The Best Writers Ever!

1. William Shakespeare

William Shakespeare's birthdate is assumed from his baptism on April 25. His father John was the son of a farmer who became a successful tradesman; his mother Mary Arden was gentry. He studied Latin works at Stratford Grammar School, leaving at about age 15. About this time his father suffered an ...

6916 points

2. Stephen King

Writer | Maximum Overdrive

Stephen Edwin King was born on September 21, 1947, at the Maine General Hospital in Portland. His parents were Nellie Ruth (Pillsbury), who worked as a caregiver at a mental institute, and Donald Edwin King, a merchant seaman. His father was born under the surname "Pollock," but used the last name ...

3885 points

3. Marcel Pagnol

Writer | La fille du puisatier

Marcel Pagnol was born on February 28, 1895 in Aubagne, Bouches-du-Rhône, France. He was a writer and producer, known for The Well-Digger's Daughter (1940), Jean de Florette (1986) and Le schpountz (1938). He was married to Jacqueline Pagnol and Simone Collin. He died on April 18, 1974 in Paris, ...

3458 points

4. Anton Chekhov

Writer | Kis Uykusu

Anton Pavlovich Chekhov was born in 1860, the third of six children to a family of a grocer, in Taganrog, Russia, a southern seaport and resort on the Azov Sea. His father, a 3rd-rank Member of the Merchant's Guild, was a religious fanatic and a tyrant who used his children as slaves. Young Chekhov...

3277 points

5. Tennessee Williams

Writer | A Streetcar Named Desire

Tennessee Williams met long-term partner Frank Merlo in the summer of 1948 (Merlo died of lung cancer in the fall of 1963). Though separated briefly in 1961 and again in 1962, the two were partners for 15 years. Merlo acted as his personal manager/secretary.

Williams spent much of his most prolific ...

2972 points

6. Charles Dickens

Writer | Great Expectations

Charles Dickens' father was a clerk at the Naval Pay Office, and because of this the family had to move from place to place: Plymouth, London, Chatham. It was a large family and despite hard work, his father couldn't earn enough money. In 1823 he was arrested for debt and Charles had to start ...

2646 points

7. Ferenc Molnár

Writer | Carousel

Ferenc Molnár was born on January 12, 1878 in Budapest, Austria-Hungary [now Hungary]. He was a writer and actor, known for Carousel, Tales of Manhattan (1942) and I'll Be Yours (1947). He was married to Lili Darvas, Sári Fedák and Margit Vészi. He died on April 1, 1952 in New York City, New York, ...

2629 points

8. Georges Simenon

Writer | Maigret tend un piège

Georges Simenon was a Belgian novelist, writing in the French language. He published nearly 500 different novels, and a large number of short stories. He became internationally famous for creating the French police detective Jules Maigret, as the protagonist in a celebrated series of mystery novels...

2564 points

9. Erich Maria Remarque

Writer | A Time to Love and a Time to Die

The German novelist Erich Maria Remarque was born in Osnabrück in 1898. His first novel, the famous anti-war epic All Quiet on the Western Front (1930), was written based on his experiences as a soldier in WWI, and published in 1929. He moved to Switzerland until 1939 and later emigrated to the US....

2440 points

10. Graham Greene

Writer | The Fallen Idol

Graham Greene was one of the greatest novelists of the 20th century and his influence on the cinema and theatre was enormous. He wrote five plays and almost all of his novels, including "Brighton Rock", "The Ministry of Fear" and "The End of the Affair", have been brought to the screen. A superb ...

2404 points

11. John Steinbeck

Writer | Lifeboat

John Steinbeck was the third of four children and the only son born to John Ernst and Olive Hamilton Steinbeck. His father was County Treasurer and his mother, a former schoolteacher. John graduated from Salinas High School in 1919 and attended classes at Stanford University, leaving in 1925 ...

2269 points

12. James M. Cain

Writer | Double Indemnity

James M. Cain was a 'Film Noir' author. His father was a professor, and president, of 'Washington College'. His mother was an opera singer in Maryland.

James graduated from the same college in 1910, and became a writer for 'Baltimore American', then 'Baltimore Sun' [still being published] by 1914. ...

2210 points

13. Victor Hugo

Writer | Les Misérables

Although Hugo was fascinated by poems from childhood on, he spent some time at the polytechnic university of Paris until he dedicated all his work to literature. He was one of the few authors who were allowed to reach popularity during his own lifetime and one of the leaders of French romance.

