World's Greatest Classics in One Volume

Hermann Karl Hesse -pseudonym: Emil Sinclair- ( 2. Juli 1877 in Calw; † 9. August 1962 in Montagnola, Schweiz), war ein deutsch-schweizerischer Schriftsteller, Dichter und Maler. Bekanntheit erlangte er mit Prosawerken wie Siddhartha, Demian, Der Steppenwolf sowie auch Narziß und Goldmund und mit seinen Gedichten (z. B. Stufen).* 1946 wurde ihm der Nobelpreis für Literatur und 1954 der Orden Pour le Mérite für Wissenschaften und Künste verliehen. ---------- Hermann Karl Hesse (2...

Marcel Proust — in full Valentin Louis Georges Eugène Marcel Proust — was a French novelist, literary critic and essayist, born on 10 July 1871 in Auteuil, on the western edge of Paris. He suffered from asthma from childhood. As a young man he moved in fashionable Parisian society and published criticism, short pieces and French translations of John Ruskin (La Bible d'Amiens and Sésame et les lys); from around 1897 his declining health drew him steadily out of social life, and he spent his final...

Лев Николаевич Толстой (9 сентября 1828 – 20 ноября 1910) – русский писатель. Он считается одним из величайших и самых влиятельных авторов всех времён. Среди наиболее известных произведений Толстого – романы «Война и мир» (1869) и «Анна Каренина» (1878), которые часто называют вершинами реалистической прозы и двумя величайшими книгами всех времён. ---------- Lev Nikolayevich Tolstoy (Russian: Лев Николаевич Толстой, 9 September 1828 – 20 November 1910), usually referred to in English a...

German philosopher

Dante was an Italian poet of the Middle Ages. The name Dante is, according to the words of Jacopo Alighieri, a hypocorism for Durante. In contemporary documents it is followed by the patronymic Alagherii or de Alagheriis; it was Boccaccio who popularized the form Alighieri. ([Source][1].) [1]:http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Dante_Alighieri Painter of this picture of Dante is Sandro Botticelli, See the new edition of the comedy published by Ateliê Editorial of São Paulo, Brazil, trabslation in...

Henrik Ibsen was a major 19th-century Norwegian playwright, theatre director, and poet. He is often referred to as "the god father" of modern drama and is one of the founders of Modernism in the theatre.[1] His plays were considered scandalous to many of his era, when Victorian values of family life and propriety largely held sway in Europe. Ibsen's work examined the realities that lay behind many facades, possessing a revelatory nature that was disquieting to many contemporaries. It utilized a...

Fyodor Mikhailovich Dostoevsky (1821–1881) was a Russian novelist, short-story writer, essayist and philosopher, widely regarded as one of the greatest novelists in Russian and world literature. Born in Moscow, his life was transformed by four years of imprisonment and exile in Siberia after his involvement with the Petrashevsky Circle, an experience that shaped the psychological depth of his later fiction. His major novels — including Crime and Punishment (1866), The Idiot (1869), Demons...

A Chinese thinker and social philosopher.

An English novelist of the 19th century. He was famous for his satirical works, particularly Vanity Fair, a panoramic portrait of English society.

Percy Bysshe Shelley was one of the major English Romantic poets and is critically regarded among the finest lyric poets in the English language. He is most famous for such classic anthology verse works as Ozymandias, Ode to the West Wind, To a Skylark, and The Masque of Anarchy, which are among the most popular and critically acclaimed poems in the English language. His major works, however, are long visionary poems which included Prometheus Unbound, Alastor, Adonaïs, The Revolt of Islam, and t...

Mary Wollstonecraft Shelley was a British novelist, short story writer, dramatist, essayist, biographer, and travel writer, best known for her Gothic novel Frankenstein: or, The Modern Prometheus (1818). She also edited and promoted the works of her husband, the Romantic poet and philosopher Percy Bysshe Shelley. Her father was the political philosopher William Godwin, and her mother was the philosopher and feminist Mary Wollstonecraft. ([Source][1].) [1]: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Mary_...

