Seven Authors We Would Invite Round For Dinner.

If you could invite any author round for dinner, who would it be and why? This is the task we set ourselves, and narrowing our list down to just seven was no mean feat. The chosen authors were selected for meeting one or all of the following:

1. They're able to offer something truly unique to the conversation, whether that be through perspective, insight, wisdom or wit.

2. They've lived an interesting life. They've overcome hardship with experiences to share and stories to tell.

3. They'd have great chemistry and engage in good chat with the other authors we've invited. 

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Jane Austen

Known For :  Pride & Prejudice, Sense & Sensibility, Emma, Northanger Abbey, Mansfield Park, Persuasion

Fun Fact : At just twenty three, she had completed the original versions of three of her books : Pride & Prejudice, Sense & Sensibility and Northanger Abbey.

Quote : “The person, be it gentleman or lady, who has not pleasure in a good novel, must be intolerably stupid."

Charles Dickens

Known For : A Christmas Carol, Great Expectations, Oliver Twist, Pickwick Papers, David Copperfield.

Fun Fact : Dickens was the creator of many words and phrases that we still use today: butter-fingers, flummox, dustbin, the creeps, and many more.

Quote : “There is wisdom of the head and there is wisdom of the heart.“

J.K Rowling

Known For : Harry Potter Series.

Fun Fact : Harry Potter as an idea was created on a delayed train journey from Manchester to London. Rowling would jot down notes on a napkin.

Quote : “It is impossible to live without failing at something, unless you live so cautiously that you might as well not have lived at all, in which case you have failed by default.”

Philip Pullman

Known For : His Dark Materials Trilogy

Fun Fact : Pullman read English at Exeter College, Oxford receiving a third class honours degree. He said “I never learned to read it very well.”

Quote : “I'm against anything, from age-ranging to pinking and blueing, whose effect is to shut the door in the face of children who might enjoy coming in. “

William Shakespeare

Known For : Hamlet, Romeo & Juliet, Othello, The Tempest, A Midsummer Night’s Dream.

Fun Fact : Shakespeare was eighteen when he married his wife Anne Hathaway. She was eight years his senior and expecting his child, it was considered quite the scandal at the time.

Quote : “To thine own self be true, and it must follow, as the night the day, thou canst not then be false to any man.“

Mary Shelley

Known For : Frankenstein

Fun Fact : Her husband drowned in a boating accident, his heart was calcified and she kept it in her desk drawer, wrapped in his poetry.

Quote : “Beware; for I am fearless, and therefore powerful."

Oscar Wilde

Known For : The Importance of Being Earnest, The Picture of Dorian Gray

Fun Fact : Always witty, articulate and clever, Wilde’s last words were reported to be my wallpaper and I are fighting a duel to the death. One or other of us has got to go

Quote : To live is the rarest thing in the world. Most people exist. That is all.”