After...

2046 points

14. Fyodor Dostoevsky

Writer | The Double

Fyodor Mikhailovich Dostoevsky was born on November 11, 1821, in Moscow, Russia. He was the second of seven children of Mikhail Andreevich and Maria Dostoevsky. His father, a doctor, was a member of the Russian nobility, owned serfs and had a considerable estate near Moscow where he lived with his ...

1923 points

15. James Jones

Writer | The Thin Red Line

James Jones was born on November 6, 1921 in Robinson, Illinois, USA. He was a writer and actor, known for The Thin Red Line (1998), From Here to Eternity (1953) and The Longest Day (1962). He was married to Gloria Jones. He died on May 9, 1977 in Southampton, New York, USA.

1872 points

16. Hermann Sudermann

Writer | Sunrise: A Song of Two Humans

German playwright and novelist Hermann Sudermann was born into a poor family in Matziken, East Prussia, in 1857. His father was a brewer and descended from a line of very strict fundamentalist Mennonite Christians; one of his ancestors, Daniel Sudermann, was a Protestant clergyman who played a ...

1827 points

17. Mario Puzo

Writer | The Godfather

Mario Puzo was born October 15, 1920, in "Hell's Kitchen" on Manhattan's (NY) West Side and, following military service in World War II, attended New York's New School for Social Research and Columbia University. His best-known novel, "The Godfather," was preceded by two critically acclaimed novels...

1774 points

18. Truman Capote

Actor | Murder by Death

Truman Capote was born on September 30, 1924 in New Orleans, Louisiana, USA. He was a writer and actor, known for Murder by Death (1976), The Innocents (1961) and Breakfast at Tiffany's (1961). He died on August 25, 1984 in Los Angeles, California, USA.

1772 points

19. Alberto Moravia

Writer | Le mépris

Alberto Moravia was born on November 22, 1907 in Rome, Lazio, Italy. He was a writer and actor, known for Contempt (1963), The Conformist (1970) and From a Roman Balcony (1960). He was married to Carmen Llera and Elsa Morante. He died on September 26, 1990 in Rome, Lazio, Italy.

1680 points

20. Vilhelm Moberg

Writer | Änkeman Jarl

Vilhelm Moberg is considered to be one of the greatest writers in Sweden of all time. He is most known for The Immigrants-series about the Swedish emigration to the United States in the 19th century. Moberg was also a journalist, author, historian and political debater. He struggled with depression...

1635 points

21. Ernest Hemingway

Writer | To Have and Have Not

Ernest Hemingway was an American writer who won the Pulitzer Prize (1953) and the Nobel Prize in Literature (1954) for his novel The Old Man and the Sea, which was made into a 1958 film The Old Man and the Sea (1958).

He was born into the hands of his physician father. He was the second of six ...

1631 points

22. Jack London

Writer | The Ballad of Buster Scruggs

Jack London was the best-selling, highest paid and most popular American author of his time.

He was born John Griffith Chaney, on January 12, 1876, in San Francisco. He was raised by his mother Flora Wellman and his stepfather John London (he didn't know who his father was until his adulthood). ...

1572 points

23. Daphne Du Maurier

Writer | The Birds

Daphne Du Maurier was one of the most popular English writers of the 20th Century, when middle-brow genre fiction was accorded a higher level of respect in a more broadly literate age. For her services to literature, she was made a Dame Commander of the Order of the British Empire in 1969, the ...

1508 points

24. Jean Cocteau

Writer | La Belle et la Bête

Jean Cocteau was one of the most multi-talented artists of the 20th century. In addition to being a director, he was a poet, novelist, painter, playwright, set designer, and actor. He began writing at 10 and was a published poet by age 16. He collaborated with the "Russian Ballet" company of Sergei...

1489 points

25. Stefan Zweig

Writer | The Grand Budapest Hotel

Here he grew up in the educated Jewish middle class, together with his brother Alfred. The Zweig family was not religious. He passed his high school diploma at the Wasagymnasium in Vienna. Zweig wrote his first poems here. At that time he was influenced by writers such as Hugo von Hofmannstahl and ...

1426 points

26. Émile Zola

Writer | Bakjwi

Émile Zola was born on April 2, 1840, in Paris, France. His father was an Italian engineer. Young Zola studied at the Collége Bourbon in Provence, where his schoolmate and friend was Paul Cezanne. In 1858 Zola returned to Paris and became a student at the Lycée Saint-Louis, from which he graduated ...

