Lives of famous writers

StumbleUpon has an article about crazy writers:

1. Virginia WoolfNotable works: To the Lighthouse, Mrs. Dalloway
Woolf was a famous writer known for her “stream of consciousness” style of writing— basically an unorganized ramble of thoughts, unintelligible to most. Her life story is also a famous one. She went insane, and would talk for days on end without stopping, as if voicing her inner stream of consciousness. She suffered from severe bipolar disorder and had a number of mental breakdowns throughout her life. At age 59, she filled her coat with stones, jumped into a river, and drowned.

2. William ShakespeareNotable works: Romeo and Juliet, Macbeth
Shakespeare is known for his plays and his legendarily romantic sonnets. You’d expect the famous writer of works so rich with passionate love to be some sort of passionate lover himself, right? Well, his love life was certainly scandalous, if not strictly loving.
Shakespeare, at the age of 18, impregnated a woman eight years his senior, Anne Hathaway, so they got married. Shortly afterwards, Shakespeare moved to London and lived without her.

3. Sylvia PlathNotable works: Ariel, The Bell Jar
Plath was a famous writer of poems, as well as a novelist. For most of her life, she suffered from depression, when, at eight years old, her father passed away. At just thirty years old, she committed suicide by putting her head in an oven.
Her troubled experiences are expressed in her semi-biographical novel, The Bell Jar. It’s a story about a beautiful young woman, bursting with potential who slowly falls to insanity. It’s shocking, gripping, and emotional — and a haunting insight to Plath's own life.

4. Ernest HemingwayNotable works: The Old Man and the Sea, The Sun Also Rises
Though his legacy in American literature is well known, few know that this famous writer had a family history of mental illness.  He became extremely paranoid and certain that the government was keeping tabs on him. He was treated with electroconvulsive therapy; basically, electric shock “treatments”. During these series of treatments, he begged his wife not to let him go back for another bout, because he’d lost so much memory after each.
Shortly afterwards, this celebrated famous writer put a shotgun to his head and pulled the trigger. And then it was revealed that the FBI really was tailing him.

5. Charles DickensNotable works: A Tale of Two Cities, Great Expectations, Oliver Twist
We know him for his provocative tales, masterly writing, and creativity — but do you really know how far his imagination stretched? This famous writer was a member of The Ghost Club. It’s a club for the investigation of paranormal activity; they talked about ghosts, looked for ghosts, performed “investigations” for ghosts. Imagine putting that on your resume. Needless to say, Dickens was quite the supernatural nerd.

Rico says he knew about Hemingway and Plath, but the others were a surprise...