Who are the most most famous authors the world has ever known? Perhaps that’s not the real question: we should instead be asking, ‘how can we judge’? With that in mind one can begin to talk about criteria. One can think about which famous writers had the most influence on the world as a result of what they wrote, or how their writings changed the world.
We don’t necessarily have to talk about their writing style or how good their prose is, as that is, in any case, far too subjective: their greatness could simply be about their ideas – ideas that grab the attention of the world and change the world’s perceptions forever. In that case the writing would only be a vehicle for the transmission of the idea they wish to convey. That idea or theory or research is the reason for writing the book.
And then, particularly if we are including Shakespeare as one of the influential writers, we need to look at what kind of writing we are talking about. Shakespeare falls into the fiction writer category and so, perhaps, to find our best writers we should look at other fiction writers whose work had something like the influence of William Shakespeare’s. It should therefore be clear that our list of the thirty greatest writers are all fiction writers. Our criterion will be that they should be poets, dramatists and prose fiction writers who have had a significant influence on the writers who came after them or on the direction of society.
But who, apart from Shakespeare, are the greatest writers of all time? Without further ado, here is a list of thirty of the greatest writers of all time offered by NoSweatShakespeare. It would be impossible to rank them so they are listed in order of their birth dates:
Homer ~850 BCE
Scholars have debated whether Homer was one single author rather than a collection of oral stories but it is now thought that such an author existed. His defining works are The Iliad and The Odyssey. The adventures described in these two epic poems have shaped our thinking about the ancient Greeks – their religious and social structures – and have profoundly influenced subsequent writers, who have used his characters in multiple ways… Read more about Homer >>
Sophocles 496-406 BCE
Sophocles, an ancient Greek dramatist, wrote plays that have stood as a model for tragic dramas, both by Greek and Roman writers and into the modern age, hugely influencing the playwrights of the golden age of Elizabethan drama in England, as well as modern dramatists. He dramatically changed the tragic form by adding a third actor, thereby eroding the role of the chorus in the presentation of the plot… Read more about Sophocles >>
Virgil (Publius Vergilius Maro) 70 BCE – 19 BCE
Virgil was a prolific Roman poet, best remembered for his epic, Aeneid. He Was to Rome what Homer was to Greece. The national epic of ancient Rome, Aeneid follows the fortunes of the Trojan refugee, Aeneas. It is the mythical story of the founding of Rome, a story that has given us our idea of that event and the history of Rome before the modern period. It has been, and is still, used by writers as the basis of Western history and values… Read more about Virgil >>
The Evangelist, Mark (Author of the Gospel of St Mark) 1st Century CE
The identity of Mark is unknown but his great book, The Gospel of St Mark, was written in about the year 70 and has had the greatest impact on the world of any book ever written. It has been translated into more languages than any other book in history, as a book of the Bible… Read more about Mark the Evangelist >>
Dante (Durante degli Alighieri) 1265-1321
Dante was an Italian poet. His most famous and acclaimed poem is the long narrative, The Divine Comedy, the story of the narrator’s journey through hell and purgatory to paradise. It impacts on modern life in that its picture of what hell is like, with its ice and sulphurous fire, where sinners are tortured in the most horrific way, is the image Western culture has of hell… Read more about Dante >>
Geoffrey Chaucer 1343-1400
Geoffrey Chaucer stands as the great giant of English poetry. His verse is still read and enjoyed today and often adapted for theatre performances. It is full of characters, still recognisable as types we encounter in daily life in spite of having been inspired by people Chaucer observed more than seven hundred years ago… Read more on Geoffrey Chaucer >>
Francois Rabelais 1498-1553
Francois Rabelais was a French monk and physician who wrote several volumes of a huge novel, The Life of Gargantua and Pantagruel, a story about a giant and his son. Satirical, amusing and over-the- top, it has influenced the style of writers like James Joyce, Lawrence Sterne and almost any writer who has attempted novels or plays containing the adventures of comical characters, including Shakespeare… Read more on Francois Rabelais >>
Cervantes (Miguel de Cervantes Cortinas) 1547-1616
Miguel Cervantes, a contemporary of Shakespeare, actually dying the day before the Bard, is without doubt the most important writer in the history of the modern novel and, indeed, one of the most important in the history of literature. His novel, Don Quixote, was written at the beginning of the form’s development but has not been surpassed… Read more on Cervantes >>
John Donne 1572-1631
