For generations, Heloise has been the name in household advice. Continuing in the tradition of her mother, the original Heloise, today's Heloise has become a media phenomenon. Along with her numerous …
Roman poet Virgil, also Vergil, originally Publius Vergilius Maro, composed the Aeneid, an epic telling after the sack of Troy of the wanderings of Aene…
Hesiod (Greek: Ησίοδος) was an ancient Greek poet generally thought to have been active between 750 and 650 BC, around the same time as Homer. Several of Hesiod's works have survived in their entirety…
Michael Andrew Screech was a cleric and a professor of French literature with special interests in the Renaissance, Michel de Montaigne and François Rabelais.
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…
Murasaki Shikibu (Japanese: 紫式部), born around 978 in Heian-kyō (modern-day Kyoto), is widely celebrated as one of the most important and pioneering figures in Japanese literature. Though her real name…
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).
Early work of Blaise Pascal of France included the invention of the adding machine and syringe and the co-development with Pierre de Fermat of the mathematical theory of probability; later, he, a Jans…
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 …
Awarded the Nobel Prize in Literature in 1913 "because of his profoundly sensitive, fresh and beautiful verse, by which, with consummate skill, he has made his poetic thought, expressed in his own Eng…
Christine de Pizan (also seen as de Pisan) (1363–c.1434) was a writer and analyst of the medieval era who strongly challenged misogyny and stereotypes that were prevalent in the male-dominated realm o…
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…
A seminary expelled Giovanni Jacopo Casanova de Seingalt, Italian adventurer, who afterward wandered Europe, met luminaries, worked in a variety of occupations, established a legendary reputation for …
Longus, sometimes Longos (Greek: Λόγγος), was a Greek novelist and romancer, and author of Daphnis and Chloe. Very little is known of his life, and it is assumed that he lived on the isle of Lesbos du…
Moses ben-Maimon, called Maimonides and also known as Mūsā ibn Maymūn ( موسى بن ميمون) in Arabic, or Rambam (רמב"ם – Hebrew acronym for "Rabbi Moshe ben Maimon"), was a preeminent medieval Jewish phil…
Jean Froissart was one of the most important of the chroniclers of medieval France. For centuries, Froissart's Chronicles have been recognized as the chief expression of the chivalric revival of the 1…
Marie-Henri Beyle, better known by his pen name Stendhal, was a 19th-century French writer. Known for his acute analysis of his characters' psychology, he is considered one of the earliest and foremos…
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…
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…
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…
Saxon theologian Bede, also Baeda or Beda, known as "the Venerable Bede," wrote Ecclesiastical History of the English Nation, a major work and an important ancient source, in 731 i…
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…
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…
Titus Lucretius Carus (c. 99 BC – c. 55 BC) was a Roman poet and philosopher. His only known work is the epic philosophical poem "De Rerum Natura" about the tenets and philosophy of Epicureanism, and …
Muslim theologian and philosopher Abu Hamid al-Ghazali of Persia worked to systematize Sufism, Islamic mysticism, and in The Incoherence of the Philosophers (1095) argued the i…