John Keats was the latest born of the great Romantic poets. Along with Byron and Shelley, he was one of the key figures in the second generation of the movement, despite publishing his work over only a four year period. During his short life, his work was not well received by critics, but his posthumous influence on poets such as Alfred Tennyson and Wilfred Owen was significant. The poetry of Keats was characterised by sensual imagery, most notably in the series of odes which remain among the mo...

Charlotte Brontë (21 April 1816 – 31 March 1855) was an English novelist and poet, the eldest of the three Brontë sisters who survived to adulthood. Born in Thornton, Yorkshire, and raised in Haworth, where her father was the parish curate, she published under the pseudonym Currer Bell. Her best-known novel, Jane Eyre (1847), was an immediate success; she followed it with Shirley (1849) and Villette (1853). The Professor, her first written novel, appeared posthumously in 1857. Her sisters Emily...

Emily Jane Brontë (1818-1848) was an English novelist and poet, best known for her only novel, Wuthering Heights (1847), a classic of English literature. The second-eldest of the three surviving Brontë sisters, between Charlotte and Anne, she grew up in the parsonage at Haworth, Yorkshire. She published under the pen name Ellis Bell, first in the 1846 poetry collection shared with her sisters and then with Wuthering Heights. She died of tuberculosis at thirty.

George Eliot, was an English novelist and one of the leading writers of the Victorian era. She is the author of seven novels, including The Mill on the Floss (1860), Silas Marner (1861), Middlemarch (1871–72), and Daniel Deronda (1876), most of them set in provincial England and well known for their realism and psychological insight. ([Source][1].) [1]: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/George_Eliot

Charles Dickens, was the most popular English novelist of the Victorian era, and one of the most popular of all time. He created some of literature's most iconic characters, with the theme of social reform running throughout his work. The continuing popularity of his novels and short stories is such that they have never gone out of print. ([Source][1].) [1]:http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Charles_Dickens

Thomas Hardy, OM was an English novelist and poet of the naturalist movement, although in several poems he displays elements of the previous romantic and enlightenment periods of literature, such as his fascination with the supernatural. While he regarded himself primarily as a poet who composed novels mainly for financial gain, during his lifetime he was much better known for his novels, such as Tess of the d'Urbervilles and Far from the Madding Crowd, which earned him a reputation as a grea...

Born in Australia, she married a German aristocrat and her earliest works are set in Germany. Her first marriage made her Countess von Arnim-Schlagenthin and her second Elizabeth Russell, Countess Russell. After her first husband's death, she had a three-year affair with the writer H. G. Wells, then later married Frank Russell, elder brother of the Nobel prize-winner and philosopher Bertrand Russell. She was a cousin of the New Zealand-born writer Katherine Mansfield. Though known in early life...

William Shakespeare (baptised 26 April 1564 – died 23 April 1616) was an English playwright, poet and actor, widely regarded as the greatest writer in the English language and the world's pre-eminent dramatist. He is often called England's national poet and "the Bard of Avon." His surviving works comprise 38–39 plays (depending on classification), 154 sonnets, and several other poems, and have been translated into every major living language and performed more often than those of any other playw...

Jane Austen (1775–1817) was an English novelist whose six major novels examine the social and economic realities facing women in the landed gentry of Georgian England. Born at Steventon in Hampshire, she published anonymously: Sense and Sensibility (1811) appeared "By a Lady", and Pride and Prejudice (1813), Mansfield Park (1814) and Emma (1815) followed without her name on them. She died at Winchester in 1817, aged 41; Northanger Abbey and Persuasion were issued together later that...

D.H. Lawrence was an English author, poet, playwright, essayist and literary critic. His collected works represent an extended reflection upon the dehumanising effects of modernity and industrialisation. In them, Lawrence confronts issues relating to emotional health and vitality, spontaneity, human sexuality and instinct. ([Source][1].) [1]:http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/D._H._Lawrence

Ann Radcliffe (born Ann Ward, 9 July 1764 – 7 February 1823) was an English author and pioneer of Gothic fiction. Her technique of explaining apparently supernatural elements in her novels has been credited with gaining Gothic fiction respectability in the 1790s. Radcliffe was the most popular writer of her day and almost universally admired; contemporary critics called her the mighty enchantress and the Shakespeare of romance-writers, and her popularity continued through the 19th century. Inter...