John Donne must be one of the most interesting writers who ever lived, both as a poet and a man. His life was a colourful adventure and his poems are significant feats of language. A Jacobean writer, more or less a contemporary of Shakespeare, Fletcher and Webster, but very distant from those theatre writers, both regarding his social class and his literary work… Read more on John Donne >>
John Milton 1608-1674
English is often referred to as ‘the language of Shakespeare and Milton.’ Milton’s poetry has been seen as the most perfect poetic expression in the English language for four centuries. His most famous poem, the epic Paradise Lost is a high point of English epic poetry. Its story has entered into English and European culture to such an extent that the details of our ideas… Read more about John Milton >>
John Bunyan (1628-1688)
John Bunyan was a Baptist preacher and writer. The book that has made him a candidate for the category of one of the most influential writers is The Pilgrim’s Progress, an allegory that has conditioned the way Christians think about their religious life. It is a novel – the most read novel of all time and the second most read book, the Bible being the most read. It has been translated into more languages than any other book, apart from the bible… Read more about John Bunyan >>
Voltaire (François-Marie Arouet) 1694-1778
François-Marie Arouet (nicknamed ‘Voltaire,’) was a French philosopher, poet, pamphleteer and fiction writer. Candide, a novel, is the work that has lasted best, still thriving in the modern world. It is widely taught in French schools and universities and French departments in universities worldwide… Read more about Voltaire >>
William Blake 1757-1827
Although not highly regarded either as a painter or poet by his contemporaries William Blake has the distinction of finding his place in the top ten of both English writers and English painters. The reason he was disregarded is because he was very much ahead of his time in his views and his poetic style, and also because he was regarded as being somewhat mad, due to behaviour that would be thought of as only slightly eccentric today… Read more about William Blake >>
Jane Austen 1775 – 1817
The Jane Austen Centre’s website states: ‘Jane Austen is perhaps the best known and best loved of Bath’s many famous residents and visitors.’ One wonders at the restraint in that, considering that Jane Austen is indisputably one of the greatest English writers – some say the greatest after Shakespeare – and certainly the greatest English novelist and one of the most famous English women who ever lived… Read more on Jane Austen >>
Hans Christian Andersen 1805-1875
Hans Christian Andersen was a Danish playwright, travel writer, poet, novelist and story writer. His fairy tales place him as one of the world’s greatest writers ever. Written basically for children they transcend age barriers because of their universal nature: they reach the deepest levels of the human condition, each story demonstrating something profound about what it means to be a human being… Read more on Hans Christian Anderson >>
Charles Dickens 1812-1870
Charles Dickens was an extraordinary man. He is best known as a novelist but he was very much more than that. He was as prominent in his other pursuits but they were not areas of life where we can still see him today. We see him as the author of such classics as Oliver Twist, David Copperfield, Great Expectations, A Tale of Two Cities, Bleak House and many others. All of his novels are English classics… Read more on Charles Dickens >>
Herman Melville 1819-1891
Herman Melville was an American writer of novels, short stories and poems. He is best known for the novel Moby-Dick and a romantic account of his experiences in Polynesian life, Typee. His whaling novel, Moby-Dick is often spoken of as ‘the great American novel’ ’vying with Scott Fitgerald’s The Great Gatsby and Mark Twain’s Huckleberry Finn for that title… Read more on Herman Melville >>
Gustave Flaubert 1821-1880
Gustave Flaubert was a French novelist, most notable for being the leading exponent of literary realism in French literature. He is known particularly for Madam Bovary (1857). Flaubert’s influence on subsequent novels is vast. The critic, James Wood, commented that ‘there really is a time before Flaubert and a time after him.’ In his exposition of what is now known as literary realism Flaubert innovated in the areas of brilliant detail, visual effect, unsentimental composure, and the absence of the superfluous commentary that typified fictional prose before Flaubert… Read more on Gustave Flaubert >>
Fyodor Mikhailovich Dostoyevsky 1821-1881
Fyodor Mikhailovich Dostoyevsky was a Russian novelist, journalist, short story writer, philosopher and essayist. His literary works explore psychology in the political, social, and spiritual turmoil of 19th-century Russia. His writings reveal a wide range of philosophical and religious themes. Dostoyevsky is best known for the novels, The Brothers Karamasov, The Idiot, and above all, Crime and Punishment… Read more on Dostoyevski >>
Jules Verne 1828-1905
Jules Verne was a French poet, playwright and novelist but he earns his place on this list of great writers because of his futuristic adventure novels. He has been called the father of science fiction and has had an incalculable influence on the development of science fiction writing. More interesting, perhaps, is his place as a prophet or predictor of technology which wasn’t to be invented until long after his death… Read more on Jules Verne >>
