Novelist
Explore 6 of history's most influential novelist, ranked by historical influence. Each figure links to a full biography, feats, trivia and similar people.
Johann Wolfgang von Goethe
92Johann Wolfgang von Goethe was a German writer, poet, and statesman, widely regarded as the greatest figure in German literature and one of the towering minds of European culture.
Lev Nikolayevich Tolstoy
92Leo 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.
Fyodor Mikhailovich Dostoevsky
91Fyodor 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.
Miguel de Cervantes
91Miguel 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.
Victor Marie Hugo
89Victor 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.
Jane Austen
88Jane Austen was an English novelist whose witty, incisive novels of manners, including Pride and Prejudice and Emma, are masterpieces of English literature and remain enduringly popular.