A wide variety of authors have tried their luck in the literary world, but there is no doubt that some have left a remarkable and unreplaceable mark on today’s books. Many of these literary giants and their contributions to large masses of poetry and works of literature have been transcribed as follows.
1. Fyodor Dostoevsky
Born in Russia, Moscow, Fyodor Dostoevsky is a widely celebrated and esteemed author. He is quite famous for his works and is honored for his literature detailing his journey through moral dilemmas, psychological complexities, and the human mind.
Fyodor Dostoevsky is extremely good in his genre and has written many famous books. His works include Crime and Punishment, The Idiot, The Brothers Karamazov, White Nights, and Notes from the Underground. All of them have one thing in common: excellent and thought-provoking writing, along with themes of redemption, faith, loyalty, and the human mind.
2. Edgar Allan Poe
Edgar Allan Poe, an iconic American author and poet, is celebrated as a master of macabre and the pioneer of modern mystery and detective fiction. Born in Boston in 1809, Poe’s works often delve into themes of death, madness, and the darker sides of human nature.
Among his most famous works are The Raven, The Tell-Tale Heart, The Fall of the House of Usher, and The Cask of Amontillado. Poe’s innovative approach to gothic literature and his creation of the first fictional detective, C. Auguste Dupin, in The Murders in the Rue Morgue, cemented his influence in shaping both horror and detective genres. Despite a turbulent life marked by financial difficulties and personal loss, Poe’s legacy endures as one of the most imaginative and haunting voices in literary history.
3. Dazai Osamu
Osamu Dazai is one of Japan’s most famous authors. He is known for a melancholic, introspective style, a focus on existential themes with an undercurrent of despair, and an almost obsessive awareness of the fragility of life.
Osamu Dazai was born in 1909 in Kanagi, Japan, where a tumultuous, personally traumatic life filled with interest came to bear on much of his literary output. His most famous works include No Longer Human and The Setting Sun, which are both considered literary masterpieces, and a legacy that includes parallels to his tragic downfall with identity crisis post-war Japan. Readers revere Osamu Dazai’s writing style as semi-autobiographical with every word dripping with emotional valence that speaks to human vulnerability, which allows his work to transcend generations.
4. F. Scott Fitzergerald
F. Scott Fitzgerald was born in 1896 in Minnesota. He was a leading voice of the 1920s and the Jazz Age. Fitzgerald’s most well-known novel is The Great Gatsby—a reflection of the American Dream and opulence of the Roaring Twenties. Fitzgerald’s other novels exploring similar themes include This Side of Paradise and Tender Is the Night.
Fitzgerald’s stylistic approach contains embellished, lyrical prose echoing the ambition and love of many of his plots with an eventual theme of disappointment and disillusionment. Fitzgerald had a complicated life despite his success with personal and financial gain; thus, the majority of his works are semi-autobiographical with Fitzgerald exploring what was learned from a successful yet tumultuous life in retrospect.
5. Chūya Nakahara
Chūya Nakahara (1907—1937) Yamaguchi, Japan. Poet of an emotional style, Nakahara wrote much of his life, publishing many collections. He was a modernist. Important pieces are Nakaba no Wakare no Uta (Yogenshū).
He avoided traditional poetic form and created the illusion of free verse with traditional feelings. He died young, at thirty, which shows in many of his more morose pieces. He is an essential poet in Japan’s literary history for those who seek the joys and tragedies of poetry.
6. Agatha Christie
Agatha Christie, “Queen of Crime,” is one of the most published/bestselling authors of all time. Born in 1890, she hails from Torquay, England. Christie is known for her mysteries—many turned into bestsellers—with plots that feature some of literature’s most famous detectives like Hercule Poirot and Miss Marple.
Two of her most notable works include Murder on the Orient Express and And Then There Were None. She is the author of the most books sold of all time; 2 billion books. Her connection to the history of crime writing is consistent and ongoing as she was a transformative author in the establishment of the mystery genre, let alone her writings compounded by literary suspense.
7. Nathaniel Hawthorn
Nathaniel Hawthorne is one of the leading American writers who compiled a sense of morality and sin with the nature of human existence. Born in Salem, Massachusetts, in 1804 (some say 1803), Hawthorne’s most renowned works include The Scarlet Letter (1850) and The House of the Seven Gables, along with several short stories such as Young Goodman Brown.
His style involves detailed historical and psychological symbolism. He was intrigued by America’s Puritanical past and how such ideas of conformity and differentiation would plague people generations later. His readers appreciate his writing for moral intensity, awareness of humankind, and the more sinister realities at play.
