Literature
JR Tolkien (1892–973) was an English writer, poet, philologist, and academic, best known as the author of the high fantasy works The Hobbit and The Lord of the Rings. Professor of Anglo-Saxon and English Language and Literature at the University of Oxford, and in 1972 appointed a Commander of th...
Jane Austen (1775-1817) was an English novelist known primarily for her six major novels, which critique and comment upon the British landed gentry at in the 18th century. Austen's plots explore the dependence of women on marriage in the pursuit of favourable social standing and economic security...
CSLewis (1898 – 22 November 1963) was a British writer and lay theologian. He held academic positions in English literature at both Oxford University (Magdalen College, 1925–1954) and Cambridge University (Magdalene College, 1954–1963) after wartime service when he was blown up at the Battle of t...
Virginia Woolf (1882–1941) was an English writer, an important modernist 20th-century author and a pioneer in the use of stream of consciousness as a narrative device. During the inter-war period, Woolf was a vibrant part of London's literary and artistic society. Her best-known works include the...
Ian Lancaster Fleming (1908–1964) was a British writer, journalist and naval intelligence officer best known for his James Bond series of spy novels. The Bond stories rank among the best-selling series of fictional books of all time, having sold over 100 million copies worldwide. Fleming also wro...
Charlotte Brontë (1816–1855) was an English novelist and poet, the eldest of the three Brontë sisters who survived into adulthood and whose novels became classics of English literature. Although she write 200 poems, her frail health and short life meant she published little. Her second novel, Shi...
Sir Arthur Conan Doyle (1859–1930) was a British writer and physician. He created the character Sherlock Holmes in 1887 for A Study in Scarlet, the first of four novels and fifty-six short stories about Sherlock Holmes and Dr. Watson. The brilliant Sherlock Holmes is one of the great detectives o...
Edward Morgan Forster (1879–1970) was an English fiction writer, essayist and librettist. Many of his novels examine class difference and hypocrisy, including A Room with a View (1908), Howards End (1910) and A Passage to India (1924). The last brought him his greatest success. Most of his writin...
Robert Louis Stevenson (1850–1894) was a Scottish novelist, essayist, poet and travel writer. He is best known for works such as Treasure Island, Strange Case of Dr Jekyll and Mr Hyde, Kidnapped and A Child's Garden of Verses. He developed some of the most memorable characters: the frightening Lo...
H.G. Wells (1866–1946) was an English writer. Prolific in many genres, he wrote dozens of novels, short stories, social commentaries, satire, biography and an autobiography. He is remembered for his futuristic novels and is known as the "father of science fiction". His most notable sci-fi works ...
Helen Beatrix Potter (1866–1943) was an English writer, illustrator, natural scientist and conservationist; she was best known for her children's books featuring animals, such as The Tale of Peter Rabbit. After self-publishing Peter Rabbit, Potter began writing and illustrating children's books f...
Aldous Leonard Huxley (26 July 1894 – 22 November 1963) was an English writer and philosopher. He wrote nearly 50 books—both novels and non-fiction works—as well as wide-ranging essays, narratives, and poems.
Alan Alexander Milne (/mɪln/; 18 January 1882 – 31 January 1956) was an English author, best known for his books about the teddy bear Winnie-the-Pooh and for various poems. Milne was a noted writer, primarily as a playwright, before the huge success of Pooh overshadowed all his previous work. Mil...
Charles Lutwidge Dodgson (1832–1898), better known by his pen name Lewis Carroll, was an English writer of children's fiction, notably Alice's Adventures in Wonderland and its sequel Through the Looking-Glass. He was noted for his facility with word play, logic, and fantasy. The poems Jabberwocky...
Mary Ann Evans (22 November 1819 – 22 December 1880; alternatively Mary Anne or Marian), known by her pen name George Eliot, was an English novelist, poet, journalist, translator and one of the leading writers of the Victorian era. She wrote seven novels: Adam Bede (1859), The Mill on the Floss (...
