17th Century
This British author's plays include "Twelfth Night" & "The Tempest".
William Shakespeare
This author was best known for his story of the intrepid ship doctor, Lemuel Gulliver, and his travels.
Jonathan Swift
This American author from Baltimore helped develop the detective story with "Murders In The Rue Morgue".
Edgar Allen Poe
This poet, whose works include "I, Too" and "The Negro Speaks of Rivers", was an instrumental part of the Harlem Renaissance movement.
Langston Hughes
Her series of books about a boy wizard are now among the most-read of all-time.
J.K. Rowling
This British author sympathized with the devil in his 1671 work "Paradise Lost".
John Milton
An early Romantic poet, this writer was the first to coin the term "suspension of disbelief", and wrote the epic poem "The Rime of The Ancient Mariner".
Samuel Taylor Coleridge
The iconic opening lines of his book, A Tale of Two Cities, reads, "It was the best of times, it was the worst of times..."
Charles Dickens
Reeling from his service during World War I, this American author wrote one of the defining novels that dealt with the conflict, "A Farewell To Arms".
Ernest Hemingway
A sequel to this author's 1977 thriller, "The Shining", was released in 2013 as "Doctor Sleep".
Stephen King
His "Two Treatises of Government" was published anonymously in 1689. They were an influence on America during the revolutionary period.
John Locke
This author wrote the mock-heroic poem, "The Rape of The Lock", which was one of the most well-known and parodied of it's time.
Alexander Pope
This American Gothic author was obsessed with the themes of guilt and sin in his novels "The House of Seven Gables" & "The Scarlet Letter".
Nathaniel Hawthorne
This author's epistolary novel, The Color Purple, which focuses on the life of African-American women in the Southern United States, won the Pulitzer Prize for fiction in 1983.
Alice Walker
His novels, The Da Vinci Code and Angels & Demons, used ancient history and the Catholic Church as clues for their mystery.
Dan Brown
This author's 1651 book "Leviathan" is one of the early examples of social contract theory.
Thomas Hobbes
This French Enlightenment philosopher wrote one of the most scathing satires of the 18th century, Candide.
Voltaire
Along with Samuel Taylor Coleridge, this British poet was at the forefront of Romantic literature. His poems "I Wandered Lonely As A Cloud" and "Lines written a few miles above Tintern Abbey", are still popular today.
William Wordsworth
Due to it's portrayal of teenage rebellion, this author's novel, "The Catcher in The Rye", became one of the most commonly banned books in the United States.
J.D. Salinger
This author gave a rare interview to Oprah Winfrey to talk about his post-apocalyptic novel, The Road, after it was picked for her book club.
Cormac McCarthy
This metaphysical poet seized the day in his carpe diem poem "To His Coy Mistress".
Andrew Marvell
His book, Robinson Crusoe, about a man stranded on a desert island, celebrates it's 300th anniversary in 2019.
Daniel Defoe
Her abolitionist novel, "Uncle Tom's Cabin", became the best-selling American novel of the 19th century after it's publication in 1852.
Harriet Beecher Stowe
Her 1985 novel, A Handmaid's Tale, was adapted into a popular television series in 2017.
His "Millennium" series, which includes "The Girl With the Dragon Tattoo", were all published posthumously in the mid 2000's
Stieg Larsson