Chronology



The following is the "master list" of pages currently intended for The Guide (though more may be added!). Listings are arranged by:

  • the birth year of the writer (where known), which may not be his or her period of productive activity (if you're born in 1790, you probably won't do much until the 1800s!);
  • approximate dates (e.g. "late 12th century") for undated writers
  • the same for publication dates of anonymous works.

The text is arbitrarily divided into nine sections for purposes of skimming:
By the way, you'll note that there are no "2000s." That's because no person born--and no work written--in this century has yet achieved "classic" status!

Notes are added at the end about how dates are written.

With hundreds of "placeholders" finished (what Wikipedia calls "stubs") I've started linking these entries to the Listings. As I begin to add full articles, I'll find a way to note them here.

--- BCE ---

"...the grandeur that was Rome."
(Painting by Giovanni Paolo Panini)

(Note: This stands for "Before the Common Era." Previously we used "BC" [= "Before Christ"] for this era, but as the term is not applicable to events in India, East Asia, Africa, the pre-Columbian Americas, and so on, the more inclusive term will be used.)


Read about the highlights of this era in my Blatherings!

  • Sayings of the Fathers (no date) Ethical teachings of rabbis across the ages, expressed in pithy verses
  • The Epic of Gilgamesh (c. 2100) Ancient Mesopotamian epic about the adventures of God-King Gilgamesh and his wild-man friend Enkidu; edited by Scribe Sin-Leqi-Unninni around 700
  • The Vedas, especially the Rig Veda (earliest 1700-1100) foundational Indian religious texts
  • Egyptian Book of the Dead (c. 1550) ancient Egyptian funerary text
  • Upanishads, especially Brhadaranyaka, Katha, Kena, Mundaka (earliest from 1st-millennium BCE) foundational texts of Indian religious philosophy
  • Homer (c. 850 CE at the earliest), purported author of two Greek epics: The Iliad, about the behavior of Achilles during the Trojan War; and The Odyssey, about the wanderings of Odysseus after the Trojan War. The Homeric Hymns, though long attributed to him, are almost certainly "Homeric" only in style, not in authorship.
  • Hesiod (between 750 and 650) Greek poet; Theogony; Works and Days
  • Sappho (630/612-c. 570) Greek poet; poems surviving only in fragments
  • Thales (c. 624-c. 546) pre-Socratic Greek philosopher; works surviving only in fragments
  • Aesop (c. 620-564) Greek fabulist; Fables
  • Pythagoras (c. 570-c. 495) pre-Socratic Greek philosopher; no surviving work, though his ideas (or those attributed to him) were, and to some degree (like the Pythagorean Theorem) are influential
  • Confucius (551-479) Chinese philosopher; credited with three of Confucianism's "Four Books" (the fourth is The Mencius, attributed to Mencius, a disciple of Confucius's grandson): Da Xue (The Great Learning); Zhong Yong (The Doctrine of the Mean); and Lun Yu (The Analects). Also attributed to Confucius (but, like the three books, probably written by his disciples) are the "Five Classics": Chunqiu (The Spring and Autumn Annals); I Ching (The Book of Changes); Liji (The Classic of Rites); Shijing (The Classic of Poetry); and Shujing, or Shangshu (The Classic of History / Books / Documents). Of all these, The Analects is probably most important.
  • Sunzi (544-496) Chinese philosopher; Sunzi Bing Fa (The Art of War)
  • Heraclitus (c. 535-c. 475) pre-Socratic Greek philosopher; On Nature (survives only in fragments)
  • Aeschylus (c. 525/524-c. 456/455) Greek tragic playwright; The Oresteia (Agamemnon, The Choephoroe, and The Eumenides)
  • Pindar (c. 522-c. 443) Greek lyric poet; Odes
  • Zengzi (505-435) Chinese philosopher; commented on Da Xue (The Great Learning) and composed or edited Xiao Jing (The Classic of Filial Piety), both attributed to Confucius
  • Laozi (6th century) Chinese philosopher; Dao De Jing
  • The Holy Bible ("Old Testament") (perhaps 8th to 2nd centuries) collection of books holy to Judaism, Christianity, and Islam
  • Sophocles (c. 497/496-406/405) Greek tragic playwright; Oedipus Rex, Oedipus at Colonus, Antigone
  • Empedocles (c. 490-c. 430) pre-Socratic Greek philosopher; Purifications; On Nature
  • Herodotus (c. 484-c. 425) Greek historian whose The Histories (about the Greco-Persian Wars) were the first use of the word in the modern sense (it had meant "inquiries").
  • Zisi (c. 481-402) Chinese philosopher and grandson of Confucius; Zhong Yong (Doctrine of the Mean) (one of Confucianism's "Four Books")
  • Euripides (c. 480-c. 406) Greek tragic playwright; Alcestis, Medea, Hippolytus, The Trojan Women, Electra, The Bacchae
  • Thucydides (c. 460-c. 400) Greek historian; The History of the Peloponnesian War
  • Hippocrates (c. 460-c. 370) Greek physician; Works; "The Oath"
  • Brahma Sutras (or Vedanta Sutras) (450 BCE to 200 CE) attributed to either Badarayana or Vyasa (c. 200)
  • Aristophanes (c. 446-c. 386) Greek comic playwright; Lysistrata, The Clouds, The Birds
  • Xenophon (c. 430-354) Greek historian and philosopher; Anabasis (An Ascent); The Constitution of the Spartans
  • Plato (428/427 or 424/423-348/347) Greek philosopher; Apology; Crito; Phaedo, approximately 30 in all
  • Diogenes the Cynic (412/404-323) Greek philosopher; one of the founders--and the prototype--of Cynic philosophy
  • The Dead Sea Scrolls (perhaps 408 BCE-318 CE) Middle Eastern; biblical and extra-biblical manuscripts in Hebrew and other languages
  • Jataka Tales (c. 4th century) Indian moral stories of the Buddha's previous lives
  • Aristotle (384-322) Greek philosopher; Ethics; Politics; Organon; Poetics
  • Mencius (372-289; or 389-303/302) Chinese philosopher; Mengzi (Mencius) (one of the "Four Books of Confucianism")
  • Menander (342/341-290) Greek comic playwright; Dyskolos; other fragments
  • Epicurus (341-270) Greek philosopher; three letters, known mainly through Diogenes Laërtius; other fragments
  • Qu Yuan (c. 339-Unknown Date; or c. 340-278) Chinese poet; Chu Ci (Songs of the South)
  • Euclid (flourished 300) Greek mathematician; Elements
  • Valmiki (from 5th to 1st centuries) Indian epic poet; Ramayana
  • The Panchatantra (probably 3rd century BCE, but estimates vary from 1200 BCE to 300 CE) attributed to Vishnu Sharma, Indian fabulist
  • Zhuangzi (c. 4th century) Chinese philosopher; wrote the Zhuangzi, a text from the Warring States period (476-221 BC) with stories depicting the carefree nature of the ideal Daoist sage
  • Archimedes (c. 287-c. 212) Greek mathematician and scientist; On Floating Bodies; The Sand Reckoner
  • Theocritus (flourished c. 270) Greek poet; Idylls
  • Apollonius of Perga (c. 262-c. 190) Greek mathematician and scientist; Conic Sections
  • Plautus (c. 254-184) Roman comic playwright; Menaechmi (The Brothers Menaechmus or The Two Menaechmuses]; Captivi (The Captives or The Prisoners)
  • Biblical Apocrypha (c. 200) so-called "intertestamental literature," books included in the Catholic Bible, but not the Protestant one
  • The Laws of Manu (Manu Smriti) (2nd century BCE to 3rd century CE) Indian creation and moral writings
  • Bhasa (2nd century BCE-2nd century CE) Indian playwright; Svapnavasavadattam (The Dream of Vasavadatta) and 12 others
  • Terence (c. 195/185-c. 159?) Roman comic playwright; Andria (The Girl from Andros)
  • Sima Qian (c. 145/135-86) Chinese historian; Shiji (Records of the Grand Historian)
  • Cicero (106-43) Roman orator, author, and letter-writer; Orations: In Verrem (Against Verres; In Catilinam (Catiline Orations) I-IV; Philippicae (Philippics); Philosophy: De Oratore (On the Orator); De Re Publica (On the Commonwealth); De Legibus (On the Laws); De Finibus (On the Ends of Good and Evil); De Natura Deorum (On the Nature of the Gods); De Officiis (On Obligations)
  • Julius Caesar (100-44) Roman emperor and author; Bellum Gallicum (The Gallic War)
  • Lucretius (c. 99-c. 55) Roman poet and philosopher; De rerum natura (On the Nature of Things)
  • Catullus (c. 84-54) Roman poet; The Carmina
  • Virgil (70-19) Roman poet; The Aeneid; The Eclogues; The Georgics
  • Horace (65-8) Roman lyric poet; Odes
  • Livy (64/59 BCE-17 CE) Roman historian; Ab Urbe Condita Libri (Books from the Foundation of the City) [a history of Rome]
  • Ovid (43 BCE-17/18 CE) Roman poet; Metamorphoses; love poetry, especially Amores (Love Affairs) and Ars Amatoria (The Art of Love)
  • Philo of Alexandria (c. 25 BCE-c. 50 CE) Hellenistic Jewish philosopher; numerous allegorical commentaries on the "Old Testament"
  • Seneca the Younger (c. 4 BCE-65 CE) Roman Stoic philosopher; Moral Essays; Epistles; Tragedies


--- 000-499 ---

Ignatius of Antioch (c. 35-c. 108),
one of the "Church Fathers"



Read about the highlights of this era in my Blatherings!

  • Petronius (c. 27-66) Roman satirist; The Satyricon
  • Pali Canon (c. 29) primary texts of Theravada Buddhism, comprised of the Vinaya Pitaka, the Sutta Pitaka, and the Abhidhamma Pitaka
  • Ignatius of Antioch (c. 35-c. 108) Greek-speaking Roman Bishop (of Antioch) and Church Father; seven Letters
  • Josephus (37-c. 100) Romano-Jewish scholar, historian; The Jewish War; Jewish Antiquities; Against Apion; Autobiography
  • Martial (38/41-102/104) Roman poet; Epigrams
  • Lucan (39-65) Roman poet; Pharsalia or De Bello Civili (On the Civil War); perhaps Laus Pisonis (Praise of Piso)
  • Plutarch (c. 46-127) Greek biographer; in the Roman era; The Lives of the Noble Grecians and Romans
  • Epictetus (c. 55-135) Greek-speaking Roman stoic philosopher; The Golden Sayings
  • Tacitus (c. 56-after 117) Roman historian; History; Annals; Germania
  • Nicomachus of Gerasa (60-120) Syrian-born Greek mathematician who wrote Introduction to Arithmetic and Manual of Harmonics, both in Greek. As a Neopythagorean, he also wrote about the mystical properties of numbers.
  • Pliny the Younger (61-c. 113) Roman author; Letters
  • Polycarp of Smyrna (69-155) Greek-speaking Roman Bishop (of Smyrna) and Church Father; Letter to the Philippians
  • Suetonius (c. 69-after 122) Roman historian; The Twelve Caesars
  • Juvenal (late 1st-early 2nd centuries) Roman satirical poet; Satires, especially the third one
  • Ashvaghosha (c. 80-c. 150) Indian philosopher and poet; Buddhacharita, an "epic" life of the Buddha
  • Gnostic Gospel of Thomas (c. 80) Middle Eastern apocryphal New Testament book made up of sayings of Jesus, some with a decidedly Gnostic flavor
  • Clement of Rome (Unknown Date-99) Roman Bishop (of Rome) and Church Father; First Letter of Clement; the Second is probably spurious.
  • (Claudius) Ptolemy (c. 100-c. 170) Greek scientist in Alexandria, Roman-era Egypt; Almagest (on astronomy); Geography of the "known world"
  • Vimalakirti Sutra (c. 100) Indian Buddhist text allegedly spoken by Vimalakirti ("undefiled fame or glory"), a patron of the Buddha; concentrates on non-dual emptiness; altruism (the "selfless hand"); advocates equal treatment for women; uses Zen-like humor
  • The Holy Bible ("New Testament") (c. 50-150) Middle Eastern collection of books; holy to Christianity and (less so) Islam
  • New Testament Apocrypha and Pseudepigrapha (c. 100-300) Middle Eastern extra-Biblical books; accounts of Jesus and the early Church not included in the Bible; some were in fact "shortlisted" when the Canon was fixed.
  • Ireneaus (early 2nd century-c. 202) Greek Bishop and Church Father in Roman Gaul; Against Heresies
  • Ilango Adigal (2nd century) Tamil poet; Silappatikaram (The Tale of an Anklet) depicts the life of Kannagi, a chaste woman--one of the three surviving "Five Great Epics of Tamil Literature"
  • Questions of King Menander (Milinda Panha) (c. 100) Indian text of Buddhist philosophy
  • Justin Martyr (100-165) Roman apologist for Christianity; a Church Father who "consummated [his] martyrdom" by being beheaded; First Apology; the Dialogue with Trypho; On The Resurrection
  • Marcus Aurelius (121-180) Roman emperor and Stoic philosopher; The Meditations
  • (Lucius) Apuleius (c. 124-c. 170) Latin-speaking Numidian writer; the Metamorphoses ("The Golden Ass"); Apologia.
  • Lucian (of Samosata) (c. 125-after 180) Assyrian-born Greek rhetorician and satirist who wrote comic dialogues, rhetorical essays and prose fiction, including A True Story
  • Galen (129-c. 200/c. 216) Greek physician; wrote voluminously on medical discoveries during the Roman era
  • Clement of Alexandria (c. 150-c. 215) Greek theologian, catechist, and Church Father; a "trilogy" made up of the Protrepticus (Exhortation); the Paedagogus (Tutor); and the Stromata (Miscellanies)
  • Nagarjuna (c. 150-c. 250) Indian Buddhist philosopher; Mulamadhyamakarika (Fundamental Verses on the Middle Way)
  • Tertullian (c. 155-c. 222) Roman theologian, apologist, and Church Father born in Carthage; Apologeticum; Adversus Valentinianos (Against the Valentinians); De Carne Christi (On the Flesh of Christ)
  • Origen (184/185-253/254) Greek-speaking Christian ascetic theologian and Church Father born in Roman-era Alexandria; Biblical Commentaries; On First Principles; Against Celsus
  • Diogenes Laertius (3rd century) Greek biographer Lives of Eminent [Greek] Philosophers
  • Lalitavistara Sutra (3rd century) Indian Buddhist text, a "life" of the Buddha; the name means "Detailed Narration of the Sport [or Play]" of the Buddha
  • Shudraka (3rd century) Indian king and playwright; most famously Mrichchhakatika (The Little Clay Cart); also Vinavasavadatta and Padmaprabhritaka
  • Maha Puranas (Great Puranas) (3rd-10th centuries) Indian holy books; 18 texts, attributed to Vyasa (c. 200 BCE)
  • Vyasa (c. 200) legendary Indian author and/or editor; tradition ascribes to him Mahabharata (including Bhagavad Gita); Brahma Sutra (Vedanta Sutra); Maha Puranas; and Skanda Purana
  • Cyprian of Carthage (c. 200-258) Roman Bishop (of Carthage) and Church Father born in North Africa; De Ecclesiae Catholicae Unitate (On the Unity of the Catholic Church), numerous epistles and treatises
  • Plotinus (204-270) Greek-speaking Egyptian-born mystic philosopher who taught "three principles": the One, the Intellect, and the Soul. Best known for his Enneads.
  • Avesta (224-651) Zoroastrian collection of religious texts; various authors, compiled during the Sasanian Empire of Persia
  • Anthony the Great (of Egypt) (c. 251-356) Coptic-speaking Egyptian hermit and Church Father; Letters
  • Eusebius (260/265-339/34) Roman Christian historian; The Ecclesiastical History
  • Lotus Sutra (before 286) Indian Buddhist text; the basis of several schools of Buddhism, it teaches that all schools are valid; all beings are already Buddhas; and non-intellectual devotion is essential.
  • Athanasius (c. 296/298-373) Roman Christian theologian and Church Father, born in Roman-era Alexandria; Life of Saint Anthony of Egypt; traditionally credited with the "Athanasian Creed"
  • Hilary of Poitiers (c. 310-c. 367) Romano-French Bishop (of Poitiers) and Church Father; De Synodis (On the Councils); De Trinitate (On the Trinity); Homilies on Psalms
  • Nag Hammadi Texts (3rd-4th centuries) Middle Eastern collection of Gnostic texts (includes the Gospel of Thomas)
  • Mahabharata (4th century) Indian epic attributed to Vyasa (c. 200)
  • Bhagavad Gita (4th century) Indian holy book, part of Mahabharata and like it attributed to Vyasa (c. 200)
  • Gregory of Nazianzus (c. 329-389) Greek Archbishop (of Constantinople) and Church Father; in the Roman era; theological works and poems
  • Basil the Great (329/330-379) Greek Bishop (of Caesarea) and Church Father; in the Roman era; On the Holy Spirit; Refutation of the Apology of the Impious Eunomius
  • Gregory of Nyssa (c. 335-c. 395) Greek-speaking Cappadocian theologian and Church Father; sermons, homilies, letters; Life of Moses
  • Ambrose of Milan (c. 340-397) Roman Bishop (of Milan) and Church Father; Biblical commentaries, hymns, and ethical works
  • John Chrysostom (347-407) Greco-Syrian Christian orator and Church Father; homilies, especially the Paschal Homily
  • Jerome (c. 347-420) Roman theologian, historian and Church Father; Gospel commentaries, Vulgate Bible
  • Hypatia (c. 350/370-415) female Greek scholar in Alexandria, Roman-era Egypt; said to have been murdered by a Christian mob
  • The Heart Sutra (c. 350) Indian Buddhist text; like the Diamond, one of the shortest, densest of sutras. It is said to contain the "heart" of all Buddhist wisdom literature, which is that all existence is empty.
  • Augustine of Hippo (354-430) Roman Christian theologian and Church Father; Confessions of St. Augustine; City of God
  • Tao Yuanming (365-427) Chinese poet of the Six Dynasties period, known for "field and garden" poetry (about domesticated nature). Also wrote the Tao Hua Yuan (Peach Blossom Spring) fable about a sort of utopia.
  • Cyril of Alexandria (c. 378-444) Greek Patriarch (of Alexandria) and Church Father; Commentaries on the Old Testament, and On St. John's Gospel; Dialogues on the Trinity; numerous Christological works
  • Xie Lingyun (385-433) Chinese poet of the Southern and Northern Dynasties, particularly known for Chinese "wild" landscape (shanshui = "mountain-water") poetry
  • Sayings of the Desert Fathers (end of 4th century) Middle Eastern collections of stories from the first Christian monks of Egypt
  • Bodhidharma (5th or 6th century) quasi-legendary Indian (?) Buddhist monk and patriarch credited with bringing the Chan (Zen) tradition to China; Outline of Practice; Bloodstream Sermon; Wake-up Sermon; Breakthrough Sermon
  • Kalidasa (5th century) Indian Sanskrit poet and playwright; Cloud Messenger, Shakuntala, Kumarasambhava
  • Diamond Sutra (before 401) Indian Buddhist text; one of the shortest, densest of sutras, it "cuts like a diamond," and emphasizes non-attachment
  • Patanjali (around 400) Indian sage; The Yoga Sutras
  • Mahavamsa (Great Chronicle) (5th century) Sri Lankan non-canonical Buddhist text (history of Sri Lanka)
  • Thiruthakka Thevar (5th-6th centuries) Tamil poet; Civaka Cintamani (The Fabulous Gem), the romantic exploits of Jeevaka, includes Jain doctrines and beliefs--one of the three surviving "Five Great Epics of Tamil Literature"
  • Boethius (c. 480-524) Roman philosopher; The Consolation of Philosophy
  • Benedict of Nursia (c. 480-543/547) Italian saint and religious founder; The Rule of St. Benedict


--- 500-999 ---

The Venerable Bede, one of the men
who tried to hold back the night



Read about the highlights of this era in my Blatherings!

  • Skanda Purana (6th century) Indian holy book; attributed to Vyasa (c. 200)
  • Sithalai Sathanar (6th century), Tamil poet; Manimekalai (a woman's name) Manimekalai, daughter of Cilappatikaram (see Silappatikaram [The Tale of an Anklet] 2nd century), renounces the world to become a Buddhist nun--includes Buddha's life, work and philosophy--one of the three surviving "Five Great Epics of Tamil Literature"
  • Gregory the Great (c. 540-604) Roman Pope and Church Father; liturgical reforms, and credited with "Gregorian" chant
  • Bharavi (6th century) Indian poet; Kiratarjuniya (Of Arjuna and the Kirata), one of the (five or six) Mahakavya
  • Isidore of Seville (c. 560-636) Hispano-Roman Archbishop and the "last of the Church Fathers"; Etymologiae (The Etymologies); De fide catholica contra Iudaeos (On the Catholic faith against the Jews); Historia de regibus Gothorum, Vandalorum et Suevorum (History of the Kings of the Goths, Vandals and Suevi)
  • Muhammad (c. 570-632) Arab messenger and prophet; received The Quran
  • (Jianzhi) Sengcan (c. 529-606) Chinese Chan (Zen) monk and patriarch; Xinxin Ming (Faith in Mind)
  • Harsha (c. 590-647) Indian king and playwright; Nagananda
  • Bhatti (7th century) Indian poet; Bhattikavya, also called Ravanavadha ("The Death of Ravana"), sixth of the (five or six) Mahakavya
  • Man'yoshu (The Anthology of Ten Thousand Leaves) (600-759) Japanese poetry anthology
  • Huineng (638-713) Chinese monk and patriarch of Chan (Zen); The Platform Sutra of the Sixth Patriarch
  • Caedmon (f. 657-680) English poet and lay monastic herder; Hymn in praise of God
  • Bede (the Venerable) (672/673-735) English monk and historian; Ec­clesiastical History of the English People
  • John of Damascus (c. 675/676-749) Syrian monk and theologian; On Holy Images; Three Sermons on the Assumption
  • Prince Toneri (676-735) Japanese author (with Ō no Yasumaro) of Nihon Shoki (The Chronicles of Japan)
  • Hammad Ar-Rawiya (694/714-Unknown Date) Iraqi anthologist of pre-Islamic Arabic poetry; Al-Mu'allaqat ("Precious Gems," or The Seven Odes)
  • Wang Wei (699-759) Chinese man of letters; Wangchuan ji (Wang River Collection) and other poems
  • The Dream of the Rood (8th century) English poem about the Cross of Christ
  • The Tibetan Book of the Dead (8th-14th centuries) A guide through the realms of consciousness encountered after death, the much-misunderstood "Bardo," the interval between death and the next rebirth.
  • Li Bai (701-762) Chinese poet; around a thousand poems, many celebrating "the Good Life," including "Waking from Drunkenness on a Spring Day," "The Hard Road to Shu," and "Quiet Night Thought"; thirty-four of his poems are included in the 18th-century anthology Three Hundred Tang Poems.
  • O no Yasumaro (Unknown Date-723) Japanese chronicler; Kojiki (A Record of Ancient Matters), a book of mythology and history
  • Du Fu (712-770) Chinese "poet historian"; nearly 1500 poems
  • Han Shan (around 712-after 793) Chinese monk/poet; biographical, religious, and transcendental poems
  • Han Yu (768-824) Chinese essayist and poet, first among the "Eight Great Prose Masters of the Tang and Song"
  • Bai Juyi (772-846) Chinese poet who wrote about his government career and everyday life
  • Liu Zongyuan (773-819) Chinese writer and poet; Yongzhou Ba Youji (Eight Records of Excursions in Yongzhou) (one of the "Eight Great Prose Masters of the Tang and Song")
  • Kukai (Kobo Daishi) (774-835) Japanese monk and founder of Shingon Buddhism; fifty religious works, including Attaining Enlightenment in This Very Existence; The Meaning of Sound, Word, Reality; Meanings of the Word Hum
  • Ise Monogatari (Tales of Ise) (Heian Period, 794-1185) Japanese poems and narratives from the Heian
  • Konjaku Monogatarishu (Tales of Times Now Past) (Heian Period, 794-1185) Japanese story anthology; over 1,000 tales from India, China and Japan
  • Hitopadesha (800-950) Indian fables, attributed to a "Narayana," who is otherwise unknown
  • Linji Yixuan (Unknown Date-866) Chinese Chan (Zen) monk and patriarch; The Record of Lin-chi
  • Ki no Tsurayuki (872-945) Japanese author and poet; Kokin Wakashu (Collection of Japanese Poems of Ancient and Modern Times) (complier); Tosa Nikki (Tosa Diary)
  • Magha (7th or 8th century) Indian poet; Shishupala Vadha (The Slaying of Shishupala), one of the (five or six) Mahakavya
  • Beowulf (8th century) Old English saga
  • Michitsuna no Haha ("Mother of Michitsuna") (c. 935-995) Japanese minor noblewoman; Kagero Nikki (The Mayfly Diary, or The Gossamer Years)
  • Li Yu (c. 937-978) Chinese emperor and poet; composed in various forms and styles
  • Ferdowsi (c. 940-1020) Persian poet; Shahnameh, national epic of Greater Iran
  • Sei Shonagon (c. 966-1017/1025) Japanese court lady; Makura no Soshi (Pillow Book) 966-1017/1025
  • Badi' al-Zaman al-Hamadani (969-1007) Persian man of letters; Maqamat al-Hamadhani (The Maqamat of al-Hamadani)
  • Murasaki Shikibu (c. 973/978-c. 1014/1031) Japanese novelist, poet, and lady-in-waiting; Genji Monogatari (Tale of Genji); Murasaki Nikki (Lady Murasaki's Diary)
  • Atisha (982-1054) Bengali Buddhist master; Bodhipathapradipa (A Lamp for the Path to Awakening)
  • Ibn Hazm (994-1064) Andalusian Muslim poet and philosopher; Tawq al-Hamama (The Ring of the Dove)


--- 1000-1499 ---

Leonardo da Vinci, the
quintessential "Renaissance Man"



Read about the highlights of this era in my Blatherings!

