TOP 20 WORLDS MOST FAMOUS

WRITERS AND BOOKS

Greatest Authors
1. Margaret Atwood: Canadian novelist and poet Margaret Atwood is
not only a writer, she is also a teacher, inventory, literary critic, and
environmental activist. Atwood writes fiction that includes
historical, climate, dystopian, and speculative fiction. The themes
that are followed in her works are gender, identity, myth and
religion, power politics, climate change, and the power of
language. Books – The Handmaid’s Tale, Alias Grace, Cat’s Eye,
Surfacing, The Testaments, Oryx and Crake, and more.

2. Stan Lee: American comic book writer, publisher, editor, and

producer Stan Lee became popular through Timely Publications
which later became Marvel Comics. He co-created some famous
characters such as Spider-Man, X-Men, Thor, Hulk, Iron Man,
Wasp, Ant-Man, DoctorStrange, Black Widow, Black Panther,
Scarlet Witch, Fantastic Four, and Daredevil.

3. Stephen King: American horror, crime, supernatural, fantasy, and

science fiction writer Stephen King is known as the ‘King of
Horror’. King had used three pen names – Richard Bachman,
under which she has published seven novels, John Swithen, and
Beryl Evans. He has received several notable awards including
Bram Stoker Awards.Books – It, The Shining, Misery, The
Outsider, Revival, Bag of Bones, Pet Sematary, Carrie, andmore.
 4. J K Rowling: British writer and philanthropist Joanne Rowling is
popular by her pen name J K Rowling. Her genres of writing are
drama, fantasy, crime fiction, and young adult fiction. Since late
2019 Rowling has been criticized by feminists and the LGBT
community as transphobic.

5. Maya Angelou: Poet, author, and civil rights activist Maya Angelou
was a champion for black feminism and is best remembered for
her autobiography, I Know Why the Caged Bird Sing. The recipient
of the Presidential Medal of Freedom and over 50 honorary
degrees was also a child sex abuse survivor.

6. 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.

7. 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.
 8. Cervantes (Miguel de Cervantes Cortinas) (1547-1616)
The Spaniard, 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, both in its influence and in its qualities, by subsequent
novels. Moreover, it is a bible for postmodern writers in that it displays
every article of the features used by writers of postmodern fiction.

9. 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, he is now regarded as the pre-eminent poet of a type of poetry that
we refer to as the ‘Metaphysical Poets.’

10. 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. The British literary critic, Martin Seymour-Smith, named it as
one of the hundred most influential books ever written.
 11. Hans Christian Andersen (1806-1875)
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. One of his stories, The
Emperor’s New Clothes, is arguably the best short story ever written
because of the way he uses the form to sum up a great universal truth in
just a few words.

12. 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 civilisation.

13. 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.
 14. 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.

15. 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.

16. 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
 17. 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.

18. 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.

19. 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.
20. Gabriel Garcia Marquez (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.

Some famous books are:

1. In Search of Lost Time by Marcel Proust

2. Ulysses by James Joyce
3. Don Quixote by Miguel de Cervantes
4. One Hundred Years of Solitude by Gabriel Garcia Marquez
5. The Great Gatsby by F. Scott Fitzgerald
6. Moby Dick by Herman Melville
7. War and Peace by Leo Tolstoy
8. The Odyssey by Homer
9. Madame Bovary by Gustave Flaubert
10. The Divine Comedy by Dante Alighieri
11. Lolita by Vladimir Nabokov
12. The Brothers Karamazov by Fyodor Dostoyevsky
13. Crime and Punishment by Fyodor Dostoyevsky
14. Wuthering Heights by Emily Brontë
15. The Catcher in the Rye by J. D. Salinger
16. Pride and Prejudice by Jane Austen
17. The Adventures of Huckleberry Finn by Mark Twain
18. Anna Karenina by Leo Tolstoy
19. The Iliad by Homer
20. Heart of Darkness by Joseph Conrad