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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
William Shakespeare
1564-1616
Greatest writer in English and exceptional dramatist
Hamlet, Macbeth, King Lear
John Milton
1608-1688
Master poet and translator
Paradise Lost
Samuel Pepys
1633-1703
Prolific diarist
Daniel Defoe
1660-1703
Novelist and pioneer of economic journalism
Alexander Pope
1688-1744
Poet and essayist
Benjamin Franklin
1706-1790
Samuel Johnson
1709-1784
James Boswell
1740-1795
A leader of the American Revolution; Created the fields of Electricity and Meteorology Creator of the first dictionary; Gifted literary critic Among the first biographers
William Blake
1757-1827
Artist and prolific poet
William Wordsworth
1770-1850
Romantic poet
Samuel Taylor Coleridge
1772-1834
Romantic poet
Jane Austen
1775-1817
First major woman novelist
1788-1859
Eccentric poet
Lord George Gordon Byron James Fennimore Cooper Percy Bysshe Shelley
1789-1851 1792-1822
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Popular 19th century American author Considered the finest lyric poet in the English language
Catalogued The Great Fire of London The Great Plague Moll Flanders, Robinson Crusoe An Essay on Criticism, translations of Homer’s Iliad and Odyssey Observations on the Relationships of Britain to her Colonies Lives of the English Poets The Life of Dr. Johnson Songs of Innocence and Experience, The Marriage of Heaven and Hell An Evening Walk, Descriptive Sketches The Rime of the Ancient Mariner, Kubla Khan Emma, Mansfield Park Pride and Prejudice Don Juan Childe Harold The Last of the Mohicans Prometheus Unbound
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John Keats
1795-1821
Elizabeth Barrett Browning
1806-1861
Lord Alfred Tennyson
1809-1892
Edgar Allan Poe
1809-1849
Charles Dickens
1812-1870
Emily Bronte
1818-1848
George Eliot (Mary Ann Evans)
1819-1880
Walt Whitman
1819-1892
Emily Dickinson
1830-1886
Prolific poet Considered the greatest English poetess One of the most popular poets of his time; Appointed Poet Laureate in 1850; First English writer raised to the peerage Originated the genre of detective fiction Created the Victorian popular novel Like her sister Charlotte became a great novelist Adopted a male pseudonym to have her work taken seriously Self-taught American poet and short story writer Considered America’s greatest poet
Lewis Carroll (Charles Lutwidge Dodgson)
1832-1898
Fantasist, poet, mathematician and photographer
Mark Twain
1835-1910
Satirist and acclaimed American novelist
1843-1916
American turned British prolif ic writer; Dense narratives explored the gulf between the Old and New worlds
Henry James
Oscar Wilde
1854-1900
George Bernard Shaw
1856-1950
Sir Arthur Conan Doyle
1859-1930
Rudyard Kipling
1865-1936
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Poet and playwright Irish playwright; Winner of the Nobel Prize for Literature in 1925 Creator of Sherlock Holmes; Credited with devising many modern policing techniques Poet and fiction writer; Awarded the Nobel Prize for literature in 1907
Ode to a Nightingale, Ode on a Grecian Urn, Hyperion. Casa Guidi Windows
The Charge of the Light Brigade
The Pit and the Pendulum Oliver Twist, David Copperfield Wuthering Heights Middlemarch, The Mill on the Floss, Silas Marner The Child’s Champion, Leaves of Grass The Chariot Alice’s Adventures in Wonderland, The Hunting of the Snark The Adventures of Huckleberry Finn, The Innocents Abroad
The Turn of the Screw
The Importance of Being Earnest, The Picture of Dorian Gray, The Ballad of Reading Gaol Candida, Pygmalion, Man and Superman. A Study in Scarlet (Holmes’ first appearance) The Jungle Book, Just So Stories
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The Time Machine, The Invisible Man, The War of the Worlds Ulysses, Finnegan’s Wake, Portrait of the Artist as a Young Man
Herbert George (H.G.) Wells
1866-1946
Eminent American writer of fiction and science fiction
James Joyce
1882-1941
Irish novelist with his own unique and influential style
1885-1930
Wrote novels, short stories, poems, plays, essays, travel books, paintings, translations and literary criticism
Sons and Lovers, Lady Chatterley’s Lovers
1888-1965
Influential and prolific poet
The Waste Land, The Four Quartets, Old Possum’s Book of Practical Cats
1899-1961
Prolific American novelist; Won the Nobel Prize for Literature in 1954
For Whom the Bell Tolls, The Old Man and the Sea
David Herbert Lawrence
Thomas Stearns (T.S.) Eliot
Ernest Hemingway
Noel Coward
1899-1973
George Orwell
1903-1949
Graham Greene
1904-1991
Samuel Beckett
1906-1989
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Actor and master playwright Socially conscious and prophetic novelist Novelist exploring the ambiguities of modern man; Awarded the British Order of Merit in 1986 Poet and prolific playwright; Won the Nobel Prize for Literature in 1969
Private Lives, Blithe Spirit and Brief Encounter Animal Farm, 1984 The Heart of the Matter, Brighton Rock Waiting for Godot, Endgame
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