1414 points

27. Noël Coward

Writer | In Which We Serve

Noel Coward virtually invented the concept of Englishness for the 20th century. An astounding polymath - dramatist, actor, writer, composer, lyricist, painter, and wit -- he was defined by his Englishness as much as he defined it. He was indeed the first Brit pop star, the first ambassador of "cool...

1354 points

28. Bram Stoker

Writer | Dracula

Bram Stoker was born in Dublin, Ireland, in 1847, and gained fame for his novel "Dracula" about an aristocratic vampire in Transylvania. The sequel, "Dracula's Guest," was not published for 17 years after the publication of "Dracula," two years after Stoker's death. Stoker also wrote "The Mystery ...

1255 points

29. Bohumil Hrabal

Writer | Ostrzhe sledované vlaky

Bohumil Hrabal was born on March 28, 1914 in Brünn, Austria-Hungary. He was a writer and actor, known for Closely Watched Trains (1966), Larks on a String (1969) and Krasosmutnení. He was married to Eliska Hrabalová. He died on February 3, 1997 in Prague, Czech Republic.

1198 points

30. Nikos Kazantzakis

Writer | The Last Temptation of Christ

Nikos Kazantzakis was born in Heraklion, Crete (Greece). He studied Law in Athens and in Paris, but soon he studied philosophy and literature. He travelled almost everywhere; he learnt many foreign languages and left his scientific research for Nitsche. At philosophy: "Ascetics" (Salvatores Dei, ...

1194 points

31. Sinclair Lewis

Writer | Elmer Gantry

Sinclair Lewis, the first American to win the Nobel Prize for Literature, was a colossus of American letters in the first half of the last century. Arguably, he is the first major "modern" writer of the 20th century, as there is American literature before "Main Street" (1920) and after that seminal...

1192 points

32. George Bernard Shaw

Writer | My Fair Lady

The Anglo-Irish playwright George Bernard Shaw (1856-1950), winner of the Nobel Prize for Literature in 1925, acquired a reputation as the greatest dramatist in the English language during the first half of the 20th Century for the plays he had written at the height of his creativity from "Mrs. ...

1183 points

33. Jane Austen

Writer | Sense and Sensibility

Jane Austen was born on December 16th, 1775, to the local rector, Rev. George Austen (1731-1805), and Cassandra Leigh (1739-1827). She was the seventh of eight children. She had one older sister, Cassandra. In 1783 she went to Southampton to be taught by a relative, Mrs. Cawley, but was brought ...

1171 points

34. Joseph Conrad

Writer | Untitled Amazon Rainforest Project

Joseph Conrad was born in Berdichev, Kiev Province, now the Ukraine, to Polish parents Apollo Korzeniowski and Ewa Bobrowska. His father was a political activist and he and his family were exiled after he was suspected of involvement with revolutionary activities. Conrad had no friends as a child ...

1158 points

35. Thomas Harris

Writer | The Silence of the Lambs

Thomas Harris was born in 1940 in Jackson, Mississippi, USA. He was raised in the town of Rich where his father worked as a farmer. He earned his bachelor's degree in English from Baylor University in Texas in 1964. While attending school, he also worked for the local newspaper.

After graduating, ...

1152 points

36. Lev Tolstoy

Writer | Anna Karenina

Count Lev Nikolaevich Tolstoy was born on September 9, 1828, in his ancestral estate Yasnaya Polyana, South of Moscow, Russia. He was the fourth of five children in a wealthy family of Russian landed Gentry. His parents died when he was a child, and he was brought up by his elder brothers and ...

1141 points

37. Agatha Christie

Writer | Les petits meurtres d'Agatha Christie

Agatha was born as "Agatha Mary Clarissa Miller" in 1890 to Frederick Alvah Miller and Clara Boehmer. Agatha was of American and British descent, her father being American and her mother British. Her father was a relatively affluent stockbroker. Agatha received home education from early childhood ...

1139 points

38. Guy de Maupassant

Writer | La criada de la granja

Guy de Maupassant was born on August 5, 1850 in Château de Miromesnil, France. He was a writer, known for La criada de la granja (1953), Pierre & Jeanne and Black Sabbath (1963). He died on July 6, 1893 in Paris, France.

