Elizabeth Cleghorn Gaskell was an English novelist and short story writer during the Victorian era. For a long time she was remembered mainly for her biography of Charlotte Brontë, but her novels, now revalued, offer an excellent portrait of the lives of many social sectors (often including the poorest), with such a sharpness that it attracts so much interest. of social historians and lovers of literature. Edgar Allan Poe was an American writer, poet, critic, and journalist. He renewed the Gothic novel and is especially remembered for his horror stories. He has been considered the inventor of the detective story, and contributed several works to the emerging genre of science fiction. Washington Irving was a writer, an essayist, a biographer, and a historian. He is best known for his short stories "The Legend of Sleepy Hollow" and "Rip Van Winkle" and also served as the U.S. minister to Spain from 1842 to 1846.