Henry James was an American-British author. He is regarded as a key transitional figure between literary realism and literary modernism, and is considered by many to be among the greatest novelists in…
Herman Melville was an American novelist, short story writer, and poet of the American Renaissance period. Among his best-known works are Moby-Dick (1851); …
Extremely popular works of Henry Wadsworth Longfellow, American poet, in the United States in his lifetime, include The Song of Hiawatha in 1855 and a translation from 1865 to 1867 of Divine Co…
Eric Blehm is the award-winning author of the New York Times bestsellers Fearless and The Only Thing Worth Dying For. His book The Last Season won the 2007 National Outdoor Book Award and was named by…
Anne Moody was an American author who wrote about her experiences growing up poor and Black in rural Mississippi and her involvement in the Civil Rights Movement through the NAACP, CORE, and SNCC. Rai…
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).
James Fenimore Cooper was a popular and prolific American writer. He is best known for his historical novel The Last of the Mohicans, one of the Leatherstocking Tales stories, and he also wrote politi…
Louise Erdrich is one of the most gifted, prolific, and challenging of American novelists. Her fiction reflects aspects of her mixed heritage: German through her father, and French and Ojibwa through …
Debbie Macomber is a #1 New York Times bestselling author and one of today’s most popular writers with more than 200 million copies of her books in print worldwide. In her novels, Macomber brings to l…
Ralph Waldo Emerson was born in Boston in 1803. Educated at Harvard and the Cambridge Divinity School, he became a Unitarian minister in 1826 at the Second Church Unitarian. The congregation, with Chr…
Henry Fielding (1707 - 1754) was an English dramatist, journalist and novelist. The son of an army lieutenant and a judge's daughter, he was educated at Eton School and the University of Leiden before…
Thomas Stearns Eliot was a poet, dramatist and literary critic. He received the Nobel Prize in Literature in 1948 "for his outstanding, pioneer contribution to present-day poetry." He wrote the poems …
Frederick Douglass (né Frederick Augustus Washington Bailey) was born a slave in the state of Maryland in 1818. After his escape from slavery, Douglass became a renowned abolitionist, editor and femin…
Bernal Díaz del Castillo (1492 – ca. 1580) was a conquistador, who wrote an eyewitness account of the conquest of Mexico by the Spaniards under Hernán Cortés, himself serving as a rodelero under Corté…
Spanish colonial administrator Álvar Núñez Cabeza de Vaca explored parts of present-day Florida, Texas, and Mexico and aroused interest in the region with his vivid stories of opportunities.
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…
1635 -1711 Mrs. Mary White Rowlandson was a Puritan resident of the Massachusetts Bay Colony who was captured by Native Americans and held for 11 weeks before being ransomed in 1676. Her later memoir o…
Spanish exiled Philippine reformer and writer José Rizal from 1892 to 1896 for his political novels, later arrested him, and executed him for sedition; his death helped to fuel an insurrection against…
Sarah Winnemucca Hopkins (1841–1891) was notable for being the first Native American woman known to secure a copyright and to publish in the English language. She was also known by her married name, S…
Pauline Elizabeth Hopkins (1859 – August 13, 1930) was a prominent African-American novelist, journalist, playwright, historian, and editor. She is considered a pioneer in her use of the romantic nove…
