- Agatha Christie - With a writing career that spanned half a century, Agatha Christie is perhaps the most widely read author, even today. Her simple plot construction and readable language makes her an all time favorite with readers, irrespective of age, culture and language.
- Alexander Pope - Physical disability, religious biases, and to top it all a vulnerable target of people’s mockery – a life loaded with ‘wrongs’, but hats off to the indefatigable spirit of the man called Alexander Pope.
- Alexander Pushkin - Ink flowed from his pen and metamorphosed into impressive works of art. The Moscow born poet, Alexander Sergeevich Pushkin is considered to be the greatest poet of Russia.
- Alexandre Dumas -One of the most popular writers of his time, Alexandre Dumas led as colorful a life as any of the characters in his books. He has left behind a mass of work whose authorship has been questioned because of its size and the numerous collaborations that he went into
- Alfred Hitchcock - Alfred Hitchcock, one of the greatest filmmakers of Hollywood, made the most frightful thrillers during his life. His suspense films were immensely popular once upon a time and he achieved a legendary status.
- Alfred Tennyson - ‘To get at him there is always the oyster to open’, said Browning of Tennyson. Being a reticent egoist, he was a perfect paradox.
- Anton Chekhov - Well-known playwright and short story writer of Russia, Anton Chekhov was the master of irony, spinning complex webs of verbal imagery, tantalizing phrases and virtual props, he gave an enigmatic touch to histrionics.
- Arnold Wesker - Arnold Wesker, a British playwright, has penetrated through the prevailing social strata by attaining the heights of name and fame. Coming from a working class Jewish immigrant family, Wesker appeared on the center stage of the world theater. The boy from Hackney has rose up to the Royal Theater, London.
- Ayn Rand - The earth has, ever since it's origin, witnessed phenomena. Ayn Rand was one such phenomenon, with an air of uniqueness all around her. Very few novelists are known to possess a philosophy that could entertain a learned race.
- Bernard Shaw - George Bernard Shaw was born in Dublin of Protestant Irish stock on July 26, 1856. His mother, Lucille Elizabeth (Bessie) Gurly, was a talented amateur singer, and his father, George Carr Shaw, was a corn trader.
- Bertrand Russell - He was born in Britain. His mother’s name was Katharine Russell, Lady Amberley. She gave birth to three children between 1865 and 1872, of whom Bertrand was the last.
- Charles Dickens - Charles Dickens, one of the most popular writers in the history of literature presented his life in form of novels and made the world ponder on the child’s upbringing. ‘Pip’, an orphan in Great Expectation is Charles’ own autobiographical sketch, where the dark secret of his life became a source, both for creative energy and for the preoccupation with the themes of alienation and betrayal.
- Charlotte Bronte - The life of Charlotte Bronte is a fine example of how a person can rise amidst turmoil and personal tragedies. All through her life she kept on losing her near and dear ones and still, with sheer single-mindedness became a novelist whom the world now respects and looks up to in terms of beauty through writing.
- Daniel Defoe - A paradoxical genius, Daniel Defoe lived an eventful life. Actively involved in the early 18th century English politics, Defoe played a vital role in the unification of Scotland and England. A successful businessman turned pamphleteer, Defoe was quite a popular personality of his times. He is the only person pilloried, who was later cherished as a national hero.
- Dante Alighieri - Italy, in 13th century, was the epitome of culture, with contributors in various fields of art. It was the time when the church bells and the bells of the castles were tolling against eachother.
- David Herbert Lawrence - D H Lawrence, as he is more popularly known as, emerged as one of the greatest English literary writers of the 20th century. He excelled as a novelist, critic, poet and painter.
- Dostoevsky - Fyodor Mikhailovich Dostoevsky is perhaps one of the most enigmatic figures to his biographers and readers alike. His misfortunes and sufferings were portrayed through the characters in his work.
- E.M. Forster - Edward Morgan Forster, popularly known as E M Forster, was one of the most influential writers of his time. However, he is not a novelist for the modern reader.
- Elizabeth Browning - English poet, political thinker and feminist, Elizabeth Barrett Browning was probably the only female poet who was held in high esteem among literary society in U S and England, in the 19th Century.
- Enid Blyton - Enid Blyton is a name loved by most children and parents. Children are busy fantasizing and experiencing the feel of adventure just by reading her books. She has played a very strong role in developing British family values, as her stories were highly educational and moral in tone not only in Britain and America but also throughout the world.
- Ernest Hemingway - "You can destroy me, but can never defeat" – said Santiago, hero of The Old Man And The Sea. Ernest Hemingway, the Pulitzer and a Nobel Prize winner had the courage of despair.
- Eugene O'Neill - When Eugene O’Neill entered the theatre as a playwright, Broadway consisted mainly of musicals, melodramas and farces, with an occasional ‘quality’ fair from Europe. For O’Neill, the theatre was a very appropriate platform for serious ideas.
- Francis Bacon - The life of Francis Bacon is a story of a life devoted to great ideas. These ideas grew on him from his very childhood and pre-occupied him until his death.