Abraham "Bram" Stoker (1847-1912) was an Irish novelist, theatre manager and barrister, born in Clontarf, Dublin. After graduating from Trinity College Dublin he worked in the Irish civil service and wrote drama criticism, then moved to London in 1878 to become business manager of Henry Irving's Lyceum Theatre, a post he held for 27 years. He wrote a run of horror and adventure novels, including The Jewel of Seven Stars and The Lair of the White Worm, but is remembered for Dracula (1897), the ep...

Sir Arthur Ignatius Conan Doyle KStJ, DL (22 May 1859 – 7 July 1930) was a Scottish writer and physician, most noted for creating the fictional detective Sherlock Holmes and writing stories about him which are generally considered milestones in the field of crime fiction. He is also known for writing the fictional adventures of a second character he invented, Professor Challenger, and for popularising the mystery of the Mary Celeste. He was a prolific writer whose other works include fantasy an...

Joseph Conrad was a Polish-born British novelist, who became a British subject in 1886. He is regarded as one of the greatest novelists in English though he did not speak the language fluently until he was in his twenties (and then always with a marked Polish accent). He wrote stories and novels, predominantly with a nautical or seaboard setting, that depict trials of the human spirit by the demands of duty and honor. ([Source][1].) [1]:https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Joseph_Conrad

An Irish writer, poet, and prominent aesthete. Oscar Fingal O'Flahertie Wills Wilde was an Irish playwright, poet, and author of numerous short stories, and one novel. Known for his biting wit, and a plentitude of aphorisms, he became one of the most successful playwrights of the late Victorian era in London, and one of the greatest celebrities of his day. Several of his plays continue to be widely performed, especially The Importance of Being Earnest. As the result of a widely covered ser...

Lewis Carroll was the pen name of Charles Lutwidge Dodgson (1832-1898), an English writer, poet, mathematician, logician and photographer, born at Daresbury, Cheshire. He lectured in mathematics at Christ Church, Oxford, and wrote Alice's Adventures in Wonderland (1865) and its sequel Through the Looking-Glass (1871), along with the nonsense poems Jabberwocky and The Hunting of the Snark. Under his own name he published work on mathematics and logic and devised word puzzles such as Doublets.

Frances Hodgson Burnett was best known as an English playwright and author. Frances Eliza Hodgson was born on November 24, 1849, at Cheetham Hill, Manchester, England, to Eliza Boond and Edwin Hodgson. She was the middle child of five, with two older brothers and two younger sisters. Frances grew up in a comfortable home. Mr. Hodgson sold brass goods to upper class households, and the family had a maid, a nurse-maid, and a horse and carriage. However, in the early 1850's when Frances was onl...

Clive Staples Lewis was an Irish-born British novelist, academic, medievalist, literary critic, essayist, lay theologian and Christian apologist.

Herbert George Wells was an English author, best known for his work in the science fiction genre. He was also a prolific writer in many genres, including contemporary novels, history, politics and social commentary.

William Wilkie Collins (8 January 1824 – 23 September 1889) was an English novelist, playwright and short story writer best known for The Woman in White (1859) and The Moonstone (1868). The last has been called the first modern English detective novel. Born to the family of a painter, William Collins, in London, he grew up in Italy and France, learning French and Italian. He began work as a clerk for a tea merchant. After his first novel, Antonina, appeared in 1850, he met Charles Dickens, w...

Gilbert Keith Chesterton was an English writer, lay theologian, poet, philosopher, dramatist, journalist, orator, literary and art critic, biographer, and Christian apologist.

