23 lives on one axis

Son of Sir Robert Walpole, first Earl of Orford; he turned his house at Strawberry Hill, Twickenham, into a Gothic villa, set up a private press there, and published The Castle of Otranto in December 1764 under an invented translator’s name.

• The Castle of Otranto 1764, at 47

Sources: Grub Street Project (reproducing DNB 1885-1900), Project Gutenberg

Published five novels between 1789 and 1797, ending with The Italian; died at her home in Pimlico, probably of a bronchial infection; Gaston de Blondeville appeared posthumously in 1826.

• The Mysteries of Udolpho 1794, at 29 or 30

Sources: Encyclopaedia Britannica (1911), via Wikisource, University of Wolverhampton, British Travel Writing

Known as ‘Monk’ Lewis; wrote The Monk as a nineteen-year-old attache at The Hague, sat in Parliament, and died of yellow fever on the voyage home from Jamaica, buried at sea.

• The Monk 1796, at 20

Sources: Dictionary of National Biography, via Wikisource, Encyclopedia.com (Gale / Thomson Gale), Encyclopedia.com (Gale)

Dublin clergyman (curate of St Peter’s), playwright and novelist, who published his first novels as ‘Dennis Jasper Murphy’ and wrote Melmoth the Wanderer, his best-known work; Oscar Wilde was his grandnephew by marriage. Sources give his birth year as 1780 or 1782.

• Melmoth the Wanderer 1820, at 37 to 40

Sources: Encyclopedia.com (Gale), University of Toronto Libraries, The Encyclopedia of Science Fiction (SFE), Dictionary of National Biography, via Wikisource

Physician and travelling companion to Lord Byron in 1816; his tale The Vampyre appeared in 1819 under Byron’s name, and he died in London two years later at twenty-five.

• The Vampyre 1819, at 23

Sources: Dictionary of National Biography, via Wikisource, Project Gutenberg (Elkin Mathews, 1911 edition)

Daughter of William Godwin and Mary Wollstonecraft; began Frankenstein at eighteen in Switzerland in the summer of 1816, in the circle of Byron and her future husband Percy Bysshe Shelley.

• Frankenstein 1818, at 20

Portrait: Richard Rothwell (1800-1868), c.1840. Public domain, via Wikimedia Commons.

Sources: Dictionary of National Biography, via Wikisource, Project Gutenberg

American poet, critic and tale-writer; his Tales of the Grotesque and Arabesque (1840) collected ‘The Fall of the House of Usher’, and ‘The Murders in the Rue Morgue’ (Graham’s Magazine, April 1841) is often called the first modern detective story. He died in Baltimore.

• The Fall of the House of Usher 1839, at 30
• Murders in the Rue Morgue 1841, at 32

Portrait: Mathew Brady (c.1822-1896), before 1849. Public domain, via Wikimedia Commons.

Sources: Library of Congress, Edgar Allan Poe Society of Baltimore, Edgar Allan Poe Society of Baltimore

Hack writer, journalist and musician who wrote penny bloods for Edward Lloyd; long credited, now usually only as co-author or not at all, with Varney the Vampyre. His birth is given as 1809 or 1810; he died in June 1859.

• Varney the Vampire 1845, at 34 to 36 (alternative attribution)

Sources: Library of Congress, edwardlloyd.org (Jarndyce)

Born about 1814; a prolific writer of penny bloods for the publisher Edward Lloyd; the bibliographer Helen Smith concludes that he, not Thomas Peckett Prest, wrote both Varney the Vampyre and Sweeney Todd’s The String of Pearls, and records that he left over 8,000 pounds when he died in 1884.

• Varney the Vampire 1845, at about 30 or 31

Sources: Library of Congress, edwardlloyd.org (Jarndyce)

Irish novelist and ghost-story writer; his vampire novella Carmilla ran in The Dark Blue (1871-72) and was gathered in In a Glass Darkly (1872), the year before his death in Dublin.

