Early work of Blaise Pascal of France included the invention of the adding machine and syringe and the co-development with Pierre de Fermat of the mathematical theory of probability; later, he, a Jans…
Plato (Greek: Πλάτων), born Aristocles (c. 427 – 348 BC), was an ancient Greek philosopher of the Classical period who is considered a foundational thinker in Western philosophy and an innovator of t…
William Shakespeare was an English playwright, poet, and actor. He is widely regarded as the greatest writer in the English language and the world's pre-eminent dramatist. He is often called England's…
Aristotle (Greek: Αριστοτέλης; 384–322 BC) was an Ancient Greek philosopher and polymath. His writings cover a broad range of subjects spanning the natural sciences, philosophy, linguistics, economic…
Kenneth Grahame was a British writer. He is best remembered for the classic of children's literature The Wind in the Willows (1908). Scottish by birth, he spent most of his childhood with his grandmot…
Émile Zola was a prominent French novelist, journalist, and playwright widely regarded as a key figure in the development of literary naturalism. His work profoundly influenced both literature and soc…
Prague-born writer Franz Kafka wrote in German, and his stories, such as "The Metamorphosis" (1916), and posthumously published novels, including The Trial (1925), concern troubled individuals…
Søren Aabye Kierkegaard was a prolific 19th century Danish philosopher and theologian. Kierkegaard strongly criticised both the Hegelianism of his time and what he saw as the empty formalities of the …
Genevan philosopher and writer Jean Jacques Rousseau held that society usually corrupts the essentially good individual; his works include The Social Contract and Émile (both 1762).
Thomas Hobbes was a British philosopher and a seminal thinker of modern political philosophy. His ideas were marked by a mechanistic materialist foundation, a characterization of human nature based on…
William Blake was an English poet, painter, and printmaker. Largely unrecognised during his lifetime, Blake's work is today considered seminal and significant in the history of both poetry and the vis…
Public condemned Les fleurs du mal (1857), obscene only volume of French writer, translator, and critic Charles Pierre Baudelaire; expanded in 1861, it exerted an enormous influence over later sym…
Thornton Niven Wilder was an American playwright and novelist. He received three Pulitzer Prizes, one for his novel The Bridge of San Luis Rey and two for his plays Our Town and The Skin of Our Teeth,…
Controversial pantheistic doctrine of Dutch philosopher and theologian Baruch Spinoza or Benedict advocated an intellectual love of God; people best know Ethics, his work of 1677.
Olaudah Equiano, also known as Gustavus Vassa, was one of the most prominent Africans involved in the British movement of the abolition for the slave trade. Although enslaved as a young man, he purcha…
Marcel Proust was a French novelist, best known for his 3000 page masterpiece À la recherche du temps perdu (Remembrance of Things Past or In Search of Lost Time), a pseudo-autobiographical novel told…
Natalie Haynes, author of THE FURIES (THE AMBER FURY in the UK), is a graduate of Cambridge University and an award-winning comedian, journalist, and broadcaster. She judged the Man Booker Prize in 20…
Dante Alighieri, or simply Dante (May 14/June 13 1265 – September 13/14, 1321), is one of the greatest poets in the Italian language; with the comic story-teller, Boccaccio, and the poet, Petrarch, he…
Early church father and philosopher Saint Augustine served from 396 as the bishop of Hippo in present-day Algeria and through such writings as the autobiographical Confessions in 397 and the volum…