  • Japanese legends: many have their roots in events of our period (1000-1500) or slightly earlier, but were written at this time. I will recommend all of the stories in Yei Theodora Ozaki's The Japanese Fairy Book, free on the web.
  • Icelandic sagas: over 40 sagas from Iceland's "Saga Age" (870-1056) including Eiríks saga rauða (Saga of Erik the Red)
  • Somadeva (11th century) Indian writer; Baital Pachisi (Twenty-two Goblins; Vikram and The Vampire; The King and the Corpse), also called Vetala-panchavimshati, with 25 stories--Somadeva is the traditional author, but the work is anonymous; Kathasaritsagara (Ocean of Rivers of Stories)
  • Daoyuan (published between 1004 and 1007); Chinese monk and chronicler; Records of the Transmission of the Lamp
  • Ouyang Xiu (1007-1072) Chinese essayist and poet; Zuiweng Tingji (An Account of the Old Drunkard's Pavilion) (one of "Eight Great Prose Masters of the Tang and Song")
  • Lady Sarashina (1008-after 1059) Japanese lady-in-waiting; Sarashina Nikki (Lady Sarashina's Diary)
  • Su Xun (1009-1066) Chinese writer; father of Su Dongpo (one of "Eight Great Prose Masters of the Tang and Song")
  • Zeng Gong (1019-1083) Chinese historian, travel writer; You Xinzhou Yushan Xiaoyan Ji (Record of a Tour of Xinzhou Yushan?) (one of "Eight Great Prose Masters of the Tang and Song") essays
  • Su Song (1020-1101) Chinese scientist; Xinyi Xiangfayao (Essentials of a New Method for Mechanizing the Rotation of an Armillary Sphere and a Celestial Globe)
  • Wang Anshi (1021-1086) Chinese poet and economist; essays "A Visit to Baochan Mountain"; "In Reply to Official Censor Sima's Letter" (one of "Eight Great Prose Masters of the Tang and Song")
  • Shen Kuo (1031-1095) Chinese scientist; Mengxi Bitan (Dream Pool Essays)
  • Anselm of Canterbury (c. 1033-1109) Italo-English monk, Archbishop (of Canterbury), theologian, philosopher; theological writings
  • Su Dongpo (1037-1101) Chinese poet (also called Su Shi) (one of "Eight Great Prose Masters of the Tang and Song")
  • Su Zhe (1039-1112) Chinese essayist; son of Su Xun, brother of Su Dongpo; political and historical writing (one of "Eight Great Prose Masters of the Tang and Song")
  • The Song of Roland (developed from 1040 to 1115) French epic poem
  • Omar Khayyam (1048-1131) Persian poet and scientist; The Rubaiyat (Quatrains)
  • Al-Hariri of Basra (1054-1122) Arab poet and scholar; Maqamat al-Hariri (The Assemblies of al-Hariri)
  • Al-Ghazali (c. 1058-1111) Persian mystic and philosopher; Tahāfut al-Falāsifa (Incoherence of the Philosophers); Kimiya-yi Sa'ādat (Alchemy of Happiness); Munqidh min al-ḍalāl (Deliverance from Error--autobiography); Ihya' Ulum al-Din or Ihya'u Ulumiddin (The Revival of Religious Sciences)
  • Yuanwu Keqin (1063-1135) Chinese Chan (Zen) master; Blue Cliff Record
  • Peter Abelard (1079-1142) French philosopher and theologian; Historia Calamitatum (Story of His Misfortunes); Letters of Abelard and Heloise (see Heloise, 1090); Sic et Non
  • Bernard of Clairvaux (1090-1153) French abbot and saint; Apologia ad Guillelmum (Apology to William of Saint-Thierry) on religious art; Liber ad milites templi de laude novae militiae (Book to the Knights of the Temple, in Praise of the New Knighthood); sermons
  • Heloise (1090/1101-1164) French writer and abbess; Letters of Abelard and Heloise (see Abelard, 1079)
  • Peter Lombard (c. 1096-1160) French Bishop (of Paris) and theologian; Libri Quattuor Sententiarum (The Four Books of Sentences)
  • Hildegard of Bingen (1098-1179) German abbess, philosopher, and mystic; Scivias (Know the Ways); Liber Vitae Meritorum (Book of Life's Merits); Liber Divinorum Operum (Book of Divine Works)
  • Singhasan Battisi (Thirty-two Tales of the Throne) (after the 11th century) Indian story collection also called Vikrama-charita (Adventures of Vikrama)
  • Epic of King Gesar (12th century) Tibetan epic
  • One Thousand and One Nights (12th century) story collection that may have started in India; came through Persia into Arabic-speaking lands--it has taken many forms, throughout centuries, but this is as good a date as any
  • Jayadeva (12th century) Indian poet; Gita Govinda, depicting the love of Krishna for Radha
  • Sriharsha (12th century) Indian poet; Naishadha-carita (About Nala and Damayanti), one of the (five or six) Mahakavya
  • Shuka-saptati (Seventy Stories of a Parrot) (12th century) Indian story collection, mainly bawdy ones
  • Geoffrey of Monmouth (c. 1100-c. 1155) Welsh historian; Historia Regum Britanniae (The History of the Kings of Britain)
  • Aucassin and Nicolette (12th or 13th century) French romance story
  • The Cattle Raid of Cooley (called Táin Bó Cúailnge, or The Táin) (12th and later centuries [manuscripts]) Irish tale, central text of the "Ulster Cycle"
  • The Destruction of Da Derga's Hostel (called Togail Bruidne Dá Derga) (12th and later centuries [manuscripts]) Irish tale also from the "Ulster Cycle"
  • Poetic Edda (presumed 12th century) Old Norse poetry collection; sometimes attributed to Sæmundr the Learned
  • Saigyo Hoshi (1118-1190) Japanese monk poet; Sankashu (Mountain Home Collection)
  • Averroes (Ibn Rushd) (1126-1198) Andalusian polymath; Tahafut al-tahafut (The Incoherence of the Incoherence); Kitab fasl al-maqal (The Harmony of Religion and Philosophy)
  • Maimonides (1135/1138-1204) medieval Jewish philosopher; The Guide for the Perplexed; "Oath of Maimonides"
  • Nizami Ganjavi (1141-1209) Persian poet Panj Ganj (The Five Jewels) or Khamsa, five long narrative poems
  • Attar of Nishapur (c. 1145-c. 1221) Persian poet and Sufi mystic; Manṭiq-uṭ-Ṭayr (The Conference of the Birds); Tazkirat al-Awliyā (Biographies of the Saints)
  • Kamo no Chomei (1153/1155-1216) Japanese poet and essayist; Hojoki (Record of the Ten-Foot Square Hut)
  • Wolfram von Eschenbach (1160/80-1220) German knight and poet; Parzival, Titurel ("fragmentary"), Willehalm ("unfinished"), lyric poetry
  • Dominic (1170-1221) Spanish saint and religious founder; traditional founder of the practice of the Rosary
  • Song of the Nibelungs (Nibelungenlied) (between 1180 and 1210) German epic poem
  • Francis of Assisi (1181/1182-1226) Italian friar and preacher; Regula non bullata (the Earlier Rule) and Regula bullata (the Later Rule); Testament; Admonitions; letters and prayers, including the "Canticum Fratris Solis" ("Canticle of Brother Sun")
  • Liu Kezhuang (1187–1269) Chinese poet; edited Poems by a Thousand Masters
  • Chretien de Troyes (late 12th century) French poet; Yvain, the Knight of the Lion; Lancelot, the Knight of the Cart; Erec and Enide; Cligès; Perceval, the Story of the Grail (unfinished?)
  • The Poem of the Cid (El Cantar de mio Cid) (end of the 12th century) Spanish epic poem
  • Ji Junxiang (13th-century) Chinese playwright; Zhaoshi gu'er (The Orphan of Zhao)
  • The Thidrekssaga (13th century) Old Norse saga about Theoderic the Great
  • The Story of Burnt Njal (Njals Saga) (13th century) Icelandic saga
  • Ogura Hyakunin Isshu (Collection of Old and New Japanese Poetry) (13th century) Japanese poetry collection by 100 poets
  • Dogen Zenji (1200-1253) Japanese Buddhist monk and poet whose writings include "Bendowa"; "Bussho"; "Genjokoan"; "Uji"; Eihei Koroku (Dogen's Extensive Record); Eihei Shingi (the first Japanese Zen monastic code)
  • Rumi (Jalāl ad-Dīn Muhammad Rūmī) (1207-1273) Persian poet and mystic; Masnavi; Divan-e Kabir; Fihi Ma Fihi (It Is What It Is)
  • Saadi Shirazi (c. 1210-1291/1292) Persian poet; Bustan (The Orchard); Gulistan (The Rose Garden)
  • Snorri Sturluson, assumed author or editor of the Prose Edda (also called the Younger Edda), an Old Norse saga compiled around 1220-1241
  • Bonaventure (1221-1274) Italian Franciscan theologian and philosopher; Life of St. Francis; commentaries and works on spiritual direction
  • Thomas Aquinas (1225-1274) Italian cleric, theologian, and saint; Summa Theologiae; Summa Contra Gentiles
  • The Secret History of the Mongols (after 1227) Mongolian account of Genghis Khan
  • Yunus Emre (1238-1320) Turkish poet and Sufi mystic; mystical poetry
  • Guan Hanqing (c. 1241-1320) Chinese playwright and poet; Dou E Yuan (The Injustice to Dou E); Yuan playwright and poet
  • Wang Shifu (1250-1337?) Chinese playwright; Xi xiang ji (The Story of the Western Wing), one of the "Four Great Classical Dramas"
  • Marco Polo (1254-1324) Italian merchant and explorer; The Travels of Marco Polo
  • Lady Nijo (1258-after 1307) Japanese imperial concubine, then Buddhist nun; Towazugatari (An Unasked-For Tale, called The Confessions of Lady Nijo)
  • Meister Eckhart (c. 1260-c. 1328) German theologian, philosopher and mystic; sermons and other theological writings
  • Dante Alighieri (1265-1321) Italian poet; Divina Commedia (The Divine Comedy); Monarchia (On Monarchy); La Vita Nuova (The New Life)
  • Nasreddin Hodja (died 1275/6 or 1285/6) Turkish Muslim holy man and funny man, subject of thousands of stories
  • Yoshida Kenko (1284-1350) Japanese author and monk; Tsurezuregusa (Essays in Idleness)
  • Shi Nai'an (1296-1372) Chinese writer; Water Margin (Shuihu Zhuan), one of the "Four Great Classical Novels"
  • Völsunga Saga (late 13th century) Icelandic prose saga on the origin and decline of the Völsung clan
  • Heike Monogatari (Tale of the Heike) (13th-14th centuries) Japanese epic of the Genpei War (1180-1185)
  • Stories of "Robin Hood" (Late Middle Ages) English folk hero
  • Li Qianfu (14th-century) Chinese playwright; Hui Lan Ji (Circle of Chalk)
  • Nornagests Thattr (The Story of Norna-Gest) (around 1300) Icelandic tale
  • Petrarch (1304-1374) Italian scholar and poet; Canzoniere (Songbook); Trionfi (Triumphs); Secretum Meum (My Secret Book); De Viris Illustribus (On Famous Men); letters
  • Song Lian (1310-1381) Chinese historian; Yuan Shi (History of Yuan)
  • Liu Bowen (1311-1375) Chinese military strategist; Huo long jing (Fire Dragon Manual) with Jiao Yu; Shaobing Song (Pancake Poem) may be spurious
  • Giovanni Boccaccio (1313-1375) Italian writer; Decameron (The Decameron); De mulieribus claris (On Famous Women)
  • Hafez of Shiraz (1325/1326-1389/1390) Persian poet known for his ghazals (lyric poems)
  • Luo Guanzhong (1330/1280-1400/1360) Chinese writer; Romance of the Three Kingdoms (Sanguo Yanyi)
  • Ibn Khaldun (1332-1406) North African Muslim historian; Muqaddimah (part I of a history of the world, Kitābul-ʻibar)
  • William Langland (c. 1332-c. 1386) English poet; Piers Plowman
  • Gao Qi (1336-1374) Chinese poet; The Blue Hill Collection (?)
  • Jean Froissart (c. 1337-c. 1405) French historian; The Chronicles
  • Qu You (1341-1433) Chinese novelist; Jiandeng xinhua (New Anecdotes Under the Lamplight, literally "Cutting the wick new stories)
  • Julian of Norwich (1342-c. 1416) English mystic; Revelations of Divine Love
  • Geoffrey Chaucer (c. 1343-1400) English poet; The Canterbury Tales, Troilus and Criseyde
  • Catherine of Siena (1347-1380) Italian Philosopher, theologian, and saint; The Dialogue of Divine Providence; letters
  • The Mabinogion (12th-13th centuries) Welsh story collection, including Welsh and other Celtic traditions
  • Zeami Motokiyo (c. 1363-c. 1443) Japanese Noh playwright; Atsumori; Izutsu
  • Jiao Yu (14th century) Chinese military officer; Huo long jing (Fire Dragon Manual) with Liu Bowen
  • Margery Kempe (c. 1373-after 1438) English Christian mystic; The Book of Margery Kempe
  • Thomas à Kempis (c. 1380-1471) Dutch monk; The Imitation of Christ
  • Ikkyu (1394-1481) Japanese Zen monk and poet; Crazy Cloud Anthology
  • Kabir (1398? 1440?-1448? 1518?) Indian mystic poet; Bijak (sacred texts); Anurag Sagar (Ocean of Love)
  • Sir Gawain and the Green Knight (late 14th century) English poem; anonymous, but thought to be by "The Pearl Poet"
  • "The Pearl Poet" (late 14th century) English poet, thought to have written Pearl, Patience, and Cleanness, as well as Sir Gawain
  • The Wakefield 2nd Shepherds' Play (15th century) medieval "miracle plays," a body of work preceding the blooming of theater in Shakespeare's day
  • Kitab-i Dede Korkut (The Book of Dede Korkut) (15th century) collection of Turkmen epics
  • Thomas Malory (1415/1418-1471) English writer; Morte D'Arthur
  • François Villon (1431-c. 1463) French poet; Le Grand Testament; Le Lais (?)
  • Kanze Kojiro Nobumitsu (1435/1450-1516) Japanese Noh playwright; Ataka (Safe Harbor?); Momijigari (Maple Viewing); Dojoji (Dojo Temple); Funa Benkei (Benkei in a Boat); Rashomon (The Demon of the Rasho Gate)
  • Matteo Maria Boiardo (1441-1494) Italian Renaissance poet who wrote Orlando Innamorato
  • Sandro Botticelli (1445-1510) Italian painter; Birth of Ve­nus, Adoration of the Magi, Guiliano de'Medici
  • Hieronymus Bosch (c. 1450-1516) Dutch painter; The Garden of Earthly Delights, The Temptation of St. Anthony, The Adoration of the Magi
  • Leonardo da Vinci (1452-1519) Italian polymath; Mona Lisa, Last Supper, The Annunciation
  • Giovanni Pico della Mirandola (1463-1494) Italian philosopher; Oratio de hominis dignitate (Oration on the Dignity of Man)
  • John Skelton (c. 1463-1529) English poet; numerous short works, often satirical
  • Desiderius Erasmus (1466-1536) Dutch scholar; The Praise of Folly
  • Niccolo Machiavelli (1469-1527) Italian philosopher; Il Principe (The Prince); Discorsi sopra la prima deca di Tito Livio (Discourses on Livy)
  • Albrecht Durer (1471-1528) German printmaker and painter; Knight, Death, and the Devil; St. Jerome in His Study; Melencolia I
  • Nicolaus Copernicus (1473-1543) German/Polish astronomer; De revolutionibus orbium coelestium (On the Revolutions of the Heavenly Spheres)
  • Ludovico Ariosto (1474-1533) Italian poet best known for Orlando Furioso (The Frenzy of Orlando)
  • Michelangelo (Michelangelo di Lodovico Buonarroti Simoni) (1475-1564) Italian sculptor, painter, architect, poet; Pietà; David; The Last Judgment; Sistine Chapel ceiling; erotic poetry
  • Thomas More (1478-1535) English author and statesman; Utopia
  • Baldassare Castiglione (1478-1529) Italian courtier and author; Il Cortegiano (The Courtier)
  • Martin Luther (1483-1546) German monk, theologian, and religious founder; The Ninety-Five Theses; Address to the Christian Nobility; Concerning Christian Liberty
  • Francois Rabelais (1483/1494-1553) French writer; Gargantua and Pantagruel, especially Book I: The Abbey of Theleme
  • Ulrich Zwingli (1484-1531) Swiss Reform theologian whose collected works are expected to fill 21 volumes; one work popular in English is The Christian Education of Youth
  • Titian (Tiziano Vecelli or Vecellio) (1488/1490-1576) Italian painter; Assumption of the Virgin; Rape of Europa; Allegory of Prudence; Sacred and Profane Love; Venus of Urbino
  • Álvar Núñez Cabeza de Vaca (c. 1488/1490/1492-c. 1557/1558/1559/1560) Spanish explorer; La relación of Álvar Núñez Cabeza de Vaca (The Relation of Alvar Nuñez Cabeza De Vaca)
  • Correggio (Antonio da Correggio) (1489-1534) Italian painter; Jupiter and Io; Assumption of the Virgin; Mystical Marriage of St. Catherine; The Supper at Emmaus
  • Thomas Cranmer (1489-1556) English reformer and Archbishop (of Canterbury); The Book of Common Prayer
  • Ignatius of Loyola (1491-1556) Spanish theologian and religious founder; Autobiography; Spiritual Exercises
  • Fuzuli (Muhammad bin Suleyman) (c. 1495-1556) Turkmen (Azerbaijani) poet and philosopher; Layla and Mejnun
  • William Roper (c. 1496-1578) English biographer; The Life of Sir Thomas More
  • Everyman (late 15th-century) English morality play

--- The 1500s ---

William Shakespeare: ahead of his time



Read about the highlights of this era in my Blatherings!

  • Gao Lian (fl. 16th century) Chinese playwright; Yuzanji (The Jade Hairpin)
  • Wu Cheng'en (1500-1582 or 1505-1580) Chinese novelist and poet; Journey to the West (Xi You Ji), one of the "Four Great Classical Novels"
  • Xu Zhonglin (presumed 16th century; died 1560) Chinese writer; Fengshen Bang (The Investiture of the Gods)
  • Benvenuto Cellini (1500-1571) Italian artisan; Autobiography
  • Thomas Wyatt (1503-1542) English lyrical poet; the first English sonnets
  • Gui Youguang (1506-1571) Chinese writer best known for his xiaopin, a genre of short non-fictional essays on almost any topic; his include "My Mother: A Brief Life" and "The Xiangji Studio"
  • John Calvin (1509-1564) French theologian and pastor; The Institutes of the Christian Religion; Bible commentaries
  • Ambroise Paré (c. 1510-1590) French barber surgeon; Journeys in Diverse Places
  • Giorgio Vasari (1511-1574) Italian painter and biographer; Lives of the Artists, especially "Leonardo da Vinci" and "Michelangelo"
  • John Knox (c. 1513-1572) Scottish clergyman, theologian, and writer; First Blast of the Trumpet Against the Monstrous Regiment of Women
  • Teresa of Avila (1515-1582) Spanish saint and mystic; Autobiography; El Camino de Perfeccion (The Way of Perfection); El Castillo Interior (The Interior Castle)
  • John Foxe (1516/17-1587) English historian and martyrologist; Actes and Monuments (popularly known as Foxe's Book of Martyrs)
  • Pierre de Ronsard (1524-1585) French poet; Les Odes; Les Amours; Sonnets pour Hélène; Discours
  • Luis de Camoëns (c. 1524-1580) Portuguese poet; Os Lusíadas (The Lusiads)
  • Fray Luis de León (1527-1591) Spanish poet, monk, and theologian; La Perfecta Casada (The Perfect Wife); De los Nombres de Cristo (The Names of Christ); Bible commentaries and poems
  • Michel de Montaigne (1533-1592) French philosopher and essayist; Meditations; Essays; In Defense of Raymond Sebond
  • El Greco (Doménikos Theotokópoulos) (1541-1614) Greek/Spanish painter; El Expolio; The Assumption of the Virgin; The Burial of the Count of Orgaz; View of Toledo; Opening of the Fifth Seal
  • Tu Long (1542-1605) Chinese playwright and essayist; Kao Pan Yu Shi (Desultory Remarks on Furnishing the Abode of the Retired Scholar)
  • John of the Cross (1542-1591) Spanish saint and mystic; Subida del Monte Carmelo (Ascent of Mount Carmel); La Noche Oscura del Alma (The Dark Night of the Soul); Cántico Espiritual (The Spiritual Canticle)
  • Torquato Tasso (1544-1595) Italian poet; La Gerusalemme Liberata (Jerusalem Delivered)
  • William Gilbert (1544-1603) English physician, physicist and "natural philosopher" regarded by some as the father of electrical engineering or electricity and magnetism. Wrote On the Lodestone (Magnet)
  • Miguel de Cervantes (1547-1616) Spanish novelist, poet, and playwright; The History of Don Quixote de la Mancha
  • Giordano Bruno (1548-1600) Italian friar, philosopher, and cosmologist; the six "Italian Dialogues": La Cena de le Ceneri (The Ash Wednesday Supper); De la Causa, Principio et Uno (On Cause, Principle and Unity); De l'Infinito, Universo e Mondi (On the Infinite, Universe and Worlds); Lo Spaccio de la Bestia Trionfante (The Expulsion of the Triumphant Beast); Cabala del cavallo Pegaseo (Cabal of the Horse Pegasus); and De gli Heroici Furori (On the Heroic Frenzies)
  • Yuan Liaofan (c. 1550-????) Chinese writer; Liao Fan Si Xun (Liao-Fan's Four Lessons)
  • Tang Xianzu (1550-1616) Chinese playwright; Mudan Ting (The Peony Pavilion), one of the "Four Great Classical Dramas"
  • Edmund Spenser (1552/1553-1599) English poet; The Faerie Queen; also, The Shepherd's Calendar; "Amoretti"; "Epithalamion"
  • Walter Raleigh (c. 1554-1618) English writer; The Historie of the World (incomplete); The Discovery of Guiana; other essays and poems
  • Philip Sidney (1554-1586) English poet and scholar; Astrophel and Stella; The Defence of Poesy; The Countess of Pembroke's Arcadia
  • Popol Vuh (between 1554 and 1558) Mayan mythological text
  • Thomas Kyd (1558-1594) English playwright; The Spanish Tragedy; King Leir; Arden of Faversham; Edward III
  • George Chapman (1559-1634) English dramatist, translator, and poet best remembered for translations of Homer's Iliad and Odyssey
  • Francis Bacon (1561-1626) English scientist and philosopher; New Atlantis; Essays, or Counsels, Civil and Moral; Novum Organum (New Scientific Method)
  • Robert Southwell (c. 1561-1595) English priest and poet; Mary Magdalen's Funeral Tears; A Short Rule of Good Life; Triumphs over Death; Epistle of Comfort; poems
  • Lope de Vega (1562-1635) Spanish playwright, poet and novelist; Fuenteovejuna; El Perro del Hortelano (The Dog in the Manger); Punishment Without Revenge
  • Christopher Marlowe (1564-1593) English playwright and poet; Dr. Faustus; Edward the Second; Hero and Leander
  • William Shakespeare (1564-1616) English playwright and poet; Hamlet; King Lear; Macbeth; The Tempest
  • Thomas Campion (1567-1620) English poet and composer; numerous "ayres" (art songs)
  • Thomas Nashe (1567-c. 1601) English playwright and poet; The Unfortunate Traveller; Summer's Last Will and Testament
  • Francis de Sales (1567-1622) French Bishop (of Geneva) and saint; An Introduction to the Devout Life; The Treatise on the Love of God
  • Yuan Hongdao (1568-1610) Chinese poet; poems and xiaopin (short essays)
  • Tommaso Campanella (1568-1639) Italian friar, philosopher, and theologian; The City of the Sun
  • Johannes Kepler (1571-1630) German astronomer; Astronomia Nova (New Astronomy); Harmonices Mundi (The Harmony of the World); Epitome Astronomiae Copernicanae (Epitome of Copernican Astronomy)
  • Caravaggio (1571-1610) Italian painter; The Fortune Teller; Amor Victorious; St. Jerome Writing; Supper at Emmaus; The Beheading of St. John the Baptist
  • Ben Jonson (1572-1637) English playwright and poet; Volpone; The Alchemist
  • John Donne (1573-1631) English poet and cleric; erotic poems and religious meditations
  • Feng Menglong (1574-1645) Chinese writer and poet; Especially Yushi Mingyan (Illustrious Words to Instruct the World); Dongzhou Lieguo Zhi (Chronicles of the Eastern Zhou Kingdoms); Jingshi Tongyan (Stories to Caution the World)
  • Galileo Galilei (1574-1642) Italian astronomer; Dialogo sopra i due massimi sistemi del mondo (Dialogue Concerning the Two Chief World Systems); Sidereus Nuncius (The Starry Messenger)
  • Robert Burton (1577-1640) English scholar; The Anatomy of Melancholy
  • Peter Paul Rubens (1577-1640) Flemish painter; Samson and Delilah; The Descent from the Cross; The Assumption of the Virgin Mary; The Rape of the Daughters of Leucippus; Massacre of the Innocents; Horror of War; Susanna and the Elders; The Three Graces; hundreds more
  • William Harvey (1578-1657) English physician; De Motu Cordis (On the Circulation of Blood)
  • John Fletcher (1579-1625) English playwright; over 50 plays alone or in collaboration (including three--maybe--with Shakespeare)
  • Ling Mengchu (1580-1644) Chinese writer; Chuke Pai'an Jingqi (Slapping the Table in Amazement)
  • Thomas Middleton (1580-1627) English playwright; another prolific Jacobean
  • John Webster (c. 1580-c. 1634) English playwright; The White Devil; The Duchess of Malfi
  • John Smith (c. 1580-1631) English soldier, explorer, and settler of Jamestown; wrote The Generall Historie of Virginia, New-England, and the Summer Isles
  • Philip Massinger (1583-1640) English playwright; A New Way to Pay Old Debts; The City Madam; The Roman Actor
  • Miyamoto Musashi (c. 1584-1645) Japanese ronin (masterless samurai); Go Rin no Sho (The Book of Five Rings)
  • Wen Zhenheng (1585-1645) Chinese scholar; Zhang Wu Zhi (Treatise on Superfluous Things)
  • John Ford (1586-c. 1639) English playwright and poet; 'Tis Pity She's a Whore
  • Xu Xiake (1587-1641) Chinese travel writer; Xu Xiake Youji (Xu Xiake's Travels)
  • Thomas Hobbes (1588-1679) English philosopher; Leviathan
  • Robert Herrick (1591-1674) English poet and cleric; "To the Virgins, to Make Much of Time" and hundreds more
  • Liu Tong (c. 1593-1637) Chinese writer; Dijing Jingwulue (Survey of Scenery and Monuments in the Imperial Capital)
  • George Herbert (1593-1633) Welsh poet and Anglican priest; The Temple: Sacred Poems and Private Ejaculations; A Priest to the Temple (also called The Country Parson)
  • Baogong An (Cases of Judge Bao) (1594) Chinese detective stories from the Yuan Dynasty
  • Izaak Walton (c. 1594-1683) English writer; The Compleat Angler; Walton's Lives
  • Rene Descartes (1596-1650) French philosopher and scientist; Discourse on the Method; Meditations on First Philosophy
  • Zhang Dai (1597-1689) Chinese writer; Tao An Meng Yi (Reminiscences in Dreams of Tao An); Xi Hu Meng Xun (Search the West Lake in Dreams)

--- The 1600s ---

Voltaire, the Enlightened Frenchman



Read about the highlights of this era in my Blatherings!

