Classics

Edna Ferber (15 August 1885 to 16 April 1968) was an American novelist, short story writer and playwright. Her novels include “So Big” (1924), which won the Pulitzer Prize, “Show Boat” (1926), the source of the 1927 Jerome Kern and Oscar Hammerstein musical, “Cimarron” (1930) and “Giant” (1952). Ferber was born in Kalamazoo, Michigan, to … Read more

Theodore Dreiser (1871 to 1945) was an American novelist and journalist of the naturalist school. He is best known for “Sister Carrie” (1900) and “An American Tragedy” (1925), and for the Trilogy of Desire, three novels about a Chicago streetcar tycoon. Dreiser was born in Terre Haute, Indiana, on 27 August 1871, the twelfth of … Read more

Stephen Crane (1871 to 1900) was an American novelist, short story writer and poet, best known for the Civil War novel “The Red Badge of Courage” (1895). He died of tuberculosis at the age of 28 after a short career that produced five novels, two volumes of poetry and several story collections. Crane was born … Read more

John Dos Passos (14 January 1896 to 28 September 1970) was an American novelist, best known for the “U.S.A.” trilogy: “The 42nd Parallel” (1930), “1919” (1932) and “The Big Money” (1936). Usually counted among the Lost Generation writers, he also wrote travel books, history, plays and poetry, and painted throughout his life. He was born … Read more

Robert W. Chambers (1865-1933) was an American artist and writer, best known for “The King in Yellow” (1895), a collection of short stories regarded as a classic of supernatural fiction. He went on to become one of the most commercially successful novelists of his day, writing historical fiction and society romances. Chambers was born in … Read more

William Saroyan (1908 to 1981) was an American novelist, playwright and short story writer of Armenian descent, much of whose work is set in his native Fresno, California. He is best known for the play “The Time of Your Life” (1939), the story collection “My Name Is Aram” (1940) and the novel “The Human Comedy” … Read more

Kate Chopin (1850 to 1904) was an American author of novels and short stories set largely in Louisiana. She is best known for her second novel, “The Awakening” (1899), and for stories such as “Désirée’s Baby” and “The Story of an Hour”, and is regarded by scholars as a forerunner of 20th-century American feminist writers. … Read more

Thornton Wilder (1897 to 1975) was an American novelist and playwright, and the only writer to win Pulitzer Prizes for both fiction and drama. He won for the novel “The Bridge of San Luis Rey” and for the plays “Our Town” and “The Skin of Our Teeth”, and later received a National Book Award for … Read more

Ralph Ellison (1913 to 1994) was an American novelist, essayist and critic, best known for “Invisible Man” (1952), which won the National Book Award for Fiction in 1953. It was the only novel he published in his lifetime; a second, “Juneteenth”, was assembled from his manuscripts and published in 1999. Ralph Waldo Ellison was born … Read more

Carson McCullers (1917 to 1967) was an American novelist, short story writer and playwright whose fiction is set mostly in the Deep South. She is best known for “The Heart Is a Lonely Hunter”, “The Member of the Wedding” and the novella “The Ballad of the Sad Café”, books about isolation and unreturned love among … Read more

Thomas Wolfe (1900 to 1938) was an American novelist from Asheville, North Carolina, best known for his autobiographical first novel, “Look Homeward, Angel” (1929). He wrote four long novels and many short stories before his death at 37, and two of those novels were published only after he died. Thomas Clayton Wolfe was born on … Read more

Henry Miller (born 1891, died 1980) was an American novelist and essayist whose semi-autobiographical books, among them “Tropic of Cancer”, “Tropic of Capricorn” and the trilogy “The Rosy Crucifixion”, were banned in the United States until 1961. Their eventual American publication led to obscenity trials that changed the law on what could be printed. Miller … Read more

Gertrude Stein (born 1874, died 1946) was an American novelist, poet, playwright and art collector who lived in Paris from 1903 and hosted a salon there for the leading figures of modernist art and writing. Her books include “Three Lives”, “Tender Buttons”, “The Making of Americans” and “The Autobiography of Alice B. Toklas”. Stein was … Read more

