Literature was formed very early, even before writing appeared. Literature exists in many forms, from being transmitted by memory as in folklore genres to hieroglyphs carved in stone; literature took shape even before the human realized he was also a writer.
As a field that carries both the history and culture of the world, literature plays an essential role in everyday life. Along with the development of society, literature has also witnessed the birth of famous and outstanding writers who have become legends of world literature.
1. Jacob Ludwig Karl, Wilhelm Karl Grimm – Brothers Grimm
Real names: Jacob Ludwig Karl, Wilhelm Karl Grimm
Country: Germany
Date of birth – date of death: January 4, 1785 – September 20, 1863, and February 24, 1786 – December 16, 1859
Era: Late 18th century, early 19th century
Genre: Folklore, Fairy Tales
Jacob and Wilhelm Grimm are two of their father Philipp Wilhelm Grimm’s nine children. Both of them were born in a city located in the state of Hessen in Germany. When they turned 20, the Grimm brothers studied linguistics and folklore. The two Brothers Grimm have achieved outstanding achievements in fairy tales and folklore.
Through their storytelling, the Brothers Grimm created timeless classics, including “Snow White and the Seven Dwarfs,” “Sleeping Beauty,” “Little Red Riding Hood,” “The Snow Queen,” “Hansel and Gretel,” “Cinderella,” and many more.
2. William Shakespeare – The bard of Avon – The author of Macbeth
Real name: William Shakespeare
Country: England
Date of birth – date of death: April 23, 1564 – April 23, 1616
Era: 16th century
Genre: History, Tragedy
Before his time, William Shakespeare, an English poet, and playwright, were often recognized as Britain’s greatest outstanding novelist and dramatist. His theatrical works fall into three categories: Comedy, Tragedy, and History, and include such classic works as Hamlet, Romeo, and Juliet, etc.
William Shakespeare is also regarded as a teacher of Western literature due to his contributions to storytelling, character development, plot, and tragedy. William Shakespeare is also regarded by linguists to have coined several new terms that were eventually included in dictionaries.
3. Lev Tolstoy – The author of War and Peace
Real name: Lev Nikolayevich Tolstoy
Country: Russia
Date of birth – date of death: August 28, 1828 – November 20, 1910
Era: 19th century
Genre: Social Realism, pacifism, anarchism
Count Lev Tolstoy was a great Russian Christian writer who advocated pacifism and anarchism.
Anna Karenina and War and Peace established Lev Tolstoy as the most influential Russian author, surpassing Pushkin, Dostoevsky, and Anton Chekhov. Time magazine placed these two masterpieces first and third among the 100 most remarkable books.
The former chancellor of Oxford University claims that Lev Tolstoy was the finest writer of the 19th century. The Guardian of the United States likewise selected Lev Tolstoy as the best author.
4. Charles Dickens – The author of A Tale of Two Cities
Real name: Charles John Huffam Dickens
Country: England
Date of birth – date of death: February 7, 1812-June 9, 1870
Era: 19th century
Genre: Children, Adventure, Reality, Short Story
Charles Dickens was born to a family of common civil workers in a neighborhood of Portsmouth, Hampshire, England. He was a court stenographer, a reporter for the Morning Star, and the creator of the Daily News in 1846.
Charles Dickens began writing in 1833, and his name quickly spread throughout Europe. He is considered the greatest novelist in the English language and the most famous writer of the Victorian era.
5. Victor Hugo – The author of Les Misérables
Real name: Victor Hugo
Country: France
Date of birth – date of death: February 26, 1802 – May 22, 1885
Era: 19th century
Genre: Romanticism, French Revolution, Social Politics
Victor Hugo has a crucial role in the history of French literature. He is a poet, writer, playwright and thinker, and politician typical of France in the 19th century. His works span and wide in many fields such as lyric poetry, romantic plays, social novels, romantic novels, etc.
He was also a representative figure of Romanticism in Europe. Victor Hugo’s works are bold, “Art for life’s sake,” with clearly depict social life at that time, showing morality, human love as well as radical political thought, and democracy to oppose the feudal and royalist ideology that was covering France and Europe at that time.
6. Mark Twain – The author of The Adventures of Tom Sawyer
Real name: Samuel Langhorne Clemens
Country: America
Date of birth – date of death: November 30, 1835 – April 21, 1910
Era: 19th century
Genre: Fable, satire, satire
If in the 19th century there was Victor Hugo in France, Charles Dickens in England, and Lev Tolstoy in Russia, then the United States, although being born late, eventually became the world’s top literary force. Mark Twain is the first literary superstar in our nation.
Mark Twain‘s style of satire, conversational writing, and skillful socio-psychological description have contributed to the fight against superstitious customs, feudal thought, domination, and incredibly racist policies against black people in America during the era of slavery in this country.