1133 points

39. W. Somerset Maugham

Writer | Quartet

Popular British novelist, playwright, short-story writer and the highest-paid author in the world in the 1930s, Somerset Maugham graduated in 1897 from St. Thomas' Medical School and qualified as a doctor, but abandoned medicine after the success of his first novels and plays. During World War I he...

1098 points

40. Arthur Schnitzler

Writer | Eyes Wide Shut

Arthur Schnitzler was born on May 15, 1862 in Vienna, Austrian Empire [now Austria]. He was a writer, known for Eyes Wide Shut (1999), The Affairs of Anatol (1921) and The Exposure. He was married to Olga Gussmann. He died on October 21, 1931 in Vienna, Austria.

1089 points

41. Patricia Highsmith

Writer | The Talented Mr. Ripley

Patricia Highsmith was born on January 19, 1921 in Fort Worth, Texas, USA. She was a writer, known for The Talented Mr. Ripley (1999), Strangers on a Train (1951) and The Two Faces of January (2014). She died on February 4, 1995 in Locarno, Switzerland.

1078 points

42. Dashiell Hammett

Writer | The Thin Man

Dashiell Hammett was born May 27, 1894, in St. Mary's County, Maryland, to Richard Hammett and Mary Bond. He joined the Baltimore branch of the Pinkerton Detective Agency in 1915. He enlisted in the US Army's Ambulance Corps in June 1918 and was posted to a camp 20 miles from Baltimore, where he ...

1071 points

43. Maxwell Anderson

Writer | All Quiet on the Western Front

James Maxwell Anderson was born in Atlantic, Pennsylvania, on December 15, 1888 to William Lincoln Anderson and Charlotte Perrimela (Stephenson) Anderson. The second child born to the couple, Anderson spent his formative years on his maternal grandmother's farm in Atlantic before the family moved ...

1071 points

44. Alice Munro

Writer | Julieta

Alice Munro was born on July 10, 1931 in Wingham, Ontario, Canada. She is a writer, known for Julieta (2016), Free Radicals and Runaway. She has been married to Gerald Fremlin since 1976. She was previously married to James Munro (I).

1068 points

45. Henri-Pierre Roché

Writer | Jules et Jim

Henri-Pierre Roché was born on May 28, 1879 in Paris, France. He was a writer, known for Jules and Jim (1962), Two English Girls (1971) and La grande collection (1990). He was married to Denise Renard and Germaine Bonnard. He died on April 9, 1959 in Meudon, Hauts-de-Seine, France.

1064 points

46. Raymond Chandler

Writer | Double Indemnity

An American novelist, writer of crime fiction featuring the private detective Philip Marlowe, Raymond (Thornton) Chandler was born in Chicago of an American father and an Anglo-Irish mother. He moved to England when his parents divorced. He attended Dulwich College and studied languages in France ...

1060 points

47. Maxim Gorky

Writer | Famine

Maksim Gorky is a pseudonym of Aleksei Maksimovich Peshkov, who was born into a poor Russian family in Nizhnii Novgorod on Volga river. Gorky lost his father at an early age, he was beaten by his stepfather and became an orphan at age 9, when his mother died. He was brought up by his grandmother, ...

1048 points

48. Stieg Larsson

Writer | The Girl in the Spider's Web

Stieg Larsson's three novels (collectively known as "The Millennium Series") were published posthumously, and each became a feature film. They were entitled (for the American market) The Girl with the Dragon Tattoo (originally published in 2005), The Girl Who Played with Fire (originally published ...

1045 points

49. Alexandre Dumas

Writer | The Count of Monte Cristo

His paternal grandparents were Marie Cessete Dumas (a Haitian slave) and Marquis Antoine Davy de la Pailleterie. Antoine disapproved of their son, Thomas-Alexandre, joining the French army under the "Davy de la Pailleterie" name, so Thomas-Alexandre used his mother's surname instead. He became a ...

1039 points

50. Stanislaw Lem

Writer | Solyaris

Stanislaw Lem was a visionary Polish author known for Solaris (1972).

He was born on September 12, 1921, in Lwów, Poland. His father, Samuel Lem, was a wealthy laryngologist who served in the Austrian army. His mother, Sabina Woller, was a homemaker. Although he was born into a Polish-Jewish family,...

1019 points

51. Johann Wolfgang von Goethe

Soundtrack | Valkyrie

Johann Wolfgang Goethe was born on 28 August 1749 in Frankfurt am Main, Germany as son of a lawyer. After growing up in a privileged upper middle class family, he studied law in Leipzig from 1765 to 1768, although he was more interested in literature. As he was seriously ill, he had to interrupt ...

