Herman Melville

Novelist · 1804 – 1864

Nathaniel Hawthorne was an American novelist and short-story writer whose dark, morally probing fiction — above all The Scarlet Letter — explored sin, guilt and hypocrisy in Puritan New England and helped found the American novel.

• The Scarlet Letter
• The House of the Seven Gables

Why A close friend and fellow novelist to whom Melville dedicated Moby-Dick.

Poet · 1819 – 1892

Walt Whitman was an American poet whose collection Leaves of Grass broke from traditional verse to celebrate democracy, the body and the self in sweeping free verse, making him a founding father of modern American poetry.

• Leaves of Grass
• Free verse

Why A contemporary who, like Melville, forged a distinctly American literature.

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 An earlier American writer of dark, symbolic fiction.

Novelist · 973 – 1014

Murasaki Shikibu was a Japanese noblewoman and writer of the Heian court whose Tale of Genji, written around 1010, is often called the world's first novel and a masterpiece of world literature.

• The Tale of Genji
• World's first novel

Why Also a novelist & writer · Comparable historical impact

Novelist · 1882 – 1941

James Joyce was an Irish novelist whose experimental masterpiece Ulysses is widely regarded as the greatest novel of the 20th century, and whose innovations in language and stream of consciousness transformed modern literature.

• Ulysses
• Dubliners

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

Novelist · 1802 – 1885

Victor Hugo was a French novelist, poet, and dramatist, the towering figure of French Romanticism, whose novels Les Misérables and The Hunchback of Notre-Dame are monuments of world literature.

• Les Misérables
• The Hunchback of Notre-Dame

Why Also a novelist & poet · 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 novelist & 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 novelist & writer · Active in the same era

Writer · 1835 – 1910

Mark Twain was an American writer and humorist, called the "father of American literature", whose novels The Adventures of Tom Sawyer and Adventures of Huckleberry Finn captured the voice of America and remain classics of world literature.

• Adventures of Huckleberry Finn
• The Adventures of Tom Sawyer

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

Novelist · 1850 – 1894

Robert Louis Stevenson was a Scottish writer whose adventure and Gothic tales — Treasure Island, Strange Case of Dr Jekyll and Mr Hyde, and Kidnapped — became enduring classics read around the world.

• Treasure Island
• Dr Jekyll and Mr Hyde

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

Writer · 1865 – 1936

Rudyard Kipling was a British writer and poet, author of The Jungle Book and the poem "If—", who became the first English-language winner of the Nobel Prize in Literature, though his association with British imperialism has made his legacy contested.

• The Jungle Book
• If—

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

Novelist · 1931 – 2019

Toni Morrison was an American novelist whose richly poetic explorations of Black American life — above all Beloved — won her the Pulitzer Prize and made her the first African American woman to receive the Nobel Prize in Literature.

• Beloved
• Song of Solomon

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

Novelist · 1897 – 1962

William Faulkner was an American novelist whose dense, experimental novels set in the fictional Yoknapatawpha County of the Deep South — including The Sound and the Fury — won him the Nobel Prize in Literature and made him one of the most influential writers of the 20th century.

• The Sound and the Fury
• As I Lay Dying

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

Poet · 1830 – 1886

Emily Dickinson was an American poet who lived in near-seclusion and published almost nothing in her lifetime, yet whose nearly 1,800 original, compressed poems made her, after her death, one of the most important poets in the English language.

• Nearly 1,800 poems
• Reclusive life

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

Writer · 1928 – 2014

Maya Angelou was an American writer, poet and civil rights activist whose autobiography I Know Why the Caged Bird Sings became a landmark of American literature, giving powerful voice to Black womanhood, trauma and resilience.

• I Know Why the Caged Bird Sings
• Still I Rise

Why Also a writer & poet · 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 novelist & 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 novelist & writer · Active in the same era

Novelist · 1871 – 1922

Marcel Proust was a French novelist whose monumental seven-volume In Search of Lost Time is one of the most celebrated novels of the 20th century, transforming fiction with its exploration of memory, time and consciousness.

• In Search of Lost Time
• Involuntary memory

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

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 Also a poet & novelist · 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 novelist & 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 novelist & 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 & novelist · Active in the same era