7. Alexander Pushkin – The author of Eugene Onegin
Real name: Aleksandr Sergeyevich Pushkin
Country: Russia
Date of birth – date of death: 06/06/1799 – 10/02/1837
Era: Early 19th century
Genre: Romance, Epic, Reality
Alexander Pushkin was a renowned poet who was revered as “the father of Russian poetry.” Tolstoy, Dostoevsky, Chekhov, and Nikolai Ostrovsky, among others, regard Pushkin to be their progenitor and inspiration. Primarily committed to literary language, he is an icon of 19th-century Russian romantic literature. 37-year-old Pushkin was killed in a firefight with a tsarist cavalry commander.
8. Marcel Proust – The author of In Search of Lost Time
Real name: Valentin Louis Georges Eugène Marcel Proust
France
Date of birth – date of death: July 10, 1871 – November 18, 1922
Era: Late 19th century, early 20th century
Genre: Autobiographical Fiction, Introspection, Impressionism
Marcel Proust is a French novelist, translator, and author of the seven-part novel In Search of Lost Time, which is practically his sole notable work. In Search of Lost Time has been an enormous success, being voted 8th by Time magazine on its list of the most outstanding books.
He was considered by writer Graham Greene (The Quiet American) as “the greatest writer of the 20th century” and “writers born in the late 19th century and early 20th century hardly avoid two sources of images. Great Influence: Proust and Freud”
9. J. R. R. Tolkien – The author of The Lord of the Rings
Real name: John Ronald Reuel Tolkien
Country: England
Date of birth – date of death: January 3, 1892 – September 2, 1973
Era: 20th century
Genre: Fantasy, Legendarium
J. R. R. Tolkien is a British author who fought in World War I and taught linguistics at Oxford University. The world of Middle-Earth in the works of The Lord of the Rings and The Hobbit that he created has a tremendous amount of history, geography, language, race, etc., making it he became the most fantastic author of fantasy literature, and the world he created was called Legendarium; there was even a study of that world, called Tolkienology.
10. George Orwell – The author of Animal Farm
Real name: Eric Arthur Blair
Country: England
Date of birth – date of death: June 25, 1903 – January 21, 1950
Era: 20th century
Genre: Politics, Society
George Orwell was a renowned English author and journalist and one of the 20th century’s most acclaimed authors.
George Orwell was born into a “lower middle class” family. He joined the police force in Burma (when it was part of the United Kingdom), battled the Nazis in Spain, and worked as a guard, teacher, and journalist.
Animal Farm (1984) are literary classic on politics against Soviet Communism, especially Stalin. George Orwell has always advocated for the people and democracy, so he firmly believed in Democratic Socialism in Northern Europe.
11. Franz Kafka – The author of The Metamorphosis
Real name: Franz Kafka
Country: Czech Republic
Date of birth – date of death: 03/07/1883 – 03/06/1924
Era: Late 19th century, early 20th century
Genre: Irrational Literature, Social Psychology, Surrealism
Franz Kafka, a German-language novelist of Austro-Hungarian descent, is regarded by critics as one of the most important writers of the 20th century.
Frequently, his writings are bizarre, illogical, and an introduction to Existentialism. In his will, Franz Kafka instructed his close friend Max Brod to burn any unfinished writings, but Max Brod edited and released the text.
The works published after Franz Kafka’s death are called Final Editions, including two of Franz Kafka’s three typical works, The Trial, The Castle; other is Amerika which made Franz Kafka’s name during his lifetime.
12. Dostoevsky – The author of Crime and Punishment
Real name: Fyodor Mikhailovich Dostoyevsky
Country: Russia
Date of birth – date of death: November 11, 1821 – February 9, 1881
Era: 19th century
Genre: Social Psychology, Social Politics, Social Realism, Existentialism
Dostoevsky, along with Lev Tolstoy, is two of the greatest Russian writers of the 19th century. Critics highly regard him, most of whom see him as the founder or herald of existentialism.
In Russia, after the October Revolution, Dostoevsky’s works were not recognized, and it was not until 1972 that Dostoevsky was re-recognized and appreciated adequately in his homeland.
13. Goethe – The author of Faust
Real name: Johann Wolfgang von Goethe
Country: Germany
Date of birth – date of death: August 28, 1749 – March 22, 1832
Era: Late 18th century, early 19th century
Genre: Enlightenment, Romanticism
Goethe is one of the most brilliant great individuals in global literature since, in addition to being a writer and poet, he is also a dramatist, scientist, and painter.
Goethe’s most famous work is Faust, with two parts composed in the form of poetic drama, considered the pinnacle of world literature. Goethe is a familiar figure in German literature, bringing literature out of the Weimar classical school.