Leo Tolstoy (Count Lev Nikolayevich Tolstoy) 1828-1910
Count Lev Nikolayevich Tolstoy was a Russian novelist. There is a large degree of consensus that his two great novels, War and Peace and Anna Karenina stand on the summit of realist fiction. He has been mentioned again and again as the greatest novelist who ever wrote, and so he wins a place in this list of great writers. He is one of the two giants of Russian literature. The other giant, Dostoyevsky, spoke of him as the greatest of all living novelists… Read more on Tolstoy >>
Emily Dickinson 1830-1886
Unknown as a poet during her lifetime, Emily Dickinson is now regarded by many as one of the most powerful voices of American culture. Her poetry has inspired many other writers, including the Brontes. In 1994 the critic, Harold Bloom, listed her among the twenty-six central writers of Western civilization. After she died her sister found the almost two thousand poems the poet had written… Read Emily Dickinson quotes. Read more on Emily Dickinson >>
Lewis Carroll (Charles Lutwidge Dodgson) 1832-1898
Lewis Carroll was an English academic, mathematician, and Anglican deacon. He is best known for two books, Alice’s Adventures in Wonderland and its sequel, Through the Looking-Glass. He is noted for his brilliant wordplay, nonsensical logic, and fantasy. He invented the genre of literary nonsense.. Read more about Lewis Carroll >>
James Joyce 1882-1941
James Joyce was an Irish novelist, best known for his novel, Ulysses, and his later novel, Finnegans Wake. He is regarded as one of the most influential and important writers of the 20th century. Ulysses is a seminal work in which Homer’s Odyssey is paralleled in a range of episodes and literary styles. Joyce’s collection of short stories, Dubliners, is regarded as one of the best collections of stories of the century… Read more about James Joyce >>
Franz Kafka 1883-1924
Franz Kafka was a Czech novelist and short story writer who wrote in the German language. He is universally regarded as one of the major figures of 20th century literature. His protagonists are isolated figures faced with surrealistic or bizarre predicaments and incomprehensible bureaucracies. The work explores themes of alienation, guilt, and anxiety… Read more about Franz Kafka >>
T.S. Eliot 1888-1965
Thomas Stearns Eliot was an American-born, British, poet, essayist, playwright, critic, now regarded as one of the twentieth century’s major poets. He received more rewards than almost any other writer of the past two centuries, including the Nobel prize, the Dante Gold Medal, the Goethe Prize, the US Medal of Freedom and the British Order of Merit… Read more about T. S. Eliot >>
F Scott Fitzgerald 1896-1940
Francis Scott Fitzgerald was an American novelist, widely regarded as one of the greatest, if not the greatest, American writers of the 20th century. He is best known for his novel, The Great Gatsby, which vies for the title ‘Great American Novel’ with Mark Twain’s Huckleberry Finn and Herman Melville’s Moby-Dick. Fitzgerald’s place on this list is justified by the fact that his great novel is actually about America… Read more about F. Scott Fitzgerald >>
Jorge Luis Borges 1899-1986
Jorge Luis Borges was an Argentine writer of poems, translations, essays, literary criticism and, what he is best known for, short fiction. It would be impossible even for the greatest fans of this Argentine writer to describe or explain his writing. The most one can say is that his work has inspired countless writers, none of whom have come close to capturing the magic of his work… Read more about Jorge Luis Borges >>
George Orwell 1903-1950
George Orwell was the pen name of Eric Blair, a twentieth-century writer, equally at home with journalism, essays, novels, literary criticism and social commentary. He was famous in all those areas but will be particularly remembered for two of his novels, Animal Farm and Nineteen Eighty Four, both among the most significant works of literature of the twentieth century and two of the most influential… Read more about George Orwell >>
Gabriel Garcia Marques 1927-2014
Gabriel García Márquez was a Colombian novelist, screenwriter, and journalist, affectionately referred to by the nickname Gabo or Gabito by the writers and readers of South America, the continent to which he gave a distinctive voice. He was awarded the Nobel Prize for Literature in 1982, and it is generally considered that the novel that clinched it was One Hundred Years of Solitude… Read more about Gabriel Garcia Marquez >>
Like our list of the thirty greatest writers of all time? Any we’re missing? Check out our list of famous English writers, and most famous American authors.
Fiction writers do not write to transmit an idea or report on research they have done. They use language to make us think that their inventions are real, that the places they create actually exist and that their characters are real people, like us, who love and hate and suffer and strive. They invite us to enter into the world of their text and although they usually write only to entertain, there is a sense in that they point to truths just as real as those reached by Darwin and Einstein. If they do that at the highest level, in creating a world that we both recognise and can be inspired by, they reveal themselves as great writers and influence the world in that way. Like Shakespeare.
