10 Writers from the East Midlands

Top Ten Tuesday is currently hosted by artsyreadergirl and has weekly topics for bloggers to respond to and share. Click the link for more info and to read more submitted posts!

This prompt was for writers from your “State/Country.” I’m from England in the United Kingdom, so we don’t have states, and as a country, we originated literature in the English language (the only one I can read), so we have thousands of years’ worth of famous writers! A list of 10 of those would be too easy, but I didn’t want to totally give away my location by getting County specific, so I’ve gone for my Region!

The East Midlands is, well, the eastern half of the middle of the country! It comprises Derbyshire, Leicestershire, Nottinghamshire, and most but not all of Lincolnshire (confusingly), Rutland, and Northamptonshire. I’ve lived in the East Midlands all my life.

It was interesting looking these up, though a few of the Biggies I knew off the top of my head!

1. Lord Byron is one of England’s most celebrated poets (and had an impressively scandalous life). His ancestral home, Newstead Abbey, is in Nottinghamshire and is currently owned by the City Council. It is an absolutely lovely day out. I highly recommend a walk around the gardens. His beloved dog, Boatswain, has a memorial there too.
2. D.H. Lawrence was born in Eastwood in Nottinghamshire. He is best known for Sons and Lovers, Women in Love and Lady Chatterley’s Lover. I’ve never read any Lawrence, which feels shameful, having and English Lit. Degree. I should do something about that.
3. Alan Sillitoe‘s most famous work, Saturday Night and Sunday Morning, is a portrait of working-class life in 1950s Nottingham, based on many elements of his own life as a Nottingham lad, including working at the old Raleigh bike factory.
4. Alan Moore, legendary comic book writer (Watchmen, V for Vendetta, From Hell etc) is from Northampton and lived there most of his life. This one I didn’t know!
5. C. J. Tudor is an author I’d come across, but she writes horror which isn’t a genre I visit often. She grew up in Nottinghamshire.
6. Sue Townsend was a beloved author from Leicester! I treasure her Adrian Mole books, and I do get a kick out of recognising the places he mentions. I never thought I’d see Ashby-de-la-Zouch in a fiction book!
7. Anne Fine is a very prolific children’s author who has written so many beloved and well-known stories that I forgot how many of them are hers! Madame Doubtfire, anyone?! She was also born in Leicester.
8. Bali Rai is another fantastic children’s author from Leicester. He’s written some wonderful books, I read a few during my time as a School Librarian.
9. Adrian Tchaikovsky, author of Children of Time and many other sci-fi books, was born in Lincolnshire.
10. Hilary Mantel, author of Wolf Hall (a book I could never get into) and other historical fiction, was born and grew up in Derbyshire.
11. Bonus! J. M. Barrie is best known for writing Peter Pan! He was, of course, Scottish, but he did live and work in Nottingham for eighteen months when his first paid writing job was for The Nottingham Journal! He lived in the Arboretum area and would have walked through the park on his way to work in the city centre. Some claim that this could have served as some inspiration for Neverland.

It is surprising that I didn’t find many well-known authors from Derbyshire, when the beauty of the Peak District has inspired so many authors over the centuries!

This is an interesting prompt, I’m looking forward to seeing what everyone comes up with for this one!