My favorite authors
by Rectangular_businessman | created - 20 Sep 2014 | updated - 09 Feb 2023 | PublicIn no particular order
1. Edgar Allan Poe
Writer | Stonehearst Asylum
Edgar Allan Poe was born on January 19, 1809, in Boston, Massachusetts. His father, named David Poe Jr., and his mother, named Elizabeth Arnold Hopkins Poe, were touring actors. Both parents died in 1811, and Poe became an orphan before he was 3 years old. He was adopted by John Allan, a tobacco ...
2. Hans Christian Andersen
Writer | Frozen
Andersen experienced an unhappy childhood marked by deep poverty. When he was 14 years old, he left his parents' home and fled alone to Copenhagen. Here the director of the Royal Theater, Jonas Collin, took care of the child and gave him shelter and work. With his help, the young Hans Christian ...
3. 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 ...
4. Mark Twain
Writer | Big River
Mark Twain, born Samuel Langhorne Clemens in Florida, Missouri in 1835, grew up in Hannibal. He was a steamboat pilot on the Mississippi River. Throughout his career, Twain served as a writer, lecturer, reporter, editor, printer, and prospector. Twain took his pen name from an alert cry used on his...
My favorite book from him is "The Mysterious Stranger".
5. 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...
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 ...
7. 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...
8. H.P. Lovecraft
Writer | Color Out of Space
Born in Providence, Lovecraft was a sickly child whose parents died insane. When he was 16, he wrote the astronomy column in the Providence Tribune. Between 1908 and 1923, he wrote short stories for Weird Tales magazine and others. He died in Providence, in poverty, on March 15, 1937. His most ...
9. 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 ...
10. 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 ...
11. 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...
12. Gabriel García Márquez
Writer | El año de la peste
Major Latin-American author of novels and short stories, a central figure in the so-called magical realism movement in Latin American literature. He was awarded the Nobel Prize for literature in 1982. Studied law and journalism in Bogotá and Cartagena. He began his career as a journalist in 1948, ...
13. Michael Ende
Writer | The Neverending Story
Born 1929 in Germany as son of a surrealist painter who was banned by the Nazis in 1936. Went to Waldorf-school and deserted when he was called to the army at age of 16 in 1945. After the war he became an actor, critic and finally writer. His first big success was the children's book "Jim Knopf und...
14. Günter Grass
Writer | Die Blechtrommel
He grew up as the son of a merchant family. At the age of 15 he reported for military service in the Second World War. In 1944 he became a member of the Waffen-SS and was stationed in the 10th SS Panzer Division Frundsberg. After the end of the war he was taken prisoner by the Americans until 1946....
RIP
15. 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 ...
His best work: The Dark Tower series.
16. Ursula K. Le Guin
Writer | Gedo senki
Ursula K. Le Guin was born on October 21, 1929 in Berkeley, California, USA. She was a writer, known for Tales from Earthsea (2006), The Lathe of Heaven (1980) and The Telling. She was married to Charles A. Le Guin. She died on January 22, 2018 in Portland, Oregon, USA.
17. Julio Ramón Ribeyro
Writer | Caídos del cielo
Julio Ramón Ribeyro was born on August 31, 1929 in Barranco, Peru. He was a writer, known for Caídos del cielo (1990) and Ni contigo ni sin ti (1992). He died on December 4, 1994 in Lima, Peru.
18. Neil Gaiman
Writer | Good Omens
Neil Gaiman is an English author of short fiction, novels, comic books, graphic novels, audio theatre, and films. He is best known for the comic book series The Sandman and novels Stardust, American Gods, Coraline, and The Graveyard Book.
As a child and a teenager, Gaiman read the works of C. S. ...
19. C.S. Lewis
Writer | The Chronicles of Narnia: The Lion, the Witch and the Wardrobe
C.S. Lewis was born in 1898 and brought up in a very strict, religious household. While he was quite young, his mother died of cancer but the "stiff upper lip" in favour at the time meant he wasn't allowed to grieve. He became an Oxford don and led a sheltered life. He seriously questioned his ...
20. Lewis Carroll
Writer | Alice in Wonderland
Lewis Carroll was the pen name of Charles L. Dodgson, author of the children's classics "Alice's Adventures in Wonderland" and "Through the Looking-Glass."
Born on January 27, 1832 in Daresbury, Cheshire, England, Charles Dodgson wrote and created games as a child. At age 20 he received a ...
21. Julio Cortázar
Writer | Blow-Up
One of the most important Argentinian writers of all time, Julio Cortazar was born in Belgium. When he was a child he went with his parents to Argentina. She stayed in Buenos Aires until 1951, when he went to Paris and he stayed in France until his death. His first book of short stories was "...
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