Joseph Conrad (born Józef Teodor Konrad Korzeniowski, Polish: 1857–1924) was a Polish-British writer and one of the greatest novelists to write in the English language. Though he did not speak English fluently until his twenties, he came to be regarded a master prose stylist who brought a non-Eng...
Roald Dahl[a] (13 September 1916 – 23 November 1990) was a British novelist, short-story writer, poet, screenwriter, and wartime fighter pilot. His books have sold more than 250 million copies worldwide.
Henry Graham Greene OM CH (2 October 1904 – 3 April 1991) was an English writer and journalist regarded by many as one of the leading English novelists of the 20th century. Combining literary acclaim with widespread popularity, Greene acquired a reputation early in his lifetime as a major writer,...
Mary Wollstonecraft Shelley (UK: /ˈwʊlstənkrɑːft/; née Godwin; 30 August 1797 – 1 February 1851) was an English novelist who wrote the Gothic novel Frankenstein; or, The Modern Prometheus (1818), which is considered an early example of science fiction. She also edited and promoted the works of he...
Arthur Evelyn St. John Waugh (28 October 1903 – 10 April 1966) was an English writer of novels, biographies, and travel books; he was also a prolific journalist and book reviewer. His most famous works include the early satires Decline and Fall (1928) and A Handful of Dust (1934), the novel Bride...
Emily Jane Brontë (/ˈbrɒnti/, commonly /-teɪ/; 30 July 1818 – 19 December 1848) was an English novelist and poet who is best known for her only novel, Wuthering Heights, now considered a classic of English literature. She also published a book of poetry with her sisters Charlotte and Anne titled ...
Daniel Defoe (/dɪˈfoʊ/; born Daniel Foe; c. 1660 – 24 April 1731) was an English writer, trader, journalist, pamphleteer and spy. He is most famous for his novel Robinson Crusoe, published in 1719, which is claimed to be second only to the Bible in its number of translations. He has been seen as ...
John Anthony Burgess Wilson, FRSL (/ˈbɜːrdʒəs/; 25 February 1917 – 22 November 1993), who published under the name Anthony Burgess, was an English writer and composer.
Jonathan Swift (1667 – 1745) was an Anglo-Irish satirist, essayist, political pamphleteer (first for the Whigs, then for the Tories), poet and Anglican cleric who became Dean of St Patrick's Cathedral, Dublin, hence his common sobriquet, "Dean Swift". He is regarded as the foremost prose satiris...
Alan Ross McWhirter (12 August 1925 – 27 November 1975) was, with his twin brother, Norris, the co-founder in 1955 of Guinness Book of Records (known since 2000 as Guinness World Records) and a contributor to the television programme Record Breakers. He was assassinated by the Provisional Irish ...
Joseph Rudyard Kipling (1865–1936) was an English journalist, short-story writer, poet, and novelist. He was born in British India, which inspired his writing. His works of fiction include The Jungle Book (1894), Kim (1901), and "The Man Who Would Be King" (1888). In 1907, he was awarded the Nob...
John Galsworthy (1867–1933) was an English novelist and playwright. His notable works include The Forsyte Saga (1906–1921) and its sequels, A Modern Comedy and End of the Chapter. Along with other writers of the period, such as George Bernard Shaw, his plays, such as Strife (1909) and The Skin G...
Bertrand Russell, 3rd Earl Russell (1872–1970) was a British polymath whose work has had a considerable influence on mathematics, logic, set theory, linguistics, artificial intelligence, cognitive science, computer science, and especially the philosophy of mathematics and language, epistemology a...
Sir William Golding (1911–1993) was a British novelist, playwright, and poet. Best known for his debut novel Lord of the Flies (1954), he published another twelve volumes of fiction in his lifetime. Awarded the Nobel Prize in Literature in 1983, he was knighted in 1988, became a fellow of the Roy...