Edward Morgan Forster OM, CH, was an English novelist, short story writer, essayist and librettist. He is known best for his ironic and well-plotted novels examining class difference and hypocrisy and also the attitudes towards gender and homosexuality in early 20th-century British society. Forster's humanistic impulse toward understanding and sympathy may be aptly summed up in the epigraph to his 1910 novel Howards End: "Only connect".

Thomas Stearns Eliot was an American poet, playwright, and literary critic, arguably the most important English-language poet of the 20th century.[3] His first notable publication, The Love Song of J. Alfred Prufrock, begun in February 1910 and published in Chicago in June 1915, is regarded as a masterpiece of the modernist movement.[4] It was followed by some of the best-known poems in the English language, including Gerontion (1920), The Waste Land (1922), The Hollow Men (1925), Ash Wednesday...

James Augustine Aloysius Joyce was an Irish novelist and poet. He contributed to the modernist avant-garde and is regarded as one of the most influential and important authors of the 20th century. Joyce is best known for Ulysses (1922), a landmark work in which the episodes of Homer's Odyssey are paralleled in an array of contrasting literary styles, perhaps most prominent among these the stream of consciousness technique he utilised. Other well-known works are the short-story collection Dubl...

An Irish playwright.

Irish poet, dramatist, and one of the foremost figures of 20th century literature. In 1923, he was awarded the Nobel Prize in Literature for what the Nobel Committee described as "inspired poetry, which in a highly artistic form gives expression to the spirit of a whole nation."

Sir Walter Scott, 1st Baronet, was a prolific Scottish historical novelist and poet, popular throughout Europe during his time. Scott has been said to be particularly associated with Toryism, though several passages in Tales of a Grandfather display a liberal, progressive and Unionist outlook on Scotland's history. Scott was the first English-language author to have a truly international career in his lifetime, with many contemporary readers in Europe, Australia, and North America. His novels...

Robert Louis Stevenson (born Robert Lewis Balfour Stevenson; 13 November 1850 – 3 December 1894) was a Scottish novelist, essayist, poet and travel writer. He is best known for works such as Treasure Island, Strange Case of Dr Jekyll and Mr Hyde, Kidnapped and A Child's Garden of Verses.

Kenneth Grahame is the author of the beloved children's classic, The Wind in the Willows. This charming story, filled with animal friends and gentle adventures, has delighted readers for generations.

George MacDonald was a Scottish author best known for his fantasy novels like Lilith. He wrote in the 19th century, creating imaginative stories that often explored spiritual themes.

Sir ; British writer, journalist, lyricist, playwright, rector (*9 May 1860 - †19 June 1937)

Mark Twain, born Samuel Langhorne Clemens, was a prolific American author and humorist. Twain is best known for his novels Adventures of Huckleberry Finn (1884), which has been called "the Great American Novel", and The Adventures of Tom Sawyer (1876). He is extensively quoted. Twain was a friend to presidents, artists, industrialists, and European royalty. ([Source][1].) [1]:http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Mark_Twain

John Griffith London (born John Griffith Chaney; January 12, 1876 – November 22, 1916) was an American novelist, journalist, and social activist. A pioneer in the world of commercial magazine fiction, he was one of the first writers to become a worldwide celebrity and earn a large fortune from writing. He was also an innovator in the genre that would later become known as science fiction. His most famous works include The Call of the Wild and White Fang, both set in the Klondike Gold Rush...

Herman Melville was an American novelist, short story writer, essayist and poet who is often classified as part of dark romanticism. He is best known for his novel Moby Dick and novella Billy Budd, the latter of which was published posthumously. ([Source][1].) [1]:http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Herman_Melville

Nathaniel Hawthorne was an American novelist and short story writer. Nathaniel Hawthorne was a 19th century American novelist and short story writer. He is seen as a key figure in the development of American literature for his tales of the nation's colonial history. Shortly after graduating from Bowdoin College, Hathorne changed his name to Hawthorne. Hawthorne anonymously published his first work, a novel titled Fanshawe, in 1828. In 1837, he published Twice-Told Tales and became engaged...