14. Voltaire – Writer behind Letters on the Quakers
Real name: Francois-Marie Arouet
France
Date of birth – date of death: November 21, 1694 – May 30, 1778
Era: 17th century
Genre: Epic, History, Enlightenment
Voltaire was a renowned writer, poet, theologian, and philosopher of the 17th century. Born in Paris to a family of mandarins and nobles, he was educated by Jesuits and was fluent in Greek, Latin, English, Italian, and Spanish.
Despite coming from a family of lords and mandarins, he was hostile to the French feudal court as well as the Church. Voltaire is considered the most influential philosopher then, even though his thought was full of prejudices such as racism, contempt for the bourgeoisie, and no respect for democracy, etc., later criticized by Victor Hugo in Les Miserables.
However, it can be said that Voltaire is a great writer who understood history and epics, especially having a strong influence on the later Enlightenment.
15. Ernest Hemingway – The author of For Whom the Bell Tolls
Real name: Ernest Miller Hemingway
America
Date of birth – date of death: July 21, 1899 – July 2, 1961
Era: 20th century
Genre: War, Romance
Ernest Hemingway is a French-American author who was a member of the “Lost Group” – the generation of young people who lived through the First World War. Hemingway invented the phrase “Lost Generation” and made it a household term.
Using the famed “iceberg technique” in writing, Ernest Hemingway has become the greatest contemporary American author. Many believe Ernest Hemingway to be even better than F. Scott Fitzgerald, author of The Great Gatsby, despite the fact that the two are close friends. Ernest Hemingway’s “iceberg principle” is a literary masterpiece and one of his most renowned writings.
In 1954, Ernest Hemingway was awarded both the Pulitzer Prize and the Nobel Prize in Literature for The Old Man and the Sea. Ernest Hemingway committed himself with a shotgun at his house in 1961.
16. Arthur Conan Doyle – The author of Sherlock Holmes series
Real name: Arthur Conan Doyle
Country: Scotland
Date of birth – date of death: May 22, 1859 – July 7, 1930
Era: Late 19th century, early 20th century
Genre: Mystery, History
Sir Arthur Conan Doyle was born in Ireland but subsequently obtained Scottish nationality; he is regarded as the monarch of the detective genre, and his book The Adventures of Sherlock Holmes has become a classic in detective fiction. He was knighted by Queen Elizabeth.
17. Agatha Christie – The author of Death on the Nile
Real name: Agatha Mary Clarissa
Country: England
Date of birth – date of death: September 15, 1890 – January 12, 1976
Era: 20th century
Genre: Detective, Romance
If Sherlock Holmes is the king, Agatha Christie is the queen of detective fiction. Just behind Shakespeare, Agatha Christie is the best-selling writer of all time in the detective fiction genre. Agatha Christie is projected to have sold around 1 billion copies in English and 1 billion copies in translations into other languages worldwide.
18. F. Scott Fitzgerald – The author of Tender is the Night
Real name: Francis Scott Key Fitzgerald
America
Date of birth – date of death: September 24, 1896 – December 21, 1940
Era: 20th century
Genre: Social Criticism, Social Psychology
Alongside his close friend Ernest Hemingway, F. Scott Fitzgerald is one of the best authors of “The Lost Generation.” Gatsby is said to have shown the opposite of the “American ideal” and the “jazz age” and is one of the “four foundations” of contemporary American literature.
19. J. D. Salinger – The author of The Catcher in the Rye
Real name: Jerome David Salinger
Country: America
Date of birth – date of death: January 1, 1919 – January 27, 2010
Era: 20th century
Genre: Autobiographical Fiction, Social
J. D. Salinger is an American author whose personality is distinct. The popularity of his works led to a more reclusive lifestyle, and he ceased composing in 1965. His most successful novel, “The Catcher in the Rye,” is among the “four pillars” of modern American literature. However, it has received much criticism from critics and has been censored and cut out in libraries in the United States.
20. Emily Bronte – The author of Wuthering Heights
Real name: Emily Jane Bronte
Country: England
Date of birth – date of death: July 30, 1818 – December 19, 1848
Era: 19th century
Genre: Humanities, Love
Wuthering Heights is the sole book written by Emily Bronte, although it is regarded as one of the greatest literary works. In addition to the novel Wuthering Heights, Emily Bronte also wrote poetry, but very few poems have been preserved.
21. Vladimir Nabokov
Real name: Vladimir Vladimirovich Nabokov
Country: Russia
Date of birth – date of death: April 22, 1899 – July 2, 1977
Era: 20th century
Genre: Comedy, Educational, Psychological
Vladimir Nabokov is one of the most famous Russian writers of the 20th century with his controversial work Lolita. Later, Lolita became a world-famous novel, a “classic classic document in the world of psychiatric medicine”, containing a deep meaning of education and protection of minors.