976 points

52. Edward Albee

Soundtrack | Who's Afraid of Virginia Woolf?

Edward Albee was born on March 12, 1928 in Washington, District of Columbia, USA. He was a writer, known for Who's Afraid of Virginia Woolf? (1966), A Delicate Balance (1973) and Qui a peur de Virginia Woolf? d'Edward Albee (2011). He died on September 16, 2016 in Montauk, New York, USA.

967 points

53. Franz Kafka

Writer | Le procès

Franz Kafka was born into a German-speaking Jewish family in Prague, Austrian Empire, in 1883. His father, Hermann Kafka, was a business owner and a domestic tyrant, frequently abusing his son. Kafka later admitted to his father, "My writing was all about you...". He believed that his father broke ...

955 points

54. John Osborne

Writer | Tom Jones

The Oscar-winning screenwriter John Osborne, better known as one of the most important British playwrights of the 1950s generation that revolutionized English-speaking theater, was born on December 12, 1929 in London, England. His father, Thomas Godfrey Osborne, a native of Newport, Monmouthshire, ...

920 points

55. Oscar Wilde

Writer | The Picture of Dorian Gray

A gifted poet, playwright and wit, Oscar Wilde was a phenomenon in 19th-century England. He was illustrious for preaching the importance of style in life and art, and of attacking Victorian narrow-mindedness.

Wilde was born in Dublin, Ireland, in 1854. He studied at Trinity College in Dublin before ...

911 points

56. Ken Kesey

Writer | One Flew Over the Cuckoo's Nest

Kesey burst into the literary scene with the "Cuckoo's Nest" in 1962 which he wrote from his experiences working at a veterans hospital. During this period, he volunteered for the testing on the drug LSD. After writing his second novel, "Sometimes A Great Notion," he bought an old school bus dubbed...

902 points

57. E.M. Forster

Writer | Howards End

E.M. Forster was born on January 1, 1879 in London, England, UK. He was a writer, known for Howards End (1992), A Room with a View (1985) and The Machine Stops (2009). He died on June 7, 1970 in Coventry, Warwickshire, England, UK.

897 points

58. Henrik Ibsen

Writer | While We're Young

Henrik Ibsen was born on March 20th in Stockmannsgerden in Skien. His mother was Marichen and his father was Knud, a merchant. On 1835 his father gave up his business and the family moved to Venstop, a farm in Gjerpen. In 1843 he confirmed in Gjerpen church and left home in order to apprentice to ...

896 points

59. Rudyard Kipling

Writer | The Man Who Would Be King

Rudyard Kipling was born in Bombay, Maharashtra, India, the son of John Lockwood Kipling, a museum director and author and illustrator. This was at the height of the "British Raj", so he was brought up by Indian nurses ("ayahs"), who taught him something of the beliefs and tongues of India. He was ...

882 points

60. Jaroslaw Iwaszkiewicz

Writer | Nad Niemnem

Jaroslaw Iwaszkiewicz was born on February 20, 1894 in Kalnik, Podolia Governorate, Russian Empire [now Kalnik, Vinnytsia Oblast, Ukraine]. He was a writer and actor, known for Nad Niemnem (1939), Kochankowie z Marony (1966) and Kochankowie z Marony (2005). He was married to Anna Lilpop. He died on...

882 points

61. Harper Lee

Writer | To Kill a Mockingbird

Nelle Harper Lee grew up in Monroeville, Alabama in the 1920s. It was a time of hostility between whites and blacks in the United States, especially in Alabama. Her father, a lawyer, also ran a local newspaper. Her mother suffered from mental illness and oftentimes stayed inside from others; she ...

882 points

62. Margaret Mitchell

Writer | Gone with the Wind

Margaret Mitchell was an American historical novelist and a journalist. She published only one completed novel in her lifetime, "Gone with the Wind" (1936), which covered a woman's struggle for survival through the American Civil War and the Reconstruction Era. The novel won the Pulitzer Prize for ...

870 points

63. James Ellroy

Writer | L.A. Confidential

James Ellroy was born on March 4, 1948 in Los Angeles, California, USA. He is a writer and producer, known for L.A. Confidential (1997), Street Kings (2008) and The Black Dahlia (2006).