Louisa May Alcott was born in Germantown, Pennsylvania on November 29, 1832. She and her three sisters, Anna, Elizabeth, and May, were educated by their father, philosopher and teacher Bronson Alcott, and raised on the practical Christianity of their mother, Abigail May. Louisa spent her childhood in Boston and in Concord, Massachusetts, where her days were enlightened by visits to Ralph Waldo Emerson’s library, excursions into nature with Henry David Thoreau, and theatricals in the barn at...

Willa Siebert Cather was an American author who grew up in Nebraska. She is best known for her depictions of frontier life on the Great Plains in novels such as O Pioneers!, My Ántonia, and The Song of the Lark. Source and more information: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Willa_Cather

Edith Wharton was a Pulitzer Prize-winning American novelist, short story writer and designer. The Age of Innocence (1920) won the 1921 Pulitzer Prize for literature, making her the first woman to win the award. She spoke fluent French as well as several other languages and many of her books were published in both French and English. ([Source][1]) [1]: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Edith_Wharton

Kate Chopin is the author of Prentice Hall Literature--Timeless Voices, Timeless Themes--The American Experience. This collection showcases her work in American literature.

Henry David Thoreau (born David Henry Thoreau) was an American author, poet, naturalist, tax resister, development critic, surveyor, historian, philosopher, and leading transcendentalist. He is best known for his book Walden, a reflection upon simple living in natural surroundings, and his essay, Civil Disobedience, an argument for individual resistance to civil government in moral opposition to an unjust state. Thoreau's books, articles, essays, journals, and poetry total over 20 volumes. Am...

Walt Whitman was an American poet, essayist, journalist, and humanist. He was a part of the transition between Transcendentalism and realism, incorporating both views in his works. Whitman is among the most influential poets in the American canon, often called the father of free verse.[1] His work was very controversial in its time, particularly his poetry collection Leaves of Grass, which was described as obscene for its overt sexuality. ([Source][1].) [1]:https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Wal...

Lebanese American artist, poet and writer.

Harriet Elisabeth Beecher Stowe (14 June 1811 – 1 July 1896) was an American author and abolitionist.

Frederick Douglass (c. February 14, 1818 – February 20, 1895) was an American social reformer, abolitionist, orator, writer, and statesman. He became the most important leader of the movement for African-American civil rights in the 19th century.

James Fenimore Cooper was a prolific and popular American writer of the early 19th century. He is best remembered as a novelist who wrote numerous sea-stories and the historical novels known as the Leatherstocking Tales, featuring frontiersman Natty Bumppo. Among his most famous works is the Romantic novel [The Last of the Mohicans][1], often regarded as his masterpiece. ([Source][2]) [1]: http://openlibrary.org/works/OL77958W/The_last_of_the_Mohicans [2]: http://en.wikipedia.org/...

Henry James, was an American writer, regarded as one of the key figures of 19th-century literary realism. He was the son of Henry James, Sr., a clergyman, and the brother of philosopher and psychologist William James and diarist Alice James. ([Source][1].) [1]:http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Henry_James

Edgar Allan Poe was an American writer, poet, editor and literary critic, considered part of the American Romantic Movement. Best known for his tales of mystery and the macabre, Poe was one of the earliest American practitioners of the short story and is considered the inventor of the detective-fiction genre. He is further credited with contributing to the emerging genre of science fiction.[1] He was the first well-known American writer to try to earn a living through writing alone, resulting in...

Born in Providence, Rhode Island, Lovecraft spent most of his life in New England. After his father's institutionalization in 1893, he lived affluently until his family's wealth dissipated after the death of his grandfather. He then lived with his mother, in reduced financial security, until her institutionalization in 1919. He began to write essays for the United Amateur Press Association, and in 1913 wrote a critical letter to a pulp magazine that ultimately led to his involvement in pulp fi...