- Geoffrey Chaucer - A soldier, a civil servant, a diplomat - Geoffrey Chaucer has been busy all his life on many more fronts besides being a pioneer of the world of literature.
- Goethe - One of the masters of the world literature, Johann Wolfgang Von Goethe was the last European poet who possessed the revolutionary qualities of the great Renaissance personalities. He was a critic, journalist, painter, statesman, educationist, philosopher, and apart from all this, a theatre manager too! The variety, depth and quality of his output were in itself, stupendous.
- Harold Pinter - Harold Pinter is today’s foremost living dramatist. What makes him interesting is his formative Hackney childhood, his conscientious objection, his love affair with Ireland, his sacred belief in friendship, his two marriages, his uncompromising hatred of injustice and his passion for poetry and cricket. His infinite complexity and private character shaped his imaginative world.
- Henri Bergson - Among French philosophers, Henri Bergson can be considered someone that clearly stands out from the crowd. He was way above his contemporaries, as he sat on the pinnacle of achievements. He received the Nobel Prize for Literature in 1927, for his brilliant and imaginative philosophical works.
- Henry Fielding - Sir Walter Scott called Fielding ‘the father of the English novel.’ He was the first English novelist to approach the genre with a fully worked-out theory in Joseph Andrews, Tom Jones and Amelia, the comic epics or domestic epics.
- Hermann Hesse - To Hermann Hesse, the most important thing was the individual, and the search for self.
- Homer - Homer’s invention of style of epic poetry has remained unrivalled. Whatever praises bestowed upon him are truly justified.
- James Joyce - James Augustine Joyce was an Irish novelist known for his artistic style and experimental use of the English language. After failing at business, Joyce tried his hands at various professions including politics and tax collecting.
- Jane Austen - Jane Austen is one of the best known and most loved novelists of the English speaking world. Yet on the face of it, she is one of the all-time unlikely candidates for such a title.
- Jean Jacques Rousseau - Perhaps the singlemost enlightened important writer was the philosopher, novelist, composer, music theorist and language theorist and – Jean-Jacques Rousseau.
- John Donne - John Donne was an English poet, essayists and sermonist. He was educated at Oxford and Cambridge and also studied law in London. Donne had a very bright future, but his secret marriage proved disastrous in relation to the prospects he had been preparing himself for.
- John Keats - "The genius of poetry must work out its own salvation in man. It cannot be matured by law and precept, but by sensation and watchfulness in itself. That which is creative must create itself."
- John Milton - He grew up under the shadow of William Shakespeare. He sipped on the residue offered by muse from a very young age to serve it in the best possible way later on : by creating monumental literary legends like Paradise Lost and Paradise Regained.
- John Ruskin - Ruskin was one of the greatest writers of England. His writings chiefly consist of criticism. After studying literature from quite an early age, Ruskin joined the Oxford University.
- Jonathan Swift - Jonathan Swift was an Anglo-Irish satirist and political pamphleteer. His passion for satire of human folly made him one of the greatest masters of English prose. His many pamphlets, prose letters and poetry, though meticulous, were yet economical and simple in language.
- Joseph Conrad - A house having four walls on the East, West, North and South but no roof and yet the dwellers protect themselves from sun, rain, wind and all that nature throws over.
- Khalil Gibran - Khalil Gibran was born on January 6, 1883, to the Maronite family of Gibran in Bsharri, in Northern Lebanon. The people of Mount Lebanon had struggle for several years to gain independence from the Ottoman rule, a cause Gibran was later to adopt and become an active member in.
- Kingsley Amis - Britain’s most versatile literary artist, Kingsley Amis is the strongest contemporary contender for the title ‘Grand Old Man of English Letters’. He has produced more than 20 novels, in his 40-year career, that began with the most amusing and much loved Lucky Jim.
- Leo Tolstoy - Leo Tolstoy was one of the greatest Russian writers and thinkers of the nineteenth century. In his long life, he wrote some unparalleled masterpieces - War and Peace and Anna Karenina.
- Lewis Carroll - How did Reverent Charles Dodgson, aged 30, lecturer in Geometry at Christ Church, Oxford and popular for precise work, on a single July afternoon while rowing up the Isis with a brother don and three little girls, give birth to one of the most famous stories of all time?
- Lord Bayron - Better known as Lord Byron, George Gordon Byron has been the most squabbling figure in the world of literary history.
- Marian George Elliot - Mary Ann was known to the world as George Eliot. Paving her way Through the male dominated world of early 19th century English Literature, she left an undeniable imprint on the minds and hearts of the readers.
- Mario Puzo - Mario Puzo's The Godfather topped the charts for 67 consecutive weeks on the Times bestseller list. Over the years, more than 21 million copies were sold.
- Mark Twain - "All you need in life is ignorance and confidence, then success is sure", these words of Mark Twain, one of the greatest humorists of America, probably reflect his philosophy of life.
