Literature

Literature, a body of written works. The name has traditionally been applied to those imaginative works of poetry and prose distinguished by the intentions of their authors and the perceived aesthetic excellence of their execution. Literature may be classified according to a variety of systems,...

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  Solomon Northup
  Solomon Northup, American farmer, labourer, and musician whose experience of being kidnapped and sold into slavery was the basis for his book Twelve Years a Slave: Narrative of Solomon Northup, a Citizen of New York, Kidnapped in Washington City in 1841, and Rescued in 1853, from a Cotton…
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  Charles Perrault
  Charles Perrault, French poet, prose writer, and storyteller, a leading member of the Académie Française, who played a prominent part in a literary controversy known as the quarrel of the Ancients and Moderns. He is best remembered for his collection of fairy stories for children, Contes de ma mère…
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  William Gibson
  William Gibson, American-Canadian writer of science fiction who was the leader of the genre’s cyberpunk movement. Gibson grew up in southwestern Virginia. After dropping out of high school in 1967, he traveled to Canada and eventually settled there, earning a B.A. (1977) from the University of…
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  Book of the Dead
  Book of the Dead, ancient Egyptian collection of mortuary texts made up of spells or magic formulas, placed in tombs and believed to protect and aid the deceased in the hereafter. Probably compiled and reedited during the 16th century bce, the collection included Coffin Texts dating from c. 2000…
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  Lady Mary Wortley Montagu
  Lady Mary Wortley Montagu, the most colourful Englishwoman of her time and a brilliant and versatile writer. Her literary genius, like her personality, had many facets. She is principally remembered as a prolific letter writer in almost every epistolary style; she was also a distinguished minor…
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  William Shakespeare
  William Shakespeare, English poet, dramatist, and actor, often called the English national poet and considered by many to be the greatest dramatist of all time. Shakespeare occupies a position unique in world literature. Other poets, such as Homer and Dante, and novelists, such as Leo Tolstoy and…
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  Bill Cosby
  Bill Cosby, American comedian, actor, and producer who played a major role in the development of a more-positive portrayal of blacks on television but whose sterling reputation was tarnished by dozens of accusations of sexual assault over the course of many decades. In 2018 he was found guilty of…
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  Alexander Hamilton
  Alexander Hamilton, New York delegate to the Constitutional Convention (1787), major author of the Federalist papers, and first secretary of the treasury of the United States (1789–95), who was the foremost champion of a strong central government for the new United States. He was killed in a duel…
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  Edgar Allan Poe
  Edgar Allan Poe, American short-story writer, poet, critic, and editor who is famous for his cultivation of mystery and the macabre. His tale “The Murders in the Rue Morgue” (1841) initiated the modern detective story, and the atmosphere in his tales of horror is unrivaled in American fiction. His…
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  Ernest Hemingway
  Ernest Hemingway, American novelist and short-story writer, awarded the Nobel Prize for Literature in 1954. He was noted both for the intense masculinity of his writing and for his adventurous and widely publicized life. His succinct and lucid prose style exerted a powerful influence on American…
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  Charles Dickens
  Charles Dickens, English novelist, generally considered the greatest of the Victorian era. His many volumes include such works as A Christmas Carol, David Copperfield, Bleak House, A Tale of Two Cities, Great Expectations, and Our Mutual Friend. Dickens enjoyed a wider popularity during his…
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  Bob Dylan
  Bob Dylan, American folksinger who moved from folk to rock music in the 1960s, infusing the lyrics of rock and roll, theretofore concerned mostly with boy-girl romantic innuendo, with the intellectualism of classic literature and poetry. Hailed as the Shakespeare of his generation, Dylan sold tens…
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  Winston Churchill
  Winston Churchill, British statesman, orator, and author who as prime minister (1940–45, 1951–55) rallied the British people during World War II and led his country from the brink of defeat to victory. After a sensational rise to prominence in national politics before World War I, Churchill…
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  J.K. Rowling
  J.K. Rowling, British author, creator of the popular and critically acclaimed Harry Potter series, about a young sorcerer in training. After graduating from the University of Exeter in 1986, Rowling began working for Amnesty International in London, where she started to write the Harry Potter…
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  Plato