Lewis "Lew" Wallace was an American lawyer, Union general in the American Civil War, governor of the New Mexico Territory, politician, diplomat, and author from Indiana. Among his novels and biographies, Wallace is best known for his historical adventure story, Ben-Hur: A Tale of the Christ (1880), a bestselling novel that has been called "the most influential Christian book of the nineteenth century." - wikipedia

Lucy Maud Montgomery CBE, (called "Maud" by family and friends) and publicly known as L.M. Montgomery was a Canadian author, best known for a series of novels beginning with Anne of Green Gables, published in 1908. Once published, Anne of Green Gables was an immediate success. The central character, Anne, an orphaned girl who was adopted by a a sister and brother duo of Marilla and Matthew, made Montgomery famous in her lifetime and gave her an international following. The first novel was...

Homer (Ancient Greek: Ὅμηρος) was an ancient Greek author and epic poet. He is the reputed author of the Iliad and the Odyssey, the two epic poems that are the foundational works of ancient Greek literature. He is regarded as one of the greatest and most influential authors of all time. The Homeric epics were the greatest influence on ancient Greek culture and education. From antiquity until the present day, the influence of Homeric epic on Western civilization has been great, inspiring many of...

Classical Greek philosopher

Lucius Apuleius is the author behind Prentice Hall Literature, a collection that brings classic stories to readers. He's known for his engaging approach to literature.

Marcus Aurelius Antoninus was Roman Emperor from 161 to 180. He ruled with Lucius Verus as co-emperor from 161 until Verus' death in 169. He was the last of the "Five Good Emperors", and is also considered one of the most important Stoic philosophers. During his reign, the empire defeated a revitalized Parthian Empire; Aurelius' general Avidius Cassius sacked the capital Ctesiphon in 164. Aurelius fought the Marcomanni, Quadi, and Sarmatians with success during the Marcomannic Wars, but the thre...

Johann Wolfgang von Goethe was a German writer and polymath. Goethe's works span the fields of poetry, drama, literature, theology, philosophy, pantheism, and science. His magnum opus, lauded as one of the peaks of world literature, is the two-part drama Faust. Goethe's other well-known literary works include his numerous poems, the Bildungsroman Wilhelm Meister's Apprenticeship and the epistolary novel The Sorrows of Young Werther. [1][1] [1]: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Johann_Wolfgang_von_...

John Milton was an English poet, author, polemicist and civil servant for the Commonwealth of England. He is best known for his epic poem Paradise Lost. ([Source][1].) [1]: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/John_Milton

Jonathan Swift was an Irish satirist, essayist, political pamphleteer (first for the Whigs, then for the Tories), poet and cleric who became Dean of St. Patrick's, Dublin. He is remembered for works such as Gulliver's Travels, A Modest Proposal, A Journal to Stella, Drapier's Letters, The Battle of the Books, An Argument Against Abolishing Christianity, and A Tale of a Tub. Source and more information: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Jonathan_Swift

Daniel Defoe, born Daniel Foe, was an English writer, journalist, and pamphleteer, who gained enduring fame for his novel Robinson Crusoe. Defoe is notable for being one of the earliest proponents of the novel, as he helped to popularise the form in Britain, and is even referred to by some as among the founders of the English novel. A prolific and versatile writer, he wrote more than 500 books, pamphlets, and journals on various topics (including politics, crime, religion, marriage, psychology a...

An English novelist and dramatist known for his rich earthy humour and satirical prowess, and as the author of the novel Tom Jones. Portraits suggest a rather large proboscis.

Laurence Sterne is the author of Guía literaria del amor, a guide to love in literature. He's known for exploring themes of romance and relationships through a literary lens.

Jules Verne was a French author who helped pioneer the science-fiction genre. He is best known for his novels A Journey to the Centre of the Earth (1864), From the Earth to the Moon (1865), Twenty Thousand Leagues Under the Sea (1869–1870), Around the World in Eighty Days (1873) and The Mysterious Island (1875). Verne wrote about space, air, and underwater travel before navigable aircraft and practical submarines were invented, and before any means of space travel had been devised. Consequen...

