Free for All Friday: Name the Author!

Welcome, and Happy Friday! We've made it through another week. Now for a moment of fun (and perhaps inspiration for a weekend of reading).

Each of the following 5 books is a lesser-known work by a famous author. See if you can guess the author for each book. Answers follow.

1. The Beautiful and Damned
2.  Hard Times
3. Personal Recollections of Joan of Arc
4. Shirley
5. The Pastures of Heaven
   

1. A masterful character study, The Beautiful and Damned by F. Scott Fitzgerald first saw publication in 1922. It tells the story of Anthony Patch, the heir to a fortune, and explores the degeneration of the American upper class, a theme common to Fitzgerald's work.
   Learn more.
2. Charles Dickens wrote Hard Times (1854) as an allegorical indictment of the effects of industrialization on society. A brother and sister, Tom and Louisa Gradgrind, raised by a cold, pragmatic father, lead unimaginative, self-focused and cultureless lives. The message found in Hard Times remains relevant today.
   Learn more.
3. Mark Twain refused to attach his name to Personal Recollections of Joan of Arc, which ran in installments in Harper's Magazine (April 1895 - April 1896). Twain felt his novel would not be taken seriously if published under his name. He considered it his greatest work.
   Learn more.
4. Charlotte Bronte, author of Jane Eyre,  fulfilled her vow to write "something real and unromantic as Monday morning" by penning Shirley (1849). Against the background of the industrialization of Britain (1811-12), Bronte unfolds the story of two women, one single and trapped in a narrowed life, one so wealthy she can defy convention.
   Learn more.
   
5. A Spanish Corporal comes upon a beautiful valley in California while chasing Indians in John Steinbeck's The Pastures of Heaven (1932), which tells the story of those who settle this valley.
   Learn more.