  • Pedro Calderón de la Barca (1600-1681) Spanish playwright; La Vida Es Sueño (Life Is a Dream); La Dama Duende (The Phantom Lady)
  • Thomas Browne (1605-1682) English polymath and author; Religio Medici (The Religion of a Physician); Hydriotaphia, Urn Burial published with The Garden of Cyrus; Pseudodoxia Epidemica (dealing with superstitions); Christian Morals
  • Pierre Corneille (1606-1684) French playwright ranked with Molière and Racine. Remembered especially for The Cid; Polyeucte; Nicomède; Horace; Cinna; and Rodogune
  • Rembrandt van Rijn (1606-1669) Dutch painter; The Bridal Couple; The Night Watch
  • John Milton (1608-1674) English poet and man of letters; Paradise Lost; Tractate on Education; Areopagitica; and minor poems in English (including "Lycidas" and "On the Morning of Christ's Nativity; Sonnets")
  • Jin Ping Mei ("The Plum in the Golden Vase") (first printed in 1610) Chinese novel attributed to "Lanling Xiaoxiao Sheng" (a pseudonym)
  • Li Yu (1610-1680) Chinese author; Rou Pu Tuan (The Carnal Prayer Mat); Lian Xiang Ban (The Fragrant Companion)
  • Anne Bradstreet (1612-1672) English-American poet; The Tenth Muse Lately Sprung Up in America
  • François de La Rochefoucauld (1613-1680) French essayist; Memoirs; Maximes
  • Jeremy Taylor (1613-1667) English cleric; Holy Living and Holy Dying
  • Brother Lawrence (c. 1614-1691) French Carmelite lay brother; The Practice of the Presence of God
  • Richard Lovelace (1617-1657) English poet; "To Althea, from Prison," "To Lucasta, Going to the Warres."
  • Xingshi Yinyuan Zhuan (The Story of a Marital Fate to Awaken the World) (composed between 1618 and 1681) Chinese novel attributed to "Xizhou Sheng" (a pseudonym)
  • Andrew Marvell (1621-1678) English poet; "To His Coy Mistress," "Upon Appleton House," and "The Garden"; Mr. Smirke; or The Divine in Mode
  • Jean de laFontaine (1621-1695) French fabulist; Fables choisies
  • Moliere (Jean-Baptiste Poquelin) (1622-1673) French playwright; Le Misanthrop (The Misanthrope); L'école des Femmes (The School for Wives); Tartuffe; L'Avare (The Miser); Le Malade Imaginaire (The Imaginary Invalid); and Le Bourgeois Gentilhomme (The Bourgeois Gentleman)
  • Blaise Pascal (1623-1662) French mathematician and Christian philosopher; Pensées (Thoughts); Lettres Provinciales (The Provincial Letters)
  • Margaret Lucas Cavendish (1623-1673) English aristocrat, writer, and scientist; A True Relation of My Birth, Breeding, and Life; The Blazing World
  • John Aubrey (1626-1697) English natural philosopher; Brief Lives; Monumenta Britannica
  • John Bunyan (1628-1688) English writer and Baptist preacher; The Pilgrim's Progress; books based on sermons
  • Charles Perrault (1628-1703) French writer of fairy tales; "The Sleeping Beauty," "Little Red Riding Hood," "Cinderella," "Puss in Boots"
  • Christiaan Huygens (1629-1695) Dutch mathematician and scientist known as an astronomer and physicist, among other things. He discovered Saturn's moon, Titan, and invented the pendulum clock. He was a proponent of the wave theory of light, and the Treatise on Light is one of his major works.
  • John Dryden (1631-1700) English poet and playwright; Poems Absalom and Achitophel, Mac Flecknoe, The Hind and the Panther; plays Marriage à la mode and All for Love
  • John Locke (1632-1704) English philosopher; Of Civil Government; Some Thoughts Concerning Education
  • Jan Vermeer (1632-1675) Dutch painter; The Milk Maid; Young Woman with a Water Jug; Girl with a Pearl Earring
  • Baruch Spinoza (1632-1677) Dutch-born Portuguese Jewish philosopher whose writings laid the groundwork for the Enlightenment and modern biblical criticism. His magnum opus was the Ethics.
  • Samuel Pepys (1633-1703) English naval administrator; Diary of Samuel Pepys
  • Madame de La Fayette (1634-1693) French writer; La Princesse de Clèves
  • Thomas Traherne (1636/1637-1674) English poet, cleric, and theologian; Centuries of Meditations
  • Jean Racine (1639-1699) French playwright; Phèdre; Andromaque; Athalie
  • Dong Yue (published c. 1640) Chinese novelist; Xi You Bu (A Supplement to the Journey to the West)
  • Pu Songling (1640-1715) Chinese writer; Liaozhai Zhiyi (Strange Tales from a Chinese Studio)
  • Aphra Behn (1640?-1689) British playwright, poet, and fiction writer; Oroonoko; The Rover; The Fair Jilt
  • William Wycherley (c. 1641-1716) English playwright; The Country Wife; The Plain Dealer
  • Ihara Saikaku (1642-1693) Japanese writer; Life of an Amorous Man; This Scheming World; Five Women Who Loved Love
  • Isaac Newton (1642-1727) English natural philosopher (scientist); Philosophiae Naturalis Principia Mathematica (Mathematical Principles of Natural Philosophy)
  • William Penn (1644-1718) English Quaker philosopher; Fruits of Solitude; No Cross, No Crown
  • Matsuo Basho (1644-1694) Japanese Buddhist monk and poet; Oku no Hosomichi (The Narrow Road to the Deep North) (one of the "Four Great Haiku Masters")
  • Jean de la Bruyere (1645-1696) French philosopher; Les Caractères (Characters)
  • Hong Sheng (1645-1704) Chinese playwright; Changsheng Dian (The Palace of Eternal Life), one of the "Four Great Classical Dramas"
  • Eusebio Kino (1645-1711) Italian Jesuit missionary; Spain in the West: Kino's Historical Memoir of Pimería Alta
  • John Wilmot (1647-1680) English poet; A Satyr Against Reason and Mankind; numerous "vulgar" poems
  • Kong Shangren (1648-1718) Chinese playwright; Taohua Shan (The Peach Blossom Fan), one of the "Four Great Classical Dramas"
  • Juana Inés de la Cruz (1651-1695) Mexican nun under colonial Spain who wrote poetry and dramas
  • Mukai Kyorai (1651-1704) Japanese poet; Kyoraishō; Conversations with Kyorai
  • François Fénelon (1651-1715) French Roman Catholic archbishop, theologian, and poet; Les Aventures de Télémaque (The Adventures of Telemachus)
  • Chikamatsu Monzaemon (1653-1725) Japanese puppet-theater (bunraku) playwright; The Battle of Coxinga; The Love Suicide at Sonezaki; The Love Suicide at Amijima
  • Daniel Defoe (c. 1660-1731) English writer; Robinson Crusoe; Moll Flanders
  • Cotton Mather (1663-1728) American Puritan minister, author, and pamphleteer who contributed to the hysteria of the Salem Witch Trials; wrote Boston Ephermeris; The Biblia Americana; Pillars of Salt; Magnalia Christi Americana; The Christian Philosopher
  • Jonathan Swift (1667-1745) Anglo-Irish satirist; A Tale of a Tub; Gulliver's Travels; A Modest Proposal
  • Ejima Kiseki (c. 1666-c. 1735) Japanese writer; Seken Musume Kataki (Characters of Worldly Young Women)
  • Giambattista Vico (1668-1744) Italian philosopher; Scienza Nuova (New Science)
  • William Congreve (1670-1729) English playwright and poet; Love for Love; The Way of the World
  • Joseph Addison (1672-1719) English writer; with Richard Steele, published The Tatler and The Spectator
  • Richard Steele (1672-1729) Irish writer; with Joseph Addison, published The Tatler and The Spectator
  • Isaac Watts (1674-1748) English hymnist, cleric, and theologian; "Joy to the World," "When I Survey the Wondrous Cross"
  • Antonio Vivaldi (1678-1741) Italian composer; Le Quattro Stagioni (The Four Seasons)
  • Haoqiu Zhuan (possibly published 1683) by a Chinese novelist with the pseudonym "Mingjiao Zhongren" (maybe "Teaching-Name Man" or "Man Named Jiao"); a caizi jiaren or "Scholar/Beauty" novel about the love between a scholar and a beautiful girl--both of good family--a popular genre in the late Ming and early Qing Dynasties; attributed to Mingjiao Zhongren (a pseudonym).
  • George Berkeley (1685-1753) Anglo-Irish philosopher and Bishop (of Cloyne, Ireland); A Treatise Concerning the Principles of Human Knowledge
  • John Gay (1685-1732) English poet and playwright; The Beggar's Opera
  • Johann Sebastian Bach (1685-1750) German composer; The Brandenburg Concertos; The Goldberg Variations; St. Matthew Passion; The Well-Tempered Clavier
  • George Frederick Handel (1685-1759) German/British composer; Water Music; Music for the Royal Fireworks; Messiah
  • Hakuin Ekaku (1686-1768) Japanese Zen monk; Itsumadegusa (Wild Ivy); commentaries, sermons, and letters
  • Alexander Pope (1688-1744) English poet and man of letters; An Essay on Criticism; The Rape of the Lock; The Dunciad; An Essay on Man
  • Emanuel Swedenborg (1688-1772) Swedish scientist and philosopher; True Christian Religion; Heaven and Hell
  • Samuel Richardson (1689-1761) English writer; Pamela; Clarissa; Sir Charles Grandison
  • Montesquieu (1689-1755) French man of letters; Lettres Persanes (Persian Letters); Considérations sur les Causes de la Grandeur des Romains et de Leur Décadence (Considerations on the Causes of the Grandeur and Decadence of the Romans); De l'Esprit des Lois (The Spirit of the Laws)
  • Voltaire (François-Marie Arouet) (1694-1778) French philosopher and satirist; Candide; Lettres Philosophiques (Letters Concerning the English Nation); Micromégas; Zadig; Songe de Platon (Plato's Dream)


--- The 1700s ---

Thomas Jefferson helped put
America on the board



Read about the highlights of this era in my Blatherings!

  • "Negro" Spirituals (started in 18th century) Christian songs created by African slaves in the United States
  • Wu Jingzi (1701-1754) Chinese author; Rulin Waishi (The Scholars; literally, The Unofficial History of the Forest [ie. World] of the Literati)
  • John Wesley (1703-1791) English Anglican cleric and theologian; Notes on the New Testament; sermons
  • Jonathan Edwards (1703-1758) American Puritan preacher, philosopher, and theologian; "Sinners in the Hands of an Angry God"; Religious Affections
  • Benjamin Franklin (1706-1790) American polymath; Autobiography; Poor Richard's Almanack
  • Leonhard Euler (1707-1783) Swiss mathematician and scientist; Lettres à une princesse d'Allemagne sur divers sujets de physique et de philosophie (Letters to a German Princess, On Different Subjects in Physics and Philosophy); science and math texts
  • Henry Fielding (1707-1754) English novelist and dramatist; The History of Tom Jones
  • Charles Wesley (1707-1788) English leader of the Methodist movement; hymns
  • Samuel Johnson (1709-1784) English man of letters; A Dictionary of the English Language; annotated Plays of William Shakespeare; The History of Rasselas, Prince of Abissinia; A Journey to the Western Islands of Scotland; Lives of the Most Eminent English Poets
  • David Hume (1711-1776) Scottish philosopher; A Treatise of Human Nature; An Enquiry Concerning Human Understanding; An Enquiry Concerning the Principles of Morals
  • Sun Zhu (1711-1778) Chinese scholar; edited Tangshi sanbai shou (Three Hundred Tang Poems)
  • Jean-Jacques Rousseau (1712-1778) Swiss ("Genevan") philosopher; Émile, or Treatise on Education (includes "Profession of Faith of a Savoyard Vicar"); Confessions; Social Contract; A Discourse on the Origin of Inequality
  • Denis Diderot (1713-1784) French philosopher; Encyclopédie (with Jean le Rond d'Alembert); Jacques the Fatalist; Rameau's Nephew; and D'Alembert's Dream
  • Laurence Sterne (1713-1768) Irish novelist and Anglican cleric; The Life and Opinions of Tristram Shandy, Gentleman; and A Sentimental Journey Through France and Italy
  • Cao Xueqin (c. 1720-c. 1764) Chinese author; Dream of the Red Chamber (Honglou Meng), one of the "Four Great Classical Novels"
  • Yuan Mei (1716-1797) Chinese author; Zibuyu (What the Master Would Not Discuss) ghost stories; Suiyuan Shidan (Recipes from Sui Garden), a cookbook
  • Yosa Buson (1716-1784) Japanese poet; haiku poems (one of the "Four Great Haiku Masters")
  • Thomas Gray (1716-1771) English poet; Elegy Written in a Country Churchyard; Ode on the Death of a Favourite Cat, Drowned in a Tub of Gold Fishes
  • Gilbert White (1720-1793) English naturalist and cleric; A Natural History and Antiquity of Selbourne
  • John Woolman (1720-1772) American Quaker; The Journal
  • William Collins (1721-1759) English poet; Persian Eclogues
  • Tobias Smollett (1721-1771) Scottish novelist and poet; Roderick Random; Peregrine Pickle; Sir Launcelot Greaves
  • Adam Smith (1723-1790) Scottish philosopher; The Theory of Moral Sentiments; The Wealth of Nations
  • Joshua Reynolds (1723-1792) English painter; Edward Cornwallis; James Boswell; Age of Innocence; Mrs. Siddons As the Tragic Muse
  • Immanuel Kant (1724-1804) German philosopher; Kritik der reinen Vernunft (Critique of Pure Reason); Kritik der praktischen Vernunft (Critique of Practical Reason); Die Metaphysik der Sitten (The Metaphysics of Morals); Kritik der Urteilskraft (Critique of Judgment)
  • Giacomo Casanova (1725-1798) Italian adventurer and author; Histoire de Ma Vie (History of My Life)
  • Thomas Gainsborough (1727-1788) English painter; Mr. and Mrs. Andrews; The Blue Boy; The Watering Place; Girl with Pigs
  • Oliver Goldsmith (1728-1774) Irish novelist, playwright, and poet; The Vicar of Wakefield; She Stoops to Conquer; The Deserted Village
  • Gotthold Ephraim Lessing (1729-1781) German writer, philosopher, dramatist, and art critic who wrote Laocoön and Nathan the Wise
  • Edmund Burke (1729-1797) Irish philosopher; On the Sublime and Beautiful; Reflections on the Revolution in France
  • William Cowper (1731-1800) English poet; The Task; "John Gilpin"; hymns
  • Yao Nai (1731-1815) Chinese scholar; Ascent of Mount Tai
  • George Washington (1732-1799) American statesman; "First" and "Second Inaugural Addresses"; "Thanksgiving Proclamation"; "Newburgh Address"; "Farewell Address"
  • (Franz) Joseph Haydn (1732-1809) Austrian composer; symphonies ("Surprise," "Clock," "London," "Toy"); chamber music; oratorios
  • Joseph Priestley (1733-1804) English theologian, natural philosopher, and chemist, who published over 150 works.
  • Ueda Akinari (1734-1809) Japanese author; Ugetsu Monogatari (Tales of Rain and the Moon); Harusame Monogatari (Tales of Spring Rain)
  • Jean de Crèvecoeur (John Hector St. John) (1735-1813) French-American author; Letters from an American Farmer
  • John Adams (1735-1826) American lawyer, author, President; The Works of John Adams
  • James Macpherson (1736-1796) Scottish author; Ossian cycle of poems
  • Edward Gibbon (1737-1794) English historian; The Decline and Fall of the Roman Empire
  • Thomas Paine (1737-1809) English-American philosopher and activist; Common Sense; The American Crisis; Rights of Man; The Age of Reason
  • Francisco Garces (1738-1781) Pioneering Spanish Franciscan missionary and explorer of Sonora and Baja California, Mexico, and Arizona and California, USA. Left a Diary after being killed in an Indian uprising near present-day Yuma, Arizona.
  • Cesare Beccaria (1738-1794) Italian philosopher On Crimes and Punishments
  • James Boswell (1740-1795) Scottish biographer; The Life of Samuel Johnson
  • Pierre Choderlos de Laclos (1741-1803) French novelist, best known for writing the epistolary novel Dangerous Liaisons
  • Marquis de Condorcet (1743-1794) French philosopher; The Progress of the Human Mind
  • Thomas Jefferson (1743-1826) American statesman; The Declaration of Independence; Notes on the State of Virginia; The Jefferson Bible
  • Antoine Lavoisier (1743-1794) French chemist; Traité élémentaire de chimie (Elementary Treatise on Chemistry); Essays Physical and Chemical
  • Olaudah Equiano (Gustavus Vassa) (c. 1745-1797) African-born American-British freeman activist and author; The Interesting Narrative of the Life of Olaudah Equiano (autobiography)
  • Francisco Goya (1746-1828) Spanish painter; The Second of May; The Third of May; La Maja Desnuda; Saturn Devouring His Son; Charles IV of Spain and His Family; Witches' Sabbath; Manuel Osorio Manrique de Zúñiga
  • Chushingura or The Treasury of Loyal Retainers (first performed 1748), a Bunraku (puppet play) about the "47 Ronin," by Takeda Izumo, Miyoshi Shôraku, and Namiki Senryû
  • Johann Wolfgang von Goethe (1749-1832) German author; Faust; Egmont; Hermann and Dorothea
  • Pierre-Simon de Laplace (1749-1827) French astronomer and mathematician; Celestial Mechanics
  • Edward Jenner (1749-1823) English scientist; documents on development of the smallpox vaccination
  • Richard Brinsley Sheridan (1751-1816) Irish satirical playwright and poet; The School for Scandal; The Rivals; The Duenna; A Trip to Scarborough
  • Fanny Burney (1752-1840) English satirical novelist, diarist, and playwright known especially for novels Evelina, Camilla, and The Wanderer; and the non-fiction Memoirs of Doctor Burney.
  • Phillis Wheatley (1753-1784) first published African-American female poet who wrote Poems on Various Subjects (1773)
  • Alexander Hamilton (1755/1757-1804) American statesman; co-author of The Federalist Papers
  • Wolfgang Amadeus Mozart (1756-1791) Austrian composer; chamber music, concertos, operas (The Magic Flute, The Marriage of Figaro), 41 symphonies
  • William Blake (1757-1827) English poet and artist; Songs of Innocence and of Experience; The Marriage of Heaven and Hell; Jerusalem; Milton
  • George Vancouver (1757-1798) English naval officer; A Voyage of Discovery to the North Pacific Ocean, and Round the World
  • Ryokan Taigu (1758-1831) Japanese monk and poet; numerous short poems
  • Noah Webster (1758-1843) American educator and author; An American Dictionary of the English Language
  • Robert Burns (1759-1796) Scottish poet; "Auld Lang Syne"; "To a Mouse"; "A Man's a Man for A' That"; "Scots Wha Hae"; "Tam O'Shanter"
  • Mary Wollstonecraft (1759-1797) English writer, philosopher, and advocate of women's rights; known for A Vindication of the Rights of Woman
  • Friedrich Schiller (1759-1805) German playwright and poet; The Robbers; Don Carlos; The Wallenstein Trilogy; Mary Stuart; William Tell
  • Hokusai (1760-1849) Japanese artist; Thirty-six Views of Mount Fuji, including "The Great Wave off Kanagawa"
  • Li Ruzhen (c. 1763-1830) Chinese novelist; Jing Hua Yuan (Flowers in the Mirror)
  • Kobayashi Issa (1763-1828) Japanese priest and poet; poems and The Spring of My Life (autobiography) (one of the "Four Great Haiku Masters")
  • Jippensha Ikku (1765-1831) Japanese author; the hilarious satire-cum-guidebook Tokaidochu Hizakurige (Shank's Mare along the Tokaido)
  • Thomas Robert Malthus (1766-1834) English cleric and scholar; An Essay on the Principle of Population
  • Takizawa Bakin (1767-1848) Japanese author; Nanso Satomi Hakkenden (The Chronicles of the Eight Dog Heroes of the Satomi Clan of Nanso); Chinsetsu Yumiharizuki (Strange Tales of the Crescent Moon)
  • Joseph Fourier (1768-1830) French mathematician and physicist; Théorie analytique de la chaleur (The Analytic Theory of Heat)
  • Georg Wilhelm Friedrich Hegel (1770-1831) German philosopher; The Phenomenology of Mind; lectures
  • William Wordsworth (1770-1850) English poet; Lyrical Ballads; Poems in Two Volumes; The Excursion; The Prelude; I Wandered Lonely as a Cloud
  • Ludwig van Beethoven (1770-1827) German composer; Concertos (Emperor); sonatas (Moonlight, Pathetique); 9 symphonies; Fidelio; "Fur Elise"
  • Walter Scott (1771-1832) Scottish novelist and poet; Ivanhoe; Rob Roy; The Lady of the Lake; Waverley; The Heart of Midlothian; The Bride of Lammermoor
  • Samuel Taylor Coleridge (1772-1834) English poet and philosopher; The Rime of the Ancient Mariner; Christabel; Kubla Khan; Biographia Literaria
  • Novalis (Friedrich von Hardenburg) (1772-1801) German poet, author, and philosopher; Hymnen an die Nacht (Hymns to the Night); Die Lehrlinge zu Sais (The Novices of Sais), unfinished
  • Jane Austen (1775-1817) English novelist; Sense and Sensibility; Pride and Prejudice; Mansfield Park; Emma; Northanger Abbey; Persuasion
  • Charles Lamb (1775-1834) English author; Essays of Elia; Tales from Shakespeare; The Adventures of Ulysses
  • Walter Savage Landor (1775-1864) English author and poet; Imaginary Conversations; Rose Aylmer
  • J. M. W. Turner (1775-1851) English painter; Dido building Carthage; Snow Storm; The Burning of the Houses of Lords and Commons; Modern Rome-Campo Vaccino; Agrippina Landing with the Ashes of Germanicus; Sunrise with Sea Monsters
  • E. T. A. Hoffmann (1776-1822) Prussian author; The Nutcracker and the Mouse King; Die Elixiere des Teufels (The Devil's Elixirs); "Der Sandmann" ("The Sandman")
  • William Hazlitt (1778-1830) English writer and critic; Characters of Shakespear's Plays; Table-Talk; The Spirit of the Age: Or, Contemporary Portraits
  • Carl von Clausewitz (1780-1831) Prussian general and philosopher; Vom Kriege (On War)
  • William Ellery Channing (1780-1842) Unitarian preacher and theologian who wrote on Slavery and lectured on "On the Elevation of the Laboring Classes"
  • Niccolo Paganini (1782-1840) Italian composer; 24 Caprices for Solo Violin
  • John C. Calhoun (1782-1850) American statesman and political theorist; seventh Vice President of the United States. "The Concurrent Majority" lays out his most important idea; a 1837 speech in the U.S. Senate, "Slavery a Positive Good"
  • Washington Irving (1783-1859) American short story writer, essayist, and historian; "Rip Van Winkle" and "The Legend of Sleepy Hollow," both in The Sketch Book of Geoffrey Crayon, Gent.
  • Stendhal (Marie-Henri Beyle) (1783-1842) French novelist; Le Rouge et le Noir (The Red and the Black); La Chartreuse de Parme (The Charterhouse of Parma)
  • Leigh Hunt (1784-1859) English critic, essayist, and poet whose popular poems include "Jenny kiss'd Me," "Abou Ben Adhem and the Angel," and "A Night-Rain in Summer"
  • Thomas De Quincey (1785-1859) English essayist; Confessions of an English Opium-Eater; "On the Knocking at the Gate in Macbeth"; "On Murder Considered as one of the Fine Arts"; The English Mail-Coach; Autobiographical Sketches
  • Jacob Grimm (1785-1863) German folklorist; Kinder-und Hausmärchen (Children's and Household Tales, with brother Wilhelm); Deutsche Mythologie (Teutonic Mythology)
  • Alessandro Manzoni (1785-1873) Italian poet and novelist; I Promessi Sposi (The Betrothed)
  • Thomas Love Peacock (1785-1866) English novelist and poet; Nightmare Abbey; Maid Marian; Crotchet Castle; Headlong Hall; The Misfortunes of Elphin; satirical verse
  • John James Audubon (1785-1851) American naturalist and painter; Birds of America; journals
  • Wilhelm Grimm (1786-1859) German folklorist; Kinder-und Hausmärchen (Children's and Household Tales, with brother Jacob)
  • Francois Guizot (1787-1874) French historian, orator, and statesman prior to the Revolution of 1848; numerous works include A Popular History of France from the Earliest Times (6 Volumes); Memoirs
  • George Gordon, Lord Byron (1788-1824) English poet; Don Juan; Childe Harold's Pilgrimage; "She Walks in Beauty"
  • Arthur Schopenhauer (1788-1860) German philosopher; Die Welt als Wille und Vorstellung (The World as Will and Representation)
  • James Fenimore Cooper (1789-1851) American author; the five "Leatherstocking Tales," especially The Deerslayer; The Last of the Mohicans; and The Pathfinder
  • Michael Faraday (1791-1867) English scientist; The Chemical History of a Candle
  • Samuel F. B. Morse (1791-1872) American painter and inventor; his letters and journals
  • Percy Bysshe Shelley (1792-1822) English poet; "Ozymandias"; "Ode to the West Wind"; "To a Skylark"; Adonaïs; Prometheus Unbound; Hellas
  • Gong Zizhen (1792-1841) Chinese poet; Jihai Zashi (Miscellaneous Poems in the Year of Ji Hai)
  • Gioacchino Rossini (1792-1868) Italian composer; Il barbiere di Siviglia (The Barber of Seville); La Cenerentola (Cinderella); Guillaume Tell (William Tell); Otello (Othello)
  • Frederick Marryat (1792-1848) British novelist and naval officer; Mr. Midshipman Easy; The Children of the New Forest; The Phantom Ship
  • John Clare (1793-1864) English poet; Poems Descriptive of Rural Life and Scenery; The Village Minstrel, and Other Poems
  • William Cullen Bryant (1794-1878) American poet; "Thanatopsis"; "To a Waterfowl"
  • Wei Yuan (1794-1857) Chinese scholar; Haiguo Tuzhi (Illustrated Treatise on the Maritime Kingdoms)
  • Thomas Carlyle (1795-1881) Scottish philosopher; On Heroes, Hero-Worship, and The Heroic in History; The French Revolution: A History; Sartor Resartus
  • John Keats (1795-1821) English poet; the "Six Great Odes" ("Ode on a Grecian Urn," "Ode on Indolence," "Ode on Melancholy," "Ode to a Nightingale," "Ode to Psyche" and "To Autumn"); "The Eve of St. Agnes," "La Belle Dame sans Merci," "Hyperion," "Lamia," "On First Looking into Chapman's Homer"--where to stop?
  • William H. Prescott (1796-1859) American historian; Conquest of Mexico; Conquest of Peru
  • Heinrich Heine (1797-1856) German poet; Buch der Lieder (Book of Songs); Reisebilder (Travel Pictures); Deutschland: Ein Wintermärchen (Germany: A Winter's Tale); Atta Troll: Ein Sommernachtstraum (Atta Troll: A Midsummer Night's Dream); Romanzero (a collection)
  • Charles Lyell (1797-1875) English geologist; Principles of Geology; Elements of Geology; Antiquity of Man
  • Mary Shelley (1797-1851) English writer; Frankenstein; others
  • Gaetano Donizetti (1797-1848) Italian composer; Lucia di Lammermoor
  • Franz Schubert (1797-1828) Austrian composer; chamber music (Trout Quintet), lieder (songs), symphonies (Unfinished).
  • Eugene Delacroix (1798-1863) French painter; Massacre at Chios; Greece Expiring on the Ruins of Missolonghi; Liberty Leading the People
  • Sojourner Truth (Isabella "Bell" Baumfree) (c. 1797-1883) American activist; The Narrative of Sojourner Truth: A Northern Slave; purported speech "Ain't I a Woman?"
  • Thomas Hood (1799-1845) English poet; "The Bridge of Sighs"; "The Song of the Shirt"; The Plea of the Midsummer Fairies, Hero and Leander, Lycus the Centaur and Other Poems; National Tales
  • Alexander Pushkin (1799-1837) Russian poet, playwright, and novelist; Eugene Onegin; The Captain's Daughter; Boris Godunov; Ruslan and Ludmila
  • Honoré de Balzac (1799-1850) French novelist and playwright; La Comédie humaine (The Human Comedy)

--- The 1800s ---

Charles Darwin changed the game for rills



Read about the highlights of this era in my Blatherings!