22. Harper Lee – The author of To Kill the Mockingbird
Real name: Nelle Harper Lee
Country: America
Date of birth – date of death: April 28, 1926 – February 19, 2016
Era: 20th century
Genre: Semi-autobiographical, Social, Southern Gothic
Harper Lee is an American writer, lawyer, and journalist. During her career, she wrote only two novels, but one of them was To Kill a Mockingbird, with content about racism; together with The Great Gatsby, it became one of the “four pillars” of modern American literature.
23. JK. Rowling – The author of Harry Potter series
Real name: Joanne Rowling
Country: England
Date of birth: July 31, 1965
Era: Late 20th century, early 21st century
Genre: Fantasy, drama, young adult, fiction, crime fiction
Joanne Rowling, commonly known by the pen name J. K. Rowling, is an English writer, philanthropist, film and television producer, and screenwriter.
J. K. Rowling is widely recognized as the creator of the best-selling book series of all time, the Harry Potter fantasies, which have together sold over 500 million copies throughout the world.
Using the pen name Robert Galbraith, she also wrote crime fiction. Though she became famous for her contributions to the Harry Potter series, that success cast such a lengthy shadow that she could never recover.
She is also the first writer to become a billionaire by publishing books. Anyway, JK Rowling is still a great writer.
24. Jack Kerouac – The author of On the Road
Real name: Jack Kerouac
Country: America
Date of birth – date of death: March 12, 1922 – October 21, 1969
Era: 20th century
Genre: Religion, Society, Travel, Music
Jack Kerouac is the last name with the work On the Road in the “four pillars” of modern American literature. He is regarded as the antithesis of literary iconography. At 47, Jack Kerouac died of internal bleeding caused by alcohol abuse.
25. Miguel de Cervantes The author of Don Quixote
Real name: Miguel de Cervantes y Saavedra
Country: Spain
Date of birth – date of death: September 29, 1547 – April 23, 1616
Era: 16th century
Genre: Satire, satire
Miguel de Cervantes is a Spanish writer, poet, and playwright, best known for his classic Don Quixote. Don Quixote is the first novel written in modern European languages. The work is considered to have a critical position in European literature.
26. Alexandre Dumas – The author of The Three Musketeers
Real name: Dumas Davy de la Pailleterie
Country: France
Date of birth – date of death: 24/7/1802 – December 5, 1870
Era: 19th century
Genre: Romanticism, History, Adventure
Alexandre Dumas is a French writer with strong creative power: about 250 works, including 100 novels and 91 plays; the rest are memoirs, memoirs, reportages, etc. Both “The Count of Monte Cristo” and “The Three Musketeers” are considered to be among his most well-known works. These are all famous literary works and have been made into movies frequently.
27. Oscar Wilde – The author of The Painting of Dorian Gray
Real name: Oscar Fingal O’Flahertie Wills Wilde
Country: Ireland
Date of birth – date of death: October 16, 1854 – November 30, 1900
Era: Late 19th century, 20th century
Genre: Aesthetics, Art for Art’s sake
Oscar Wilde is a famous writer and poet. He greatly influenced European aesthetics and was the first to explain the movement “Art for art’s sake,” which later contrasted with Victor Hugo’s “Art for life’s sake” movement. His most famous work is The Painting of Dorian Gray.
28. Gabriel Garcia Marquez – The author of One Hundred Years of Solitude
Real name: Gabriel Jose Garcia Marquez
Country: Columbia
Date of birth – date of death: March 6, 1928 – April 17, 2014
Era: 20th century, early 21st century
Genre: Fantasy Reality
Gabriel Garcia Marquez is the most excellent writer of South America, representing Magical Realism with his typical work One Hundred Years of Solitude. He won the Neustadt International Literary Prize in 1972 and the Nobel Prize in Literature in 1982.
29. O’Henry – The author of The Last Leaf
Real name: William Sydney Porter
Country: America
Date of birth – date of death: September 1, 1862 – June 5, 1910
Era: 19th century, early 20th century
Genre: Life, society, humanities, satire
O’Henry is an American writer known for his short stories. O’Henry’s short stories are often rustic, everyday life tells about ordinary people in society, but there are fascinating, tricky, sometimes wacky plots in which they are full of humanity or social satire. His most famous short story is The Last Leaf.
30. Jane Austen – The author of Pride and Prejudice
Real name: Jane Austen
Country: England
Year of birth-year of death: December 16, 1775 – July 18, 1817
Era: Late 18th century, early 19th century
Genre: Humanities, Love, Culture, Society
Jane Austen is Britain’s most respected female writer, with her classic work Pride and Prejudice. The character Elizabeth in Pride and Prejudice, with her demanding, witty, and sensitive personality, is considered the most charismatic character in English literature.