Poets
Boris Pasternak
1890 - 1960
Nobel Prize-winning Russian poet and writer, in the West best known for his epic novel Doctor Zhivago. In Russia, however, Boris Pasternak is most celebrated as a poet. My Sister Life, written in 1917, is arguably the most influential collection of poetry published in Russian language in the 20th century.
Charlotte Brontė
1816 - 1855
British novelist and poet, the eldest of the three famous Brontė sisters whose novels have become standards of English literature.
Czeslaw Milosz
1911 - 2004
Polish-American poet, prose writer and translator. From 1961 to 1978 he was a professor of Slavic Languages and Literatures at the University of California, Berkeley. In 1980 he was awarded the Nobel Prize in Literature. He is widely considered one of the greatest contemporary Polish poets.
D(avid) H(erbert) Lawrence
1885 - 1930
English writer of the 20th century, whose prolific and diverse output included novels, short stories, poems, plays, essays, travel books, paintings, translations, and literary criticism. His collected works represent an extended reflection upon the dehumanizing effects of modernity and industrialization. In them, Lawrence confronts issues relating to emotional health and vitality, spontaneity, human sexuality and instinct.
Edgar Allan Poe
1809 - 1849
American poet, short-story writer, editor and literary critic, and is 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. Poe's publishing career began humbly, with an anonymous collection of poems.
Emily Brontė
1818 - 1848
British novelist and poet, now best remembered for her only novel Wuthering Heights, a classic of English literature. Emily was the second eldest of the three surviving Brontė sisters, being younger than Charlotte and older than Anne. She published under the masculine pen name Ellis Bell.
Emily Dickinson
1830 - 1886
Dickinson was a prolific private poet, choosing to publish fewer than a dozen of her nearly eighteen hundred poems. Dickinson's poems are unique for the era in which she wrote; they contain short lines, typically lack titles, and often utilize slant rhyme as well as unconventional capitalization and punctuation.
Howard Nemerov
1920 - 1991
United States Poet Laureate on two separate occasions: from 1963 to 1964, and from 1988 to 1990. The Collected Poems of Howard Nemerov won the National Book Award, Pulitzer Prize and Bollingen Prize. He was brother to photographer Diane Nemerov Arbus and father to art critic Alexander Nemerov.
James Joyce
1882 - 1941
Irish expatriate writer, widely considered to be one of the most influential writers of the 20th century. He is best known for his landmark novel Ulysses (1922) and its highly controversial successor Finnegans Wake (1939), as well as the short story collection Dubliners (1914) and the semi-autobiographical novel A Portrait of the Artist as a Young Man (1916). Joyce also published a number of books of poetry.
Johann Wolfgang von Goethe
1749 - 1832
German writer. George Eliot called him "Germany's greatest man of letters and the last true polymath to walk the earth." Goethe's works span the fields of poetry, drama, literature, theology, humanism, and science.
John Keats
1795 - 1821
One of the principal poets of the English Romantic movement. During his short life, his work received constant critical attacks from the periodicals of the day, but his posthumous influence on poets such as Alfred Tennyson has been immense. Elaborate word choice and sensual imagery characterize Keats's poetry, including a series of odes that were his masterpieces and which remain among the most popular poems in English literature.
Langston Hughes
1902 - 1967
American poet, novelist, playwright, short story writer, and columnist. Hughes is known for his work during the Harlem Renaissance.
Leonard Cohen
1934 -
Singer-songwriter, musician, poet and novelist. Cohen published his first book of poetry in Montreal in 1956 and his first novel in 1963. His work often deals with the exploration of religion, isolation, sexuality and complex interpersonal relationships.
Maya Angelou
1928 -
American poet, memoirist, actress and an important figure in the American Civil Rights Movement. Her volume of poetry, Just Give Me a Cool Drink of Water 'Fore I Diiie (1971) was nominated for the Pulitzer Prize.
Oscar Wilde
1854 - 1900
Irish poet and dramatist, and one of the foremost figures of 20th-century literature. In 1923, he was awarded a 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;" and he was the first Irishman so honored.
Robert Frost
1874 - 1963
American poet. He is highly regarded for his realistic depictions of the rural life and his command of American colloquial speech. A popular and often-quoted poet, Frost was honored frequently during his lifetime, receiving four Pulitzer Prizes.
Rudyard Kipling
1865 - 1936
English author and poet, born in Bombay, British India, and best known for his works The Jungle Book (1894), The Second Jungle Book (1895), Just So Stories (1902), and Puck of Pook's Hill (1906); his novel, Kim (1901); his poems, including Mandalay (1890), Gunga Din (1890), If (1910) and Ulster 1912 (1912).
T. S. Eliot
1888 - 1965
Poet, dramatist, and literary critic. He received the Nobel Prize in Literature in 1948. Eliot was born in the United States, moved to the United Kingdom in 1914 (at age 25), and became a British subject in 1927 at the age of 39.
William Butler Yeats
1865 - 1939
Irish poet and dramatist, and one of the foremost figures of 20th-century literature. In 1923, he was awarded a 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;" and he was the first Irishman so honored.
William Shakespeare
1564 - 1616
English poet and playwright, widely regarded as the greatest writer in the English language and the world's pre-eminent dramatist.