  • Coyote stories (19th century, dated to early contacts) Native American trickster folk-tales
  • Shen Fu (early 19th century) Chinese writer; Fu Sheng Liu Ji (Six Records of a Floating Life)
  • Thomas Babington Macaulay (1800-1859) British historian; Lays of Ancient Rome; Critical and Historical Essays; History of England
  • Friedrich Wohler (1800-1882) German chemist who wrote Hand-book of mineral analysis; Wöhler's Outlines of Organic Chemistry
  • John Henry (Cardinal) Newman (1801-1890) British Catholic cardinal and theologian; Tracts for the Times; Apologia Pro Vita Sua; The Idea of a University
  • Alexandre Dumas (1802-1870) French writer; The Three Musketeers, The Count of Monte Cristo; The Man in the Iron Mask
  • Elias Lonnrot (1802-1884) Finnish folklorist who compiled Kalevala, the national epic of Finland, from national folk tales he had gathered; and Kanteletar, a collection of Finnish folk poetry
  • Victor Hugo (1802-1885) French writer; The Hunchback of Notre-Dame; Les Misérables
  • Hector Berlioz (1803-1869) French composer; Damnation of Faust; Symphonie Fantastique; Requiem
  • Ralph Waldo Emerson (1803-1882) American writer; Essays ("Nature"; "Self-Reliance"; "The Transcendentalist"; "The Over-Soul"; "The Amerian Scholar"; etc.); English Traits
  • George Sand (Amantine-Lucile-Aurore Dupin) (1804-1876) French novelist; La Mare au Diable; La Petite Fadette; A Winter in Majorca; Indiana; Mauprat; Consuelo
  • Nathaniel Hawthorne (1804-1864) American writer; The Scarlet Letter; The House of the Seven Gables; short stories ("The Minister's Black Veil"; "Young Goodman Brown"; "Rappaccini's Daughter"; "My Kinsman, Major Molineux"; etc.)
  • Charles Augustin Sainte-Beuve (1804-1869) French literary critic widely translated into English; "What Is a Classic?"; "Montaigne"
  • Alexis de Tocqueville (1805-1859) French historian; Democracy in America
  • Hans Christian Andersen (1805-1875) Danish children's author; "The Emperor's New Clothes"; "The Little Mermaid"; "The Nightingale"; "The Snow Queen"; "The Ugly Duckling"; "Thumbelina"; etc.
  • Elizabeth Barrett Browning (1806-1861) English poet; Sonnets from the Portuguese; Aurora Leigh
  • John Stuart Mill (1806-1873) English philosopher; Autobiography; On Liberty; Utilitarianism; The Subjection of Women
  • Josiah Gregg (1806-1850) American merchant, naturalist, and author; Commerce of the Prairies
  • Henry Wadsworth Longfellow (1807-1882) American poet; "Paul Revere's Ride"; The Song of Hiawatha; Evangeline
  • John Greenleaf Whittier (1807-1892) American Quaker poet and activist; poetry and activism against slavery; Old Portraits and Modern Sketches; poems Barbara Frietchie; Snow-Bound; anti-slavery writings
  • Abraham Lincoln (1809-1865) American politician and president; "House Divided" speech; "First Inaugural Address"; "The Gettysburg Address"; "Second Inaugural Address"
  • Alfred, Lord Tennyson (1809-1892) English poet; Idylls of the King; "Ulysses"; "Tithonus"; "The Charge of the Light Brigade"; "Crossing the Bar"; Poet Laureate of Great Britain and Ireland
  • Charles Darwin (1809-1882) English naturalist; The Voyage of the Beagle; The Origin of Species; The Descent of Man
  • Edgar Allan Poe (1809-1849) American poet and short story writer; short stories "The Cask of Amontillado"; "The Fall of the House of Usher"; "The Masque of the Red Death"; "The Murders in the Rue Morgue"; "The Pit and the Pendulum"; "The Purloined Letter"; "The Tell-Tale Heart"; poems "Annabel Lee"; "Eldorado"; "To Helen"; "The Raven"
  • Edward Fitzgerald (1809-1883) English poet; The Rubaiyat of Omar Khayyam
  • Felix Mendelssohn (1809-1847) German composer; A Midsummer Night's Dream; The Hebrides; Songs Without Words; violin concerto
  • Nikolai Gogol (1809-1852) Russian writer; novels Dead Souls; Taras Bulba; short stories "The Overcoat"; "Diary of a Madman"
  • Oliver Wendell Holmes, Sr. (1809-1894) American poet and author; The Autocrat of the Breakfast-Table
  • Frederic Chopin (1810-1849) Polish composer; mazurkas, waltzes, etudes, polonaises, sonatas; and perhaps especially, his nocturnes for piano
  • Alfred de Musset (1810-1857) French dramatist, poet, and novelist who wrote The Story of a White Blackbird and The Confession of a Child of the Century, as well as the play Lorenzaccio
  • P. T. Barnum (1810-1891) American showman; Life of P.T. Barnum; The Humbugs of the World; Struggles and Triumphs; The Art of Money-Getting
  • Robert Schumann (1810-1856) German composer; Carnaval; Symphonic Studies; Kinderszenen; Kreisleriana; the Fantasie in C
  • Franz Liszt (1811-1886) Hungarian composer; twenty Hungarian rhapsodies, sym­phonic poems
  • Harriet Beecher Stowe (1811-1896) American writer and activist; Uncle Tom's Cabin
  • Horace Greeley (1811-1872) American newspaperman; The American Conflict; Glances at Europe; numerous short pieces
  • Théophile Gautier (1811-1872) French writer; poetry (Émaux et Camées "Enamels and Cameos"), drama, novels (Mademoiselle de Maupin), etc.
  • William Makepeace Thackeray (1811-1863) English novelist; Catherine; The Luck of Barry Lyndon; Vanity Fair; Pendennis; The Newcomes; The History of Henry Esmond
  • Charles Dickens (1812-1870) English writer; The Pickwick Papers; Oliver Twist; A Christmas Carol; David Copperfield; Bleak House; Hard Times; Little Dorrit; A Tale of Two Cities; Great Expectations
  • Edward Lear (1812-1888) English artist and writer; A Book of Nonsense; "The Owl and the Pussycat"
  • Edward Shepherd Creasy (1812-1878) English historian; wrote Fifteen Decisive Battles of the World
  • Robert Browning (1812-1889) English poet; "Childe Roland to the Dark Tower Came"; Fra Lippo Lippi; "Andrea Del Sarto"; "My Last Duchess"; "The Pied Piper of Hamelin"
  • Claude Bernard (1813-1878) French physiologist; Introduction to the Study of Experimental Medicine
  • Giuseppe Verdi (1813-1901) Italian composer; Aida; Rigoletto; Don Carlo; Il Trovatore; La Traviata; Falstaff; Macbeth
  • Richard Wagner (1813-1883) German composer; Rienzi; Tannhauser; Lohengrin; Tristan und Isolde; Der Ring des Nibelungen
  • Soren Kierkegaard (1813-1855) Danish philosopher and theologian; Either/Or; Fear and Trembling; The Sickness Unto Death
  • Mikhail Bakunin (1814-1876) Russian anarchist; God and the State; Statism and Anarchy
  • Anthony Trollope (1815-1882) English novelist; the six novels of the Chronicles of Barsetshire; many more
  • Richard Henry Dana (1815-1882) American writer; Two Years before the Mast
  • Charlotte Bronte (1816-1855) English novelist; Jane Eyre
  • Henry David Thoreau (1817-1862) American writer; A Week on the Concord and Merrimack Rivers; Civil Disobedience; Walden; Walking
  • Theodor Storm (1817-1888) German writer whose most popular novellas were Immensee, The Rider on the White Horse, and Paul the Puppeteer
  • Emily Bronte (1818-1848) English novelist and poet; Wuthering Heights
  • Frederick Douglass (c. 1818-1895) American writer and activist; Narrative of the Life of Frederick Douglass, an American Slave; My Bondage and My Freedom; Life and Times of Frederick Douglass
  • Ivan Turgenev (1818-1883) Russian novelist, short story writer, and playwright; Fathers and Sons; short stories in A Sportsman's Sketches; play A Month in the Country
  • Karl Marx (1818-1883) German philosopher; The Communist Manifesto (with Friedrich Engels); Das Kapital
  • Arthur Hugh Clough (1819-1861) English poet; the short poems "Say Not the Struggle Naught Availeth"; "Through a Glass Darkly"; and "The Latest Decalogue"
  • Charles Kingsley (1819-1875) English cleric and professor; novels including Hypatia; Westward Ho!; The Water-Babies
  • George Eliot (Mary Ann Evans) (1819-1880) English novelist; Adam Bede; The Mill on the Floss; Silas Marner; Middlemarch; and Daniel Deronda
  • Jacques Offenbach (1819-1880) French composer; Les Contes d'Hoffmann; (The Tales of Hoffmann)
  • Susan Warner (1819-1885) American writer; The Wide, Wide World; What She Could
  • Gottfried Keller (1819-1890) Swiss poet and novelist who wrote (in German) Green Henry and The Banner of the Upright Seven
  • Herman Melville (1819-1891) American novelist, short story writer, and poet; Typee; Moby Dick; Billy Budd; "Bartleby, the Scrivener"
  • James Russell Lowell (1819-1891) American poet, critic, and editor; A Fable for Critics; The Biglow Papers
  • Walt Whitman (1819-1892) American poet and writer; Leaves of Grass
  • Theodor Fontane (1819-1898) German novelist and poet best remembered for his novels Trials and Tribulations, Frau Jenny Treibel, and Effi Briest
  • John Ruskin (1819-1900) English art critic; Modern Painters; The Stones of Venice; Fors Clavigera
  • Louise Smith Clapp (1819-1906) American author; The Shirley Letters
  • Anna Sewell (1820-1878) English author of children's literature; Black Beauty
  • Friedrich Engels (1820-1895) German philosopher; The Communist Manifesto (with Karl Marx); The Condition of the Working Class in England
  • John Tyndall (1820-1893) Irish scientist; Heat: a Mode of Motion
  • William L. Manly (1820-1903) American pioneer; Death Valley in '49
  • Charles Baudelaire (1821-1867) French poet, essayist, and critic; poems Les Fleurs du Mal (The Flowers of Evil)
  • J. Ross Browne (1821-1875) Irish-born American traveler, artist, writer and government agent who wrote Adventures in the Apache Country
  • Fyodor Dostoyevsky (1821-1881) Russian novelist, short story writer, essayist, journalist and philosopher; Poor Folk; Crime and Punishment; The Idiot; Demons; The Brothers Karamazov; Notes from Underground
  • Gustave Flaubert (1821-1880) French novelist; novel Madame Bovary; stories "A Simple Heart," "Saint Julian the Hospitalier," and "Hérodias"
  • Hermann von Helmholtz (1821-1894) German scientist; several branches of science, as well as philosophy of science; On the Conservation of Force
  • Richard Francis Burton (1821-1890) British explorer and writer; translations of One Thousand and One Nights and The Kama Sutra; Personal Narrative of a Pilgrimage to Al Madinah and Meccah; and the pseudotranslation The Kasidah
  • Wen Kang (Yanbei Xianren) (flourished 1821-1850) Chinese novelist; Ernu Yingxiong Zhuan (The Story of Hero Boys and Hero Girls; also called Thirteenth Sister)
  • Edward Everett Hale (1822-1909) American author and cleric; Illustrious Americans (co-author); "The Man without a Country"; Boys' Heroes
  • Francis Galton (1822-1911) English polymath; "The Classification of Human Ability" from Hereditary Genius
  • Gregor Mendel (1822-1884) Austrian-Czech monk and scientist; "Experiments on Plant Hybridization"
  • Louis Pasteur (1822-1895) French scientist; Germ Theory and Its Applications to Medicine; other scientific papers; showed that germs cause disease and fermentation, originated pasteurization.
  • Matthew Arnold (1822-1888) English poet and critic; "Dover Beach"; "The Scholar-Gipsy"; "Thyrsis"; Culture and Anarchy; Literature and Dogma
  • Thomas Hughes (1822-1896) English author; Tom Brown's School Days
  • Ernest Renan (1823-1892) French philosopher and historian who wrote a ground-breaking Life of Jesus and other rationalist works on early Christianity
  • Francis Parkman (1823-1893) American historian; The Oregon Trail: Sketches of Prairie and Rocky-Mountain Life; France and England in North America
  • Coventry Patmore (1823-1896) English poet and critic who wrote The Unknown Eros and The Angel in the House
  • Jean-Henri Fabre (1823-1915) French scientist; works on insects, especially for younger readers
  • Wilkie Collins (1824-1889) English novelist, playwright, and short story writer; The Woman in White; No Name; Armadale; The Moonstone
  • George MacDonald (1824-1905) Scottish writer and cleric; Lilith; Phantastes; David Elginbrod; The Princess and the Goblin; At the Back of the North Wind
  • Juan Valera (1824-1905) Spanish author known for Pepita Jimenez
  • Johann Strauss the Younger (1825-1899) Austrian composer; Gypsy Baron; Die Fledermaus; waltzes: "Blue Danube"; "Tales from the Vienna Woods"
  • Thomas Henry Huxley (1825-1895) English biologist; Autobiography and Selected Essays; Man's Place in Nature, and Other Essays; Science and Culture, and Other Essays; On the Relations of Man to the Lower Animals; Evolution and Ethics, and Other Essays
  • Joseph Lister (1827-1912) British surgeon; On the Antiseptic Principle of the Practice of Surgery; Autobiography
  • Susan Shelby Magoffin (1827-1855) American traveler and diarist; Down the Santa Fe Trail and Into Mexico
  • Dante Gabriel Rossetti (1828-1882) English poet and painter; The Blessed Damozel; The House of Life
  • Henrik Ibsen (1828-1906) Norwegian playwright and poet; Peer Gynt; An Enemy of the People; A Doll's House; Hedda Gabler; Ghosts; The Wild Duck; The Master Builder
  • Jules Verne (1828-1905) French novelist, poet, and playwright; Journey to the Center of the Earth; Twenty Thousand Leagues Under the Sea; Around the World in Eighty Days
  • Leo Tolstoy (1828-1910) Russian novelist, short story writer, playwright, essayist; War and Peace; Anna Karenina; A Confession; The Death of Ivan Ilyich; short stories
  • William H. Brewer (1828-1910) American botanist; Up and Down California in 1860-64, the travel account of a collecting journey
  • Lewis H. Garrard (1829-1887) American adventurer who wrote Wah-to-yah and the Taos Trail
  • Albert Bierstadt (1830-1902) German-American painter; large landscapes like The Rocky Mountains; Among the Sierra Nevada, California; Mount Corcoran
  • Camille Pissarro (1830-1903) Danish-French painter; Boulevard Montmartre cityscape series; Boulevard des Italians, Morning, Sunlight; Bather in the Woods
  • Christina Rossetti (1830-1894) English poet; Goblin Market; Remember
  • Emily Dickinson (1830-1886) American poet; short pieces numbering close to 1800; "There is no frigate like a book"; "Because I could not stop for death"; "I taste a liquor never brewed"; "I'm Nobody! Who are you?"; "I like to see it lap the Miles"; etc.
  • Helen Hunt Jackson (1830-1885) American writer and activist; Ramona; A Century of Dishonor
  • Frédéric Mistral (1830-1914) French writer and lexicographer of the Occitan language. Epic Prvencal poem Mirèio (Mireille). Nobel Prize in Literature (1904).
  • Horace Bell (1830-1918) American author and lawman; Reminiscences of a Ranger
  • Edouard Manet (1832-1883) French painter; Luncheon on the Grass; Olympia; A Bar at the Folies-Bergère; Young Flautist or The Fifer
  • Louisa May Alcott (1832-1888) American novelist and poet; Little Women; Little Men; Jo's Boys
  • Lewis Carroll (Charles Lutwidge Dodgson) (1832-1898) English writer and mathematician; Alice's Adventures in Wonderland; Through the Looking-Glass; The Hunting of the Snark; "Jabberwocky"
  • Björnstjerne Björnson (1832-1910) Norwegian writer and Nobel winner (1903) known for his "peasant tales" such as A Happy Boy; with Ibsen, Lie, and Kielland, one of Norway's "Four Greats."
  • Alexander Borodin (1833-1887) Russian composer; symphonies; Polovtzian Dances; In the Steppes of Central Asia; opera Prince Igor
  • Johannes Brahms (1833-1897) German composer; The "Lullaby"; Academic Festival Overture; The Tragic Overture; A German Requiem; Variations and Fugue on a Theme by Handel; The Paganini Variations; Variations on a Theme by Haydn
  • Jonas Lie (1833-1908) Norwegian novelist, poet, and playwright who wrote The Family at Gilje and One of Life’s Slaves; with Ibsen, Bjørnson, and Kielland, one of Norway's "Four Greats."
  • Artemus Ward (Charles Farrar Browne) (1834-1867) American humorist; numerous short humorous pieces
  • Charles Haddon Spurgeon (1834-1892) British baptist preacher; The Wordless Book
  • Dmitri Mendeleev (1834-1907) Russian chemist; The Principles of Chemistry; An Attempt Towards a Chemical Conception of the Ether; Mendeleev on the Periodic Law: Selected Writing
  • Edgar Degas (1834-1917) French artist; The Ballet Class; The Bellelli Family; Woman with Chrysanthemums; Chanteuse de Café; At the Milliner's
  • Harris Newmark (1834-1916) Prussian-American businessman and historian; Sixty Years in Southern California: 1853-1913
  • James Abbott McNeill Whistler (1834-1903) American artist; Arrangement in Grey and Black, No. I: The Artist's Mother (known as "Whistler's Mother")
  • John Wesley Powell (1834-1902) American explorer who wrote The Exploration of the Colorado River and Its Canyons
  • William Morris (1834-1896) English poet and novelist; News from Nowhere; The Well at the World's End; The Story of the Volsungs and Niblungs
  • Camille Saint-Saens (1835-1921) French composer; The Carnival of Animals; Danse Macabre; Samson and Delilah
  • Mark Twain (Samuel Clemens) (1835-1910) American author; novels Huckleberry Finn and Tom Sawyer, as well as short stories like "The Man Who Corrupted Hadleyberg" and "The Jumping Frog of Calaveras County"
  • Samuel Butler (1835-1902) English author; Erewhon; The Way of All Flesh
  • Fitz Hugh Ludlow (1836-1870) American author, journalist, and explorer best known for his autobiographical book The Hasheesh Eater
  • Ramakrishna (Gadadhar Chatterji) (1836-1886) Indian mystic and yogi; The Gospel of Sri Ramakrishna
  • Bret Harte (1836-1902) American writer; American writer of short stories ("The Outcasts of Poker Flat," "The Luck of Roaring Camp") and poetry
  • Winslow Homer (1836-1910) American painter; A Visit from the Old Mistress; Breezing Up; Eight Bells; The Gulf Stream; The Fox Hunt; Right and Left; Marine Coast; High Cliff
  • W. S. Gilbert (1836-1911) English dramatist and poet; with Arthur Sullivan, The Mikado; H.M.S. Pinafore; The Pirates of Penzance
  • Joaquin Miller (1837-1913) American poet; Songs of the Sierras
  • William Dean Howells (1837-1920) American novelist, short story writer, playwright, and critic; short story "Christmas Every Day"; novels The Rise of Silas Lapham and A Traveler from Altruria
  • Algernon Charles Swinburne (1837-1909) English poet, playwright, novelist, and critic; Poems and Ballads
  • Georges Bizet (1838-1875) French composer; Carmen; Pearl Fishers
  • John Muir (1838-1914) Scottish-American naturalist and writer; The Mountains of California; Our National Parks; My First Summer in the Sierra; The Yosemite
  • Henry Adams (1838-1918) American historian descended from two U.S. Presidents; The Education of Henry Adams; The History of the United States of America 1801–1817; "Mont Saint-Michel and Chartres"; Pulitzer Prize (1919)
  • Walter Pater (1839-1894) English essayist, critic, and novelist; The Renaissance; Marius the Epicurean
  • Modest Moussorgsky (1839-1881) Russian composer; Boris Godunov; Night on Bald Mountain; Pictures at an Exhibition
  • Paul Cezanne (1839-1906) French painter; Mont Sainte-Victoire seen from Bellevue; Apothéose de Delacroix; Rideau, Cruchon et Compotier; The Card Players; The Bathers
  • Sully Prudhomme (1839-1907) French poet and essayist. "The Broken vase" is representative; he was the first winner of the Nobel Prize in Literature (1901).
  • Charles Sanders Peirce (1839-1914) American philosopher; academic papers on logic, mathematics, philosophy, scientific methodology, and semiotics
  • Peter Ilyich Tchaikovsky (1840-1893) Russian composer; Swan Lake; Eugene Onegin; Marche Slave; Capriccio Italien in A; 1812 Overture; The Sleeping Beauty; The Nutcracker
  • Alphonse Daudet (1840-1897) French novelist, short story writer, playwright, and poet best known for short stories, including those in Letters From My Windmill; the boffo novel Fromont Junior and Risler Senior; and the Tarscon novels, including Tartarin of Tarascon
  • Emile Zola (1840-1902) French novelist, playwright, and journalist; the twenty novels of the cycle called Les Rougon-Macquart; Therese Raquin
  • Chief Joseph (1840-1904) Native American leader of the last faction of Nez Perce Indians to live outside of a reservation; his spoken words and writings (like Chief Joseph's Own Story) have led him to be seen as a humanitarian and a peacemaker.
  • Auguste Rodin (1840-1917) French sculptor; The Age of Bronze; The Walking Man; The Burghers of Calais; The Kiss; The Thinker
  • Claude Monet (1840-1926) French painter; Impression, Sunrise; Rouen Cathedral series; London Parliament series; Water Lilies; Poplars; The Bridge at Argenteull; Haystacks
  • Thomas Hardy (1840-1928) English novelist and poet; Tess of the d'Urbervilles; Far from the Madding Crowd; Collected Poems; Jude the Obscure
  • Antonin Dvorak (1841-1904) Czech composer; Songs My Mother Taught Me; The New World Symphony; Slavonic Dance No. 2
  • Ina Donna Coolbrith (1841-1928) American poet and writer; "The Mother's Grief"; "When the Grass Shall Cover Me"; "Copa De Oro (California Poppy)"
  • Auguste Renoir (1841-1919) French painter; The Luncheon of the Boating Party; Dance in the Country
  • Clarence King (1842-1901) American geologist and author; Mountaineering in the Sierra Nevada
  • Stéphane Mallarmé (1842-1898) French poet; "L'après-midi d'un faune" ("The Afternoon of a Faun"); "Un Coup de Dés Jamais N'Abolira Le Hasard" ("A Throw of the Dice will Never Abolish Chance"); Poésies
  • William James (1842-1910) American philosopher and psychologist; The Principles of Psychology; The Varieties of Religious Experience
  • Ambrose Bierce (1842-c. 1914?) American journalist, short story writer, and satirist; "Chickamauga"; "An Occurrence at Owl Creek Bridge"; "The Death of Halpin Frayser"; "The Moonlit Road"; In the Midst of Life; The Devil's Dictionary
  • Arthur Sullivan (1842-1900) English composer; with W. S. Gilbert H.M.S. Pinafore; Pirates of Penzance; The Mikado.
  • Charles Warren Stoddard (1843-1909) American author and editor; South-Sea Idyls; Over the Rocky Mountains to Alaska; In the Footprints of the Padres; Summer Cruising in the South Seas
  • Edvard Grieg (1843-1907) Norwegian composer; the Peer Gynt Suite
  • Henry James (1843-1916) American-born British writer; The American; The Turn of the Screw; The Portrait of a Lady; What Maisie Knew; The Wings of the Dove; Daisy Miller; The Ambassadors; Washington Square
  • Friedrich Wilhelm Nietzsche (1844-1900) German philosopher; The Birth of Tragedy; Thus Spoke Zarathustra; Beyond Good and Evil; On the Genealogy of Morality
  • Gerard Manley Hopkins (1844-1889) English poet; "Binsey Poplars"; "Pied Beauty"; "The Windhover"; The Wreck of the Deutschland
  • Henri Rousseau (1844-1910) French painter; Post-Impressionist painting, especially primitive-looking jungley ones
  • Nikolai Rimsky-Korsakov (1844-1908) Russian composer; Capriccio Espagnol; Scheherazade; "Flight of the Bumblebee."
  • Paul Verlaine (1844-1896) French poet; Poèmes saturniens; Sagesse; Les poètes maudits
  • Andrew Lang (1844-1912) Scottish poet, novelist, and folklorist; best-known for the "Fairy Book" series starting with The Blue Fairy Book
  • Anatole France (1844-1924) French poet, journalist, and novelist; Thaïs; At the Sign of the Reine Pédauque; Penguin Island; The Gods Are Athirst; The Revolt of the Angels; Nobel Prize in Literature (1921)
  • Martha Summerhayes (1844-1926) American travel memoirist and "army wife" who brought her Massachusetts sensibilities to Vanished Arizona, her observations of life in that territory, where she and her husband lived off and on from 1874 to 1900.
  • Mary Cassatt (1844-1926) American painter; The Boating Party; Two Women Throwing Flowers During Carnival; Spanish Dancer Wearing a Lace Mantilla; Little Girl in a Blue Armchair; The Child's Bath
  • Gabriel Faure (1845-1924) French composer; Pavane; Requiem; songs "Après un rêve," "Clair de lune"
  • William Clifford (1845-1879) English mathematician and philosopher; "The Ethics of Belief"; Seeing and Thinking; The Common Sense of the Exact Sciences
  • Alexander Graham Bell (1847-1922) Scottish-born American scientist; scientific papers, and especially his Notebooks
  • Bram Stoker (1847-1912) Irish author; Dracula
  • Thomas A. Edison (1847-1931) American scientist; his Diary and published Papers
  • Joel Chandler Harris (1848-1908) American journalist and folklorist; the Uncle Remus series
  • Paul Gauguin (1848-1903) French painter; Where Do We Come From? What Are We? Where Are We Going?; The Yellow Christ; Vision After the Sermon; Spirit of the Dead Watching; Two Tahitian Women
  • Emma Lazarus (1849-1887) American poet; "The New Colossus"
  • Alexander Kielland (1849-1906) Norwegian writer of short stories, plays, essays, novels, including Skipper Worse; with Ibsen, Lie, and Bjørnson, one of Norway's "Four Greats."
  • Sarah Orne Jewett (1849-1909) American writer; works set in Maine, especially The Country of the Pointed Firs
  • August Strindberg (1849-1912) Swedish playwright, novelist, poet, essayist, and painter; The Red Room; The Father; Miss Julie; Inferno; To Damascus; A Dream Play; The Ghost Sonata; The Creditors
  • Frances Hodgson Burnett (1849-1924) English-American novelist and playwright; Little Lord Fauntleroy; A Little Princess; The Secret Garden
  • George Bird Grinnell (1849-1938) American anthropologist, historian, naturalist, and writer; The Cheyenne Indians: Their History and Lifeways; Pawnee Hero Stories; Blackfoot Lodge Tales; founded the first Audubon Society in America, and co-founded the New York Zoological Society
  • Ivan Pavlov (1849-1936) Russian physiologist who wrote Conditioned Reflexes; Psychopathology and Psychiatry; Nobel Prize in Physiology or Medicine (1904)
  • Lafcadio Hearn (1850-1904) International writer; In Japan: Kwaidan; Glimpses of Unfamiliar Japan; Kokoro; Gleanings in Buddha-Fields; In Ghostly Japan; New Orleans work includes: Gombo Zhèbes: Little Dictionary of Creole Proverbs; La Cuisine Créole; Chita: A Memory of Last Island