867 points

64. Arthur Miller

Writer | The Crucible

Arthur Asher Miller was born on October 17, 1915, in New York City, one of three children born to Augusta (nee Barnett) and Isidore Miller. His family was of Austrian Jewish descent. His father manufactured women's coats, but his business was devastated by the Depression, seeding his son's ...

866 points

65. Anthony Shaffer

Writer | Sleuth

Anthony Shaffer was born on May 15, 1926 in Liverpool, England, UK. He was a writer, known for Sleuth (1972), Frenzy (1972) and The Wicker Man (1973). He was married to Diane Cilento and Carolyn Soley. He died on November 6, 2001 in London, England, UK.

854 points

66. Herman Melville

Writer | The Enigma of Benito Cereno

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); Typee (1846), a romanticized account of his experiences in Polynesia; and Billy Budd, Sailor, a posthumously published novella. Although his ...

841 points

67. L. Frank Baum

Writer | The Wizard of Oz

L. Frank Baum became a success with his 1883 production of "The Maid of Arran" in 1882. He was a dreamer, had a printing press and an amateur newspaper, "The Rose Lawn Home Journal" and published a coin and stamp collecting guide. He failed at almost everything through poor business sense. He had ...

839 points

68. Dennis Lehane

Producer | The Drop

Dennis Lehane was born on August 4, 1965 in Dorchester, Massachusetts, USA. He is a producer and writer, known for The Drop (2014), Mystic River (2003) and Live by Night (2016). He was previously married to Dr. Angela Mililani (Lieb) Bernardo and Sheila Fort Lawn.

839 points

69. Nicholas Sparks

Writer | Safe Haven

Nicholas Sparks was born on December 31, 1965 in Omaha, Nebraska. He graduated from the University of Notre Dame in 1988 and is one of the more critically-acclaimed authors of the past 5 years. He is the author of 5 best-selling books, including "The Notebook" and "The Rescue". Eleven of his books, ...

837 points

70. Jerzy Kosinski

Writer | Being There

Jerzy Kosinski was born on June 14, 1933 in Lódz, Lódzkie, Poland. He was a writer and actor, known for Being There (1979), Reds (1981) and The Painted Bird (2019). He was married to Kiki von Fraunhofer-Kosinski and Mary Emma (Hayward) Weir. He died on May 3, 1991 in New York City, New York, USA.

836 points

71. Knut Hamsun

Writer | Poslední radost

Norwegian novelist Knut Hamsun was born to a poor family and sent to live with an uncle, a commercial fisherman. He grew up without any formal schooling. Hamsun left Norway for the U.S. twice: once in 1882, and again in 1886. Each time he stayed in the U.S. for two years, holding various jobs ...

833 points

72. Vladimir Nabokov

Writer | Lolita

Vladimir Vladimirovich Nabokov was born on April 22, 1899, the eldest of five children in a wealthy aristocratic family in St. Petersburg, Russia. His grandfather was a Justice Minister to the Czar Alexander II. His father, named Vladimir Dmitrievich Nabokov, was a liberal political leader, the ...

820 points

73. Bruno Schulz

Writer | Sanatorium pod Klepsydra

Schulz is undoubtedly one of the most remarkable writers in Polish literature of the first half of the 20h Century. He was born in Drohobycz, a small village near Lvov, where he would live until he was shot by the Nazis on the street on November 19th, 1942. By then, Schulz had published two books. ...

819 points

74. B. Traven

Writer | The Treasure of the Sierra Madre

B. Traven was born on February 23, 1882 in Schwiebus, Prussia, Germany [now Swiebodzin, Lubuskie, Poland]. He was a writer and actor, known for The Treasure of the Sierra Madre (1948), Macario and The White Rose. He was married to Rosa Elena Lujan. He died on March 27, 1969 in Mexico City, Distrito...

818 points

75. Christopher Isherwood

Writer | Cabaret

Christopher Isherwood was born on August 26, 1904 in Cheshire, England, UK. He was a writer and actor, known for Cabaret (1972), A Single Man (2009) and Frankenstein: The True Story (1973). He died on January 4, 1986 in Santa Monica, California, USA.

813 points

76. Anthony Burgess

Writer | A Clockwork Orange

Anthony Burgess was born on February 25, 1917 in Manchester, England, UK. He was a writer, known for A Clockwork Orange (1971), Cyrano de Bergerac (1990) and Vinyl (1965). He was married to Liana Burgess and Llewela Isherwood Jones. He died on November 22, 1993 in London, England, UK.

