Plato (Greek: Πλάτων), born Aristocles (c. 427 – 348 BC), was an ancient Greek philosopher of the Classical period who is considered a foundational thinker in Western philosophy and an innovator of t…
Thucydides (c. 460 B.C. – c. 400 B.C.) (Greek Θουκυδίδης) was an Athenian historian and general. His History of the Peloponnesian War recounts the fifth-century BC war between Sparta and Athens un…
Euripides (Greek: Ευριπίδης) (ca. 480 BC–406 BC) was a tragedian of classical Athens. Along with Aeschylus and Sophocles, he is one of the three ancient Greek tragedians for whom any plays have sur…
Aristophanes (Greek: Αριστοφάνης; c. 446 – c. 386 BC) was an Ancient Greek comic playwright from Athens and a poet of Old Attic Comedy. He wrote in total forty plays, of which eleven survive virtually…
Henry Graham Greene was an English writer and journalist regarded by many as one of the leading novelists of the 20th century. Combining literary acclaim with widespread popularity, Greene acquired a r…
Vladimir Nabokov (Russian: Владимир Набоков) was a writer defined by a life of forced movement and extraordinary linguistic transformation. Born into a wealthy, liberal aristocratic family in St. Pete…
Franz Kafka was a German-speaking writer from Prague whose work became one of the foundations of modern literature, even though he published only a small part of his writing during his lifetime. Born …
Kate Atkinson was born in York and now lives in Edinburgh. Her first novel, Behind the Scenes at the Museum, won the Whitbread Book of the Year Award and she has been a critically acclaimed internatio…
Early work of Blaise Pascal of France included the invention of the adding machine and syringe and the co-development with Pierre de Fermat of the mathematical theory of probability; later, he, a Jans…
Charles Robert Darwin of Britain revolutionized the study of biology with his theory, based on natural selection; his most famous works include On the Origin of Species (1859) and The Descent o…
After Napoleon III seized power in 1851, French writer Victor Marie Hugo went into exile and in 1870 returned to France; his novels include The Hunchback of Notre Dame (1831) and Les Misérables…
Gaius Valerius Catullus (ca. 84 BC – ca. 54 BC) was a Roman poet of the 1st century BC. His surviving works are still read widely, and continue to influence poetry and other forms of art. Catullus inv…
DR. ERIC H. CLINE is the former Chair of the Department of Classical and Near Eastern Languages and Civilizations and current Director of the Capitol Archaeological Institute at The George Washington …
Lev Nikolayevich Tolstoy (Russian: Лев Николаевич Толстой; most appropriately used Liev Tolstoy; commonly Leo Tolstoy in Anglophone countries) was a Russian writer who primarily wrote novels and short…
Ernst Jünger was a decorated German soldier and author who became famous for his World War I memoir Storm of Steel. The son of a successful businessman and chemist, Jünger rebelled against an affluent…
A master of poetry, drama, and the novel, German writer and scientist Johann Wolfgang von Goethe spent 50 years on his two-part dramatic poem Faust, published in 1808 and 1832, also conducted scie…
Claudia Piñeiro is an Argentine novelist and screenwriter, best known for her crime and mystery novels, most of which became best sellers in Argentina. She was born in Burzaco, Buenos Aires province.
Irving Leonard Finkel, Ph.D. (Assyriology, University of Birmingham, 1976; B.A., Ancient New Eastern Studies, University of Birmingham, 1969), is a British philologist and Assyriologist. He has served …
Douglas Richard Hofstadter is an American scholar of cognitive science, physics, and comparative literature whose research focuses on consciousness, thinking and creativity. He is best known for his b…
Dante Alighieri, or simply Dante (May 14/June 13 1265 – September 13/14, 1321), is one of the greatest poets in the Italian language; with the story-teller, Boccaccio, and the poet, Petrarch, he forms…
Eduardo Galeano was a Uruguayan journalist, writer and novelist. His best known works are Memoria del fuego (Memory of Fire Trilogy, 1986) and Las venas abiertas de América Latina (Open Veins of Latin…
Claire North is actually Catherine Webb, a Carnegie Medal-nominated young-adult novel author whose first book, Mirror Dreams, was written when they were just 14 years old. They went on to write seven …
Books can be attributed to "Unknown" when the author or editor (as applicable) is not known and cannot be discovered. If at all possible, list at least one actual author or editor for a book instead o…