  • Guy de Maupassant (1850-1893) French short story writer, novelist, and poet; "Boule de Suif"; "The Necklace"; "The Piece of String"; "Two Friends"
  • Kate Chopin (Katherine O'Flaherty) (1850-1904) American novelist and short story writer; The Awakening; "The Kiss"
  • Robert Louis Stevenson (1850-1894) Scottish novelist, poet, essayist, and travel writer; Treasure Island; A Child's Garden of Verses; Kidnapped; Strange Case of Dr Jekyll and Mr Hyde
  • Zephyrin Engelhardt (1851-1934) German-American Catholic Franciscan priest; The Missions and Missionaries of California
  • Howard Pyle (1853-1911) American author; The Merry Adventures of Robin Hood; The Story of King Arthur and His Knights; The Story of the Champions of the Round Table; etc.
  • Vincent van Gogh (1853-1890) Dutch painter; The Starry Night; L'Arlesienne; Bedroom at Aries; Self-Portrait
  • James George Frazer (1854-1941) Scottish anthropologist; mythology and comparative religion, especially The Golden Bough
  • Arthur Rimbaud (1854-1891) French poet; Lettres du voyant (Letters of the Seer); "Le bateau ivre" ("The Drunken Boat"); Une Saison en Enfer (A Season in Hell); Soleil et chair (Sun and Flesh)
  • Henri Poincaré (1854-1912) French mathematician and philosopher of science; Science and Hypothesis; The Value of Science; Science and Method; "The Future of Mathematics"
  • John Philip Sousa (1854-1932) American composer; "The Stars and Stripes Forever"; "Semper Fidelis"; "The Liberty Bell"; "The Thunderer"; "The Washington Post"
  • Oscar Wilde (1854-1900) Irish playwright, novelist, essayist, and poet; The Picture of Dorian Gray; Salome; The Importance of Being Earnest; The Ballad of Reading Gaol; "The Happy Prince"; "The Nightingale and the Rose"; "The Selfish Giant"
  • H. Rider Haggard (1856-1925) English adventure novelist; King Solomon's Mines; the Allan Quatermain Series; She
  • Booker T. Washington (1856-1915) American educator and author; The Story of My Life and Work; Up From Slavery
  • L. Frank Baum (1856-1919) American children's author; the Wizard of Oz series
  • John C. Van Dyke (1856-1932) American art historian and critic who wrote not only on art, but on his time in the West in The Desert. Also a posthumous Autobiography.
  • Sigmund Freud (1856-1939) Austrian neurologist; and the founder of psychoanalysis known for The Interpretation of Dreams; Five Lectures on Psycho-Analysis; Totem and Taboo; Beyond the Pleasure Principle; The Ego and the Id; The Future of an Illusion; Civilization and Its Discontents; Moses and Monotheism; Why War?
  • George Bernard Shaw (1856-1950) Irish playwright and critic; Arms and the Man; Candida; The Devil's Disciple; Caesar and Cleopatra; Man and Superman; Major Barbara; Androcles and the Lion; Pygmalion; Heartbreak House; Back to Methuselah; Saint Joan; Nobel Prize in Literature (1925); Academy Award
  • Gertrude Atherton (1857-1948) American author; Black Oxen; The Splendid Idle Forties
  • Joseph Conrad (1857-1924) Polish-British novelist; The Nigger of the "Narcissus"; Heart of Darkness; Lord Jim; Typhoon; Nostromo; The Secret Agent; Under Western Eyes
  • Liu E (1857-1909) Chinese novelist; Lao Can Youji (The Travels of Lao Can)
  • Ruggero Leoncavallo (1857-1919) Italian composer; Pagliacci
  • Thorstein Veblen (1857-1929) Norwegian-American economist and sociologist; The Theory of the Leisure Class
  • E. Nesbit (1858-1924) English author of children's literature and poet; the Bastable series; The Railway Children; over a dozen more children's books, as well as stories and adult novels
  • Theodore Roosevelt (1858-1919) American president and writer; The Naval War of 1812; The Rough Riders; The Winning of the West
  • Walter Nordhoff (1858-1937) American businessman and author; wrote The Journey of the Flame under a pen name
  • Franz Boas (1858-1942) German-American anthropologist; The Mind of Primitive Man; Folk-tales of Salishan and Sahaptin Tribes
  • Andrew Russell Forsyth (1858-1942) British mathematician known for lecture "Mathematics, in Life and Thought"; mammoth six-volume Theory of Differential Equations, among many other sleep-inducing tomes
  • George Wharton James (1858-1923) Anglo-American author; The Wonders of the Colorado Desert; Through Ramona's Country; In and Out of the Old Missions of California; The Lake of the Sky
  • Giacomo Puccini (1858-1924) Italian composer; La Boheme; Manon Lescaut; Tosca; Madama Butterfly; Turandot
  • Max Planck (1858-1947) German physicist; Eight Lectures on Theoretical Physics; Where Is Science Going?; Scientific Autobiography and other papers; The Origin and Development of the Quantum Theory; Nobel Prize in Physics in 1918
  • A. E. Housman (1859-1936) English poet and scholar; A Shropshire Lad
  • Francis Thompson (1859-1907) English poet; "The Hound of Heaven"
  • Henri Bergson (1859-1941) French philosopher; Time and Free Will; Laughter; Dreams; Nobel Prize in Literature (1927)
  • Arthur Conan Doyle (1859-1930) Scottish writer; creator of Sherlock Holmes and Professor Challenger
  • Charles Fletcher Lummis (1859-1928) American journalist, historian, ethnographer, archaeologist, poet, librarian, and museum founder; Land of Sunshine (magazine, later called Out West); Some Strange Corners of Our Country; The Spanish Pioneers and the California Missions; Flowers Of Our Lost Romance; A Tramp Across the Continent; The Land of Poco Tiempo
  • Georges Seurat (1859-1891) French painter; Sunday Afternoon on the Island of La Grande Jatte; Bathers at Asnières; Jeune femme se poudrant
  • John Dewey (1859-1952) American philosopher, psychologist, and educator; Democracy and Education; The Public and its Problems; Art as Experience; Freedom and Culture; Knowing and the Known
  • Kenneth Grahame (1859-1932) British writer; The Wind in the Willows; The Reluctant Dragon
  • Sholem Aleichem (Solomon Naumovich Rabinovich) (1859-1916) Russian/Ukrainian author and playwright; stories of Tevye the Dairyman: Tevye's Daughter; Adventures of Mottel; The Old Country
  • J. M. Barrie (1860-1937) Scottish novelist and playwright; Peter Pan; The Little White Bird; plays The Admirable Crichton; What Every Woman Knows;
  • Jane Addams (1860-1935) American social activist; known for women's rights and suffrage, and for winning the 1931 Nobel Peace Prize. Addams wrote ote Twenty Years at Hull-House; The Second Twenty Years at Hull-House; A New Conscience and an Ancient Evil; The Spirit of Youth and the City Streets; Democracy and Social Ethics.
  • Anton Chekhov (1860-1904) Russian playwright and short story writer,; Uncle Vanya; The Cherry Orchard; Three Sisters; "The Darling"
  • Gustav Mahler (1860-1911) Austrian composer; Das Lied von der Erde; nine complete symphonies.
  • Italo Svevo (1861-1928) Italian novelist, playwright, and short story writer who wrote The Confession of Zeno and As a Man Grows Older
  • Frederick Jackson Turner (1861-1932) American historian; The Frontier in American History
  • J. B. Bury (1861-1927) Irish historian; mainly histories of the Classical period
  • Alfred North Whitehead (1861-1947) British mathematician and philosopher; A Treatise on Universal Algebra; Principia Mathematica; An Introduction to Mathematics; Science and the Modern World; Process and Reality
  • Jose Rizal (1861-1896) Filipino activist and polymath; Noli Me Tángere; El Filibusterismo; "Mi último adios"
  • Rabindranath Tagore (1861-1941) Indian (Bengali) polymath; Sadhana; The Realization of Life; Gitanjali; Gora; Ghare-Baire; Rabindra Sangeet; Nobel Prize in Literature (1913)
  • Inazo Nitobe (1862-1933) Japanese author and educator; Bushido: The Soul of Japan
  • O. Henry (W. S. Porter) (1862-1910) American short story writer; surprise endings, among the best-known "The Gift of the Magi"; "The Ransom of Red Chief"; "The Cop and the Anthem"; "A Retrieved Reformation"; "The Duplicity of Hargraves"; "The Caballero's Way"
  • Claude Debussy (1862-1918) French composer; Pelleas et Melisande; La Mer; Prelude to the Afternoon of a Faun
  • Edith Wharton (1862-1937) American novelist and short story writer; The House of Mirth; Ethan Frome; The Age of Innocence; Pulitzer Prize for Fiction (1920)
  • Mori Ogai (1862-1922) Japanese novelist and poet; Gan (Wild Geese); Wita sekusuarisu (Vita Sexualis); "Takasebune" ("The Boat on the Takase River"); "Maihime" ("The Dancing Girl")
  • C. P. Cavafy (1863-1933) Egyptian Greek poet and journalist best known for Ithaca
  • Black Elk (1863-1950) Native American elder and writer; Black Elk Speaks (with John Neihardt)
  • George Santayana (1863-1952) Spanish-American philosopher, essayist, poet, and novelist; The Sense of Beauty; The Life of Reason; Scepticism and Animal Faith; The Realms of Being; The Last Puritan
  • Edvard Munch (1863-1944) Norwegian painter; The Scream; Madonna; The Sick Child
  • Henri de Toulouse-Lautrec (1864-1901) French painter; painter of Paris night-life in the late 19th century, such as At the Moulin Rouge
  • Richard Strauss (1864-1949) German composer; operas Der Rosenkavalier, Elektra, and Salome; tone poems Don Juan, Till Eulenspiegel's Merry Pranks, and Also Sprach Zarathustra
  • Futabatei Shimei (Hasegawa Tatsunosuke) (1864-1909) Japanese author and critic; Ukigumo (Drifting Clouds)
  • George Washington Carver (1864-1943) American botanist and inventor; practical bulletins on growing and using peanuts and sweet potatoes; a brief autobiographical sketch
  • J. Smeaton Chase (1864-1923) English-born American author; California Coast Trails; California Desert Trails; The Penance of Magdalena: And Other Tales of the California Missions
  • Max Weber (1864-1920) German sociologist and philosopher; The Protestant Ethic and the Spirit of Capitalism; The Religion of China: Confucianism and Taoism; The Religion of India: The Sociology of Hinduism and Buddhism; Ancient Judaism; Economy and Society
  • Paul Dukas (1865-1935) French composer who wrote L'Apprenti Sorcier (The Sorcerer's Apprentice)
  • Rudyard Kipling (1865-1936) English journalist, short-story writer, poet, and novelist; The Jungle Book; Just So Stories; Kim; Captains Courageous; "If—"; "Gunga Din"; "The White Man's Burden"; Nobel Prize in Literature (1907)
  • William Butler Yeats (1865-1939) Irish poet; tapped into Irish traditions and spiritual explorations; best-known for "The Second Coming"; Nobel Prize in Literature (1923)
  • G. I. Gurdjieff (c. 1866-1949) Armenian philosopher and mystic; Meetings with Remarkable Men
  • H. G. Wells (1866-1946) English novelist; The Time Machine; The Invisible Man; The War of the Worlds; The Island of Doctor Moreau
  • Lincoln Steffens (1866-1936) American writer; The Shame of the Cities; Boy on Horseback (part of his Autobiography)
  • Beatrix Potter (1866-1943) English natural scientist and children's author; The Tale of Peter Rabbit and others
  • Romain Rolland (1866-1944) French playwright, novelist, essayist, art historian and mystic; Jean-Christophe (10 volumes); Colas Breugnon; Clérambault; Pierre et Luce; L'âme enchantée (7 volumes); biographical essays including those of Ramakrishna and Vivekananda; Nobel Prize in Literature (1915)
  • Harry Leon Wilson (1867-1939) American novelist; Merton of the Movies; Ruggles of Red Gap
  • Masaoka Shiki (1867-1902) Japanese poet; Take no Sato Uta (Songs from a Bamboo Village) (one of the "Four Great Haiku Masters")
  • Natsume Soseki (1867-1916) Japanese novelist; Kokoro; Botchan; I Am a Cat
  • Scott Joplin (c. 1867-1917) American ragtime composer, "Maple Leaf Rag"; "The Entertainer"; opera Treemonisha.
  • Frank Lloyd Wright (1867-1959) American architect; Fallingwater; Solomon R. Guggenheim Museum; Taliesin; Taliesin West; Ennis House
  • John Galsworthy (1867-1933) English novelist and playwright; The Forsyte Saga; A Modern Comedy; End of the Chapter; Nobel Prize in Literature (1932)
  • Koda Rohan (Koda Shigeyuki) (1867-1947) Japanese author; "Encounter with a Skull"; "The Icon of Liberty"; The Five-Storied Pagoda
  • Laura Ingalls Wilder (1867-1957) American author; Little House on the Prairie and its sequels
  • Luigi Pirandello (1867-1936) Italian dramatist, novelist, poet and short story writer; The Late Mattia Pascal; Six Characters in Search of an Author; Henry IV; One, No One and One Hundred Thousand; Nobel Prize in Literature (1934)
  • Marie Curie (1867-1934) Polish-French scientist; The Discovery of Radium; Pierre Curie
  • Edmond Rostand (1868-1918) French poet and dramatist; Cyrano de Bergerac
  • Maxim Gorky (1868-1936) Russian novelist, dramatist, short story writer, and poet; short story Twenty-six Men and a Girl; poem "The Song of the Stormy Petrel"; novel The Mother; plays The Lower Depths, Summerfolk and Children of the Sun
  • W. E. B. DuBois (1868-1963) American author; co-founder of the National Association for the Advancement of Colored People (NAACP); wrote The Souls of Black Folk
  • Edgar Lee Masters (1868-1950) American poet, biographer, and dramatist; Spoon River Anthology and others
  • Mary Hunter Austin (1868-1934) American writer; The Land of Little Rain; The Land of Journeys' Ending
  • Booth Tarkington (1869-1946) American novelist and dramatist; The Magnificent Ambersons; Alice Adams; Seventeen
  • Edwin Arlington Robinson (1869-1935) American poet; three Pulitzer Prizes for Poetry: Collected Poems (1922); The Man Who Died Twice (1925); Tristram (1928)
  • Eugene Manlove Rhodes (1869-1934) American writer; Paso por Aqui
  • Rudolf Otto (1869-1937) German theologian; The Idea of the Holy
  • William Strunk (1869-1946) American educator and author; original author of The Elements of Style
  • André Gide (1869-1951) French author; L'immoraliste (The Immoralist); La porte étroite (Strait Is the Gate); Les caves du Vatican (The Vatican Cellars); La Symphonie Pastorale (The Pastoral Symphony); Les faux-monnayeurs (The Counterfeiters); Nobel Prize in Literature (1947)
  • Henri Matisse (1869-1954) French artist; Woman with a Hat; Nu bleu; La Danse
  • Mohandas Gandhi (1869-1948) Indian activist and philosopher; Autobiography, or the Story of My Experiments with Truth
  • Herbert E. Bolton (1870-1953) American historian; Anza's California Expeditions
  • Frank Norris (Benjamin Franklin Norris) (1870-1902) American novelist; McTeague; The Octopus: A Story of California; The Pit
  • Franz Lehar (1870-1948) Austro-Hungarian composer; Die lustige Witwe (The Merry Widow), many more
  • Hilaire Belloc (1870-1953) Anglo-French poet, writer, and historian; Cautionary Tales for Children; The Servile State; Europe and Faith; The Jews
  • Ivan Bunin (1870-1953) Russian writer; The Village; The Life of Arseniev; Cursed Days; Nobel Prize in Literature (1933)
  • Saki or H(ector) H(ugh) Munro (1870-1916) British short story writer; also playwright, and novelist; "The Storyteller"; "The Open Window"; "The East Wing"; The Westminster Alice; The Chronicles of Clovis
  • Vladimir Lenin (Vladimir Ilyich Ulyanov) (1870-1924) Russian revolutionary and political theorist; State and Revolution; Imperialism
  • John Millington Synge (1871-1909) Irish playwright, poet, prose writer, travel writer, and folklorist; play The Playboy of the Western World
  • Marcel Proust (1871-1922) French novelist, critic, and essayist; best-known for À la recherche du temps perdu (In Search of Lost Time or Remembrance of Things Past)
  • Paul Valéry (1871-1945) French poet, essayist, and philosopher; La Jeune Parque (The Young Fate); "Le Cimetière marin" ("The Cemetery by the Sea"); "L'Ébauche d'un serpent" ("Silhouette of a Serpent")
  • Theodore Dreiser (1871-1945) American novelist; An American Tragedy, Sister Carrie
  • Stephen Crane (1871-1900) American poet, novelist, and short story writer; The Red Badge of Courage; Maggie: A Girl of the Streets; "The Open Boat"; "The Blue Hotel"; "The Bride Comes to Yellow Sky"; The Monster
  • Higuchi Ichiyo (Higuchi Natsuko) (1872-1896) Japanese short story writer; "Takekurabe" ("Comparing Heights"); "Jūsan'ya" ("The Thirteenth Night"); "Ōtsugomori" ("On the Last Day of the Year"); "Nigorie" ("Troubled Waters"); "Wakare-Michi" ("Separate Ways")
  • Aubrey Beardsley (1872-1898) English illustrator and essayist; illustrations for Salome; Lysistrata; Morte d'Arthur; Volpone; essays in Under the Hill
  • Paul Laurence Dunbar (1872-1906) American poet, novelist, and playwright; The Heart of Happy Hollow: A Collection of Stories; The Uncalled: A Novel; The Sport of the Gods; The Complete Poems of Paul Laurence Dunbar; The Strength of Gideon and Other Stories
  • Zane Grey (1872-1939) American adventure writer; Riders of the Purple Sage
  • Shimazaki Toson (Shimazaki Haruki) (1872-1943) Japanese novelist; The Broken Commandment; The Family; Before the Dawn
  • Johan Huizinga (1872-1945) Dutch historian; The Autumn of the Middle Ages (a.k.a. The Waning of the Middle Ages); Erasmus; Homo Ludens
  • Max Beerbohm (1872-1956) English essayist, parodist, and caricaturist who wrote Zuleika Dobson; Seven Men; A Christmas Garland
  • John Cowper Powys (1872-1963) British novelist, philosopher, critic, and poet; Wolf Solent; A Glastonbury Romance; Weymouth Sands; Maiden Castle (these four his "Wessex novels"); Autobiography; Owen Glendower; Porius
  • Bertrand Russell (1872-1970) British philosopher, mathematician, historian, and activist; Principia Mathematica (with Alfred North Whitehead); "On Denoting"; The Problems of Philosophy; Mysticism and Logic and Other Essays; What I Believe; Why I Am Not a Christian; A History of Western Philosophy; Nobel Prize in Literature (1950)
  • Therese of Lisieux (1873-1897) French nun and mystic who wrote the poetic masterpiece "To Live by Love"; also L'Histoire d'une Âme (The Story of a Soul); Last Conversations; poetry, prayers, and religious plays
  • Ford Madox Ford (1873-1939) English novelist, poet, critic and editor known for his novels The Good Soldier; Parade's End (tetralogy); The Fifth Queen (trilogy)
  • Stewart Edward White (1873-1946) American writer, novelist, and spiritualist who wrote Arizona Nights
  • Willa Cather (1873-1947) American author; O Pioneers!; Death Comes for the Archbishop; The Song of the Lark; My Ántonia; Pulitzer Prize in Literature (1923)
  • Colette (1873-1954) French novelist; Gigi; the Claudine stories
  • Walter De la Mare (1873-1956) English poet, short story writer and novelist; novel Memoirs of a Midget; Collected Stories for Children; Eight Tales (some of them ghost stories); poem "The Listeners"
  • G. E. Moore (1873-1958) English philosopher; Principia Ethica; "The Refutation of Idealism"; "A Defence of Common Sense"; "A Proof of the External World"
  • W. C. Handy (1873-1958) American composer and performer; "St. Louis Blues"; "Beale Street Blues"
  • Gertrude Stein (1874-1946) American novelist, poet, and playwright; The Autobiography of Alice B. Toklas; Q.E.D.; Fernhurst; Three Lives; The Making of Americans; Tender Buttons
  • Gustav Holst (1874-1934) English composer; The Planets
  • Robert W. Service (1874-1958) British-Canadian poet; "The Shooting of Dan McGrew" and "The Cremation of Sam McGee"
  • W. Somerset Maugham (1874-1965) British playwright, novelist and short story writer; Of Human Bondage; The Moon and Sixpence; Cakes and Ale; The Razor's Edge
  • G. K. Chesterton (1874-1936) English poet, philosopher, dramatist, journalist, lay theologian, biographer, and critic; novels The Napoleon of Notting Hill and The Man Who Was Thursday; the Father Brown stories; theological works Orthodoxy and The Everlasting Man
  • L. M. Montgomery (1874-1942) Canadian author of children's literature; Anne of Green Gables and sequels; Rilla of Ingleside; Emily of New Moon and two more; the Avonlea stories
  • Robert Frost (1874-1963) American poet; "Mending Wall"; "The Road Not Taken"; "Fire and Ice"; "Nothing Gold Can Stay"; "Stopping by Woods on a Snowy Evening"; four Pulitzer Prizes (1924, 1931, 1937, 1943)
  • Winston Churchill (1874-1965) British statesman, historian, writer, and orator; The Second World War; A History of the English-Speaking Peoples
  • Albert Schweitzer (1875-1965) French-German theologian and physician; missionary work; winner of the Nobel Peace Prize; wrote Geschichte der Leben-Jesu-Forschung (The Quest of the Historical Jesus); Aus Meinem Leben und Denken (Out of My Life and Thought: An Autobiography); Zwischen Wasser und Urwald (On the Edge of the Primeval Forest)
  • Carl Gustav Jung (1875-1961) German-speaking Swiss psychiatrist; Psychology of the Unconscious; Symbols of Transformation; Man and His Symbols; Memories, Dreams, Reflections; Seven Sermons to the Dead; Archetypes and the Collective Unconscious
  • Thomas Mann (1875-1955) German novelist, short story writer, essayist; Buddenbrooks; The Magic Mountain; Death in Venice; Joseph and His Brothers; Doctor Faustus; Nobel Prize in Literature (1929)
  • D.W. Griffith (1875-1948) American filmmaker; The Birth of a Nation; Intolerance
  • Edgar Rice Burroughs (1875-1950) American pulp writer; writing "pulp fiction," most famously Tarzan, John Carter, Pellucidar, and other series
  • Maurice Ravel (1875-1937) French composer; Boléro; Pavane pour une infante défunte (Pavane for a Dead Princess); Rapsodie espagnole; ballet Daphnis et Chloé; opera L’Enfant et les sortilèges (The Child and the Enchantments)
  • Rainer Maria Rilke (1875-1926) Bohemian-Austrian poet and novelist; poetry collections Duineser Elegien (Duino Elegies) and Die Sonette an Orpheus (Sonnets to Orpheus); novel Die Aufzeichnungen des Malte Laurids Brigge (The Notebooks of Malte Laurids Brigge); and a collection of Letters to a Young Poet
  • Sherwood Anderson (1876-1941) American novelist and short story writer; short-story cycle Winesburg, Ohio; Dark Laughter
  • Jack London (1876-1916) American novelist, short story writer, journalist, and activist; novels The Call of the Wild; White Fang; The Sea Wolf; stories "To Build a Fire"; "An Odyssey of the North"; "Love of Life"; "The Pearls of Parlay"; "The Heathen"; non-fiction The People of the Abyss
  • A. L. Kroeber (1876-1960) American cultural anthropologist Handbook of the Indians of California
  • G. H. Hardy (1877-1947) English mathematician; A Mathematician's Apology; A Course of Pure Mathematics
  • Hermann Hesse (1877-1962) German-born Swiss poet and novelist; Steppenwolf; Siddhartha; The Glass Bead Game; Nobel Prize in Literature (1946)
  • James Jeans (1877-1946) English scientist; physics, astronomy, and mathematics; The Universe Around Us
  • Arishima Takeo (1878-1923) Japanese novelist, short-story writer and essayist; Aru Onna (A Certain Woman); Labyrinth; Bears in Mt. Nametoko; Yoko
  • Will Levington Comfort (1878-1932) American adventure writer known for adventure for Apache; three of his works were the basis of feature films.
  • George M. Cohan (1878-1942) American composer, playwright, perfomer, and producer; "Over There", "Give My Regards to Broadway", "The Yankee Doodle Boy"; "You're a Grand Old Flag"
  • Carl Sandburg (1878-1967) American poet, writer, and editor; poetry Chicago Poems; The People, Yes; history Abraham Lincoln: The Prairie Years and The War Years; Rootabaga Stories for children; two Pulitzer Prizes in Poetry (1919, 1951); one for History (1940)
  • Upton Sinclair (1878-1968) American novelist, activist, and journalist; The Jungle; Oil!; the "Lanny Budd" series; Pulitzer Prize for Fiction (1943)
  • Edward Steichen (1879-1973) Luxembourgish-American photographer; credited with transforming photography into an art form; curator of The Family of Man
  • Mabel Dodge Luhan (1879-1962) American writer and patron; Edge of the Taos Desert; Winter in Taos
  • Vachel Lindsay (1879-1931) American poet; "Abraham Lincoln Walks at Midnight"; "Bryan, Bryan, Bryan, Bryan"; "The Dandelion"; "General William Booth Enters Into Heaven"; The Golden Book of Springfield; "The Eagle That is Forgotten"
  • Wallace Stevens (1879-1955) American poet; "Anecdote of the Jar"; "Disillusionment of Ten O'Clock"; "The Emperor of Ice-Cream"; "The Idea of Order at Key West"; "Sunday Morning"; "The Snow Man"; and "Thirteen Ways of Looking at a Blackbird"; Pulitzer Prize for Poetry (1955)
  • Albert Einstein (1879-1955) German-American physicist; Relativity: the Special and General Theory; The Meaning of Relativity; "The World As I See It"; "My Views"; Nobel Prize in Physics (1921)
  • E. M. Forster (1879-1970) English novelist, short story writer, and essayist; novels A Passage to India; Howards End; A Room with a View; stories "The Machine Stops"; "The Other Side of the Hedge"; "The Life to Come"; "The Classical Annex"; "The Other Boat"
  • John Erskine (1879-1951) American educator and author; "The Moral Obligation to Be Intelligent"
  • Nagai Kafu (1879-1959) Japanese; Ude Kurabe (Geisha in Rivalry); Amerika Monogatari (American Stories); Sumidagawa (Sumida River); Bokuto Kidan (A Strange Tale from East of the River); films The Strange Story of Oyuki; Bungō: Sasayaka na yokubō; Yume no onna (Yearning)
  • Guillaume Apollinaire (1880-1918) French author and poet who wrote Calligrammes
  • Helen Keller (1880-1968) American author and activist; The Story of My Life; Light in My Darkness
  • Oswald Spengler (1880-1936) German historian and philosopher; The Decline of the West
  • Premchand (or Munshi Premchand) (1880-1936) Indian writer (in Hindi and Urdu); Nirmala; Karmabhoomi; Godaan; Bazaar-e-Husn; Shatranj ke khiladi; Gaban; short stories
  • Sean O'Casey (1880-1964) Irish playwright; The Shadow of a Gunman; Juno and the Paycock; The Plough and the Stars; Red Roses for Me
