages to save Wooster or one of his friends from numerous awkward situations. As the first-person narrator of ten novels and over 30 short stories, Wooster ranks as one of the most vivid comic creations in popular literature.
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Christopher Fry Christopher Fry (18 December 1907 – 30 June 2005) was an English poet and playwright. He is best known for his verse dramas, notably "The Lady's Not for Burning", which made him a major force in theatre in the 1940s and 1950s.
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William Buck (translator) William Benson Buck (April 20, 1934 – August 26, 1970) was an American writer who produced novelized translations into English of the Sanskrit epic poems "Mahabharata" and "Ramayana". A translation of "Harivamsa" was unfinished at his death.
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Comedy of humours The comedy of humours is a genre of dramatic comedy that focuses on a character or range of characters, each of whom exhibits two or more overriding traits or 'humours' that dominates their personality, desires and conduct. This comic technique may be found in Aristophanes, but the English playwrights Ben Jonson and George Chapman popularized the genre in the closing years of the sixteenth century. In the later half of the seventeenth century, it was combined with the comedy of manners in Restoration comedy.
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Gilbert Cannan Gilbert Cannan (25 June 1884 – 30 June 1955) was a British novelist and dramatist.
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George Smiley George Smiley OBE is a fictional character created by John le Carré. Smiley is a career intelligence officer with "The Circus", the British overseas intelligence agency. He is a central character in the novels "Call for the Dead", "A Murder of Quality", "Tinker Tailor Soldier Spy", "The Honourable Schoolboy", and "Smiley's People", and a supporting character in "The Spy Who Came in from the Cold", "The Looking Glass War", "The Secret Pilgrim" and "A Legacy of Spies".
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Thomas Hood Thomas Hood (23 May 1799 – 3 May 1845) was an English poet, author and humorist, best known for poems such as "The Bridge of Sighs" and "The Song of the Shirt". Hood wrote regularly for "The London Magazine", the "Athenaeum", and "Punch". He later published a magazine largely consisting of his own works. Hood, never robust, lapsed into invalidism by the age of 41 and died at the age of 45. William Michael Rossetti in 1903 called him "the finest English poet" between the generations of Shelley and Tennyson. Hood was the father of playwright and humourist Tom Hood (1835–1874).
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Agatha Christie bibliography Agatha Christie (1890–1976) was an English crime novelist, short story writer and playwright. Although she wrote six romance novels under the pseudonym Mary Westmacott, her reputation rests on the 66 detective novels and 14 short story collections that she wrote under her own name, which have sold over two billion copies—an amount only surpassed by the Bible and the works of William Shakespeare. Her works contain several regular characters with whom the public became familiar, including Hercule Poirot, Miss Marple, Tommy and Tuppence Beresford, Parker Pyne and Harley Quin. Christie wrote more Poirot stories than any of the others, even though she thought the character to be "rather insufferable". Following the publication of the 1975 novel "Curtain", Poirot's obituary appeared on the front page of "The New York Times". The literary historian Howard Haycraft considered that "few fictional sleuths can surpass the amazing little Belgian—with his waxed moustache and egg-shaped head, his inflated confidence in the infallibility of his 'little grey cells', his murderous attacks on the English language—either for individuality or ingenuity."