So who are these writers who can be placed in the same category as Shakespeare for doing that? Shakespeare is, of course, foremost among the great writers. Apart from writing plays that can be held up like mirrors in which we can see ourselves as human beings clearly, and come to an understanding of many of the things that make us human, Shakespeare’s poetry has had a profound effect on the English language: the way we use it today has been shaped by his words and phrases. It can be difficult at times to utter a sentence in English without using a construction first used by Shakespeare. And whenever we need to find a phrase that will sum something we want to say up perfectly and beautifully, we will find a phrase somewhere in Shakespeare’s works.
Virginia Woolf and Marcel Proust
Oscar Wilde
I agree
I have to admit, like the Rankers list, whoever put this together has probably yet to read great literature, or maybe better stated, do their homework with literature from classic college and literary critics from a thousand years ago to the present. I apologize but I have to say something. First, let’s break authors down to great story tellers and writers – there is an immense difference. In every genre, there are leaders here who you cannot deny. If William Faulkner is not near the top, then you have not read Sanctuary or some of his other works. If you are physically and emotionally affected by a writer, that says something. Joseph Conrad’s Lord Jim will affect you. Tolstoy will affect you. Though Herman Melville wrote some great works, and had about 50 pages in Moby Dick which were compelling, take a class on him and you will learn that Melville’s earlier works were significantly better than Moby Dick. Also, read the critics of the times on Moby Dick, most hated it; great story, poorly written.
But I digress a moment. Shakespeare was a great story teller. Hemingway was a great writer. Twain was a very good writer, not great. But his stories of Huckleberry Finn and Tom Sawyer were magnificent. Life on the Mississippi was a great story. I personally have read Tolkein’s books maybe 10 times or more. But I acknowledge he is not a great writer, a good one, but not great. Yet if you read a genre like H.P. Lovecraft in the old Sci-Fi scheme you understand he has some incredible moments that affect you. Enjoying a novel, like Harry Potter is fine. It is a style of story telling that is compelling – it is not great, maybe clever, but not great. But the stories are wonderful. Lee Child is a good writer, his Jack Reacher character is compelling and I enjoy his style. But he is not a great writer. Robert B. Parkers style of narrative is difficult and not very good. He ebbs and flows and gets you lost. Yet, he was considered a famous author for Jesse Stone and Spenser to name a few but his style, well, not great in the least; at best an average writer. Some novels rise to classics that never should – Emily Bronte’ is a rather poor writer – sentence structure, character creation, chapter and story flow – extremely flawed. And yet Wuthering Heights is considered a great work by a great writer. If a person had written that today and given two chapters to an English Professor they would have sent it back with a D+. Her sister though wrote Jane Eyre which was excellent, not great, but quite good. Jack London’s short story, to build a fire, should get mention, as should a number of his famous novels. As should a few of Edgar Allen Poe’s works, though his style is not for everyone.
Ok, my digression is over. I am sure that this diatribe has sounded arrogant. Maybe it was because my mother started me on the classics when I was eleven. And though we did not agree on authors like Steinbeck (I think he wrote some great works, but again, I have my favorites), we agreed that certain authors separated themselves. I loved Shakespeare growing up, but since he copied Chaucer when he re-wrote Troilus and Cressida (really need to read the old english version, fascinating by the way, much better than Shakespeare by a long shot) I think we know that he copied much of what he did for the theatre. That does not make him less than what he was, just maybe not as original as people thought.
I would really like to see a list whereby the people discuss truly why someone is great. With a sense of what it was about, the story and the style. D.H. Lawrence wrote maybe a hundred pages in Lady Chatterley’s lover which was superb but the rest was drawn out and it looked like he was lost for the rest of it. You cannot count a book that drags and is lost though many do. Then again, we tend to forget the garbage portions of great works and focus on the magic which is sad because a great work should end to end captivate and change you. That is why when I see people talk about F.Scott Fitzgerald I just think they really need to read the Great Gatsby again. It is just not that good! Period! Good characters, rather poor writing.
I will end by saying this. Authors strive for something. It is hard to be a great writer and great storyteller. I have never read anything that could be both. A few great short stories maybe get close, but not quite. Novels, nearly impossible to achieve both. I hope someone builds a real list that has some reference to it…some critique, that truly shows where the greats really stand. I wish this was just an opinion but I think the academic world likely is closest to this and history has shown us where the greats really stand.