  • H. L. Mencken (1880-1956) American man of letters; Journalism; satire; The American Language
  • R. H. Tawney (1880-1962) English historian, critic, and educator; Religion and the Rise of Capitalism; The Acquisitive Society; Equality
  • Sholem Asch (1880-1957) Polish-American Yiddish novelist, dramatist, and essayist; Three Cities; The Nazarene; The Apostle; Mary; Tales of My People (short stories)
  • Margery Williams (1881-1944) English author of children's literature; The Velveteen Rabbit
  • Lu Xun (1881-1936) Chinese short story writer; "The True Story of Ah Q"; "Diary of a Madman"; "The New Year Sacrifice"; collections: Call to Arms; Wandering; Old Tales Retold
  • Cecil B. DeMille (1881-1959) American filmmaker; silent movies The Squaw Man; The Trail of the Lonesome Pine; "talkies" Cleopatra; The Plainsman; "epics" Samson and Delilah; The Greatest Show on Earth (Academy Award, 1953); The Ten Commandments
  • Pablo Picasso (1881-1973) Spanish painter, multi-faceted artist, poet, and playwright; Guernica; Dove; Head of a Woman; Head of a Bull, Metamorphosis
  • Padraic Colum (1881-1972) Irish poet, novelist, dramatist, playwright, children's author, and folklorist; The Saxon Shillin'; The King of Ireland's Son; The Children's Homer; Children of Odin: Nordic Gods and Heroes; The Golden Fleece and the Heroes Who Lived Before Achilles
  • Pierre Teilhard de Chardin (1881-1955) French philosopher and Jesuit priest; The Phenomenon of Man; The Divine Milieu; The Future of Man; letters and essays
  • Witter Bynner (1881-1968) American poet, writer and scholar; poems, including translations from the Chinese
  • Edward Hopper (1882-1967) American painter; Nighthawks; House by the Railroad; Automat; Chop Suey; Office in a Small City
  • Georges Braque (1882-1963) French artist; co-founder (with Picasso) of Cubism
  • Jacques Maritain (1882-1973) French philosopher; The Person and the Common Good; The Degrees of Knowledge; The Range of Reason
  • James Joyce (1882-1941) Irish novelist and poet; Ulysses; Dubliners; A Portrait of the Artist as a Young Man; Finnegans Wake
  • Jean Giraudoux (1882-1944) French novelist, essayist, and playwright; plays The Madwoman of Chaillot; Ondine; Duel of Angels; The Trojan War Will Not Take Place
  • Taneda Santoka (1882-1940) Japanese poet; Somokuto (Grass and Tree Cairn); For All My Walking
  • A. A. Milne (1882-1956) English author of children's literature; the Winnie-the-Pooh books
  • Arthur Eddington (1882-1944) English astronomer, physicist, mathematician, philosopher and popularizer of science; The Mathematical Theory of Relativity; The Nature of the Physical World; New Pathways in Science
  • Igor Stravinsky (1882-1971) Russian composer; L'Oiseau de feu (The Firebird); Petrushka; Le Sacre du printemps (The Rite of Spring)
  • Virginia Woolf (1882-1941) English novelist, essayist, and critic; Mrs. Dalloway; To the Lighthouse; Orlando; A Room of One's Own; How to Read a Book
  • Shiga Naoya (1883-1971) Japanese novelist and short story writer; An'ya Koro (A Dark Night's Passing); The Paper Door and Other Stories
  • Takamura Kotaro (1883-1956) Japanese poet; Chiekosho (Selections of Chieko also called Chieko's Sky)
  • William Carlos Williams (1883-1963) American poet; "The Red Wheelbarrow"; "This Is Just To Say"; Spring and All; Paterson; Pulitzer Prize for Poetry (1963); Consultants in Poetry to the Library of Congress (now titled "Poet Laureate") (1952)
  • Franz Kafka (1883-1924) German-speaking Austro-Hungarian novelist and short story writer; Der Process (The Trial); Das Schloss (The Castle); "Die Verwandlung" ("The Metamorphosis"); Ein Hungerkünstler (A Hunger Artist)
  • John Maynard Keynes (1883-1946) English economist; The Economic Consequences of the Peace; A Treatise on Probability; A Treatise on Money; The General Theory of Employment, Interest and Money
  • Kahlil Gibran (1883-1931) Lebanese-American artist, poet, and writer; The Prophet; Jesus, The Son of Man; Broken Wings
  • Nikos Kazantzakis (1883-1957) Greek novelist, poet, playwright, and essayist; epic poem The Odyssey: A Modern Sequel; novels Zorba the Greek; The Greek Passion; Captain Michalis; The Last Temptation of Christ; essay The Saviors of God: Spiritual Exercises
  • Sara Teasdale (1884-1933) American poet known for Flame and Shadow; Love Songs; Pulitzer: Special Citation (Letters, 1918)
  • Otto Rank (1884-1939) Austrian psychoanalyst, writer, and teacher; Der Mythus von der Geburt des Helden (The Myth of the Birth of the Hero); Das Inzest-Motiv in Dichtung und Sage (The Incest Theme in Literature and Legend); Das Trauma der Geburt (The Trauma of Birth)
  • Tobias Dantzig (1884-1956) Latvian-American mathematician; Number: The Language of Science; Aspects of Science
  • Kees Boeke (1884-1966) Dutch educator who wrote Cosmic View; Powers of Ten
  • Etienne Gilson (1884-1978) French philosopher and historian; The Spirit of Mediaeval Philosophy; History of Christian Philosophy in the Middle Ages; The Philosophy of St Thomas Aquinas; Heloise and Abelard; Christian Philosophy; many more
  • D.H. Lawrence (1885-1930) English writer; Sons and Lovers; Women in Love; Lady Chatterley's Lover; short stories "The Prussian Officer"; "The Rocking-Horse Winner"
  • Ezra Pound (1885-1972) American poet and critic; Ripostes; Hugh Selwyn Mauberley; The Cantos
  • Isak Dinesen (1885-1962) Danish author; Out of Africa; Seven Gothic Tales; Babette's Feast
  • Robert Glass Cleland (1885-1957) American historian; The Cattle on a Thousand Hills
  • Will Durant (1885-1981) American writer, historian, and philosopher; The Story of Civilization; The Story of Philosophy
  • Edna Ferber (1885-1968) American novelist, short story writer and playwright; So Big; Cimarron; Show Boat; Pulitzer Prize for Fiction (1925)
  • Niels Bohr (1885-1962) Danish physicist; Atomic Physics and Human Knowledge; Philosophical Writings of Niels Bohr Series; Nobel Prize in Physics (1922)
  • (Harry) Sinclair Lewis (1885-1951) American novelist, short-story writer, and playwright; Main Street; Babbitt; Arrowsmith; Elmer Gantry; Nobel Prize in Literature (1930)
  • H.D. (Hilda Doolittle) (1886-1961) American writer; poems composed of clear, sharp imagery
  • Ishikawa Takuboku (1886-1912) Japanese poet; A Handful of Sand; Sad Toys
  • Michael Curtiz (1886-1962) Hungarian-American filmmaker; Casablanca (Best Director Oscar); Angels with Dirty Faces; Yankee Doodle Dandy; Mildred Pierce; White Christmas
  • Tanizaki Jun'ichiro (1886-1965) Japanese fiction writer; playwright; essayist; Tade ku mushi (Some Prefer Nettles); Sasameyuki (Light Snow = The Makioka Sisters)
  • Hugh Lofting (1886-1947) British author who wrote The Story of Doctor Dolittle and its sequels; The Story of Mrs. Tubbs and Tommy, Tilly, and Mrs. Tubbs; Porridge Poetry; Noisy Nora; The Twilight of Magic; and Victory for the Slain (for adults)
  • Diego Rivera (Diego María de la Concepción Juan Nepomuceno Estanislao de la Rivera y Barrientos Acosta y Rodríguez) (1886-1957) Mexican painter and muralist; murals Man, Controller of the Universe; The History of Mexico; paintings The Fecund Earth; The Flower Seller
  • Edward Weston (1886-1958) American photographer; Nautilus; the Pepper series; Dunes, Oceano; Nude, 1936; landscapes of American West
  • Hagiwara Sakutaro (1886-1942) Japanese writer and poet; Tsuki ni Hoeru (Howling at the Moon); Aoneko (Blue Cat); Hyōtō (Icy Island)
  • Karl Barth (1886-1968) Swiss theologian; The Epistle to the Romans; Church Dogmatics
  • Paul Tillich (1886-1965) German-American theologian; Systematic Theology; Dynamics of Faith; The Courage to Be
  • Aldo Leopold (1887-1948) American scientist; A Sand County Almanac
  • Idwal Jones (1887-1964) American novelist and non-fiction writer; The Vineyard; Ark of Empire: San Francisco’s Montgomery Block
  • Ruth Benedict (1887-1948) American anthropologist; particularly interested in the American Southwest; wrote Patterns of Culture; The Chrysanthemum and the Sword
  • Erwin Schrodinger (1887-1961) Austrian physicist and philosopher of science; Science and the Human Temperament; Science and Humanism; My View of the World; What Is Life?; Nobel Prize in Physics (1933)
  • Georgia O'Keeffe (1887-1986) American artist; inspired by flowers and plants: Petunia No. 2; Black Iris; Oriental Poppies; Jimson Weed, White Flower No. 1; Blue and Green Music; New York cityscapes: City Night; Shelton Hotel, New York No. 1; Radiator Bldg--Night, New York; New Mexico: Black Cross, New Mexico; Cow's Skull: Red, White and Blue; Ram's Head, White Hollyhock-Hills; Summer Days
  • Marc Chagall (1887-1985) Russian-French artist; I and the Village; Adam and Eve; The Fiddler; Bouquet with Flying Lovers; Bella with White Collar; The Circus Horse; The Father
  • Marianne Moore (1887-1972) American poet; Collected Poems; "Poetry" (a poem); Pulitzer Prize in Poetry (1951)
  • Robinson Jeffers (1887-1962) California-based American poet; Tamar; Roan Stallion; Give Your Heart to the Hawks; "Natural Music"; "Hurt Hawks"; "The Purse-Seine"; "Shine, Perishing Republic"
  • Katherine Mansfield (1888-1923) New Zealand short story writer; The Garden Party: and Other Stories; The Aloe
  • Georges Bernanos (1888-1948) French author; Diary of a Country Priest
  • Eugene O'Neill (1888-1953) American playwright; The Emperor Jones; Desire Under the Elms; Mourning Becomes Electra; The Iceman Cometh; Long Day's Journey into Night; A Moon for the Misbegotten; Nobel Prize in Literature (1936); Pulitzer Prize for Drama (1920, 1922, 1928, 1957)
  • Haniel Long (1888-1956) American poet and novelist; Interlinear to Cabeza de Vaca; Pinon Country; "The Power within Us"
  • Raymond Chandler (1888-1959) British-American crime novelist; created Philip Marlowe, and wrote The Big Sleep; Farewell, My Lovely; The Little Sister; The Long Goodbye
  • Erna Fergusson (1888-1964) New Mexico-based writer, historian, and storyteller, who documented the culture and history of New Mexico for more than forty years. Wrote Dancing Gods.
  • J. Frank Dobie (1888-1964) American folklorist; American regional folklorist whose collections include Coronado's Children
  • T. S. Eliot (1888-1965) American-British poet, essayist, publisher, playwright, and critic best known for poems such as The Love Song of J. Alfred Prufrock; The Waste Land; Four Quartets; Nobel Prize in Literature (1948)
  • Irving Berlin (1888-1989) Russian-born American composer; known for Annie Get Your Gun; Call Me Madam; "God Bless America"; "White Christmas"; "There's No Business Like Show Business"; "Easter Parade"; "Happy Holiday"
  • Adolf Hitler (1889-1945) German politician; Mein Kampf (My Struggle)
  • Ludwig Wittgenstein (1889-1951) Austrian-British philosopher; Tractatus Logico-Philosophicus; Philosophical Investigations
  • Gabriela Mistral (1899-1957) Chilean poet, educator, and humanist known for Sonnets of Death, Despair, Tenderness, and Harvesting. Nobel Prize in Literature (1945)
  • Ross Calvin (1889-1970) American writer; Sky Determines
  • Martin Heidegger (1889-1976) German philosopher who wrote Being and Time
  • Charlie Chaplin (1889-1977) English filmmaker; The Gold Rush; City Lights; Modern Times; The Great Dictator; Honorary Academy Award (1972)
  • Agatha Christie (1890-1976) English crime novelist, short story writer, and playwright; characters Hercule Poirot and Miss (Jane) Marple; novels Murder on the Orient Express; Death on the Nile; The ABC Murders; And Then There Were None; short story collection Partners in Crime; play The Mousetrap
  • Harvey Fergusson (1890-1971) American writer; the "Followers of the Sun" trilogy: The Blood of the Conquerors; In Those Days; Wolf Song
  • Karel Capek (1890-1938) Czech playwright and novelist; novel War with the Newts; play R.U.R. (Rossum's Universal Robots)
  • Katherine Anne Porter (1890-1980) American short story writer and novelist; novel Ship of Fools; short story collection The Collected Stories of Katherine Anne Porter, especially "Flowering Judas," "Theft," "Magic"
  • Marc Connelly (1890-1980) American playwright; The Green Pastures; Tall Story; Pulitzer Prize for Drama (1930)
  • Boris Pasternak (1890-1960) Russian poet and novelist; My Sister; Life; The Second Birth; Doctor Zhivago; Nobel Prize in Literature (1958)
  • Fritz Lang (1890-1976) Austrian-German filmmaker; Metropolis; M; The Big Heat; Fury; You Only Live Once; The Woman in the Window; While the City Sleeps
  • Gertrude Warner (1890-1979) American author of children's literature; The Boxcar Children and its sequels
  • H. P. Lovecraft (1890-1937) American author of science fiction; "The Call of Cthulhu"; The Shadow Out of Time; At the Mountains of Madness
  • Jean Rhys (1890-1979) Anglo-Dominican novelist, short story writer, essayist; Wide Sargasso Sea; Voyage in the Dark; Good Morning, Midnight
  • "Jelly Roll" Morton (Ferdinand Joseph LaMothe) (1890-1941) American composer; "Jelly Roll Blues"; "King Porter Stomp"; "Wolverine Blues"; "Black Bottom Stomp"; "I Thought I Heard Buddy Bolden Say"
  • Mikhail Bulgakov (1891-1940) Russian writer and playwright; The Master and Margarita
  • Sidney Howard (1891-1939) American playwright; They Knew What They Wanted which won the Pulitzer Prize for Drama in 1925; Academy Award (Gone with the Wind, 1940)
  • Sergei Prokofiev (1891-1953) Russian composer; The Love for Three Oranges; Lieutenant Kijé; Romeo and Juliet; Alexander Nevsky; Piano Concerto No. 3; Symphony No. 1 ("Classical"); Peter and the Wolf
  • Cole Porter (1891-1964) American composer; shows Anything Goes; Kiss Me Kate; Can Can; Silk Stockings; songs "Night and Day"; "Begin the Beguine"; "I Get a Kick Out of You"; "Well, Did You Evah!"; "I've Got You Under My Skin"; "My Heart Belongs to Daddy"; "You're the Top"
  • Henry Miller (1891-1980) American writer; Tropic of Cancer; Black Spring; Tropic of Capricorn; The Colossus of Maroussi; The Rosy Crucifixion (Sexus, Plexus, and Nexus)
  • Zora Neale Hurston (1891-1960) American novelist, short story writer, and folklorist; Their Eyes Were Watching God; Mules and Men
  • Ernst Lubitsch (1892-1947) German-American filmmaker; Ninotchka; Trouble in Paradise; The Shop Around the Corner; Heaven Can Wait; To Be or Not to Be; Honorary Academy Award (1946)
  • J. B. S. Haldane (1892-1964) British-born Indian scientist; Daedalus; or, Science and the Future; My Friend Mr. Leakey
  • Pearl S. Buck (1892-1973) American writer and novelist who grew up in China; The House of Earth series: The Good Earth; Sons; A House Divided; China Sky; Peony; The Big Wave; Pulitzer Prize (1932); Nobel Prize in Literature (1938)
  • Archibald MacLeish (1892-1982) American poet and writer; three Pulitzer Prizes: Conquistador (for Poetry, 1933); Collected Poems 1917–1952 (for Poetry, 1953); J.B. (for Drama, 1959)
  • Edna St. Vincent Millay (1892-1950) American poet and playwright; A Few Figs From Thistles; Second April; "Euclid Alone has Looked on Beauty Bare"; Pulitzer Prize for Poetry (1923)
  • Hugh MacDiarmid (1892-1978) Scottish poet and essayist; A Drunk Man Looks at the Thistle
  • J. R. R. Tolkien (1892-1973) English author; The Lord of the Rings and The Hobbit
  • Reinhold Niebuhr (1892-1971) American theologian; Moral Man and Immoral Society; The Nature and Destiny of Man
  • Ferde Grofe (1892-1972) American composer; Mississippi Suite; Grand Canyon Suite; Death Valley Suite; Niagara Falls Suite
  • Akutagawa Ryonosuke (1892-1927) Japanese short story writer; "Rashōmon"; "In a Grove"; "The Nose"; "Hell Screen"; "The Spider's Thread"; "Dragon: the Old Potter's Tale"; "Autumn Mountain"
  • Elmer Rice (1892-1967) American playwright; best known for The Adding Machine; Street Scene; Dream Girl; Not for Children; Pulitzer Prize for Drama (1929)
  • James M. Cain (1892-1977) American author and journalist; The Postman Always Rings Twice; Mildred Pierce; Double Indemnity
  • John P. Marquand (1893-1960) American writer; best known for his spy stories with the stereotyped Asian character "Mr. Moto"; The Late George Apley; Pulitzer Prize for the Novel (1938)
  • Joseph Wood Krutch (1893-1970) American writer, critic, and naturalist; The Desert Year; The Twelve Seasons; The Measure of Man
  • Dorothy L. Sayers (1893-1957) English crime writer; poet; playwright; essayist; created the character Lord Peter Wimsey
  • Paramahansa Yogananda (1893-1952) Indian yogi; Autobiography of a Yogi
  • Wilfred Owen (1893-1918) English poet; "Dulce et Decorum est"; "Insensibility"; "Anthem for Doomed Youth"; "Futility"; and "Strange Meeting".
  • Dashiell Hammett (1894-1961) American crime writer who created the characters Sam Spade (The Maltese Falcon); Nick and Nora Charles (The Thin Man); the Continental Op (Red Harvest and The Dain Curse); also wrote short stories
  • Isaac Babel (1894-1940) Russian journalist, playwright, and short story writer; Red Cavalry; Story of My Dovecote; Tales of Odessa
  • James Thurber (1894-1961) American cartoonist, author, journalist, and playwright; short stories "The Secret Life of Walter Mitty"; "The Catbird Seat"; "The Unicorn in the Garden"; play The Male Animal; autobiography My Life and Hard Times; children's books The White Deer; The 13 Clocks; The Wonderful O
  • Jean Toomer (1894-1967) American poet and novelist; the novel Cane
  • Norman Rockwell (1894-1978) American painter and illustrator; Willie Gillis series; Rosie the Riveter; Four Freedoms series; The Problem We All Live With; especially known as a cover illustrator for the Saturday Evening Post
  • Aldous Huxley (1894-1963) English short story writer, novelist and philosopher; Brave New World; Island; Point Counter Point; The Doors of Perception; The Perennial Philosophy
  • e. e. cummings (1894-1962) American poet; odd capitalization, strange arrangement on the page, and untitled poems referred to by their first lines, such as "in Just-," "next to of course god america I," "l(a," "i sing of Olaf glad and big," "Buffalo Bill's," and "i carry your heart with me"
  • Jean Renoir (1894-1979) French filmmaker; La Grande Illusion; The Rules of the Game; received an Academy Award for Lifetime Achievement in 1975
  • John Ford (1894-1973) American filmmaker; Western films such as (especially those featuring John Wayne) Stagecoach, The Searchers, and The Man Who Shot Liberty Valance; and classics such as The Grapes of Wrath; winner of a record four Best Director Oscars
  • Edogawa Ranpo (Tarō Hirai) (1894-1965) Japanese crime novelist and short story writer; "Private Detective Kogoro Akechi" series
  • Jean Giono (1895-1970) French author; Colline; Second Harvest; Un roi sans divertissement; The Horseman on the Roof
  • Lancelot Hogben (1895-1975) British scientist; Mathematics for the Million; Science for the Citizen
  • Robert Graves (1895-1985) English poet, novelist, and critic; poetry; The White Goddess; The Golden Ass of Apuleius; I, Claudius
  • Miyazawa Kenji (1896-1933) Japanese poet and children's author; Ginga Tetsudo no Yoru (Night on the Galactic Railroad); Kaze no Matasaburo (Matasaburo of the Wind); Sero Hiki no Goshu (Gauche the Cellist); Taneyamagahara no Yoru (The Night of Taneyamagahara); Gusukō Budori no Denki (The Life of Guskō Budori)
  • F. Scott Fitzgerald (1896-1940) American novelist and short story writer; best known for The Great Gatsby; also wrote Tender Is the Night; The Diamond as Big as the Ritz; "The Curious Case of Benjamin Button"; "Babylon Revisited"
  • Marjorie Kinnan Rawlings (1896-1953) American author; "YA" novels The Yearling; The Secret River; autobiography Cross Creek; Pulitzer Prize for Fiction (1939)
  • Robert E. Sherwood (1896-1955) American playwright and screenwriter; Waterloo Bridge; Idiot's Delight; Abe Lincoln in Illinois; Rebecca; There Shall Be No Night; The Best Years of Our Lives; The Bishop's Wife; Pulitzer Prize for Drama (1936, 1939, 1941); Academy Award for Best Screenplay (1947); Pulitzer Prize for Biography (1948)
  • André Breton (1896-1966) French writer and poet; Surrealist Manifesto; poems
  • John Dos Passos (1896-1970) American novelist; Manhattan Transfer; the U.S.A. trilogy: The 42nd Parallel; 1919; The Big Money
  • William Faulkner (1897-1962) American novelist, short story writer, playwright, poet, and essayist whose novels include The Sound and the Fury; As I Lay Dying; Light in August; Absalom, Absalom!; A Rose for Emily; Nobel Prize in Literature (1949); two Pulitzer Prizes for Fiction (1955, 1963)
  • Thornton Wilder (1897-1975) American playwright and novelist; three Pulitzer Prizes: The Bridge of San Luis Rey (for Fiction, 1928); Our Town (for Drama, 1938); The Skin of Our Teeth (for Drama, 1942)
  • Dorothy Day (1897-1980) American journalist and activist; autobiography The Long Loneliness
  • Frank Capra (1897-1991) Italian-American filmmaker; Oscar-winning films like It Happened One Night; You Can't Take It With You; Mr. Smith Goes to Washington; It's a Wonderful Life
  • G. Wilson Knight (1897-1995) English literary critic known for The Wheel of Fire; The Burning Oracle
  • Nirad C. Chaudhuri (1897-1999) Indian Bengali-English writer; The Autobiography of an Unknown Indian; The Continent of Circe (essays)
  • Bertolt Brecht (1898-1956) German poet and playwright; The Threepenny Opera; Life of Galileo; Mother Courage and Her Children; The Good Person of Szechwan; The Caucasian Chalk Circle; The Resistible Rise of Arturo Ui
  • Federico Garcia Lorca (Federico del Sagrado Corazón de Jesús García Lorca) (1898-1936) Spanish poet and playwright; Romancero gitano (Gypsy Ballads); the Rural Trilogy (Blood Wedding; Yerma; The House of Bernarda Alba)
  • Ibuse Masuji (1898-1993) Japanese author; Sanshouo (Salamander and Other Stories); Kuroi Ame (Black Rain); Jon Manjiro Hyoryuki (John Manjiro, the Cast-Away: His Life and Adventures)
  • M. C. Escher (1898-1972) Dutch graphic artist; known for geometrically intricate drawings such as Relativity; Waterfall; Hand with Reflecting Sphere
  • Stephen Vincent Benét (1898-1943) American poet, short story writer, and novelist; long poem John Brown's Body; short stories, "The Devil and Daniel Webster" and "By the Waters of Babylon"; two Pulitzer Prizes for Poetry (1929, 1944)
  • Yokomitsu Riichi (1898-1947) Japanese writer; The Sun; Machine; Shanghai; memoir "Haru wa basha ni note" ("Spring Riding in a Carriage") and other stories
  • C. S. Lewis (1898-1963) British novelist, poet, essayist, and lay theologian; Allegory of Love; The Chronicles of Narnia; The Space Trilogy; Mere Christianity; The Screwtape Letters; The Problem of Pain
  • George Gershwin (1898-1937) American composer; "Someone to Watch Over Me"; "I've Got a Crush on You"; "Embraceable You"; Porgy and Bess; Rhapsody in Blue; An American in Paris
  • Preston Sturges (1898-1959) American filmmaker; sophisticated "screwball comedies," including The Great McGinty; The Lady Eve; Sullivan's Travels; The Palm Beach Story; The Miracle of Morgan's Creek
  • Hart Crane (1899-1932) American poet; White Buildings; The Bridge
  • Ernest Hemingway (1899-1961) American novelist, short story writer, and journalist; novels The Sun Also Rises; A Farewell to Arms; For Whom the Bell Tolls; The Old Man and the Sea; non-fiction Death in the Afternoon; Green Hills of Africa; short stories "A Clean, Well-Lighted Place"; "Fifty Grand"; "Hills Like White Elephants"; "The Killers"; "The Snows of Kilimanjaro"; "The Short Happy Life of Francis Macomber"; Pulitzer Prize for Fiction (1953); Nobel Prize in Literature (1954)
  • Jean Cocteau (1899-1963) French writer, playwright, artist and filmmaker; novel Les Enfants Terribles; play The Infernal Machine; films Beauty and the Beast and Orpheus
  • Lao She (1899-1966) Chinese novelist and dramatist; Rickshaw Boy; Teahouse
  • Kawabata Yasunari (1899-1972) Japanese novelist and short story writer; novels The Scarlet Gang of Asakusa; Snow Country; The Master of Go; Thousand Cranes; The Old Capital; The Sound of the Mountain; Beauty and Sadness; short-stories "The Dancing Girl of Izu"; Palm-of-the-Hand Stories; Nobel Prize in Literature (1968)
  • Noel Coward (1899-1973) English playwright; Hay Fever; Private Lives; Design for Living; Present Laughter; Blithe Spirit; Academy Honorary Award (1943)
  • Duke Ellington (1899-1974) American jazz composer and performer; "Take the "A" Train"; "In a Sentimental Mood"; "Mood Indigo"; "It Don't Mean a Thing (If It Ain't Got That Swing)"; "Cocktails for Two"; "Black and Tan Fantasy"; " Solitude"; multiple Grammys
  • Vladimir Nabokov (1899-1977) Russian-American novelist; novels The Defense; The Gift; Bend Sinister; Lolita; Pnin; Pale Fire; Ada, or Ardor; memoirSpeak, Memory
  • Alfred Hitchcock (1899-1980) English-American filmmaker; Notorious; Rear Window; Vertigo; North by Northwest; Psycho; numerous Academy Awards
  • Hoagy Carmichael (1899-1981) American composer; "Stardust"; "Georgia on My Mind"; "The Nearness of You"; "Heart and Soul"
  • George Cukor (1899-1983) American filmmaker; The Philadelphia Story; Gaslight; Adam's Rib; A Star Is Born; My Fair Lady (for which he won an Oscar)
  • E. B. White (1899-1985) American writer; best known for The Elements of Style (with William Strunk); and children's books Charlotte's Web; Stuart Little; The Trumpet of the Swan
  • Jorge Luis Borges (1899-1986) Argentine writer; short stories and essays, including A Universal History of Infamy; The Garden of Forking Paths; and Labyrinths.
  • P. L. Travers (1899-1996) Australian-born British novelist and children's writer; the "Mary Poppins" series; spiritual writings