• Carmilla 1871, at 57

Sources: Wikisource (transcription of the DNB), The Irish Times, The Victorian Web

Eldest surviving Brontë sister; published Jane Eyre in October 1847 as ‘Currer Bell’ and wrote the 1850 ‘Biographical Notice’ explaining the three sisters’ pseudonyms. She died at Haworth.

• Jane Eyre 1847, at 31

Portrait: George Richmond (1809-1896), 1850. Public domain, via Wikimedia Commons.

Sources: Wikisource (transcription of the DNB), The Victorian Web, Project Gutenberg

Published Wuthering Heights in December 1847 as ‘Ellis Bell’ and died of illness at Haworth Parsonage the following December, aged thirty.

• Wuthering Heights 1847, at 29

Sources: Poetry Foundation, Academy of American Poets (poets.org), Project Gutenberg

Novelist and staff writer on Dickens’s Household Words and All the Year Round, where The Woman in White (1859-60) and The Moonstone (1868) were serialised.

• The Woman in White 1859, at 35
• The Moonstone 1868, at 43

Sources: Wikisource (transcription of the DNB), The Wilkie Collins Society

American-born novelist who died in London; he signed his work ‘Henry James Jr.’ until 1881 and was the brother of the philosopher William James.

• The Turn of the Screw 1898, at 54

Sources: Bibliotheque nationale de France

Irish writer and, for twenty-seven years, Henry Irving’s manager at the Lyceum Theatre; he died in London.

• Dracula 1897, at 49

Portrait: W. & D. Downey, 1906. Public domain, via Wikimedia Commons.

Sources: Trinity Writers, Trinity College Dublin

Scottish essayist and novelist, born into the lighthouse-engineering Stevensons; he died of a brain haemorrhage at his home in Samoa and was called Tusitala, ‘teller of tales’, there.

• Jekyll and Hyde 1886, at 35

Sources: The Victorian Web, National Library of Scotland

Irish writer; The Picture of Dorian Gray is his only novel; he took the exile alias Sebastian Melmoth after prison and died in Paris.

• Dorian Gray 1890, at 35

Portrait: Napoleon Sarony (1821-1896), 1882. Public domain, via Wikimedia Commons.

Sources: Academy of American Poets (poets.org), The Victorian Web

Born Richard Bernard Heldmann; wrote as Richard Marsh and died at Haywards Heath, Sussex, having written 76 volumes.

• The Beetle 1897, at 39

Sources: City Research Online, City, University of London, University of Reading Special Collections

Born Korzeniowski, he became a naturalised British subject in 1886 and died at Oswalds, his home in Kent.

• Heart of Darkness 1899, at 41

Sources: Bibliotheque nationale de France, Universitat de Valencia (uv.es)

Physician and writer; created Sherlock Holmes in A Study in Scarlet (1887) and died at Windlesham Manor, Crowborough, Sussex.

• Sherlock Holmes 1887, at 28
• The Hound of the Baskervilles 1901, at 42

Portrait: Herbert Rose Barraud (1845-1896), 1890. Public domain, via Wikimedia Commons.

Sources: The Victorian Web, Arthur Conan Doyle Encyclopedia

Welsh writer born Arthur Llewellyn Jones; Machen was his mother’s surname.

• The Great God Pan 1890, at 27

Sources: National Library of Wales, The Friends of Arthur Machen, SF Encyclopedia

Born in Bromley and died in London; his scientific romances of 1895-98, from The Time Machine to The War of the Worlds, made his name.

• The Time Machine 1895, at 28
• Island of Doctor Moreau 1896, at 29 or 30
• The War of the Worlds 1897, at 30
• The Invisible Man 1897, at 30

Sources: Bibliotheque nationale de France, The Encyclopedia of Science Fiction (SFE Ltd)

Trained as a lawyer, he worked as a court reporter for L’Echo de Paris and as a reporter for Le Matin before turning to fiction; he died in Nice. Sources give his death as 15 or 16 April 1927.

• The Phantom of the Opera 1909, at 41

Sources: Bibliotheque nationale de France, EBSCO