Benvenuto Cellini was an Italian goldsmith, sculptor, and author. His best-known extant works include the Cellini Salt Cellar, the sculpture of Perseus with the Head of Medusa, and his autobiography, …
Henry Valentine Miller was an American novelist, short story writer and essayist. He broke with existing literary forms and developed a new type of semi-autobiographical novel that blended character s…
Euripides (Greek: Ευριπίδης) (ca. 480 BC–406 BC) was a tragedian of classical Athens. Along with Aeschylus and Sophocles, he is one of the three ancient Greek tragedians for whom any plays have sur…
Publius Ovidius Naso (20 March 43 BC – AD 17/18), known in English as Ovid was a Roman poet who lived during the reign of Augustus. He was a younger contemporary of Virgil and Horatius, with whom he…
Raymond Thornton Chandler was an American-British novelist and screenwriter. In 1932, at the age of forty-four, Chandler became a detective fiction writer after losing his job as an oil company execut…
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, …
Shirley Hazzard was born in Australia, and as a child travelled the world due to her parents’ diplomatic postings. At age 16, she began working for British Combined Intelligence Services in Hong Kong,…
清少納言 in Japanese Sei Shonagon (c. 966 -1017) was a Japanese author and a court lady who served the Empress Teishi (Sadako) around the year 1000 during the middle Heian period. She is best known as the…
Charles Robert Darwin of Britain revolutionized the study of biology with his theory, based on natural selection; his most famous works include On the Origin of Species (1859) and The Descent o…
Gaius Suetonius Tranquillus, commonly known as Suetonius (ca. 69/75 - after 130), was a Roman historian belonging to the equestrian order in the early Imperial era. His most important surviving work i…
Michel Eyquem de Montaigne (1532-1592) was one of the most influential writers of the French Renaissance. Montaigne is known for popularizing the essay as a literary genre. He became famous for his ef…
John Kenneth Galbraith was a Canadian-American economist. He was a Keynesian and an institutionalist, a leading proponent of 20th-century American liberalism and democratic socialism. His books on eco…
François Roland Truffaut was an award-winning and influential filmmaker, critically acclaimed worldwide. He was also a talented and sought-after film critic in France (most notably, his work for Cahie…
Joseph Roth, journalist and novelist, was born and grew up in Brody, a small town near Lemberg in East Galicia, part of the easternmost reaches of what was then the Austro-Hungarian empire and is now …
Christopher Hibbert, MC, FRSL, FRGS (5 March 1924 - 21 December 2008) was an English writer, historian and biographer. He was a Fellow of the Royal Society of Literature and the author of many books, …
William Lindsay Gresham (August 20, 1909 – September 14, 1962) was an American novelist and non-fiction author particularly regarded among readers of noir. His best-known work is Nightmare Alley (1946…
Maryanne Wolf received her doctorate from Harvard University in the Department of Human Development and Psychology in the Graduate School of Education, where she began her work on the neurological und…
A master of poetry, drama, and the novel, German writer and scientist Johann Wolfgang von Goethe spent 50 years on his two-part dramatic poem Faust, published in 1808 and 1832, also conducted scie…
Frances Wilson was educated at Oxford University and lectured on nineteenth- and twentieth-century English literature for fifteen years before becoming a full-time writer. Her books include Literary S…
Lykophron was born around 330 BCE. Poet of the Alexandrian Pleiad, he is attributed several tragedies and a satirical play, but all of them are lost. In the reign of Ptolemy II Philadelfo (285-246 BCE…
Desiderius Erasmus Roterodamus (28 October 1466 – 12 July 1536), known as Erasmus of Rotterdam, or simply Erasmus, was a Dutch Renaissance humanist, Catholic priest, social critic, teacher, and theolo…
From the death of Augustus in 14 Histories and Annals, greatest works of Publius Cornelius Tacitus, Roman public official, concern the period to Domitian in 96. …
Dutch writer Ernest van der Kwast was born in Mumbai, India. Mama Tandoori (2010), his breakthrough novel, enjoyed huge success in the Netherlands and Italy, selling over 100,000 copies. In 2012 he pr…
Statesman and historian Julius Caesar, fully named Gaius Julius Caesar, general, invaded Britain in 55 BC, crushed the army of the politician Gnaeus Pompeius Magn…
