Major Literary Figures Flashcards
Aeschylus
(525-456 B.C.E.) Ancient Greek dramatist who specialized in tragedies, among them ‘Prometheus Bound’.
Aesop
(c. 620-560 B.C.E.) Ancient Greek fabulist whose allegorical fables have inspired many writers.
Dante Aligheri
(1265-1321) Early Renaissance Italian writer who is called the father of modern literature. His ‘Divine Comedy’ is one of literature’s great triumphs.
Sherwood Anderson
(1876-1941) American short-story writer whose most famous collection is ‘Winesburg, Ohio’.
Jane Austen
(1775-1817) Nineteenth-century English author whose novels include ‘Sense and Sensibility’, ‘Pride and Prejudice’, and ‘Emma’.
Honoré de Balzac
(1799-1850) Early 19th-century French writer best known for his series ‘La Comédie Himaine’.
Samuel Beckett
(1906-1989) Irish-born French novelist and playwright whose Existentialist works include ‘Malloy’ and ‘Waiting for Godot’.
Saul Bellow
(1915-2005) American novelist awarded the Nobel Prize in Literature in 1976. His works include the novels ‘Herzog’ and ‘Humboldt’s Gift’.
William Blake
(1757-1827) British artist, poet, and engraver who wrote ‘Songs of Innocence and Experience’.
Charlotte Brontë
(1816-1855) English novelist, sister to Emily, who wrote under the pen name Currer Bell. Best known for the novels ‘Jane Eyre’ and ‘Shirley’.
Emily Brontë
(1818-1848) One of three literary sisters, this English novelist wrote under the pen name Ellis Bell. Her novel ‘Withering Heights’ is considered one of the great romantic novels.
John Bunyan
(1628-1688) English preacher and writer of allegorical stories, most famously ‘The Pilgrim’s Progress’.
Lord George Byron
(1788-1824) Prominent Romantic poet known for his adventurous life and writings. Important works include ‘Don Juan’ and ‘Childe Harold’s Pilgrimage’.
Albert Camus
(1913-1960) French writer and Existentialist best known for his novels ‘The Stranger and the Plague’.
Lewis Carroll (Charles Dodgson)
(1832-1898) Prominent British writer, mathematician, and artist, Carroll wrote the classic children’s takes ‘Alice in Wonderland’ and ‘Through the Looking Glass’.
Miguel de Cervantes
(1547-1616) Spanish writer whose book ‘Don Quixote’ is considered the first modern novel.
Geoffrey Chaucer
(c. 1340-1400) Early English poet who wrote the influential ‘The Canterbury Tales’.
Anton Pavlovich Chekhov
(1860-1904) Late 19th- and early 20th- century Russian playwright and short-story writer who wrote ‘The Seagull’ and ‘The Cherry Orchard’.
Samuel Taylor Coleridge
(1772-1834) One of the first English Romantics, widely remembered for “The Rime of the Ancient Mariner.” Together with William Wordsworth, he published ‘Lyrical Ballads’ in 1798.
Sidonie-Gabrielle Colette
(1873-1954) Late 19th-century French female author who published the Claudine novels as well as ‘The Innocent Wife’.
Joseph Conrad
(1857-1924) Polish-born British writer whose most famous books are the novella ‘Heart of Darkness’ and the novel ‘Under Western Eyes’.
Stephen Crane
(1871-1900) American author of the Civil War novel ‘Red Badge of Courage’.
Charles Dickens
(1812-1870) English writer immensely popular with his Victorian audience. A contemporary of Thomas Hardy. Some important works are ‘A Tale of Two Cities’, ‘Great Expectations’, and ‘A Christmas Carol’.
Emily Dickinson
(1830-1886) One of American’s great 19th-century poets whose emotional poems were never published in her lifetime.
John Donne
(1572-1631) English writer, essayist, and religious scholar considered the greatest of the metaphysical poets due to his highly original poems, including “The Flea” and “Death Be Not Proud.”
Fyodor Dostoevsky
(1821-1881) Prominent Russian novelist whose major works include ‘Crime and Punishment’ and ‘The Idiot’.
Theodore Dreiser
(1871-1945) American writer of the naturalist school whose novels include ‘Sister Carrie’ and ‘An American Tragedy’.
George Eliot (Mary Ann Evans)
(1819-1880) Victorian English female novelist who wrote the realist novels ‘Middlemarch’ and ‘Adam Bede’.
T. S. Eliot
(1888-1965) American-born British Modernist poet who wrote the poems “The Waste Land” and “The Love Song of J. Alfred Prufrock.”
Ralph Waldo Emerson
(1803-1882) Important American Transcendentalist writer and philosopher. The mentor of Thoreau, he wrote the essay “Nature.”
Euripedes
(c. 480-406 B.C.E.) Along with Sophocles and Aeschylus, a preeminent Ancient Greek dramatist.
William Faulkner
(1897-1962) Acclaimed American Southern novelist had a major influence on contemporary literature. Some major works include ‘The Sound and the Fury’, ‘Absolom! Absolom!’, and ‘As I Lay Dying’.
F. Scott Fitzgerald
(1896-1940) One of the 20th century’s literary stars, his writing chronicled the Jazz Age. His novel ‘The Great Gatsby’ is considered and American masterpiece.
Gustave Flaubert
(1821-1880) French writer who coined the phrase ‘le mot juste’ (the perfect word0 and had a notoriously meticulous style. His masterpiece is ‘Madame Bovary’.
Robert Frost
(1874-1963) Popular American poet of the 20th century who penned such notable poems as ‘Stopping by Woods on a Snowy Evening’ and ‘Mending Wall’.
Allen Ginsberg
(1926-1997) American Beat poet and active political figure who became the face of a generation’s underground. Perhaps his most famous work is the collection ‘Howl’.
Johann Wolfgang von Goethe
(1749-1832) Prominent German writer, critic, and scientist who is most famous for his classic ‘Faust’.
Dashiell Hammett
(1894-1961) Popular American writer of noir, or detective, fiction. Man of his novels, including ‘Maltese Falcon’ and ‘The Thin Man’, became successful movies.
