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…
Sophocles (497/496 BC-406/405 BC), (Greek: Σοφοκλής; German: Sophokles, Russian: Софокл, French: Sophocle, Catalan: Sòfocles) was an ancient Greek tragedian, known as one of three …
Geoffrey Chaucer (c. 1343 – 25 October 1400) was an English poet, author, and civil servant best known for The Canterbury Tales. He has been called the "father of English literature", or, alternativel…
Daniel Defoe was an English novelist, journalist, merchant, pamphleteer and spy. He is most famous for his novel Robinson Crusoe, published in 1719, which is claimed to be second only to the Bible in …
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, …
Oscar Fingal O'Fflahertie Wills Wilde was an Irish poet and playwright. After writing in different forms throughout the 1880s, he became one of the most popular playwrights in London in the early 1890…
George Bernard Shaw stands as one of the most prolific and influential intellectuals of the late nineteenth and early twentieth centuries, a man whose literary output was matched only by his fervent c…
Christopher "Kit" Marlowe (baptised 26 February 1564) was an English dramatist, poet and translator of the Elizabethan era. The foremost Elizabethan tragedian next to William Shakespeare, he is known …
Chrétien de Troyes, commonly regarded as the father of Arthurian romance and a key figure in Western literature, composed in French in the latter part of the twelfth century. Virtually nothing is know…
Jean Rhys, CBE (born Ella Gwendolyn Rees Williams; 24 August 1890–14 May 1979) was a British novelist who was born and grew up in the Caribbean island of Dominica. From the age of 16, she mainly resid…
Aphra Behn, or Ayfara Behn, of the first professional women authors in English on Britain wrote plays, poetry, and her best known work, the prose fiction Oroonoko (1688).
Marie de France ("Mary of France", around 1135-1200) was a poet evidently born in France and living in England during the late 12th century. Virtually nothing is known of her early life, though she wr…
Historia Regum Britanniae circa 1139 of Geoffrey of Monmouth as English chronicler, popularized Arthurian legend and contains the source material for several plays of William Shak…
Caryl Churchill (born 3 September 1938) is an English dramatist known for her use of non-naturalistic techniques and feminist themes, dramatisation of the abuses of power, and exploration of sexual po…
Novels of Samuel Barclay Beckett, Irish writer, include Murphy in 1938 and Malone Dies in 1951; a wider audience know his absurdist plays, such as Waiting for Godot in 1952 and Krapp's …
The Wakefield Mystery Play cycle is the work of many authors, some sourced from the York Cycle. However, the most significant contribution has been attributed to an anonymous author known as the "Wake…
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…
