Anton Chekhov

Novelist · 1828 – 1910

Leo Tolstoy was a Russian novelist and moral philosopher whose epics War and Peace and Anna Karenina rank among the greatest works of fiction, and whose later doctrine of nonviolence influenced Gandhi and King.

• War and Peace
• Anna Karenina

Why An admired older contemporary and friend among Russia's literary giants.

Poet · 1799 – 1837

Alexander Pushkin was a Russian poet, playwright and novelist, regarded as the founder of modern Russian literature, whose verse novel Eugene Onegin and other works shaped the language and the writers who followed him.

• Eugene Onegin
• Boris Godunov

Why The founder of the Russian literary tradition Chekhov perfected.

Playwright · 1828 – 1906

Henrik Ibsen was a Norwegian playwright, often called the "father of modern drama" and second only to Shakespeare in influence on the theatre, whose realistic plays like A Doll's House confronted the moral and social questions of his age.

• A Doll's House
• Hedda Gabler

Why A contemporary playwright who, with Chekhov, founded modern drama.

Playwright · 480 BC – 406 BC

Euripides was one of the three great tragedians of classical Athens, whose psychologically searching, often unsettling plays such as Medea and The Bacchae made him the most modern-feeling dramatist of the ancient world.

• Medea
• The Bacchae

Why Also a playwright & writer · Comparable historical impact

Novelist · 1547 – 1616

Miguel de Cervantes was a Spanish writer whose novel Don Quixote is widely regarded as the first modern novel and one of the greatest works in world literature.

• Don Quixote
• The first modern novel

Why Also a writer & playwright · Comparable historical impact

Playwright · 1622 – 1673

Molière was a French playwright and actor of the 17th century, the supreme master of comedy in the French language, whose satires of hypocrisy and vanity remain among the most performed plays in the world.

• Tartuffe
• The Misanthrope

Why Also a playwright & writer · Comparable historical impact

Playwright · 497 BC – 406 BC

Sophocles was one of the three great tragedians of classical Athens, author of Oedipus Rex and Antigone, whose dramas shaped Western theatre and gave us some of its most enduring stories.

• Oedipus Rex
• Antigone

Why Also a playwright & writer · Comparable historical impact

Playwright · 1856 – 1950

George Bernard Shaw was an Irish playwright, critic and polemicist, the leading dramatist of his age after Shakespeare, whose witty, idea-driven plays such as Pygmalion won him the Nobel Prize in Literature and, uniquely, an Academy Award.

• Pygmalion
• Saint Joan

Why Also a playwright & writer · Active in the same era

Writer · 1854 – 1900

Oscar Wilde was an Irish writer and wit, one of the most celebrated playwrights of late-Victorian London, whose sparkling comedies, the novel The Picture of Dorian Gray, and famous epigrams made him a legend — before a scandalous trial destroyed his career.

• The Importance of Being Earnest
• The Picture of Dorian Gray

Why Also a playwright & writer · Active in the same era

Novelist · 1890 – 1976

Agatha Christie was an English writer, the best-selling novelist of all time, whose ingenious detective stories featuring Hercule Poirot and Miss Marple made her the undisputed "Queen of Crime".

• Hercule Poirot
• Miss Marple

Why Also a writer & playwright · Active in the same era

Novelist · 1802 – 1870

Alexandre Dumas was a French writer whose swashbuckling historical novels — The Three Musketeers and The Count of Monte Cristo — became some of the most popular and widely adapted stories in the world.

• The Three Musketeers
• The Count of Monte Cristo

Why Also a writer & playwright · Active in the same era

Writer · 1859 – 1930

Arthur Conan Doyle was a British writer and physician who created Sherlock Holmes, the most famous detective in fiction, whose stories of brilliant deduction defined the detective genre and remain among the best-loved in the world.

• Sherlock Holmes
• The Hound of the Baskervilles

Why Also a writer & physician · Active in the same era

Poet · 1865 – 1939

William Butler Yeats was an Irish poet and dramatist, one of the greatest poets of the 20th century and a driving force of the Irish Literary Revival, who won the Nobel Prize in Literature and helped found Ireland's national theatre.

• The Second Coming
• Irish Literary Revival

Why Also a playwright & writer · Active in the same era

Novelist · 1821 – 1881

Fyodor Dostoevsky was a Russian novelist whose psychologically penetrating works, including Crime and Punishment and The Brothers Karamazov, probe faith, guilt, and freedom and helped shape modern existential thought.

• Crime and Punishment
• The Brothers Karamazov

Why Also a writer · Active in the same era

Writer · 1894 – 1963

Aldous Huxley was an English writer and philosopher whose dystopian novel Brave New World became one of the most influential warnings of the 20th century, imagining a future enslaved not by terror but by pleasure and conditioning.

• Brave New World
• The Doors of Perception

Why Also a writer · Active in the same era

Writer · 1847 – 1912

Bram Stoker was an Irish writer and theatre manager whose 1897 Gothic novel Dracula created the modern vampire and became one of the most influential works of horror fiction ever written.

• Dracula
• Creating the modern vampire

Why Also a writer · Active in the same era

Novelist · 1812 – 1870

Charles Dickens was an English novelist of the Victorian age, the most popular writer of his time and one of the greatest in the English language, whose vivid characters and social conscience defined the 19th-century novel.

• A Christmas Carol
• Oliver Twist

Why Also a writer · Active in the same era

Writer · 1809 – 1849

Edgar Allan Poe was an American writer and poet, a master of the macabre, who invented the detective story, helped shape the modern short story and science fiction, and gave the world haunting tales and poems such as "The Raven".

• The Raven
• Detective fiction

Why Also a writer · Active in the same era

Writer · 1899 – 1961

Ernest Hemingway was an American novelist and short-story writer whose spare, understated prose style revolutionized 20th-century fiction, winning the Nobel Prize in Literature for works such as The Old Man and the Sea.

• The Old Man and the Sea
• A Farewell to Arms

Why Also a writer · Active in the same era

Novelist · 1896 – 1940

F. Scott Fitzgerald was an American novelist and short-story writer, the great chronicler of the Jazz Age, whose novel The Great Gatsby is often called the quintessential American novel.

• The Great Gatsby
• The Jazz Age

Why Also a writer · Active in the same era

Writer · 1883 – 1924

Franz Kafka was a German-language writer from Prague whose nightmarish, unsettling fiction — The Metamorphosis, The Trial and The Castle — became so influential that "Kafkaesque" entered the language to describe bewildering, oppressive situations.

• The Metamorphosis
• The Trial

Why Also a writer · Active in the same era

Novelist · 1927 – 2014

Gabriel García Márquez was a Colombian novelist, the most celebrated figure of Latin American literature, whose masterpiece One Hundred Years of Solitude made magical realism world-famous and won him the Nobel Prize in Literature.

• One Hundred Years of Solitude
• Magical realism

Why Also a writer · Active in the same era

Writer · 1903 – 1950

George Orwell was an English writer and journalist whose novels Nineteen Eighty-Four and Animal Farm became the defining warnings against totalitarianism, giving the world terms such as "Big Brother", "doublethink" and "Orwellian".

• Nineteen Eighty-Four
• Animal Farm

Why Also a writer · Active in the same era

Writer · 1866 – 1946

H. G. Wells was an English writer, a founding father of science fiction, whose visionary novels — The Time Machine, The War of the Worlds and The Invisible Man — imagined time travel, alien invasion and other ideas that have shaped the genre ever since.

• The War of the Worlds
• The Time Machine

Why Also a writer · Active in the same era