813 points

77. Peter Weiss

Writer | Hägringen

Peter Ulrich Weiss was born in Berlin in 1916. His family was prosperous, educated, and middle-class; his father had been in the military, and his mother had given up her acting career in order to marry Peter's father and raise a family. Weiss describes, with Kafkaesqe photographic recall, his ...

812 points

78. Wladyslaw Stanislaw Reymont

Writer | Chlopi

Wladyslaw Stanislaw Reymont was born on May 7, 1867 in Kobiele Wielkie, Poland, Russian Empire [now Kobiele Wielkie, Lódzkie, Poland]. He was a writer, known for Chlopi (1922), Ziemia obiecana (1927) and Komediantka (1987). He was married to Aurelia Szablowska. He died on December 5, 1925 in Warsaw...

808 points

79. Ian McEwan

Writer | Atonement

Ian McEwan was born on June 21, 1948 in Aldershot, Hampshire, England, UK. He is a writer and producer, known for Atonement (2007), The Good Son (1993) and Enduring Love (2004). He has been married to Annalena McAfee since 1997. He was previously married to Penny Allen.

805 points

80. John le Carré

Writer | The Constant Gardener

John le Carré was born in Poole, Dorset in England on 19 October, 1931. He went to Sherborne School and, later, studied German literature for one year at University of Bern. Later, he went to Lincoln College, Oxford and graduated in Modern Languages. From 1956 to 1958, he taught at Eton and from ...

789 points

81. Theodore Dreiser

Writer | A Place in the Sun

Theodore Dreiser was one of the great American writers, and a transitional figure between Victorian America and the "modern" age that was inaugurated after the cessation of hostilities after WWI and the publication of Sinclair Lewis' "Main Street" in 1920. A naturalist with a committed social ...

762 points

82. Nikolay Gogol

Writer | Burnt Hickory

Nikolai (Mykola) Gogol was a Russian humorist, dramatist, and novelist of Ukrainian origin. His ancestors were bearing the name of Gogol-Janovsky and claimed belonging to the upper class Polish Szlachta. Gogol's father, a Ukrainian writer living on his old family estate, had five other children. He...

756 points

83. Charlotte Brontë

Writer | Jane Eyre

Charlotte was born 1816, the third of the six children of Patrick Brontë, an Anglican clergyman, and his wife Maria Branwell Brontë. After their mother's death in 1821, Charlotte and her sisters, Maria and Elizabeth, were sent to Cowan Bridge Clergy Daughters' School, which Charlotte would later ...

729 points

84. William Inge

Writer | Splendor in the Grass

William (Motter) Inge brought small-town life in the American Midwest to Broadway with four successive dramatic triumphs: "Come Back Little Sheba" (1950), "Picnic" (1953; Pulitzer Prize), "Bus Stop" (1955) and "The Dark at the Top of the Stairs" (1957). With the exception of his Academy ...

702 points

85. Neil Simon

Writer | The Odd Couple

Neil Simon was born on July 4, 1927 in The Bronx, New York City, New York, USA. He was a writer and producer, known for The Odd Couple (1968), Murder by Death (1976) and The Goodbye Girl (1977). He was married to Elaine Joyce, Diane Lander, Marsha Mason and Joan Baim. He died on August 26, 2018 in ...

695 points

86. Roald Dahl

Writer | The Witches

Dahl was born in Wales in 1916. He served as a fighter pilot in the Royal Air Force during World War II. He made a forced landing in the Libyan Desert and was severely injured. As a result, he spent five months in a Royal Navy hospital in Alexandria. Dahl is noted for how he relates suspenseful and...

689 points

87. Mikhail Sholokhov

Writer | Podnyataya tselina

Mikhail Sholokhov was a Russian writer who received a Nobel prize for his epic novel 'Tikhiy Don'.

He was born in 1905 into a Cossack family of farmers in Kruzhilin, Veshenskaya, Rostov province in Southern Russia. His high school studies were interrupted by the Russian revolution and the Civil War, ...

654 points

88. Henry James

Writer | What Maisie Knew

Henry James was born 15 April 1843, to a wealthy family. He was born in New York, New York USA. His parents were Henry James Sr. and Mary Robertson Walsh; He had one brother William James (January 11 1842-August 26 1910) and one sister Alice James. When Henry James was a young boy he would enjoy ...