  Plato, ancient Greek philosopher, student of Socrates (c. 470–399 bce), teacher of Aristotle (384–322 bce), and founder of the Academy, best known as the author of philosophical works of unparalleled influence. Building on the demonstration by Socrates that those regarded as experts in ethical…
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  Woody Allen
  Woody Allen, American motion-picture director, screenwriter, actor, comedian, playwright, and author, best known for his bittersweet comic films containing elements of parody, slapstick, and the absurd but who also made weighty dramas, often with dark themes and bleak landscapes reminiscent of the…
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  J.R.R. Tolkien
  J.R.R. Tolkien, English writer and scholar who achieved fame with his children’s book The Hobbit (1937) and his richly inventive epic fantasy The Lord of the Rings (1954–55). At age four Tolkien, with his mother and younger brother, settled near Birmingham, England, after his father, a bank…
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  Umberto Eco
  Umberto Eco, Italian literary critic, novelist, and semiotician (student of signs and symbols) best known for his novel Il nome della rosa (1980; The Name of the Rose). After receiving a Ph.D. from the University of Turin (1954), Eco worked as a cultural editor for Italian Radio-Television and…
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  Marco Polo
  Marco Polo, Venetian merchant and adventurer, who traveled from Europe to Asia in 1271–95, remaining in China for 17 of those years, and whose Il milione (“The Million”), known in English as the Travels of Marco Polo, is a classic of travel literature. Polo’s way was paved by the pioneering efforts…
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  Stephen King
  Stephen King, American novelist and short-story writer whose books were credited with reviving the genre of horror fiction in the late 20th century. King graduated from the University of Maine in 1970 with a bachelor’s degree in English. While writing short stories he supported himself by teaching…
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  Martin Luther
  Martin Luther, German theologian and religious reformer who was the catalyst of the 16th-century Protestant Reformation. Through his words and actions, Luther precipitated a movement that reformulated certain basic tenets of Christian belief and resulted in the division of Western Christendom…
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  Friedrich Nietzsche
  Friedrich Nietzsche, German classical scholar, philosopher, and critic of culture, who became one of the most influential of all modern thinkers. His attempts to unmask the motives that underlie traditional Western religion, morality, and philosophy deeply affected generations of theologians,…
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  Christopher Hitchens
  Christopher Hitchens, British American author, critic, and bon vivant whose trenchant polemics on politics and religion positioned him at the forefront of public intellectual life in the late 20th and early 21st century. Hitchens, the son of a commander in the Royal Navy, spent his early childhood…
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  Lord Byron
  Lord Byron, British Romantic poet and satirist whose poetry and personality captured the imagination of Europe. Renowned as the “gloomy egoist” of his autobiographical poem Childe Harold’s Pilgrimage (1812–18) in the 19th century, he is now more generally esteemed for the satiric realism of Don…
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  Olympe de Gouges
  Olympe de Gouges, French social reformer and writer who challenged conventional views on a number of matters, especially the role of women as citizens. Marie was born to Anne Olympe Mouisset Gouze, who was married to Pierre Gouze, a butcher; Marie’s biological father may have been Jean-Jacques…
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  Mark Twain
  Mark Twain, American humorist, journalist, lecturer, and novelist who acquired international fame for his travel narratives, especially The Innocents Abroad (1869), Roughing It (1872), and Life on the Mississippi (1883), and for his adventure stories of boyhood, especially The Adventures of Tom…
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  Roald Dahl
  Roald Dahl, British writer, a popular author of ingenious, irreverent children’s books. Following his graduation from Repton, a renowned British public school, in 1932, Dahl avoided a university education and joined an expedition to Newfoundland. He worked from 1937 to 1939 in Dar es Salaam,…
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  Oscar Wilde
  Oscar Wilde, Irish wit, poet, and dramatist whose reputation rests on his only novel, The Picture of Dorian Gray (1891), and on his comic masterpieces Lady Windermere’s Fan (1892) and The Importance of Being Earnest (1895). He was a spokesman for the late 19th-century Aesthetic movement in England,…
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  Michelangelo
  Michelangelo, Italian Renaissance sculptor, painter, architect, and poet who exerted an unparalleled influence on the development of Western art. Michelangelo was considered the greatest living artist in his lifetime, and ever since then he has been held to be one of the greatest artists of all…
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  David Foster Wallace
  David Foster Wallace, American novelist, short-story writer, and essayist whose dense works provide a dark, often satirical analysis of American culture. Wallace was the son of a philosophy professor and an English teacher. He received a B.A. from Amherst College in 1985. He was completing a…