8. Homer
Homer, famous for writing the Iliad and the Odyssey is an ancient Greek poet, believed to be from the 8th or 7th centuries B.C.E.–known during much antiquity, and his works laid the foundation for much of subsequent literary history. What does this work speak to about the culture from which it came? The Iliad is a study in Greek glory. Everything from a heroic society to a discussion of war, planned endeavors abroad, and achievements in foreign lands.
He focuses on the Trojan War in The Iliad and the subsequent return home of Odysseus in The Odyssey, fighting godly temptations and end of war struggles (in Ithaca) with equally powerful warring gods with curiosities along the way. How does this work relate to others of similar theme? He relies on a clear poetic structure–metaphor, simile and more–with extensive use of imagery and metaphorical approaches to desire, struggle and weaknesses.
9. Franz Kafka
Franz Kafka (1883-1924, Prague) is one of the giants of twentieth-century literature. Famous for surreal, nightmarish concepts and concerns with alienation, possibilities for escape, the oppressive bureaucracy, bureaucratic overlords, and the foibles of modern life, Kafka is known for such works as The Metamorphosis, The Trial, and The Castle.
His imprint on the world involves a type of literary storytelling that renders seemingly impossible situations so full of existential dread and psychologically introspective daydreams that the reader sees no way out. Thus, “Kafkaesque” means being so overwhelmingly complicated and oppressive that one’s fate is sealed and there’s no escape. A tragic figure, published infrequently during his lifetime, his posthumous publications resonate through the twentieth century to solidify Kafka as the emperor of modernist literature.
10. George Orwell
George Orwell, 1903-1950, was a British novelist and political journalist, best known for social criticism through themes of political futility and propaganda. Orwell penned several novels, including 1984 and Animal Farm. He seeks to explore the futility of social constructs in a totalitarian society and ensure that proper thought is the only way through which society can be moral.
Furthermore, Orwell’s prose is straightforward yet tinged with humor. He thus seeks to get to the bottom of truth, often revealing in his essays, such as “Politics and the English Language,” that the society in which he lives is riddled with various ills, which he seeks to explain through the written word. He is arguably one of the greatest thinkers of the twentieth century.
11. Leo Tolstoy
Leo Tolstoy was a Russian novelist and philosopher, most known for the novels War and Peace and Anna Karenina. He was born in Yasnaya Polyana, Russia, where he would die, and wrote many short stories and novels reflective of social constructs, morality, and good vs. evil.
He was one of the first realist authors; 19th-century Russia is a detailed setting many of his works share with great character development. As an activist, he advocated for nonviolent resistance, Christian anarchism, and pacifism. Gandhi and Martin Luther King, Jr., were inspired by him. His philosophical thoughts were anti-institutional; he believed in the spirit of morality, not the letter of the law. He is remembered as a great social thinker with a focus on love and faith.
12. William Shakespeare
William Shakespeare was born in 1564 and died in 1616. He was born in England in Stratford-upon-Avon. He’s the most famous playwright and author of all time in the history of the English language. He penned almost 40 works from tragedies including Hamlet, Macbeth, and King Lear to his comedies and histories like A Midsummer Night’s Dream and Julius Caesar to romances such as Romeo and Juliet and Othello as well as 154 sonnets.
Regardless of which works are enjoyed, it’s clear he has a command of the language from the perspective of one with a quill in hand, plus a keen sense of characterization and plot construction. He shifted the paradigm of literary history. He is one of the most cited and performed playwrights and sonneteers globally, bringing meaningful appreciation to many elements of life. He is the quintessential example of everything to appreciate about art and the best in humanity.
13. Nikolai Gogol
Nikolai Gogol, Ukrainian-born Russian novelist, one of the founders of modern Russian literature was known for writing absurd tales that call into question societal failings. Many of his works focused on bureaucracy, featured corruption and police presence, with an overarching theme of authority and an anti-authoritarian attitude. Some of his most renowned works include The Overcoat, Dead Souls, and the comedic The Government Inspector.
He influenced subsequent generations of writers from Dostoevsky to Kafka, focusing on the absurd with comical elements and psychological meaning. Gogol was born in Poltava Governorate, Russian Empire, but established a stable life in Russia with a St. Petersburg persona, although many of his early stories were written based on later inspired tales from his youthful years, centering around his middle-class heritage in Ukraine. The ambiguity of his style and the grotesque elements have solidified him in the canon.