--- The 1900s ---

Albert Einstein, another scientist
who changed the world


  • Thomas Wolfe (1900-1938) American novelist; Look Homeward, Angel; Of Time and the River; You Can't Go Home Again; The Web and the Rock
  • Antoine de Saint-Exupery (1900-1944) French writer and poet; The Little Prince; Wind, Sand and Stars; Night Flight
  • Theodosius Dobzhansky (1900-1975) Russian-American evolutionary biologist who contributed to the "modern synthesis" of Darwin's theory with Gregor Mendel's ideas on heredity; wrote Genetics and the Origin of Species; article "Nothing in Biology Makes Sense except in the Light of Evolution"
  • Richard Hughes (1900-1976) British poet, short story writer, novelist, and playwright; A High Wind in Jamaica
  • Aaron Copland (1900-1990) American composer; Appalachian Spring; Fanfare for the Common Man; Lincoln Portrait
  • Oliver La Farge (1901-1963) American novelist and anthropologist; Laughing Boy; Pulitzer Prize for Fiction (1929)
  • Walt Disney (1901-1966) American filmmaker and entrepreneur responsible for dozens of animated and live-action films (which earned a record 22 Academy Awards, plus four honoraries) as well as theme parks and other enterprises. His films include Snow White and the Seven Dwarfs; Fantasia; Pinocchio; Dumbo; Bambi; Cinderella; and Mary Poppins.
  • Salvatore Quasimodo (1901-1968) Italian novelist and poet; Ed è subito sera (And Suddenly It Is Evening); Lirici Greci (Greek Poets); Giorno dopo giorno (Day After Day); Nobel Prize in Literature (1959)
  • Louis Armstrong (1901-1971) American performer; trumpet, singer ("scat" vocals); "When The Saints Go Marching In"; "Ain't Misbehavin'"; "Stompin' at the Savoy"; "Hello, Dolly!"; "What a Wonderful World"; Grammy Lifetime Achievement Award (1972)
  • Andre Malraux (1901-1976) French novelist; La Condition Humaine (Man's Fate)
  • Werner Heisenberg (1901-1976) German physicist; The Physical Principles of the Quantum Theory; Nobel Prize in Physics (1932)
  • Margaret Mead (1901-1978) American cultural anthropologist; Coming of Age in Samoa; Sex and Temperament in Three Primitive Societies
  • Langston Hughes (1902-1967) American poet, novelist, and playwright; poetry The Weary Blues; Montage of a Dream Deferred; short story collection The Ways of White Folks; poems "The Negro Speaks of Rivers"; "Harlem"; "Dreams"
  • John Steinbeck (1902-1968) American novelist; short story writer; Of Mice and Men; The Grapes of Wrath; East of Eden; Pulitzer Prize for Fiction (1940); Nobel Prize in Literature (1962)
  • Ogden Nash (1902-1971) American poet; light verse such as The Carnival of the Animals (to accompany the musical suite by Saint-Saens)
  • Stevie Smith (1902-1971) English poet and novelist; novel The Holiday; poem "Not Waving but Drowning"
  • William Wyler (1902-1981) French-born American filmmaker; Ben-Hur; Roman Holiday; The Best Years of Our Lives; Mrs. Miniver
  • Ansel Adams (1902-1984) American photographer; Landscape photography of the American Southwest; Monolith, The Face of Half Dome, Yosemite National Park, 1927; Moonrise, Hernandez, New Mexico, 1941; created the "Zone System" of black-and-white exposure
  • Meredith Wilson (1902-1984) American composer; The Music Man
  • Beryl Markham (1902-1986) British-born Kenyan adventurer and author who wrote West with the Night
  • Isaac Bashevis Singer (1902-1991) Polish-born American author in Yiddish; The Magician of Lublin; A Day of Pleasure; A Crown of Feathers and Other Stories; Nobel Prize in Literature (1978)
  • Frank Waters (1902-1995) American writer; novels: The Man Who Killed the Deer; The Yogi of Cockroach Court; The Woman at Otowi Crossing; also, Book of The Hopi; Pumpkin Seed Point
  • Kobayashi Takiji (1903-1933) Japanese author who wrote Kanikosen (Crab Cannery Ship)
  • Nathanael West (1903-1940) American author who wrote Miss Lonelyhearts; The Day of the Locust
  • George Orwell (Eric Arthur Blair) (1903-1950) English novelist, essayist, journalist and critic; Animal Farm; Nineteen Eighty-Four
  • Frank O'Connor (1903-1966) Irish short story writer, poet, and novelist; "Guests of the Nation"; "The Majesty of Law"; "First Confession"; "My Oedipus Complex"
  • Evelyn Waugh (Arthur Evelyn St. John Waugh) (1903-1966) English writer of novels, biographies and travel books who wrote The Loved One; Decline and Fall; A Handful of Dust; Brideshead Revisited; Sword of Honour (trilogy)
  • Anaïs Nin (1903-1977) French-born Cuban essayist and memoirist who lived most of her life and wrote in the US. Known for novels, critical studies, essays, short stories, and erotica, including Delta of Venus, Little Birds, and her diaries.
  • Erskine Caldwell (1903-1987) American novelist; Tobacco Road; God's Little Acre
  • Marguerite Yourcenar (1903-1987) French novelist and essayist who wrote Coup de Grace; Memoirs of Hadrian
  • Konrad Lorenz (1903-1989) Austrian biologist; On Aggression; King Solomon's Ring; Man Meets Dog; Nobel Prize in Physiology or Medicine (1973)
  • Paul Horgan (1903-1995) American author; Great River: The Rio Grande in North American History; Lamy of Santa Fe; Pulitzer Prize for History (1955, 1976)
  • Fats Waller (1904-1943) American composer and performer; "Ain't Misbehavin'"; "Honeysuckle Rose"; Grammy Lifetime Achievement Award (1993)
  • Shunryu Suzuki (1904-1971) Japanese Buddhist monk; Zen Mind, Beginner's Mind
  • Pablo Neruda (1904-1973) Chilean poet; Twenty Love Poems and One Song of Despair, Toward the Splendid City; Nobel Prize in Literature (1971)
  • Edward Conze (1904-1979) Anglo-German Buddhist scholar; Buddhism: Its Essence and Development; Buddhism: A Short History; The Memoirs of a Modern Gnostic; numerous translations of the Prajñaparamita Literature
  • James T. Farrell (1904-1979) American novelist, short-story writer, and poet; The Studs Lonigan Trilogy
  • Count Basie (1904-1984) American performer; "One O'Clock Jump"; "April in Paris"; "Everyday (I Have the Blues)"; Grammy Lifetime Achievement Award (2002)
  • Christopher Isherwood (1904-1986) British/American novelist; also cooperated with Swami Prabhavananda on Indian religious texts
  • Joseph Campbell (1904-1987) American mythologist, writer and lecturer who wrote The Hero with a Thousand Faces; the four-part The Masks of God; The Mythic Image; A Joseph Campbell Companion: Reflections on the Art of Living; The Power of Myth
  • Clifford D. Simak (1904-1988) American author of science fiction; City; Way Station
  • Salvador Dali (1904-1989) Spanish painter; Persistence of Memory, The Crucifixion
  • B. F. Skinner (1904-1990) American psychologist and author; Walden Two; Verbal Behavior
  • Dr. Seuss (1904-1991) American writer and illustrator of children's books; And to Think That I Saw It on Mulberry Street; If I Ran the Zoo; Horton Hears a Who!; If I Ran the Circus; The Cat in the Hat; How the Grinch Stole Christmas!; Green Eggs and Ham; also received a special Pulitzer Prize (1984); two Academy Awards
  • Graham Greene (1904-1991) English novelist and author; wrote Brighton Rock; The Power and the Glory; The Heart of the Matter; The End of the Affair; The Confidential Agent; The Third Man; The Quiet American; Our Man in Havana; The Human Factor; Monsignor Quixote
  • John O'Hara (1905-1970) American novelist, short story writer, playwright, and essayist; Appointment in Samarra; Butterfield 8; Pal Joey; Ten North Frederick
  • Manfred Bennington Lee (Emanuel Benjamin Lepofsky) (1905-1971) American author of crime stories; half of a pair of cousins who together created the fictional character and equally-fictional writer "Ellery Queen." (His cousin's name was Daniel Nathan, pen named Frederic Dannay)
  • C. H. Waddington (1905-1975) British biologist and philosopher who wrote The Scientific Attitude
  • Jean-Paul Sartre (1905-1980) French philosopher, playwright, novelist, and critic; Nausea; Huis Clos (No Exit); L'Être et le Néant (Being and Nothingness); L'existentialisme est un humanisme (Existentialism is a Humanism)
  • Frederic Dannay (Daniel Nathan) (1905-1982) American author of crime stories; half of a pair of cousins who together created the fictional character and equally-fictional writer "Ellery Queen." (His cousin's name was Emanuel Benjamin Lepofsky, pen named Manfred Bennington Lee.)
  • Ayn Rand (1905-1982) Russian-American novelist, philosopher, and playwright; The Fountainhead; Atlas Shrugged
  • Arthur Koestler (1905-1983) Hungarian-British author; best known for his novel Darkness at Noon
  • Lillian Hellman (1905-1984) American playwright; Toys in the Attic; Another Part of the Forest; The Children's Hour; The Little Foxes
  • Otto Preminger (1905-1986) Austrian American filmmaker; Laura; Fallen Angel; The Man with the Golden Arm; Anatomy of a Murder; Exodus; Advise and Consent; The Cardinal
  • Enchi Fumiko (1905-1986) Japanese writer; Onna Zaka (The Waiting Years); Onna Men (Masks)
  • Robert Penn Warren (1905-1989) American novelist and poet; All the King's Men (Pulitzer Prize for the Novel, 1946; also, Best Picture Oscar, 1949) Pulitzer Prizes for Poetry (1958, 1979); Poet Laureate of the US (1944-1945)
  • Stanley Kunitz (1905-2015) American poet; Selected Poems: 1928-1958; Passing Through: The Later Poems; Pulitzer Prize for Poetry (1959); Poet Laureate of the United States (1974 and 2000)
  • Robert E. Howard (1906-1936) American author of fantasy; Conan the Barbarian (series); Solomon Kane (series); The Hour of the Dragon; "Worms of the Earth"; "Pigeons from Hell"
  • Dietrich Bonhoeffer (1906-1945) German pastor and theologian; The Cost of Discipleship; Letters and Papers from Prison
  • Clifford Odets (1906-1963) American playwright; Waiting for Lefty; Awake and Sing!; Till the Day I Die; Paradise Lost; Golden Boy; Rocket to the Moon
  • T. H. White (1906-1964) English novelist; The Once and Future King; (four parts: The Sword in the Stone; The Queen of Air and Darkness; The Ill-Made Knight; The Candle in the Wind); The Book of Beasts; The Book of Merlyn
  • Dmitri Shostakovich (1906-1975) Russian composer; best known for Symphonies number 5, 7 and 10
  • John Huston (1906-1987) American filmmaker; 37 films, including The Maltese Falcon; The Treasure of the Sierra Madre (for which Huston received two Oscars); Key Largo; The African Queen
  • Samuel Beckett (1906-1989) Irish novelist, playwright, and poet; Murphy; Molloy; Malone Dies; The Unnamable; Waiting for Godot; Watt; Endgame; Krapp's Last Tape; How It Is; Nobel Prize in Literature 1969
  • Lawrence Clark Powell (1906-2001) American "bookman" and librarian; longtime head librarian at UCLA who wrote books about books and authors; California Classics; Southwest Classics
  • R.K. Narayan (1906-2001) Indian writer who wrote the novels Swami and Friends; The English Teacher; Waiting for the Mahatma; The Guide; The Man-Eater of Malgudi; The Vendor of Sweets; A Tiger for Malgudi; short story collections Lawley Road; A Horse and Two Goats and Other Stories; Under the Banyan Tree and Other Stories; The Grandmother’s Tale; and versions of The Ramayana and The Mahabharata
  • Frida Kahlo (1907-1954) Mexican painter; Self-Portrait with Monkey
  • Rachel Carson (1907-1964) American biologist; The Sea Around Us; The Edge of the Sea; Silent Spring
  • W.H. Auden (1907-1973) English-American poet; The Age of Anxiety; "Funeral Blues"; "September 1, 1939"; "The Shield of Achilles"; "For the Time Being"; "Horae Canonicae"; Pulitzer Prize in Poetry (1947)
  • Loren Eiseley (1907-1977) American anthropologist and science writer; known for The Immense Journey; Darwin's Century; The Unexpected Universe
  • Mircea Eliade (1907-1986) Romanian historian of religion, philosopher, and fiction writer; Shamanism: Archaic Techniques of Ecstasy; Cosmos and History: The Myth of the Eternal Return; The Sacred and the Profane: The Nature of Religion; From Primitives to Zen
  • Robert A. Heinlein (1907-1988) American author of science fiction; Stranger in a Strange Land; The Moon is a Harsh Mistress; Starship Troopers; Time Enough for Love
  • Inoue Yasushi (1907-1991) Japanese poet, essayist, short fiction writer, and novelist; Aru gisakka no shogai (The Counterfeiter); Wind and Waves; Tun-huang; Confucius; Shirobamba; Asunaro Monogatari; Ryoju; The Bullfight; The Roof Tile of Tempyo; Lou-Lan; The Flood
  • Leslie Charteris (1907-1993) British-Chinese author of adventure fiction; creator of Simon Templar ("The Saint")
  • Cab Calloway (1907-1994) American performer; "Minnie the Moocher"; "Saint James Infirmary"; "Kicking the Gong Around"; "Between the Devil and the Deep Blue Sea"; Grammy Lifetime Achievement Award (2008)
  • James Michener (1907-1997) American author who wrote Tales of the South Pacific; Hawaii; The Drifters; Centennial; The Source; The Fires of Spring; Chesapeake; Caribbean; Caravans; Alaska; Texas; Poland; received the Pulitzer Prize for Fiction (1948)
  • Christopher Fry (1907-2005) English poet and playwright; best-known for The Lady's Not for Burning
  • Richard Wright (1908-1960) American writer; Native Son; Black Boy
  • Theodore Roethke (1908-1963) American poet; The Waking; The Lost Son; The Far Field; Words for the Wind; Pulitzer Prize for poetry (1954)
  • Ian Fleming (1908-1964) English author; creator of the James Bond series
  • Jacob Bronowski (1908-1974) Polish-born British mathematician, historian of science, and poet; The Ascent of Man
  • William Saroyan (1908-1981) American dramatist, novelist, and short story writer; The Time of Your Life (Pulitzer Prize for Drama in 1940); novel The Human Comedy
  • Simone de Beauvoir (1908-1986) French novelist and philosopher; She Came to Stay; The Second Sex; Memoirs of a Dutiful Daughter
  • Louis L'Amour (1908-1988) American author of western novels; Hondo; the Sackett series; Shalako
  • David Lean (1908-1991) English filmmaker; The Bridge on the River Kwai; Lawrence of Arabia; Doctor Zhivago; A Passage to India; two Academy Awards
  • Claude Lévi-Strauss (1908-2009) French anthropologist who wrote Tristes Tropiques (Sad Tropics); La Pensée Sauvage (The Savage Mind); Le Cru et le Cuit (The Raw and the Cooked); Myth and Meaning
  • Simone Weil (1909-1943) French philosopher, mystic, and political activist; wrote Waiting for God
  • Dazai Osamu (1909-1948) Japanese novelist and short story writer; Shayo (The Setting Sun); No Longer Human (Ningen Shikkaku)
  • James Agee (1909-1955) American author, poet, and critic; A Death in the Family; Let Us Now Praise Famous Men; Pulitzer Prize for Fiction (1958)
  • Malcolm Lowry (1909-1957) English poet and novelist; Ultramarine; Under the Volcano; Hear Us O Lord from Heaven Thy Dwelling Place; Lunar Caustic; Dark as the Grave wherein my Friend is Laid; October Ferry to Gabriola
  • Ketti Frings (1909-1981) American author and playwright; Walking Happy; Look Homeward, Angel; Pulitzer Prize for Drama (1958)
  • Ooka Shohei (1909-1988) Japanese novelist; Nobi (Fires on the Plain)
  • Wallace Stegner (1909-1993) American novelist, short story writer, and historian; Angle of Repose; The Spectator Bird; Crossing to Safety; Pulitzer Prize for Fiction (1972)
  • Eugene Ionesco (1909-1994) Romanian-French playwright; The Bald Soprano; The Killer; Rhinoceros
  • Eudora Welty (1909-2001) American short story writer and novelist; short story collections Music from Spain; The Golden Apples; novels The Robber Bridegroom; Delta Wedding; The Ponder Heart; The Shoe Bird; Losing Battles; The Optimist's Daughter; Pulitzer Prize for Fiction (1973)
  • Ernest Gombrich (1909-2001) Austrian-born British art historian; The Story of Art; Art and Illusion; Meditations on a Hobby Horse; The Image and the Eye
  • Elia Kazan (1909-2003) Greek-American filmmaker; and writer known for films of A Streetcar Named Desire; On the Waterfront; East of Eden
  • Jean Genet (1910-1986) French novelist, playwright, poet, essayist, and political activist; novels Our Lady of the Flowers, The Thief's Journal; play The Balcony
  • Jean Anouilh (1910-1987) French dramatist; wrote The Lark; Becket; Traveler without Luggage; Antigone
  • Fritz Leiber (1910-1992) American fantasy and science fiction writer; most famous for stories starring his characters Fafhrd and the Gray Mouser
  • Akira Kurosawa (1910-1998) Japanese filmmaker; known for Rashomon; Ikiru; Seven Samurai; Yojimbo; Kagemusha; Ran
  • Paul Bowles (1910-1999) American author; The Sheltering Sky
  • Marshall McLuhan (1911-1980) Canadian philosopher; The Mechanical Bride; The Gutenberg Galaxy; Understanding Media; The Medium is the Massage; War and Peace in the Global Village; From Cliché to Archetype
  • Tennessee Williams (1911-1983) American playwright; A Streetcar Named Desire; Cat on a Hot Tin Roof; The Glass Menagerie; Sweet Bird of Youth; The Night of the Iguana
  • William Golding (1911-1993) British novelist, playwright, and poet; known for novel Lord of the Flies; Nobel Prize in Literature (1983)
  • Naguib Mahfouz (1911-2006) Egyptian writer; 34 novels (including Midaq Alley and the "Cairo Trilogy"), over 350 short stories, and more; Nobel Prize in Literature (1988)
  • John Cheever (1912-1982) American novelist and short story writer; stories "The Enormous Radio"; "Goodbye, My Brother"; "The Five-Forty-Eight"; "The Country Husband"; "The Swimmer"; novel The Wapshot Chronicle
  • Barbara W. Tuchman (1912-1989) American historian; The Guns of August; Stilwell and the American Experience in China; Pulitzer Prize for General Non-Fiction (1962 and 1971)
  • Lawrence Durrell (1912-1990) British novelist, poet, playwright, and travel writer; The Alexandria Quartet (Justine; Balthazar; Mountolive; Clea)
  • Patrick White (1912-1990) Australian novelist, short story writer, and playwright; Voss; Riders in the Chariot; Happy Valley; The Tree of Man; The Burnt Ones; Nobel Prize in Literature (1973)
  • A. E. van Vogt (1912-2000) Canadian author of science fiction; best-known for the novel Slan; short stories "The Silkie"; "The Weapon Shop"; "Black Destroyer"
  • Studs Terkel (1912-2008) American author and historian; Working; The Good War; Pulitzer Prize for General Non-Fiction (1985)
  • Albert Camus (1913-1960) French philosopher, author, and journalist; The Stranger; The Plague; The Myth of Sisyphus; Nobel Prize in Literature (1957)
  • Delmore Schwartz (1913-1966) American poet and short story writer; In Dreams Begin Responsibilities; Summer Knowledge: New and Selected Poems
  • William Inge (1913-1973) American playwright and novelist; Picnic; Come Back, Little Sheba; Bus Stop; Pulitzer Prize for Drama (1953)
  • May Swenson (1913-1989) American poet and playwright known for poetry collections New & Selected Things Taking Place; In Other Words
  • Lewis Thomas (1913-1993) American physician and essayist; The Lives of a Cell; The Medusa and the Snail; Late Night Thoughts on Listening to Mahler's Ninth Symphony
  • Ralph Ellison (1913-1994) American novelist; Invisible Man
  • Robertson Davies (1913-1995) Canadian man of letters; wrote three novel "trilogies" (the Salterton, Depfford, and Cornish trilogies) and most of a fourth
  • R. S. Thomas (1913-2000) Welsh poet and Anglican priest; collections Song at the Year's Turning; Laboratories of the Spirit
  • Dylan Thomas (1914-1953) Welsh poet and writer who wrote "Do not go gentle into that good night"; "And death shall have no dominion"; Under Milk Wood; A Child's Christmas in Wales; Portrait of the Artist as a Young Dog
  • Randall Jarrell (1914-1965) American poet, literary critic, children's author, essayist, novelist remembered for The Woman at the Washington Zoo; The Lost World; Pictures from an Institution, and other poems. US Poet Laureate (1956-1958).
  • John Berryman (John Allyn Smith, Jr.) (1914-1972) American poet who wrote The Dream Songs (77 Dream Songs and His Toy, His Dream His Rest); received the Pulitzer Prize for Poetry (1965)
  • Julio Cortázar (1914-1984) Argentine novelist, short story writer, and essayist known for Hopscotch; All Fires the Fire; Blow-up and Other Stories
  • Bernard Malamud (1914-1986) American novelist and short story writer; The Natural; The Fixer; Pulitzer Prize for Fiction (1967)
  • Marguerite Duras (1914-1996) French novelist, playwright, and essayist; L'Amant (The Lover); film Hiroshima mon amour
  • William S. Burroughs (1914-1997) American novelist, short story writer, satirist, essayist; Naked Lunch; Junkie
  • Octavio Paz (1914-1998) Mexican poet; Early Poems: 1935–1955; Collected Poems, 1957–1987; The Labyrinth of Solitude; They Shall Not Pass!; The Sun Stone; Nobel Prize in Literature (1990)
  • Billie Holiday (1915-1959) American performer; blues singer "Strange Fruit"
  • Thomas Merton (1915-1968) American Catholic writer and mystic; The Seven Storey Mountain
  • Ross Macdonald (Kenneth Millar) (1915-1983) American-Canadian author of crime stories; the Lew Archer series
  • Orson Welles (1915-1985) American filmmaker who made Citizen Kane; The Magnificent Ambersons; Macbeth; Othello; Touch of Evil; Academy Award (1941) and an Academy Honorary Award (1970)
  • Saul Bellow (1915-2005) Canadian-American novelist, short story writer, and playwright; The Adventures of Augie March; Henderson the Rain King; Herzog; Mr. Sammler's Planet; Humboldt's Gift; Nobel Prize in Literature (1976); Pulitzer Prize for Fiction (1976)
  • Arthur Miller (1915-2005) American playwright and essayist who wrote All My Sons; Death of a Salesman; The Crucible; A View from the Bridge
  • Beverly Cleary (1916-2021) American author of children's literature; Henry Huggins series; Ramona series; The Mouse and the Motorcycle; Dear Mr. Henshaw
  • Shirley Jackson (1916-1965) American novelist and short story writer; The Haunting of Hill House; "Charles"; "The Lottery"
  • John D. MacDonald (1916-1986) American crime novelist and short story writer; the Travis McGee series
  • Roald Dahl (1916-1990) British writer; best known for children's books James and the Giant Peach; Charlie and the Chocolate Factory; Fantastic Mr. Fox; The BFG; Matilda
  • Walker Percy (1916-1990) American novelist, essayist; The Moviegoer; The Second Coming
  • Francis Crick (1916-2004) British biologist; Of Molecules and Men; What Mad Pursuit: A Personal View of Scientific Discovery; The Astonishing Hypothesis: The Scientific Search For The Soul; Nobel Prize in Physiology or Medicine (1962)
  • Shelby Foote (1916-2005) American historian and novelist; The Civil War: A Narrative
  • Carson McCullers (1917-1967) American novelist, short story writer, playwright, essayist, and poet; The Heart Is a Lonely Hunter; The Ballad of the Sad Café; Member of the Wedding
  • Robert Lowell (1917-1977) American poet; known for Lord Weary's Castle; Life Studies; For the Union Dead; Pulitzer Prizes for Poetry (1947 and 1974)
  • Anthony Burgess (1917-1993) English writer; A Clockwork Orange; the Enderby quartet
  • Dizzy Gillespie (1917-1993) American jazz composer and performer who wrote "Groovin' High"; "Woody 'n' You"; "Salt Peanuts"; "A Night in Tunisia"; "Manteca"; Grammy Lifetime Achievement Award (1989)
  • Ella Fitzgerald (1917-1996) American performer; "A-Tisket, A-Tasket"; You Can't Sing It) You'll Have to Swing It (Mr. Paganini)"; "How High the Moon"; "Cheek to Cheek"; "It Don't Mean a Thing (If It Ain't Got That Swing)"; "Oh, Lady Be Good!"
  • Gwendolyn Brooks (1917-2000) American poet; A Street in Bronzeville; Annie Allen; Winnie; Pulitzer Prize for Poetry (1950)
  • Arthur C. Clarke (1917-2008) British author of science fiction; 2001: A Space Odyssey; Profiles of the Future; Rendezvous with Rama; The Fountains of Paradise
  • Theodore Sturgeon (1918-1985) American author of science fiction; More Than Human; I, Libertine; "Microcosmic God"; "Slow Sculpture"
  • Richard Feynman (1918-1988) American scientist; The Feynman Lectures on Physics; memoirs Surely You're Joking, Mr. Feynman! and What Do You Care What Other People Think?; The Meaning of It All: Thoughts of a Citizen Scientist; The Pleasure of Finding Things Out: The Best Short Works of Richard P. Feynman; Nobel Prize in Physics (1965)
  • Leonard Bernstein (1918-1990) American composer; of such works as Candida; On the Town; Wonderful Town; and West Side Story; multiple Grammys, including Lifetime Achievement Award
  • Muriel Spark (1918-2006) Scottish novelist, short story writer, poet, and essayist; The Prime of Miss Jean Brodie; The Mandelbaum Gate; The Driver's Seat; Memento Mori
  • Madeleine L'Engle (1918-2007) American author of children's literature (among others),; known for A Wrinkle in Time and other books in the "Kairos" and "Chronos" series.
  • Ingmar Bergman (1918-2007) Swedish filmmaker; The Seventh Seal; Wild Strawberries; Winter Light; Persona; Cries and Whispers; Fanny and Alexander; three Academy Awards
  • Aleksandr Solzhenitsyn (1918-2008) Russian novelist, historian, and short story writer; The First Circle; One Day in the Life of Ivan Denisovich; Cancer Ward; August 1914; The Gulag Archipelago; Nobel Prize in Literature (1970)
  • Philip José Farmer (1918-2009) American author of science fiction; the World of Tiers and Riverworld series
  • Lawrence Ferlinghetti (1919-2021) American poet; A Coney Island of the Mind
  • Huston Smith (1919-2016) American religious studies scholar; The World's Religions; Why Religion Matters; The Wisdom of Faith with Bill Moyers
  • Primo Levi (1919-1987) Italian novelist, short story writer, essayist, and poet; If This Is a Man (U.S. title: Survival in Auschwitz); The Periodic Table
  • Iris Murdoch (1919-1999) English novelist and philosopher; Under the Net; The Black Prince; The Sea, the Sea
  • J. D. Salinger (1919-2010) American short story writer, novelist; The Catcher in the Rye; Nine Stories; Raise High the Roof Beam, Carpenters and Seymour: An Introduction; Franny and Zooey
  • Frank Kermode (1919-2010) British literary critic who wrote The Sense of an Ending
  • Frederik Pohl (1919-2013) American author of science fiction; Gateway; Man Plus; Jem
  • Doris Lessing (1919-2013) British novelist, poet, playwright, and short story writer who wrote The Grass is Singing; Children of Violence (pentalogy); The Golden Notebook; The Good Terrorist; Canopus in Argos: Archives (pentalogy); received the Nobel Prize in Literature (2007)
  • Frank Herbert (1920-1986) American author of science fiction who wrote Dune and its sequels; the ConSentiency series; the Destination: Void series
  • Howard Nemerov (1920-1991) American poet; The Collected Poems of Howard Nemerov; twice Poet Laureate of the United States (1963-1964 and 1988-1990); Pulitzer Prize for Poetry (1978)
  • Isaac Asimov (1920-1992) American author of science fiction; the Foundation Series; the Galactic Empire series; the Robot series; "Nightfall"; essay collections
  • Federico Fellini (1920-1993) Italian filmmaker who made La Strada; Nights of Cabiria; La Dolce Vita; 81/2; Satyricon; Amarcord
  • Charles Bukowski (1920-1994) American poet, novelist, and short story writer; Poems Written Before Jumping Out of an 8 Story Window; Burning in Water, Drowning in Flame; Notes of a Dirty Old Man (columns)
  • Philippa Pearce (1920-2006) English author of children's books; Tom's Midnight Garden; The Squirrel Wife; The Battle of Bubble and Squeak
  • Dick Francis (1920-2010) British author of crime stories who wrote Dead Cert; Nerve; Whip Hand; Under Orders
  • Ray Bradbury (1920-2012) American science fiction writer; Fahrenheit 451; The Martian Chronicles; Something Wicked This Way Comes; "The Veldt"; "All Summer in a Day"; Pulitzer Prize Special Citations and Awards (Letters) (2007)
  • P. D. James (1920-2014) English author of crime stories; the Adam Dalgliesh series
  • Wilson Harris (1921-2018) Guyanese poet, novelist, and essayist; The Guyana Quartet (Palace of the Peacock; The Far Journey of Oudin; The Whole Armour; The Secret Ladder)
  • Richard Wilbur (1921-2017 ) American poet; Things of This World; Pulitzer Prize for Poetry (1957, 1989); Poet Laureate of the United States (1996)
  • James Jones (1921-1977) American novelist; From Here to Eternity; Some Came Running; The Thin Red Line
  • Alex Haley (1921-1992) American author; Roots; The Autobiography of Malcolm X
  • John Rawls (1921-2002) American philosopher; A Theory of Justice
  • Mona Van Duyn (1921-2004) American poet; To See, To Take: Poems; Near Changes; Pulitzer Prize for Poetry (1991); Poet Laureate of the United States (1992)