Frances Hodgson Burnett (1849 to 1924) was a British-American novelist and playwright, born in Manchester and settled for most of her life in the United States. She is best known for three children’s novels: “Little Lord Fauntleroy” (1886), “A Little Princess” (1905) and “The Secret Garden” (1911). She also wrote a long list of novels … Read more

James Fenimore Cooper (born 15 September 1789, died 14 September 1851) was an American novelist whose historical romances of the frontier and the sea made him one of the most popular American authors of the 19th century. He is best known for the five Leatherstocking Tales, which feature the frontier scout Natty Bumppo and include … Read more

Willa Cather (1873 to 1947) was an American novelist known for her fiction about settlers and immigrants on the Great Plains, including “O Pioneers!”, “The Song of the Lark” and “My Ántonia”. She won the Pulitzer Prize in 1923 for “One of Ours”, a novel set during the First World War. Cather was born near … Read more

Margaret Mitchell was an American novelist and journalist from Atlanta, Georgia, who published a single novel in her lifetime. That novel, “Gone with the Wind” (1936), won the Pulitzer Prize for Fiction in 1937 and has sold more than 30 million copies worldwide. She was born in Atlanta on 8 November 1900, the daughter of … Read more

Pearl S. Buck (1892 to 1973) was an American writer and humanitarian best known for “The Good Earth”, the best-selling novel in the United States in 1931 and 1932 and winner of the Pulitzer Prize in 1932. In 1938 she became the first American woman to win the Nobel Prize in Literature. She was born … Read more

Sinclair Lewis (1885 to 1951) was an American novelist who in 1930 became the first writer from the United States to receive the Nobel Prize in Literature. He is best known for the satirical novels “Main Street” (1920), “Babbitt” (1922), “Arrowsmith” (1925), “Elmer Gantry” (1927) and “Dodsworth” (1929), and for “It Can’t Happen Here” (1935). … Read more

Harriet Beecher Stowe (1811 to 1896) was an American author and abolitionist, best known for the anti-slavery novel “Uncle Tom’s Cabin” (1852). She wrote more than 30 books, including novels, travel memoirs and collections of articles and letters. She was born Harriet Elisabeth Beecher in Litchfield, Connecticut, the sixth of eleven children of the Calvinist … Read more

Zora Neale Hurston (1891 to 1960) was an American novelist, anthropologist and folklorist, and a central figure of the Harlem Renaissance. She published four novels in her lifetime, the best known of which is “Their Eyes Were Watching God” (1937), along with books of folklore and anthropology, an autobiography and more than 50 short stories, … Read more

Edith Wharton (born 1862, died 1937) was an American novelist and short story writer who drew on her insider’s knowledge of upper-class New York society to portray the lives and morals of the Gilded Age. In 1921 she became the first woman to win the Pulitzer Prize for Fiction, for “The Age of Innocence”. Her … Read more

Upton Sinclair (1878 to 1968) was an American novelist, muckraking journalist and socialist campaigner who wrote nearly 100 books. He is best known for “The Jungle” (1906), his novel about Chicago’s meatpacking plants, for “Oil!” (1927), and for the eleven Lanny Budd novels, the third of which, “Dragon’s Teeth”, won the Pulitzer Prize in 1943. … Read more

Ken Kesey (1935 to 2001) was an American novelist and a central figure of the 1960s counterculture, best known for “One Flew Over the Cuckoo’s Nest” (1962) and “Sometimes a Great Notion” (1964). He saw himself as a link between the Beat Generation of the 1950s and the hippies of the 1960s, and led the … Read more

Nathaniel Hawthorne (1804 to 1864) was an American novelist and short story writer, the author of “The Scarlet Letter” (1850) and “The House of the Seven Gables” (1851). Much of his writing centres on New England and its Puritan past, and his fiction is considered part of the Romantic movement and, more specifically, dark romanticism. … Read more

Henry James (1843 to 1916) was an American-born novelist who spent most of his working life in England and became a British citizen in 1915. His books include “The Portrait of a Lady”, “The Wings of the Dove”, “The Ambassadors” and the ghost story “The Turn of the Screw”. James was born in New York … Read more

J. D. Salinger (1919 to 2010) was an American writer best known for his 1951 novel “The Catcher in the Rye”. He published one novel and three further books of short fiction, among them “Nine Stories” and “Franny and Zooey”, before withdrawing from public life. His last published work appeared in 1965. Jerome David Salinger … Read more