14. Vladimir Nabokov
Vladimir Nabokov was a Russian-American novelist and lepidopterist. A literary critic, Nabokov was known for ornate prose and wordplay. Born into a cataloged family in St. Petersburg, Russia, Nabokov fled to America after the Bolshevik Revolution. Nabokov’s books were published with much acclaim in Russian and English, suggesting a mastery of both languages at high levels.
Nabokov is best known for Lolita, a highly controversial novel based on an unreliable narrator and the ethics of obsession, as well as other works like Pale Fire, a poem/narrative, and Speak, Memory, a memoir of historical remembrances with poetic devices. His second love was butterflies. He integrated his love for lepidopterology into his literary life. Known for an intricate style and meaning from multilayered narratives, Nabokov remains one of literature’s greatest masters and visionaries.
15. Albert Camus
Albert Camus was a significant philosopher whose writings flourished in post-World War II Europe under a French-Algerian nom de plume. A novelist, philosopher, and journalist, his use of absurdism is most relevant to our study; however, many assert that his philosophy aligns more with existentialism as Camus was a contemporary and very close personal friend of Jean-Paul Sartre.
The most important published works of Camus are The Stranger, The Plague, and The Myth of Sisyphus. Camus was a humanist politically left-of-center who opposed totalitarianism and supported human rights issues, personal responsibilities, and social ethical responsibilities. Camus won the Nobel Prize in Literature in 1957.
16. H.P. Lovecraft
H.P. Lovecraft is an American author of weird horror. He is also associated with the cosmic horror sub-genre. Lovecraft was born and raised in Providence, meaning his existence and literary relevance were largely in the New England area. Central themes relate to the chaotic nature of the universe and how small life on Earth is (as humanity basically is).
He frequently regarded the universe of the Cthulhu Mythos, which boasts an extensive array of fan fiction and collaborative works spawned by the extremely ancient deities he created (and others). Lovecraft is inspired by ancient history and ancient texts. Lovecraft’s renowned works include The Call of Cthulhu, At the Mountains of Madness, The Shadow over Innsmouth, etc. He wasn’t a mainstream success during his life, but his whimsical intentions and originality granted him post-mortem success to be one of the more well-known weird fiction authors today.
17. Izumi Kyōka
Izumi Kyōka was a novelist and playwright with a penchant for gothic romanticism and an appreciation for the Japanese aesthetic. Born in Kanazawa, Kyōka had a folkloric style relative to connection beyond the daily realm but with daily emotional understandings.
The Holy Man of Mount Kōya and The Surgery Room contain elements of love and spirit and body/spirit and mind and spirit and mind and distinctions of eras from the past to the often transient present. They are also reminiscent of the reverent imagery through poetic linguistic fashion made for his writing via kabuki and a strong association to classical Japanese style. Kyōka is a revered author of the Japanese literary canon.
18. Sophocles
Sophocles Greek dramatist. One of the most famous tragedians of the classical world. Credited with 120 plays, though only seven exist in full today, two are Oedipus Rex and Antigone, and the third is Electra.
His major themes center around an exploration of fate, human tragedy, and morality; oftentimes, Sophocles abounds in attempts to create a balance between God’s power and human efforts. He is known to use a third actor and levels of characterization within the advancement of Greek drama; therefore, such tragedies are incredibly nuanced in emotional resonance and characterization.
19. Dr. Seuss
“Dr. Seuss” Theodor Seuss Geisel was an author, illustrator, and political cartoonist. American. The good doctor is best known for his children’s books, fantasy, and rhyme. His most famous titles are The Cat in the Hat, Green Eggs and Ham, and Horton Hears a Who! Dr. Seuss’s legacy consists of his literary works with moral messages and the creativity, determination, and compassion of the man. He impacted not only print literature but also film and television, and a good portion of America pieced together his titles and championed his efforts for social change.
20. Murakami
Murakami is a contemporary author of note from Japan, and he was born in 1949. His most popular novels include Norwegian Wood, Kafka on the Shore, 1Q84, and The Wind-Up Bird Chronicle. He tends to write surreal stories that come from the power of imagination and an undercurrent of existentialism.
He is a contemporary Japanese author, yet his books contain overtly Western cultural references and a penchant for jazz that allow for a magical realism feel and dreamlike reading experience. There are many ideas, plots, and themes in his various works that cohere to make sense, nonsensical on the surface but almost absurdly speaking going much deeper to explore psyche and our absurd existence.