Victor-Marie Hugo (1802-1885) was a French poet, playwright, novelist and essayist, and the leading figure of French Romanticism. Born in Besançon, he is best known abroad for the novels Les Misérables (1862) and Notre-Dame de Paris (1831), published in English as The Hunchback of Notre-Dame. In France his standing rests first on his poetry, including Les Contemplations and La Légende des siècles. Politically he moved from youthful royalism to committed republicanism, spent the years of the Seco...

Gustave Flaubert was a French writer who is counted among the greatest Western novelists. He is known especially for his first published novel, Madame Bovary (1857), and for his scrupulous devotion to his art and style. ([Source][1].) [1]:https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Gustave_Flaubert

Gaston Louis Alfred Leroux was born in Paris and worked there as an author and journalist (Wikipedia). His most famous work is The Phantom of the Opera as it has been made into films and a musical.

Honoré de Balzac was a French novelist and playwright. His magnum opus was a sequence of almost 100 novels and plays collectively entitled La Comédie humaine, which presents a panorama of French life in the years after the fall of Napoléon Bonaparte in 1815. ([Source][1].) [1]:https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Honor%C3%A9_de_Balzac

Stendhal was the pseudonym of the 19th-century French writer Marie-Henri Beyle. Known for his acute analysis of his characters' psychology, he is considered one of the earliest and foremost practitioners of realism in his two novels Le Rouge et le Noir (The Red and the Black, 1830) and La Chartreuse de Parme (The Charterhouse of Parma, 1839).

François-Marie Arouet, better known by the pen name Voltaire, was a French Enlightenment writer and philosopher famous for his wit and for his advocacy of civil liberties, including freedom of religion and free trade. Voltaire was a prolific writer and produced works in almost every literary form including plays, poetry, novels, essays, historical and scientific works, more than 20,000 letters and more than 2,000 books and pamphlets. He was an outspoken supporter of social reform, despite strict...

Charles Pierre Baudelaire was a nineteenth-century French poet, critic, and translator. A controversial figure in his lifetime, Baudelaire's name has become a byword for literary and artistic decadence. At the same time his works, in particular his book of poetry Les fleurs du mal (The Flowers of Evil), have been acknowledged as classics of French literature. ([Source][1].) [1]: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Charles_Baudelaire

A French writer, best known for his numerous historical novels of high adventure which have made him one of the most widely read French authors in the world. Many of his novels, including The Count of Monte Cristo, The Three Musketeers, Twenty Years After, and The Vicomte de Bragelonne were serialized. He also wrote plays and magazine articles and was a prolific correspondent. (From Wikipedia.)

Emile Zola was a French journalist and novelist known for his series of 20 novels known collectively as Les Rougon-Macquart (1871-93). Zola's style was called literary naturalism; his novels were attacked and even banned for their frankness and sordid detail, and caused quite a bit of controversy in their day. The same traits made him a best-selling author and a star of French literature in his day. In 1898 he then further incurred the wrath of French officials when he published the open letter...

Ivan Sergeyevich Turgenev (Russian: Ива́н Серге́евич Турге́нев) was a Russian novelist, short story writer, poet, playwright, translator and popularizer of Russian literature in the West. His first major publication, a short story collection titled A Sportsman's Sketches (1852), was a milestone of Russian realism. His novel Fathers and Sons (1862) is regarded as one of the major works of 19th-century fiction.

Anton Pavlovich Chekhov (Russian: Антон Павлович Чехов) was a Russian playwright and short-story writer who is considered to be one of the greatest writers of all time. His career as a playwright produced four classics, and his best short stories are held in high esteem by writers and critics. Along with Henrik Ibsen and August Strindberg, Chekhov is often referred to as one of the three seminal figures in the birth of early modernism in the theatre. Chekhov was a physician by profession. "Medic...

Nikolai Vasilievich Gogol (Russian: Николай Васильевич Гоголь; Ukrainian: Микола Васильович Гоголь) (31 March [O.S. 19 March] 1809 – 4 March [O.S. 21 February] 1852) was a Ukrainian-born Russian novelist, humourist, and dramatist He is considered the father of modern Russian realism. His early works, such as Evenings on a Farm Near Dikanka, were heavily influenced by his Ukrainian upbringing and identity. His more mature writing satirised the corrupt bureaucracy of the Russian Empire, leading...