Harper Lee (1926 to 2016) was an American novelist whose 1960 novel “To Kill a Mockingbird” won the Pulitzer Prize for Fiction in 1961 and has more than 40 million copies in print. She published only one other novel, “Go Set a Watchman” (2015), and a posthumous collection of stories and essays, "The Land of … Read more

Vladimir Nabokov (1899 to 1977) was a Russian and American novelist, poet, translator and entomologist, best known for the novels “Lolita” and “Pale Fire” and the memoir “Speak, Memory”. He wrote his first nine novels in Russian under the pen name Vladimir Sirin before switching to English after moving to the United States in 1940. … Read more

Jack Kerouac (born 12 March 1922 in Lowell, Massachusetts; died 21 October 1969 in St. Petersburg, Florida) was an American novelist and poet and, with William S. Burroughs and Allen Ginsberg, a pioneer of the Beat Generation. He is best known for “On the Road” (1957) and for the stream-of-consciousness method he called spontaneous prose. … Read more

Ayn Rand (1905 to 1982) was a Russian-born American novelist and philosopher, known for the novels “The Fountainhead” and “Atlas Shrugged” and for the philosophical system she named Objectivism. Her books have sold over 37 million copies. She was born Alisa Zinovyevna Rosenbaum in Saint Petersburg on 2 February 1905, the eldest of three daughters … Read more

Sylvia Plath (1932 to 1963) was an American poet and novelist who is credited with advancing the genre of confessional poetry. She is best known for the collections “The Colossus and Other Poems” and “Ariel”, and for her only novel, “The Bell Jar”. Plath was born on 27 October 1932 in Jamaica Plain, Boston. Her … Read more

Edgar Allan Poe (1809 to 1849) was an American writer, poet, editor and literary critic, best known for his poetry and for short stories of mystery and the macabre. He is generally considered a pioneer of detective fiction and an early contributor to science fiction, and he was one of the first American writers to … Read more

Robert Louis Stevenson (13 November 1850 to 3 December 1894) was a Scottish novelist, essayist, poet and travel writer. He is best known for the novels “Treasure Island” (1883), “Strange Case of Dr Jekyll and Mr Hyde” (1886) and “Kidnapped” (1886), and for the poetry collection “A Child’s Garden of Verses” (1885). Born and educated … Read more

Charlotte Brontë (1816 to 1855) was an English novelist and poet, and the elder sister of Emily, Anne and Branwell Brontë. She is best known for “Jane Eyre”, first published in 1847 under the pseudonym Currer Bell, which was a great success on publication and is now regarded as a classic of English literature. She … Read more

Thomas Hardy (2 June 1840 to 11 January 1928) was an English novelist and poet whose fiction is set in Wessex, a semi-fictional version of south-west England. He is the author of fourteen published novels, among them “Far from the Madding Crowd”, “The Mayor of Casterbridge”, “Tess of the d’Urbervilles” and “Jude the Obscure”, and … Read more

Lewis Carroll was the pen name of Charles Lutwidge Dodgson (1832 to 1898), an English author, poet, mathematician, photographer and Anglican deacon. He is best known for “Alice’s Adventures in Wonderland” (1865) and its sequel “Through the Looking-Glass” (1871), and for the nonsense poems “Jabberwocky” and “The Hunting of the Snark”. Dodgson was born on … Read more

F. Scott Fitzgerald (24 September 1896 to 21 December 1940) was an American novelist and short story writer best known for “The Great Gatsby” and for his portrayal of the Jazz Age, a term he popularised with the collection “Tales of the Jazz Age”. He published four novels and four story collections in his lifetime, … Read more

Jules Verne (1828 to 1905) was a French novelist whose “Voyages extraordinaires”, a sequence of more than fifty adventure novels, includes “Journey to the Centre of the Earth”, “Twenty Thousand Leagues Under the Seas” and “Around the World in Eighty Days”. He has been the second most translated author in the world since 1979, behind … Read more

Jane Austen (born 16 December 1775, died 18 July 1817) was an English novelist known mainly for six novels about the landed gentry of late eighteenth-century England, among them “Pride and Prejudice” and “Emma”. Her plots often turn on the dependence of women on marriage for social standing and economic security. Austen was born in … Read more