  • Betty Friedan (1921-2006) American writer; The Feminine Mystique
  • Jack Kerouac (1922-1969) American novelist and poet who wrote The Town and the City; On the Road; The Dharma Bums; Mexico City Blues (poem)
  • Philip Larkin (1922-1985) English poet and novelist; The Whitsun Weddings; High Windows
  • Thomas Kuhn (1922-1996) American physicist and philosopher of science; The Structure of Scientific Revolutions
  • Kurt Vonnegut Jr. (1922-2007) American novelist and short story writer; Player Piano; The Sirens of Titan; Cat's Cradle; Slaughterhouse-Five; Breakfast of Champions; short-story collection Welcome to the Monkey House includes "Harrison Bergeron," "Who Am I This Time?" and "EPICAC"
  • Arthur Penn (1922-2010) American filmmaker; The Miracle Worker; The Chase; Bonnie and Clyde; Alice's Restaurant; Little Big Man
  • Italo Calvino (1923-1985) Italian journalist and writer of short stories and novels; Our Ancestors (trilogy), especially The Baron in the Trees; Invisible Cities; If on a winter's night a traveler; short story collection Cosmicomics
  • Endo Shusaku (1923-1996) Japanese author; Chinmoku (Silence)
  • James Dickey (1923-1997) American poet and novelist; Buckdancer's Choice: Poems; Deliverance; Poet Laureate of the United States (1966)
  • Anthony Hecht (1923-2004) American poet; The Hard Hours; received the Pulitzer Prize for Poetry (1968)
  • Norman Mailer (1923-2007) American novelist, essayist, playwright, and journalist; The Naked and the Dead; The Executioner's Song; The Armies of the Night; Pulitzer Prize for General Non-Fiction (1969); Pulitzer Prize for Fiction (1980)
  • Nadine Gordimer (1923-2014) South African writer; The Conservationist; Burger's Daughter; July's People; Nobel Prize in Literature (1991)
  • Truman Capote (1924-1984) American author of both fiction and non-fiction; fiction Other Voices, Other Rooms; Breakfast at Tiffany's); non-fiction In Cold Blood
  • James Baldwin (1924-1987) American novelist, essayist, playwright, and poet; Go Tell It on the Mountain; Notes of a Native Son; The Fire Next Time; Blues for Mister Charlie; Just Above My Head
  • Abe Kobo (1924-1993) Japanese writer; Suna no Onna (The Woman in the Dunes)
  • Lloyd Alexander (1924-2007) American author of children's literature; The Chronicles of Prydain (The Book of Three; The Black Cauldron; The Castle of Llyr; Taran Wanderer; The High King); the Westmark trilogy (Westmark; The Kestrel; The Beggar Queen)
  • Flannery O'Connor (1925-1964) American novelist and short story writer; Wise Blood; The Violent Bear It Away; A Good Man Is Hard to Find and Other Stories
  • Mishima Yukio (1925-1970) Japanese novelist, playwright, poet, short story writer, and essayist; Confessions of a Mask; The Temple of the Golden Pavilion; The Sailor Who Fell from Grace with the Sea; The Sea of Fertility tetralogy (Spring Snow; Runaway Horses; The Temple of Dawn; The Decay of the Angel); Hagakure Nyumon
  • Sam Peckinpah (1925-1984) American filmmaker; The Wild Bunch; Straw Dogs; The Getaway; Pat Garrett and Billy the Kid; Bring Me the Head of Alfredo Garcia
  • Robert Altman (1925-2006) American filmmaker; MASH; Nashville; The Player; Short Cuts; Gosford Park
  • William Styron (1925-2006) American novelist and essayist; The Confessions of Nat Turner; Sophie's Choice
  • Tony Hillerman (1925-2008) American author of crime stories who wrote the Leaphorn and Chee series (The Blessing Way etc.) about Navajo Tribal Police
  • Maruya Saiichi (1925-2012) Japanese author; Japanese novelist who also translated James Joyce; Singular Rebellion; Rain in the Wind: Four Stories; A Mature Woman; Grass for My Pillow
  • Gore Vidal (1925-2012) American novelist, essayist, and dramatist; wrote The City and the Pillar; Julian; Myra Breckinridge; Burr; Lincoln
  • Elmore Leonard (1925-2013) American author of crime novels and short stories who wrote Hombre; Get Shorty; Raylan; "Three-Ten to Yuma"
  • Mel Brooks (1926 - ) American filmmaker; The Producers; Blazing Saddles; Young Frankenstein; Silent Movie; High Anxiety; History of the World, Part I; Robin Hood: Men in Tights
  • John Coltrane (1926-1967) American jazz saxophonist and composer known especially for the genres "bebop" and "hard bop,"; and who won a special Pulitzer Prize in 2007; notable works include "My Favorite Things"; "Naima"; "Giant Steps"; "Equinox"; "Cousin Mary"; "Central Park West"
  • Miles Davis (1926-1991) American jazz artist; Round About Midnight; Sketches of Spain; Milestones; Kind of Blue
  • Allen Ginsberg (1926-1997) American poet; best-known for "Howl"
  • John Fowles (1926-2005) English novelist; The Collector; The Magus; The French Lieutenant's Woman
  • Harper Lee (1926-2016) American novelist; To Kill a Mockingbird; Pulitzer Prize for Fiction (1961)
  • John Ashbery (1927-2017) American poet; Self-portrait in a Convex Mirror; Pulitzer Prize for Poetry (1976)
  • W. S. Merwin (1927-2019) American poet who has written over fifty books of poetry; United States Poet Laureate (2010), Pulitzer Prize for Poetry (1971, 2009)
  • Edward Abbey (1927-1989) American novelist and essayist; The Monkey Wrench Gang; Desert Solitaire
  • Kita Morio (Sokichi Saito) (1927-2011) Japanese novelist; Japanese novelist who wrote The House of Nire; Ghosts; The Adventures of Kupukupu the Sailor; story "In the Corner of Night and Fog"
  • Ruth Prawer Jhabvala (1927-2013) German-born British and American novelist, short story writer, and screenwriter known for her novel Heat and Dust, and adapting the screenplays from E. M. Forster's Room with a View and Howards End (winning Oscars for both)
  • Gabriel Garcia Marquez (1927-2014) Colombian novelist, short-story writer, and journalist; One Hundred Years of Solitude; The Autumn of the Patriarch; Love in the Time of Cholera; Chronicle of a Death Foretold; Nobel Prize in Literature (1982)
  • Günter Grass (1927-2015) German novelist, poet, playwright, and artist who wrote The Tin Drum; Cat and Mouse; Dog Years; Crabwalk; What Must Be Said; received the Nobel Prize in Literature (1999)
  • Ellery Queen: pseudonymous author actually representing a pair of writing cousins; SEE Frederic Dannay and Manfred Bennington Lee
  • William Kennedy (1928 - ) American author; Legs; Billy Phelan's Greatest Game; Ironweed; Pulitzer Prize for Fiction (1984)
  • Donald Hall (1928-2018) American poet and writer; poetry collections Exiles and Marriages; Kicking the Leaves; The Happy Man; The One Day; The Museum of Clear Ideas; Without: Poems; children's book Ox-Cart Man; non-fiction Essays After Eighty
  • James Watson (1928 - ) American biologist; The Double Helix; Avoid Boring People: Lessons from a Life in Science; Nobel Prize in Physiology or Medicine (1962)
  • Edward Albee (1928-2016) American playwright; Who's Afraid of Virginia Woolf?; The Zoo Story; A Delicate Balance; The Goat, or Who is Sylvia?; Pulitzer Prize for Drama (1967, 1975, and 1994)
  • Philip K. Dick (1928-1982) American author of science fiction; Ubik; Do Androids Dream of Electric Sheep?; The Man in the High Castle; A Scanner Darkly; Flow My Tears, the Policeman Said; the VALIS trilogy (VALIS; The Divine Invasion; The Transmigration of Timothy Archer); "Second Variety"
  • Andy Warhol (1928-1987) American artist; Campbell's Soup Cans; Marilyn Diptych
  • Stanley Kubrick (1928-1999) American filmmaker; Spartacus; Lolita; Dr. Strangelove; 2001: A Space Odyssey; A Clockwork Orange; Barry Lyndon; The Shining; Full Metal Jacket; Eyes Wide Shut
  • Carlos Fuentes (1928-2012) Mexican novelist and essayist; Gringo Viejo (The Old Gringo); La Muerte de Artemio Cruz (The Death of Artemio Cruz); Terra Nostra
  • Maurice Sendak (1928-2012) American illustrator and writer of children's books; Where the Wild Things Are; In the Night Kitchen; Outside Over There
  • Maya Angelou (1928-2014) American poet, memoirist, and activist; I Know Why the Caged Bird Sings; On the Pulse of Morning
  • Philip Levine (1928-2015) American poet; The Simple Truth; What Work Is; Pulitzer Prize for Poetry (1994); Poet Laureate of the United States (2011-2012)
  • E. O. Wilson (1929 - ) American biologist; Sociobiology: The New Synthesis; On Human Nature; The Ants; Consilience; Pulitzer Prize for Non-Fiction (1979, 1991)
  • Milan Kundera (1929 - ) Czech-born French writer; The Joke; The Book of Laughter and Forgetting; The Unbearable Lightness of Being
  • Ursula LeGuin (1929-2018) American author of novels, children's books, and short stories, mainly fantasy and science fiction who wrote The Earthsea series; The Hainish Cycle; The Lathe of Heaven
  • Martin Luther King Jr. (1929-1968) American minister and activist; Stride Toward Freedom; Why We Can't Wait; The Autobiography of Martin Luther King Jr.; "I Have a Dream" and "I've Been to the Mountaintop" (speeches); Nobel Peace Prize (1964)
  • Sergio Leone (1929-1989) Italian filmmaker; the Dollars trilogy (A Fistful of Dollars; For a Few Dollars More; The Good, the Bad and the Ugly); Once Upon a Time in the West; Once Upon a Time in America
  • A. K. Ramanujan (1929-1993) Indian poet and critic who wrote the controversial essay "Three Hundred Ramayanas: Five Examples and Three Thoughts on Translation"; remembered for Collected Poems
  • Adrienne Rich (1929-2012) American poet; Diving Into the Wreck
  • John Barth (1930 - ) American writer; The Floating Opera; The End of the Road; The Sot-Weed Factor; Giles Goat-Boy; Lost in the Funhouse
  • Clint Eastwood (1930 - ) American filmmaker; The Outlaw Josey Wales; Pale Rider; Unforgiven; Mystic River; Million Dollar Baby; Letters from Iwo Jima
  • Gary Snyder (1930 - ) American poet and essayist; Turtle Island; The Real Work; A Place in Space; Mountains and Rivers Without End; Pulitzer Prize for Poetry (1975)
  • Harold Brodkey (1930-1996) American short-story writer and novelist known for Stories in an Almost Classical Mode (stories); The Runaway Soul (novel); and This Wild Darkness: The Story of My Death (non-fiction).
  • Ted Hughes (Edward James Hughes) (1930-1998) English poet and children's writer who wrote poems The Hawk in the Rain; Crow; Birthday Letters; prose Shakespeare and the Goddess of Complete Being; The Iron Man (The Iron Giant) for children; Poet Laureate of the United Kingdom (1984-1998)
  • Shel Silverstein (1930-1999) American poet, songwriter, and children's author who wrote Where the Sidewalk Ends; The Giving Tree
  • Harold Pinter (1930-2008) English playwright who wrote The Birthday Party; The Homecoming; Betrayal; received the Nobel Prize in Literature (2005)
  • J. G. Ballard (1930-2009) English novelist and short story writer (including science fiction), and essayist; The Wind from Nowhere; The Drowned World; Crash; Empire of the Sun; High-Rise
  • Chinua Achebe (1930-2013) Nigerian novelist, poet, and critic; The "African Trilogy" (Things Fall Apart; No Longer at Ease; Arrow of God); A Man of the People; Anthills of the Savannah
  • Derek Walcott (1930-2017) Saint Lucian poet and playwright known for epic poem Omeros and play Dream on Monkey Mountain
  • Toni Morrison (1931-2019) American novelist; Beloved; Song of Solomon; The Bluest Eye; Nobel Prize in Literature (1993); Pulitzer Prize for Fiction (1988)
  • Alice Munro (1931 - ) Canadian short story writer; Runaway; Hateship, Friendship, Courtship, Loveship, Marriage (or Away from Her); Dance Of The Happy Shades; Something I’ve Been Meaning To Tell You; Nobel Prize in Literature (2013)
  • John le Carré (David John Moore Cornwell) (1931 - ) British author of espionage novels who wrote The Spy Who Came in from the Cold; Tinker Tailor Soldier Spy; The Honourable Schoolboy; Smiley's People; The Night Manager; The Constant Gardener
  • Ariyoshi Sawako (1931-1984) Japanese novelist; The Doctor's Wife; The River Ki
  • Donald Barthelme (1931-1989) American short story writer and novelist; Sixty Stories; Forty Stories; Snow White; The Dead Father
  • E. L. Doctorow (1931-2015) American novelist; The Book of Daniel; Ragtime; World's Fair; Billy Bathgate; The March; Homer & Langley
  • V. S. Naipaul (1932-2018) Trinidadian British novelist and essayist; A House for Mr Biswas; In a Free State; A Bend in the River; The Enigma of Arrival; Nobel Prize in Literature (2001)
  • Sylvia Plath (1932-1963) American poet, novelist, and short story writer who wrote The Colossus and Other Poems; Ariel; The Bell Jar
  • Henri Nouwen (1932-1996) Dutch Catholic priest and theologian whose works include The Return of the Prodigal Son; The Wounded Healer; In the Name of Jesus
  • John Updike (1932-2009) American novelist, poet, short story writer, and critic; the Rabbit Angstrom novels (Rabbit, Run; Rabbit Redux; Rabbit Is Rich; Rabbit at Rest; Rabbit Remembered); the Henry Bech stories; The Witches of Eastwick; Pulitzer Prize for Fiction (1982, 1991)
  • Robert B. Parker (1932-2010) American writer; detective novels featuring Spenser, Jesse Stone, and Sunny Randall
  • Umberto Eco (1932-2016) Italian novelist, critic, and philosopher; The Name of the Rose; Foucault's Pendulum; The Island of the Day Before; The Prague Cemetery
  • Philip Roth (1933-2018) American novelist; Goodbye, Columbus; Portnoy's Complaint; American Pastoral; Pulitzer Prize for Fiction (1998)
  • Cormac McCarthy (1933 - ) American novelist; Suttree; Blood Meridian; the Border trilogy (All the Pretty Horses; The Crossing; Cities of the Plain); No Country for Old Men; The Road; The Sunset Limited; Pulitzer Prize for Fiction (2007)
  • Donald E. Westlake (1933-2008) American author of crime stories; the Parker and John Dortmunder series; The Hunter; The Grifters; The Stepfather
  • Harlan Ellison (1934-2018) American author of science fiction; A Boy and His Dog; I Have No Mouth, and I Must Scream; "Repent, Harlequin!" Said the Ticktockman
  • Piers Anthony (1934 - ) English American author of science fiction; The Magic of Xanth series
  • Alan Garner (1934 - ) English novelist and author of children's literature and British folk tales who wrote The Weirdstone of Brisingamen; The Moon of Gomrath; Red Shift; Elidor; The Owl Service; The Stone Book Quartet
  • Carl Sagan (1934-1996) American scientist and author; Cosmos: A Personal Voyage; The Dragons of Eden; Pale Blue Dot; Contact (novel); Pulitzer Prize for General Non-Fiction (1978)
  • Mark Strand (1934-2014) Canadian-born American poet and essayist; Blizzard of One; Pulitzer Prize for Poetry (1999); Poet Laureate of the United States (1990)
  • Richard Brautigan (1935-1984) American novelist, poet, and short story writer whose work often uses black comedy, parody, and satire. Best known for his novels Trout Fishing in America and In Watermelon Sugar.
  • Ken Kesey (1935-2001) American novelist, short story writer, essayist, and poet; One Flew Over the Cuckoo's Nest; Sometimes a Great Notion
  • Oe Kenzaburo (1935 - ) Japanese novelist, short story writer, and essayist; A Personal Matter; The Silent Cry; Nobel Prize in Literature (1994)
  • Woody Allen (1935 - ) American filmmaker; Annie Hall; Interiors; Manhattan; The Purple Rose of Cairo; Hannah and Her Sisters; Bullets over Broadway; Mighty Aphrodite; Stardust Memories; Match Point; four Academy Awards
  • Charles Wright (1935 - ) American poet; Poet Laureate of the United States (2014-2015); Pulitzer Prize for Poetry (1998); National Book Award for Poetry
  • E. Annie Proulx (1935 - ) American novelist, short story writer, and journalist; Postcards; The Shipping News; Close Range: Wyoming Stories includes "Brokeback Mountain"; Pulitzer Prize for Fiction (1994)
  • Susan Cooper (1935 - ) English author of children's literature; The Dark Is Rising series (Over Sea, Under Stone; The Dark Is Rising; Greenwitch; The Grey King; Silver on the Tree)
  • Mary Oliver (1935-2019) American poet whose poems look deeply into nature; Pulitzer Prize for Poetry (1984)
  • Thomas Keneally (1935 - ) Australian novelist, playwright, and essayist known for novels Schindler's Ark (which became the film Schindler's List) and The Playmaker
  • Mario Vargas Llosa (1936 - ) Peruvian novelist, short story writer, and essayist; The Time of the Hero; Aunt Julia and the Scriptwriter; The War of the End of the World; The Feast of the Goat; The Bad Girl; Nobel Prize in Literature (2010)
  • Don DeLillo (1936 - ) American novelist, playwright and essayist; White Noise; Libra; Mao II; Underworld; Cosmopolis
  • Vaclav Havel (1936-2011) Czech writer, philosopher, and statesman who wrote The Garden Party and The Memorandum
  • Ridley Scott (1937 - ) English filmmaker; Alien; Blade Runner; Thelma & Louise; Gladiator; Black Hawk Down; Hannibal; Prometheus; The Martian
  • Tom Stoppard (1937 - ) British playwright; Arcadia; The Coast of Utopia; Every Good Boy Deserves Favour; Professional Foul; The Real Thing; Rosencrantz and Guildenstern Are Dead
  • Lois Lowry (1937 - ) American author of children's literature; The Giver Quartet: (The Giver; Gathering Blue; Messenger; Son); Number the Stars; series: Anastasia; Sam Krupnik; Tate Family; Gooney Bird
  • Thomas Pynchon (1937 - ) American novelist; V.; The Crying of Lot 49; Gravity's Rainbow; Mason & Dixon
  • Furui Yoshikichi (1937-2020) Japanese author; White-Haired Melody; Child of Darkness: Yoko and Other Stories; Ravine and Other Stories
  • Charles Simic (1938 - ) Serbian-American poet; The World Doesn't End; Selected Poems; Unending Blues; Pulitzer Prize for Poetry (1990); Poet Laureate of the United States (2007-2008)
  • Joyce Carol Oates (1938 - ) American novelist, playwright, short story writer, poet, and nonfiction writer; them; Black Water; What I Lived For; Blonde; short story collections The Wheel of Love and Other Stories and Lovely, Dark, Deep: Stories
  • Judy Blume (1938 - ) American author of children's literature; Tiger Eyes; Are You There God? It's Me, Margaret; Tales of a Fourth Grade Nothing
  • Ishmael Reed (1938 - ) American poet, novelist, essayist, and playwright; Yellow Back Radio Broke-Down; Mumbo Jumbo; The Last Days of Louisiana Red; Flight to Canada
  • Raymond Carver (1938-1988) American short-story writer and poet who contributed to the revitalization of the American short story during the 1980s. His story "What We Talk About When We Talk About Love" was the "play within a play" in Alejandro Iñárritu's film Birdman; the short story collection Where I'm Calling From is cited by Bloom.
  • Ted Kooser (1939 - ) American poet; Delights and Shadows; Pulitzer Prize for Poetry (2005); Poet Laureate of the United States (2004-2006)
  • Francis Ford Coppola (1939 - ) American filmmaker; The Godfather (three parts); The Conversation; Apocalypse Now; Bram Stoker's Dracula; Mary Shelley's Frankenstein; multiple Academy Awards
  • Margaret Atwood (1939 - ) Canadian poet, novelist, and essayist; The Handmaid's Tale; Cat's Eye; Alias Grace; The Blind Assassin; Oryx and Crake; Surfacing
  • Seamus Heaney (1939-2013) Irish poet; playwright; and translator (of Beowulf); Opened Ground: Selected Poems: 1966-1996; Nobel Prize in Literature (1995)
  • Gao Xingjian (1940 - ) Chinese novelist, playwright, and critic; Buying a Fishing Rod for My Grandfather (short story collection); Soul Mountain; One Man's Bible; Nobel Prize in Literature (2000)
  • J. M. Coetzee (1940 - ) South African novelist and essayist; Waiting for the Barbarians; Life and Times of Michael K; Foe; Age of Iron; The Master of Petersburg; Disgrace; The Childhood of Jesus; Nobel Prize in Literature (2003)
  • Robert Pinsky (1940 - ) American poet and essayist who wrote Selected Poems; Poet Laureate of the United States (1997-2000)
  • Joseph Brodsky (1940-1996) Russian and American poet and essayist; Gorbunov and Gorchakov; Less Than One: Selected Essays; Nobel Prize in Literature (1987)
  • Billy Collins (1941 - ) American poet; The Art of Drowning; Picnic, Lightning; Poet Laureate of the USA (2001-2003)
  • Stephen Jay Gould (1941-2002) American scientist and historian of science who wrote Ontogeny and Phylogeny; Ever Since Darwin and other collections of essays from Natural History Magazine; also, Wonderful Life: The Burgess Shale and the Nature of History; The Hedgehog, the Fox, and the Magister's Pox; Punctuated Equilibrium
  • Martin Scorsese (1942 - ) American filmmaker; Taxi Driver; Raging Bull; The Last Temptation of Christ; Goodfellas; Gangs of New York; The Aviator; The Departed; Hugo; The Wolf of Wall Street; Academy Award
  • Michael Crichton (1942-2008) American author of science fiction who wrote The Andromeda Strain; The Terminal Man; Jurassic Park; Rising Sun; The Lost World
  • Sam Shepard (1943-2017) American playwright; Buried Child; A Lie of the Mind; Curse of the Starving Class; Fool for Love; True West; Pulitzer Prize for Drama (1979)
  • Louise Glück (1943 - ) American poet; Firstborn; Triumph of Achilles; The Wild Iris; Meadowlands; Averno; Pulitzer Prize for Poetry (1993); US Poet Laureate (2003–2004)
  • Michael Ondaatje (1943 - ) Sri-Lankan born Canadian writer known for poems and novels, including The English Patient; Anil's Ghost
  • Mildred D. Taylor (1943 - ) American author of young adult literature; Roll of Thunder, Hear My Cry (part of the "Logans" series)
  • Elaine Pagels (1943 - ) American religious historian; The Gnostic Gospels; Adam, Eve and the Serpent: Sex and Politics in Early Christianity; Beyond Belief: The Secret Gospel of Thomas
  • Karen Armstrong (1944 - ) British religion writer; A History of God; The Battle for God; The Case for God
  • Alice Walker (1944 - ) American novelist, short story writer, poet, and activist; The Color Purple; Meridian; The Third Life of Grange Copeland; Pulitzer Prize for Fiction (1983)
  • Kay Ryan (1945 - ) American poet; known for The Best of It: New and Selected Poems; US Poet Laureate (2008-2010); Pulitzer Prize for Poetry (2011)
  • Tobias Wolff (1945 - ) American short story writer, memoirist, and novelist; memoirs This Boy's Life; In Pharaoh's Army; novels Ugly Rumours; The Barracks Thief; Old School
  • Annie Dillard (1945 - ) American writer; Pilgrim at Tinker Creek; Holy the Firm; For the Time Being; An American Childhood; The Maytrees; Pulitzer Prize for General Nonfiction (1975)
  • August Wilson (1945-2005) American playwright; wrote The Pittsburgh Cycle, a series of ten plays which won two Pulitzer Prizes for Drama (1987, 1990)
  • Steven Spielberg (1946 - ) American filmmaker; Jaws; Close Encounters of the Third Kind; Raiders of the Lost Ark; E.T. the Extra-Terrestrial; The Color Purple; Empire of the Sun; Schindler's List; Amistad; Saving Private Ryan; Munich; Lincoln; Jurassic Park; Academy Award
  • Oliver Stone (1946 - ) American filmmaker; Scarface; Platoon; Born on the Fourth of July; Salvador; Wall Street; The Doors; JFK; Nixon
  • Philip Pullman (1946 - ) English author of YA literature who wrote His Dark Materials (trilogy: The Golden Compass; The Subtle Knife; The Amber Spyglass); The Good Man Jesus and the Scoundrel Christ
  • Nakagami Kenji (1946-1992) Japanese novelist and essayist; The Cape; The Sea of Withered Trees; Hanzo's Bird; The Immortal; The Cape and other stories from the Japanese Ghetto; Snakelust
  • Salman Rushdie (1947 - ) British Kashmiri novelist and essayist; Midnight's Children; The Satanic Verses; children's books: Haroun and the Sea of Stories; Luka and the Fire of Life
  • David Mamet (1947 - ) American playwright and essayist; The Duck Variations; Sexual Perversity in Chicago; American Buffalo; Glengarry Glen Ross; Oleanna; Pulitzer Prize for Drama (1984)
  • Tsushima Yuko (1947-2016) Japanese writer, essayist and critic; Child of Fortune; Woman Running in the Mountains; The Shooting Gallery & Other Stories; Laughing Wolf
  • Juan Felipe Herrera (1948 - ) American poet; Calling the Doves / Canto a Las Palomas; CrashBoomLove: A Novel in Verse; Grandma & Me at the Flea / Los Meros Meros Remateros; Super Cilantro Girl / La Superniña del Cilantro; Poet Laureate of the United States (2015 - )
  • Alan Lightman (1948 - ) American physicist and writer whose Einstein's Dreams combines these two interests. He has written numerous other short fiction pieces, books (nonfiction and novels), and articles.
  • Murakami Haruki (1949 - ) Japanese novelist, short-story writer, and essayist; A Wild Sheep Chase; Norwegian Wood; The Wind-Up Bird Chronicle; Kafka on the Shore; 1Q84
  • James Wilcox (1949 - ) American novelist; Modern Baptists
  • Bill Bryson (1951 - ) Anglo-American author; The Lost Continent: Travels in Small-Town America; Notes from a Small Island; A Walk in the Woods; A Short History of Nearly Everything
  • Murakami Ryu (1952 - ) Japanese novelist, short story writer, essayist, and filmmaker; Almost Transparent Blue; Coin Locker Babies; In the Miso Soup
  • Rita Dove (1952 - ) American poet; Poet Laureate of the United States (1993-1995); Pulitzer Prize for Poetry (1987)
  • Robert Hass (1952 - ) American poet; Time and Materials: Poems 1997-2005; Pulitzer Prize for Poetry (2008); Poet Laureate of the United States (1995-1997)
  • Douglas Adams (1952-2001) English author, essayist, satirist, and playwright; The Hitchhiker's Guide to the Galaxy series; Dirk Gently's Holistic Detective Agency; The Long Dark Tea-Time of the Soul
  • Joel Coen (1954 - ) American filmmaker; with brother Ethan, made Raising Arizona; Barton Fink; Fargo; The Big Lebowski; O Brother, Where Art Thou?; No Country for Old Men
  • Mo Yan (1955 - ) Chinese novelist and short story writer; Red Sorghum Clan; The Republic of Wine; Life and Death Are Wearing Me Out; Nobel Prize in Literature (2012)
  • Barbara Kingsolver (1955 - ) American novelist, essayist and poet; The Poisonwood Bible; Animal, Vegetable, Miracle
  • Tony Kushner (1956 - ) American playwright and screenwriter best known for his Pulitzer-Prize winning play (1993) Angels in America: A Gay Fantasia on National Themes. He also co-authored the screenplay for Munich (2005) and wrote the screenplay for Lincoln (2012).
  • Spike Lee (1957 - ) American filmmaker; She's Gotta Have It; Do the Right Thing; Mo' Better Blues; Jungle Fever; Malcolm X; Girl 6; Academy Honorary Award (2015)
  • Ethan Coen (1957 - ) American filmmaker who, with brother Joel, made Raising Arizona; Barton Fink; Fargo; The Big Lebowski; O Brother, Where Art Thou?; No Country for Old Men
  • Tim Burton (1958 - ) American filmmaker; over 30 films, including dark comedies such as The Nightmare Before Christmas and Edward Scissorhands; two Oscar Academy Award nominations
  • Amy Yamada (1959 - ) Japanese novelist and short story writer; Trash; Bedtime Eyes; The Piano Player's Fingers; 120% cool; Jesse
  • Neil Gaiman (1960 - ) English novelist and short story writer; The Sandman; Neverwhere; American Gods; Stardust; Coraline; The Graveyard Book; Good Omens; The Ocean at the End of the Lane
  • Shimada Masahiko (1961 - ) Japanese novelist; Music for the Kingdom of Somnambulism; The Dream Messenger
  • Arundhati Roy (1961 - ) Indian author; The God of Small Things
  • David Foster Wallace (1962-2008) American writer; known for novels The Broom of the System; Infinite Jest; The Pale King (unfinished); short story collection Brief Interviews with Hideous Men; essay collection A Supposedly Fun Thing I'll Never Do Again
  • Quentin Tarantino (1963 - ) American filmmaker; Reservoir Dogs; Pulp Fiction; Kill Bill: Volume 1 & 2; Inglourious Basterds; Django Unchained; two Academy Awards
  • Yoshimoto Banana (1964 - ) Japanese novelist; Moonlight Shadow; Kitchen; Goodbye Tsugumi; The Lake
  • Natasha Trethewey (1966 - ) American poet; Domestic Work; Native Guard; Pulitzer Prize for Poetry (2006); Poet Laureate of the US (2012–2014)
  • Jhumpa Lahiri (1967 - ) Indian American novelist and short story writer; Interpreter of Maladies; The Namesake; Unaccustomed Earth; The Lowland; Pulitzer Prize for Fiction (2000)

--- Notes about dates ---

  • c.--indicating "circa" or "around"--is used before each uncertain date; thus in c. 27-66, "27" is approximate, and "66" exact. In c. 35-c. 108, both dates are approximate.
  • When one date is simply unknown, "Unknown Date" may used.
  • Dates expressed with "century/ies" are approximate indeed.
  • It is sometimes known that someone was alive in a certain year; birth can then be surmised "before" that year, or death "after."
  • Most dates are taken from Wikipedia; where unavailable (as with some anonymous works), further research was attempted.