As you say, nobody’s perfect, and that’s a good starting point when it comes to reading: not being in awe and ending up in the blind alley of hagiography. Certain writers are overblown; Gatsby because it’s an American novel, for instance — in reality a very light one with a tedious narrator but set in a country of good promoters of their own stuff.
As you say, there is writing and storytelling. Much depends on age and circumstances. When I was young, I had to spend some time in hospital and took a stack of “great books” that I planned on reading. I’d forgotten the fact that I’d be in pain and in unpleasant surroundings. The only book I could bear to read was one I’d added as an afterthought: The Godfather. It got me through a couple of bad days and I thought it a great book.
Missing from many of these lists are such names as Yukio Mishima. His final work, the tetralogy, is a good balance of writing and story telling. Then there are writers who may be considered great yet are insufferably boring: James Joyce most of all. He simply could not come up with a story in any shape or form. Thomas Hardy combined both, yet people find him too dense nowadays. Nabokov’s Lolita was a masterpiece of storytelling and writing, yet his other books are intolerable. Faulkner’s The Hamlet, The Town, The Mansion trilogy is another example of writing and storytelling at its best, but have you ever seen those books on Top 100 lists? All lists that I’ve seen are merely regurgitated fodder, not really based in reality. Fear and Loathing in Las Vegas: another classic, but it doesn’t fit into “the canon” so the dreary, static farce is perpetuated.
I disagree with you about Emily Bronte, but then everyone has their own taste and I think gender has much to do with likes and dislikes. For example, I could never make it through a book by Hemingway though I recognize him as a great writer. Some people on this list I consider to be downright torture to read, such as John Milton, and several I did not even recognize. I guess that makes me an amateur reader, though I majored in English Literature in college. But, anyway I know what I like. Poe wrote what is probably my all time favorite poem in “Dream Within a Dream,” though he is not known well as a poet. I would, in my ignorance, have also included Robert Frost.
How about Louis Lamour. A great American classic and historical story teller
Finnegans Wake. Mo apostrophe.
Thanks Mel, typo corrected!
Doot
I respect no list that excludes Mark Twain.
im related to mark twain
Emily Bronte
I find it disappointing that most websites only take into account Western writers and Western books, even though there are many great Asian writers too. I am only familiar with Chinese writers, so let me name a few:
1. Cao Xueqin（曹雪芹）: He only ever wrote one book, Dream of the Red Chambers, but read it (even if it’s the English version), and you’ll agree with me that it’s a masterpiece. What’s particularly amazing about this book is that the author and his family went through the feudal rise and fall described in the book. He didn’t write it for publication either. The book was literally his food and drink as he had to exchange the stories for food and wine. There are many mysteries within and surrounding the book, so when you research it (Redology) you will be drawn in and intrigued.
2. Luo Guanzhong（罗贯中）: He wrote Romance of the Three Kingdoms and possibly Water Margin. Romance of the Three Kingdoms was based on the Three Kingdoms era in Ancient China. Although it is historically inaccurate (sometimes), it is considered a masterpiece and has influenced Chinese perception of the Three Kingdoms era. What’s cool about this book is that it accurately described society and etiquette of the Han Dynasty, even though Luo Guanzhong wrote the book over a thousand years later in the Ming Dynasty.
3. Wu Chengen（吴承恩）: He wrote Journey to the West. It’s fictional story about Buddhist monk Tang Xuanzang’s journey with Sun Wukong (Monkey King), Zhu Bajie and Sha Wujing to the obtain the Buddhist sacred texts. It has strong roots in Chinese folk religion, mythology and Confucianist, Taoist and Buddhist philosophy. As such, it is highly fictional and has mythical creatures wanting to either marry or eat Tang Xuanzang (it’s said that eating his flesh will make you immortal). Many people view it as an allegory, especially with Zhu Bajie representing temptation (he’s a pig). The best thing about it is that it is a comic adventure story, a humorous satire of Chinese bureaucracy and a spiritual insight, although it was written in the 800s.
If you include poets, there would be many more:
2. Li Bai: If you don’t know this person, you don’t know Chinese culture. His poets are really really really good and have also influenced Chinese culture a lot.
3. Du Fu and Wang Wei: These two, along with Li Bai are considered the greatest poets in Chinese history. They all lived during the Tang Dynasty (the most prosperous dynasty in Chinese history).
I think Aleksnader Sergeevich Pushkin is on the best writers too. It is russian as Leo Tolstoy.
Maya Angelou is missing from the list….