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 The Bluffer’s Guide to Great Writers

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© Genius Mindset.com 2007 geniusmindset.com

 The Bluffer’s Guide to Great Writers

NAME DATES CLAIM TO FAME WORKS

Geoffrey Chaucer 1340-1400 Father of English Literature The Canterbury Tales
Hamlet,
William Greatest writer in English and
1564-1616 Macbeth,
Shakespeare exceptional dramatist
King Lear
John Milton 1608-1688 Master poet and translator Paradise Lost
Catalogued The Great Fire
Samuel Pepys 1633-1703 Prolific diarist of London
The Great Plague
Novelist and pioneer of Moll Flanders,
Daniel Defoe 1660-1703
economic journalism Robinson Crusoe
An Essay on Criticism,
Alexander Pope 1688-1744 Poet and essayist translations of Homer’s Iliad
and Odyssey
A leader of the American
Observations on the
Revolution;
Benjamin Franklin 1706-1790 Relationships of Britain to
Created the fields of Electricity
her Colonies
and Meteorology
Creator of the first dictionary;
Samuel Johnson 1709-1784 Lives of the English Poets
Gifted literary critic
James Boswell 1740-1795 Among the first biographers The Life of Dr. Johnson
Songs of Innocence and
Experience,
William Blake 1757-1827 Artist and prolific poet
The Marriage of Heaven
and Hell
William An Evening Walk,
1770-1850 Romantic poet
Wordsworth Descriptive Sketches
The Rime of the Ancient
Samuel Taylor
1772-1834 Romantic poet Mariner,
Coleridge
Kubla Khan
Emma,
Jane Austen 1775-1817 First major woman novelist Mansfield Park
Pride and Prejudice
Lord George Don Juan
1788-1859 Eccentric poet
Gordon Byron Childe Harold
James Fennimore Popular 19th century American
1789-1851 The Last of the Mohicans
Cooper author
Percy Bysshe Considered the finest lyric poet
1792-1822 Prometheus Unbound
Shelley in the English language

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 Ode to a Nightingale,
John Keats 1795-1821 Prolific poet Ode on a Grecian Urn,
Hyperion.
Elizabeth Barrett Considered the greatest English
1806-1861 Casa Guidi Windows
Browning poetess
One of the most popular poets of
his time;
Lord Alfred Appointed Poet Laureate in The Charge of the Light
1809-1892
Tennyson 1850; Brigade
First English writer raised to the
peerage
Originated the genre of detective
Edgar Allan Poe 1809-1849 The Pit and the Pendulum
fiction
Created the Victorian popular Oliver Twist,
Charles Dickens 1812-1870
novel David Copperfield
Like her sister Charlotte became
Emily Bronte 1818-1848 Wuthering Heights
a great novelist
Middlemarch,
George Eliot (Mary Adopted a male pseudonym to
1819-1880 The Mill on the Floss,
Ann Evans) have her work taken seriously
Silas Marner
Self-taught American poet and The Child’s Champion,
Walt Whitman 1819-1892
short story writer Leaves of Grass
Considered America’s greatest
Emily Dickinson 1830-1886 The Chariot
poet
Lewis Carroll Alice’s Adventures in
Fantasist, poet, mathematician
(Charles Lutwidge 1832-1898 Wonderland,
and photographer
Dodgson) The Hunting of the Snark
The Adventures of
Satirist and acclaimed American
Mark Twain 1835-1910 Huckleberry Finn,
novelist
The Innocents Abroad
American turned British prolific
writer;
Henry James 1843-1916 Dense narratives explored the The Turn of the Screw
gulf between the Old and New
worlds
The Importance of Being
Earnest,
Oscar Wilde 1854-1900 Poet and playwright
The Picture of Dorian Gray,
The Ballad of Reading Gaol
Irish playwright; Candida,
George Bernard
1856-1950 Winner of the Nobel Prize for Pygmalion,
Shaw
Literature in 1925 Man and Superman.
Creator of Sherlock Holmes;
Sir Arthur Conan A Study in Scarlet (Holmes’
1859-1930 Credited with devising many
Doyle first appearance)
modern policing techniques
Poet and fiction writer;
The Jungle Book,
Rudyard Kipling 1865-1936 Awarded the Nobel Prize for
Just So Stories
literature in 1907

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 The Time Machine,
Herbert George Eminent American writer of
1866-1946 The Invisible Man,
(H.G.) Wells fiction and science fiction
The War of the Worlds
Ulysses,
Irish novelist with his own unique Finnegan’s Wake,
James Joyce 1882-1941
and influential style Portrait of the Artist as a
Young Man
Wrote novels, short stories,
David Herbert poems, plays, essays, travel Sons and Lovers,
1885-1930
Lawrence books, paintings, translations Lady Chatterley’s Lovers
and literary criticism
The Waste Land,
Thomas Stearns The Four Quartets,
1888-1965 Influential and prolific poet
(T.S.) Eliot Old Possum’s Book of
Practical Cats
Prolific American novelist;
For Whom the Bell Tolls,
Ernest Hemingway 1899-1961 Won the Nobel Prize for
The Old Man and the Sea
Literature in 1954
Private Lives,
Noel Coward 1899-1973 Actor and master playwright Blithe Spirit and Brief
Encounter
Socially conscious and prophetic Animal Farm,
George Orwell 1903-1949
novelist 1984
Novelist exploring the
ambiguities of modern man; The Heart of the Matter,
Graham Greene 1904-1991
Awarded the British Order of Brighton Rock
Merit in 1986
Poet and prolific playwright;
Waiting for Godot,
Samuel Beckett 1906-1989 Won the Nobel Prize for
Endgame
Literature in 1969

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