Writers

104 people, in date order

• Enheduanna c. 2285–c. 2250 BCE, poet
• Hesiod c. 750–c. 650 BCE, poet
• Homer c. 750–c. 700 BCE, poet
• Sappho c. 630–c. 570 BCE, poet
• Aesop c. 620–c. 564 BCE, fabulist
• Aeschylus c. 525–c. 456 BCE, playwright
• Sophocles c. 497–c. 406 BCE, playwright
• Herodotus c. 484–c. 425 BCE, historian
• Euripides c. 480–c. 406 BCE, playwright
• Thucydides c. 460–c. 400 BCE, historian
• Aristophanes c. 446–c. 386 BCE, playwright
• Virgil 70–19 BCE, poet
• Horace 65–8 BCE, poet
• Ovid 43 BCE–17 CE, poet
• Plutarch c. 46–c. 120, biographer
• Li Bai 701–762, poet
• Du Fu 712–770, poet
• Ferdowsi 940–c. 1020, poet
• Murasaki Shikibu c. 973–c. 1014, novelist
• Omar Khayyam 1048–1131, poet
• Rumi 1207–1273, poet
• Saadi Shirazi c. 1210–1291, poet
• Yunus Emre c. 1238–c. 1320, poet
• Dante Alighieri c. 1265–1321, poet
• Petrarch 1304–1374, poet
• Giovanni Boccaccio 1313–1375, writer
• Hafez c. 1315–c. 1390, poet
• Geoffrey Chaucer c. 1343–1400, writer
• Christine de Pizan 1364–c. 1430, writer
• François Rabelais c. 1494–1553, writer
• Miguel de Cervantes 1547–1616, writer
• Christopher Marlowe 1564–1593, playwright
• William Shakespeare 1564–1616, playwright
• John Milton 1608–1674, poet
• Molière 1622–1673, playwright
• Matsuo Bashō 1644–1694, poet
• Daniel Defoe c. 1660–1731, writer
• Jonathan Swift 1667–1745, satirist
• Samuel Johnson 1709–1784, writer
• Johann Wolfgang von Goethe 1749–1832, writer
• William Wordsworth 1770–1850, poet
• Samuel Taylor Coleridge 1772–1834, poet
• Jane Austen 1775–1817, writer
• Lord Byron 1788–1824, poet
• Mary Shelley 1797–1851, writer
• Honoré de Balzac 1799–1850, writer
• Alexandre Dumas 1802–1870, writer
• Victor Hugo 1802–1885, writer
• Hans Christian Andersen 1805–1875, writer
• Edgar Allan Poe 1809–1849, writer
• Charles Dickens 1812–1870, writer
• Charlotte Brontë 1816–1855, writer
• Emily Brontë 1818–1848, writer
• Herman Melville 1819–1891, writer
• Walt Whitman 1819–1892, poet
• Fyodor Dostoevsky 1821–1881, writer
• Gustave Flaubert 1821–1880, writer
• Jules Verne 1828–1905, writer
• Leo Tolstoy 1828–1910, writer
• Emily Dickinson 1830–1886, poet
• Mark Twain 1835–1910, writer
• Oscar Wilde 1854–1900, writer
• George Bernard Shaw 1856–1950, playwright
• Arthur Conan Doyle 1859–1930, writer
• Anton Chekhov 1860–1904, playwright
• Rabindranath Tagore 1861–1941, poet
• H. G. Wells 1866–1946, writer
• Marcel Proust 1871–1922, writer
• Gertrude Stein 1874–1946, writer
• James Joyce 1882–1941, writer
• Virginia Woolf 1882–1941, writer
• Franz Kafka 1883–1924, writer
• Ezra Pound 1885–1972, poet
• T. S. Eliot 1888–1965, poet
• Agatha Christie 1890–1976, writer
• H. P. Lovecraft 1890–1937, writer
• J. R. R. Tolkien 1892–1973, writer
• F. Scott Fitzgerald 1896–1940, writer
• William Faulkner 1897–1962, writer
• Ernest Hemingway 1899–1961, writer
• Jorge Luis Borges 1899–1986, writer
• John Steinbeck 1902–1968, writer
• Nazım Hikmet 1902–1963, poet
• George Orwell 1903–1950, writer
• Dr. Seuss 1904–1991, writer
• Pablo Neruda 1904–1973, poet
• Samuel Beckett 1906–1989, playwright
• Albert Camus 1913–1960, writer
• Arthur Miller 1915–2005, playwright
• Isaac Asimov 1920–1992, writer
• Jack Kerouac 1922–1969, writer
• Yaşar Kemal 1923–2015, writer
• Harper Lee 1926–2016, writer
• Gabriel García Márquez 1927–2014, writer
• Maya Angelou 1928–2014, poet
• Anne Frank 1929–1945, diarist
• Chinua Achebe 1930–2013, writer
• Toni Morrison 1931–2019, writer
• Umberto Eco 1932–2016, writer
• Margaret Atwood 1939–, writer
• Stephen King 1947–, writer
• Haruki Murakami 1949–, writer
• Orhan Pamuk 1952–, writer
• J. K. Rowling 1965–, writer