632 points

89. Alexander Pushkin

Soundtrack | Florence Foster Jenkins

Born to noble parents (his father Sergei was a retired major, and his mother, Nadezhda, was the granddaughter of an ennobled Ethiopian general) on the 26th of May, 1799 in Moscow, Alexander Sergeevich Pushkin became involved with a liberal underground revolutionary group that saw him exiled to the ...

629 points

90. Chingiz Aitmatov

Writer | Selvi Boylum Al Yazmalim

Chingiz Aitmatov was a Russian-Kyrgyz writer and statesman known for such films as The First Teacher (1965), Selvi Boylum Al Yazmalim (1977) and Jamila (1995).

He was born Chingiz Torekulovich Aitmatov on December 12, 1928, in Kirgizia, Soviet Union. His family was bilingual, Russian-Kyrgyz. His ...

628 points

91. William Faulkner

Writer | To Have and Have Not

William Faulkner, one of the 20th century's most gifted novelists, wrote for the movies in part because he could not make enough money from his novels and short stories to support his growing number of dependants. The author of such acclaimed novels as "The Sound and the Fury" and "Absalom, Absalom...

622 points

92. Edna Ferber

Writer | Giant

Ferber initially studied acting. She then worked as a reporter in Milwaukee and Chicago. Travels through America and Europe followed. Ferber became the author of interesting novels with a cultural-historical background. She often designed the plot in such a way that a female figure was in the ...

616 points

93. Friedrich Dürrenmatt

Writer | The Pledge

Friedrich Dürrenmatt was born on January 5, 1921 in Konolfingen, Switzerland. He was a writer and director, known for The Pledge (2001), It Happened in Broad Daylight (1958) and Suspicion (1957). He was married to Charlotte Kerr and Lotti Geißler. He died on December 14, 1990 in Neuchâtel, ...

585 points

94. D.H. Lawrence

Writer | Lady Chatterley's Lover

David Herbert Lawrence was born in Nottinghamshire, England, 11 September 1885. His father was a coal miner, his mother a genteel woman who sought education and refinement for her son. Lawrence earned a university degree and taught school for a short time. While still a student he began to publish ...

582 points

95. Robert Ludlum

Writer | The Bourne Supremacy

Robert Ludlum was born on May 25, 1927 in New York City, New York, USA. He was a writer and actor, known for The Bourne Supremacy (2004), The Bourne Identity (2002) and The Bourne Legacy (2012). He was married to Karen Dunn and Mary Patricia Ryducha. He died on March 12, 2001 in Naples, Florida, ...

581 points

96. Robert Harris

Writer | The Ghost Writer

Robert Harris is a former television news reporter, journalist and columnist who wrote his first suspense novel "Fatherland" in 1992. He has followed up that novel with several others, among them "Enigma" (1995) and "Archangel" (1998). Harris is a graduate of Cambridge University and lives in ...

580 points

97. Robert Louis Stevenson

Writer | Muppet Treasure Island

Robert Louis Stevenson was a Scottish novelist, poet, and travel writer from Edinburgh. His most popular works include the pirate-themed adventure novel "Treasure Island" (1883), the poetry collection "A Child's Garden of Verses" (1885), the Gothic horror novella "Strange Case of Dr Jekyll and Mr ...

577 points

98. Heinrich Mann

Writer | Der blaue Engel

Heinrich Mann, German novelist and the elder brother of Nobel-Prize winner Thomas Mann, is most famous in the English-speaking world for his novel "Professor Unrat" that was turned into the successful 1930 movie "Der Blaue Engel" ("The Blue Angel"). Mann once enjoyed a considerable reputation in ...

576 points

99. Eugene O'Neill

Writer | Long Day's Journey Into Night

Eugene O'Neill, the winner of four Pulitzer Prizes for Drama and the 1936 Nobel Prize for Literature, is widely considered the greatest American playwright. No one, not Maxwell Anderson, Tennessee Williams, Arthur Miller, nor Edward Albee, approaches O'Neill in terms of his artistic achievement or ...

576 points

100. Mary Shelley

Writer | Young Frankenstein

Mary Wollstonecraft Shelley (née Godwin; 30 August 1797 - 1 February 1851) was an English novelist, short story writer, dramatist, essayist, biographer, and travel writer, best known for her Gothic novel "Frankenstein: or, The Modern Prometheus" (1818). She also edited and promoted the works of her...

543 points