Thomas Ruggles Pynchon Jr. is an American novelist noted for his dense and complex novels. His fiction and nonfiction writings encompass a vast array of subject matter, genres and themes, including hi…
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…
Malcolm Timothy Gladwell is a Canadian journalist, author, and public speaker. He has been a staff writer for The New Yorker since 1996. He has published seven books. He is also the host of the podcas…
Zadie Smith is an English novelist, essayist, and short-story writer. Her debut novel, White Teeth (2000), immediately became a best-seller and won a number of awards. She became a tenured professor i…
Peter Joachim Gay was a German-American historian, educator, and author. He was a Sterling Professor of History at Yale University and former director of the New York Public Library's Center for Schol…
Joseph Conrad was a Polish-British novelist and story writer. He is regarded as one of the greatest writers in the English language and, although he did not speak English fluently until his twenties, …
Chloe Anthony Wofford Morrison, known as Toni Morrison, was an American novelist and editor. Her first novel, The Bluest Eye, was published in 1970. The critically acclaimed Song of Solomon (1977) bro…
James Brian Jacques was an English author celebrated for the Redwall series of children’s fantasy novels and the Castaways of the Flying Dutchman books, along with several collections of short stories…
Horatio Walpole, 4th Earl of Orford — also known as Horace Walpole — was an English art historian, man of letters, antiquarian and Whig politician. He is now largely remembered for Strawberry Hill, th…
John Richard Hersey, a Pulitzer Prize-winning American writer, earliest practiced the "new journalism," which fuses storytelling devices of the novel with nonfiction reportage. A 36-member panel under…
Susan Wise Bauer is an American author, English instructor of writing and American literature at The College of William and Mary, and founder of Well-Trained Mind Press (formerly Peace Hill Press).
Gerhard Ludwig Weinberg is a German-born American diplomatic and military historian noted for his studies in the history of World War II. Weinberg currently is the William Rand Kenan, Jr. Professor Em…
A specialist in German history and modern culture, Modris Eksteins attended Upper Canada College on scholarship and then the University of Toronto (Trinity College) from which he graduated with a BA i…
Christopher Robert Browning recently retired as Frank Porter Graham Professor of History at the University of North Carolina–Chapel Hill. He is the author of numerous books on Nazism and the Holocaust…
Caroline Finkel is a British historian and writer based in Turkey; she has a doctorate in Ottoman history from the School of Oriental and African Studies, University of London.
Many works, including Siddhartha (1922) and Steppenwolf (1927), of German-born Swiss writer Hermann Hesse concern the struggle of the individual to find wholeness and meaning in life; he won t…
Mary Wollstonecraft was an eighteenth century British writer, philosopher, and feminist. Among the general public and specifically among feminists, Wollstonecraft's life has received much more attenti…
Sir Thomas More (1477-1535), venerated by Catholics as Saint Thomas More, was an English lawyer, social philosopher, author, statesman, and noted Renaissance humanist. He was a councillor to Henry VII…
The name Poe brings to mind images of murderers and madmen, premature burials, and mysterious women who return from the dead. His works have been in print since 1827 and include such literary classics…
Roman mathematician Anicius Manlius Severinus Boethius, imprisoned on charges of treason, wrote The Consolation of Philosophy, his greatest work, an investigation of destiny and free will, while a…
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…
