Wang Wei (Chinese: 王維, 699-761) was a Chinese poet, painter, musician, and politician of the Tang dynasty, widely regarded as one of the most accomplished and influential literary figures of his time.…
Walter Whitman Jr. was an American poet, essayist, and journalist. He is considered one of the most influential poets in American literature. Whitman incorporated both transcendentalism and realism in…
Jonathan Swift was an Anglo-Irish satirist, author, essayist, political pamphleteer (first for the Whigs, then for the Tories), poet, and Anglican cleric who became Dean of St Patrick's Cathedral, Dub…
Friedrich Wilhelm Nietzsche was a German classical scholar, philosopher, and critic of culture, who became one of the most influential of all modern thinkers. He began his career as a classical philol…
Hans Christian Andersen (often referred to in Scandinavia as H.C. Andersen) was a Danish author and poet. Although a prolific writer of plays, travelogues, novels, and poems, Andersen is best remember…
Thomas Hardy, OM, was an English author of the naturalist movement, although in several poems he displays elements of the previous romantic and enlightenment periods of literature, such as his fascina…
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…
Henri René Albert Guy de Maupassant was a popular 19th-century French writer. He is one of the fathers of the modern short story. A protege of Flaubert, Maupassant's short stories are characterized by…
Giovanni Boccaccio (1313 - 1375) was an Italian author and poet, a friend and correspondent of Petrarch, and an important Renaissance humanist in his own right and author of a number of notable works …
Johann Peter Hebel (10 May 1760 – 22 September 1826) was a German short story writer, dialectal poet, evangelical theologian and pedagogue, most famous for a collection of Alemannic lyric poems (Allem…
Thomas de Quincey was an English author and intellectual, best known for his Confessions of an English Opium-Eater (1821). See also http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Thomas_d...
Gaius Valerius Catullus (ca. 84 BC – ca. 54 BC) was a Roman poet of the 1st century BC. His surviving works are still read widely, and continue to influence poetry and other forms of art. Catullus inv…
Constantine P. Cavafy (also known as Konstantin or Konstantinos Petrou Kavafis, or Kavaphes; Greek Κ.Π. Καβάφης) was a major Greek poet who worked as a journalist and civil servant. His consciously in…
Work of Greek lyric poet Sappho, noted for its passionate and erotic celebration of the beauty of young women and men, after flourit circa 600 BC and survives only in fragments.
Gerard Manley Hopkins (1844-1889) was an English poet, Roman Catholic convert, and Jesuit priest, whose 20th-century fame established him posthumously among the leading Victorian poets. His experiment…
Pu Songling (simplified Chinese: 蒲松龄; traditional Chinese: 蒲松齡; pinyin: Pú Sōnglíng; Wade–Giles: P'u Sung-ling, June 5, 1640—February 25, 1715) was a Qing Dynasty Chinese writer, best known as the aut…
Robert Louis Balfour Stevenson was a Scottish novelist, poet, and travel writer, and a leading representative of English literature. He was greatly admired by many authors, including Jorge Luis Borges…
Baltasar Gracián y Morales, SJ, formerly Anglicized as Baltazar Gracian, was a Spanish Jesuit and baroque prose writer and philosopher. He was born in Belmonte, near Calatayud (Aragón). His proto-exis…
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 story-teller, Boccaccio, and the poet, Petrarch, he forms…
Yoshida Kenkō (吉田 兼好, 1283? – 1350?) was a Japanese author and Buddhist monk. His most famous work is Tsurezuregusa (Essays in Idleness), one of the most studied works of medieval Japanese literature.…
Apollonius of Rhodes (Ancient Greek: Ἀπολλώνιος Ῥόδιος Apollṓnios Rhódios; Latin: Apollonius Rhodius; fl. first half of 3rd century BCE), is best known as the author of the Argonautica, an epic poem a…
Hāfez (حافظ) (Khwāja Shams-ud-Dīn Muḥammad Ḥāfeẓ-e Shīrāzī) was a Persian poet whose collected works (The Divan) are regarded as a pinnacle of Persian literature and are to be found in the homes of mo…
Books can be attributed to "Unknown" when the author or editor (as applicable) is not known and cannot be discovered. If at all possible, list at least one actual author or editor for a book instead o…