- Munshi Premchand - The greatest stalwart in the field of Hindi and Urdu fiction – Premchand – whose real name was Dhanpat Rai or Nawabrai, was a prolific writer who wrote 12 novels and 300 short stories.
- Norman Mailer - Mailer has not only published 39 books (including 11 novels), he has written plays (and staged them), screenplays (and directed them), poems (for both Nugget and The New Yorker, among others) and essayed every sort of narrative form (including some he invented).
- Odysseus - The Odyssey is an epic story that has been a significant piece of literature since it was first composed, and will remain so for ages to come. One of the reasons it has been so, is its hero, Odysseus.
- Oscar Wild - AT A GLANCEOSCAR WILDE [1854 - 1900] "I am not English. I am Irish - Which is quite another thing."
- P G Wodehouse - Known around the world as the antidote to sorrow, Pelham Grenville Wodehouse and his Jeeves novels mark a genre of their own.
- P. B. Shelley - PERCY BYSSHE SHELLEY [1792-1822]
Always enveloped by mysticism and controversy, Percy Bysshe Shelley lived a life of a rebel.
- R K Laxman - R K Laxman, a man blessed with a unique sense of satire is the most loved cartoonist in India whose popularity has traveled to several other countries.
- Rabindranath Tagore - Gurudev Rabindranath Tagore was a creative epoch in whose wake great legions of inspired writers, poets, singers, musicians, linguists, historians, artists and philosophers emerged in India.
- Ralph Emerson - 1820
Began keeping journals, which he continued throughout virtually all his life. The first series was called "Wide World", expressing his current thoughts on all topics.
- Rudyard Kipling - Rudyard Kipling, the poet of all times, speaks about the involvement and evolution of life. He visualizes the mankind in few stanzas, which reflect the aim and conclusion of every being.
- Samuel Coleridge - A man of profound imagination and romanticism, Samuel Taylor Coleridge has contributed into the world of English literature with such lyrical ballads that the generations to come will always be oblidged to him for Kubla Khan, The Ancient Mariner and Biographia Literaria.
- Sarojini Naidu - Sarojini Naidu, also known as the Nightingale of India, lived a purposeful life. A devoted freedom fighter, a principled politician, a progressive activist, a radical reformer, an inspirational poet - woman of varied talents and high caliber, Sarojini Naidu lived life to its fullest.
- Satyajit Ray - "The quiet but deep observation, understanding and love of the human race, which are characteristic of all his films, have impressed me greatly – I feel that he is a ‘giant’ of the movie industry."
- Sir Arthur Conan Doyle - Perhaps the most famous fictional character of all time, Sherlock Holmes is still alive in popular imagination more than a hundred years after he was created.
- Stephen Edwin King - Over the years, the name Stephen King has become synonymous with cryptic tales, stories of horror, studies of the macabre, and also a continuity of sagas filled with horror, suspense, and intrigue. His stories catapult the reader into a world of dark fantasy, unknown terror, with descriptions of characters so meticulous and vivid that they seem astonishingly real.
- T. S. Eliot - T. S. Eliot was born on September 26, 1888 in St. Louis, Missouri (U.S.A).
A representative poet of the present century, he has been regarded as a foremost poet, dramatist and critic. He was also an editor of repute.
- Thomas Hardy - Thomas Hardy is one of the greatest literary figures of the 19th century. His literary genius is apparent in his poems and novels.
- Thomas Hobbes - "A Law of Nature (Lex Naturalis) is a precept, or general rule, found out by reason, by which a person is forbidden to do that which is destructive of his life, or takes away the means of preserving the same; and to omit that by which he thinks it may be preserved," said Thomas Hobbes, the English philosopher and political theorist known even today for his philosophical works.
- Victor Hugo - "To love another person is to see the face of God."
- Les Miserables
'Love' was the only religion he had faith in.
- Virginia Woolf - "There is or should be, an existence of yours beyond you."
Virginia's life was paradoxical. She was exceptionally astute and in many respects wise.
- W.B.Yeats - Dull in study, dark in complexion, unsuccessful in love, William Butler Yeats was attracted towards occultism and theosophy, and began writing plays, ballads and poetry.
- Walt Whitman - Walt Whitman, the great poet, was every inch an American. His poems, including those in Leaves Of Grass, advocate the principles of freedom and democracy that the USA always stood for.
- William Maugham - A British novelist, playwright and short-story writer, W S Maugham was the highest paid author in the 1930’s.
- William Shakespeare - The Bard of Avon, as he was known, is still famous in this era more than four hundred years after his birth.
- William Thackeray - William Makepeace Thackeray was an English novelist, whose reputation rests chiefly on Vanity Fair, a novel of the Napoleonic era in England, and The History of Henry Esmond, Esq., set in the early 18th century.
- William Wordsworth - Born in Cockermouth, England was the pioneer and central figure of the English poetry in the Romantic Era, his effort was a brief flowering of creative spirit midway between the collapse of 18th century authoritarianism and of the Victorian Era.
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