Miguel de Cervantes Saavedra was a Spanish novelist, poet, and playwright. His magnum opus, Don Quixote, often considered the first modern novel, is a classic of Western literature and is regularly regarded among the best novels ever written. His work is considered among the most important in all of literature. His influence on the Spanish language has been so great that Spanish is often called la lengua de Cervantes (The language of Cervantes). He has been dubbed el Príncipe de los Ingenios...

Benito Pérez Galdós is a major figure in Spanish literature known for his realistic novels. He wrote books such as Marianela and Trafalgar. His work provides a detailed look at the social and political life of nineteenth-century Spain.

Giovanni Boccaccio was an Italian writer, poet, correspondent of Petrarch, and an important Renaissance humanist. Born in the town of Certaldo, he became so well known as a writer that he was sometimes simply known as "the Certaldese" and one of the most important figures in the European literary panorama of the fourteenth century.

Niccolò di Bernardo dei Machiavelli-Italian diplomat, writer and political philosopher was born in Florence, Italy, on May 3, 1469 to the parentage of Bernardo Machiavelli and Bartolomea Nelli. In 1502 Machiavelli married Marietta Corsini, who bore him four sons and two daughters. His grandson, Giovanni Ricci, is credited with saving many of Machiavelli's letters and writings. He died in the city on June 21, 1527. His tomb is in the church of Santa Croce in Florence. (Sources: The Histo...

Bengali polymath who reshaped his region's literature and music. Author of "Gitanjali" and its "profoundly sensitive, fresh and beautiful verse" (The Nobel Foundation), he became the first non-European Nobel laureate by earning the 1913 Prize in Literature.

legendary Indian poet, author of the Ramayana

Laozi (Chinese: 老子; pinyin: Lǎozǐ; Wade–Giles: Laosi; also Lao Tse, Lao Tu, Lao-Tzu, Lao-Tsu, Laotze, Lao Zi, Laocius, and other variations) was a mystic philosopher of ancient China, and is a central figure in Taoism (also spelled "Daoism"). Laozi literally means "old master", and is generally considered honorific. Laozi is revered as a deity in most religious forms of Taoism. Taishang Laojun is title for Laozi in the Taoist religion, which refers to him as "One of the Three Pure Ones". Ac...

Sun Tzu, the brilliant military strategist, penned the timeless classic The Art of War. This foundational text on strategy and tactics continues to influence leaders and thinkers across various fields.

Ts'ao Hsüeh-ch'in is the author of the classic Chinese novel Dream of the Red Chamber. His work is a cornerstone of Chinese literature, often explored in collections like Antología de la literatura fantástica.

Inazo Nitobe was a Japanese diplomat and scholar who wrote the classic study Bushido: The Soul of Japan. His work explains the ethical code of the samurai and how those traditional values influenced Japanese culture and

In this Japanese name, the family name is Okakura. Okakura Kakuzō (岡倉 覚三, February 14, 1862 – September 2, 1913; also known as 岡倉 天心 Okakura Tenshin) was a Japanese scholar who contributed to the development of arts in Japan. Outside of Japan, he is chiefly remembered today as the author of The Book of Tea.

Natsume Sōseki (1867–1916), born Natsume Kinnosuke, is widely regarded as the foremost Japanese novelist of the Meiji era. He studied English literature in Tokyo and London before turning to fiction, and his best-known works — I Am a Cat, Botchan and Kokoro — examine isolation, duty and the strain of Japan's rapid Westernisation. His portrait appeared on the 1,000-yen note from 1984 to 2004.

Natsume Sōseki is a cornerstone of modern Japanese literature. He is widely recognized for novels such as "I Am a Cat" and "Sanshiro," which often explore themes of identity and societal change. His work offers a keen look at early 20th-century Japan.