Figures of Literature
by angeliki_spatki | created - 12 Jan 2014 | updated - 12 Oct 2022 | PublicWriters, transfered to cinema
1. Anton Chekhov
Writer | Kis Uykusu
Anton Pavlovich Chekhov was born in 1860, the third of six children to a family of a grocer, in Taganrog, Russia, a southern seaport and resort on the Azov Sea. His father, a 3rd-rank Member of the Merchant's Guild, was a religious fanatic and a tyrant who used his children as slaves. Young Chekhov...
Russian Novelist, Playwright Uncle Vania, The Seagull, Belated flowers 1970, Lady with a dog 1960 (✿◡‿◡) more about, Summer storm 1944
2. Ernest Hemingway
Writer | To Have and Have Not
Ernest Hemingway was an American writer who won the Pulitzer Prize (1953) and the Nobel Prize in Literature (1954) for his novel The Old Man and the Sea, which was made into a 1958 film The Old Man and the Sea (1958).
He was born into the hands of his physician father. He was the second of six ...
"For whom the Bell Tolls" 1943, "To have or have not" 1944, "A Farewell to Arms" 1957, "The Old man and the Sea" 1958, The Sun also Rises 1957 - Illinois US (1899-1961) Idaho, US
3. Choderlos de Laclos
Writer | Dangerous Liaisons
Pierre Ambroise François Choderlos DE Laclos was a French novelist, official, Freemason and army general, best known for writing the epistolary novel Les Liaisons dangerous (Dangerous Liaisons) (1782). A unique case in French literature, he was for a long time considered to be as scandalous a ...
French Novelist - "Liaisons Dangereuses" 1988
4. D.H. Lawrence
Writer | Lady Chatterley's Lover
David Herbert Lawrence was born in Nottinghamshire, England, 11 September 1885. His father was a coal miner, his mother a genteel woman who sought education and refinement for her son. Lawrence earned a university degree and taught school for a short time. While still a student he began to publish ...
English novelist "Sons and Lovers" UK
5. Théophile Gautier
Writer | Madamigella di Maupin
Théophile Gautier was born on August 31, 1811 in Tarbes, France. He was a writer, known for Madamigella di Maupin (1966), Avatar (1916) and El que murió de amor (1945). He was married to Ernesta Grisi. He died on October 23, 1872 in Neuilly-sur-Seine, France.
Mademoiselle Maupin 1966 - FR
6. Gustave Flaubert
Writer | Salammbo
Gustave Flaubert was born on December 12, 1821, in Rouen, Seine-Inférieure, France. His father was a Medical Doctor and practiced surgery in Rouen, in Hôtel-Dieu (where Flaubert was born). His mother was from an aristocratic Norman family. Young Flaubert received a good private education with ...
Mme Bovary FR
7. Jane Austen
Writer | Sense and Sensibility
Jane Austen was born on December 16th, 1775, to the local rector, Rev. George Austen (1731-1805), and Cassandra Leigh (1739-1827). She was the seventh of eight children. She had one older sister, Cassandra. In 1783 she went to Southampton to be taught by a relative, Mrs. Cawley, but was brought ...
"Pride and Prejudice" - UK
8. Oscar Wilde
Writer | The Picture of Dorian Gray
A gifted poet, playwright and wit, Oscar Wilde was a phenomenon in 19th-century England. He was illustrious for preaching the importance of style in life and art, and of attacking Victorian narrow-mindedness.
Wilde was born in Dublin, Ireland, in 1854. He studied at Trinity College in Dublin before ...
Novelist, Playwright "The Portrait of Dorian Gray" 2009, by Oliver Parker, The Importence of being Earnest 2002, by Oliver Parker, "An Ideal Husband" 1999, by Oliver Parker (Direction, Screenplay) - b. IR d. FR
9. Stendhal
Writer | The Red and the Black
A foremost French writer of the Romantic era, Stendhal was born Marie-Henri Beyle in Grenoble, France in 1783. A loyal Bonapartist he followed Napoleon closely during his military campaigns Stendhal's novels reflect his intense love of Italy, his political convictions and the moral and ...
"Le Rouge et le Noir", "Parma's Monastery" FR
10. Emily Brontë
Writer | Wuthering Heights
The dreamiest of the talented Brontë clan, Emily Jane Brontë was born in 1818. Her mother died when she was barely more than a toddler, and Emily and her younger sister, Anne, became very close. Along with their other siblings, 'Charlotte Bronte' and Branwell Bronte, they invented the make-believe ...
"Weathering Heights" UK
11. Charlotte Brontë
Writer | Jane Eyre
Charlotte was born 1816, the third of the six children of Patrick Brontë, an Anglican clergyman, and his wife Maria Branwell Brontë. After their mother's death in 1821, Charlotte and her sisters, Maria and Elizabeth, were sent to Cowan Bridge Clergy Daughters' School, which Charlotte would later ...
"]ane Eyre" 1943 - UK
12. Daphne Du Maurier
Writer | The Birds
Daphne Du Maurier was one of the most popular English writers of the 20th Century, when middle-brow genre fiction was accorded a higher level of respect in a more broadly literate age. For her services to literature, she was made a Dame Commander of the Order of the British Empire in 1969, the ...
"Rebecca" - UK
13. Margaret Mitchell
Writer | Gone with the Wind
Margaret Mitchell was an American historical novelist and a journalist. She published only one completed novel in her lifetime, "Gone with the Wind" (1936), which covered a woman's struggle for survival through the American Civil War and the Reconstruction Era. The novel won the Pulitzer Prize for ...
"Gone with the Wind" US
14. Vladimir Nabokov
Writer | Lolita
Vladimir Vladimirovich Nabokov was born on April 22, 1899, the eldest of five children in a wealthy aristocratic family in St. Petersburg, Russia. His grandfather was a Justice Minister to the Czar Alexander II. His father, named Vladimir Dmitrievich Nabokov, was a liberal political leader, the ...
"Lolita" RU
15. Albert Camus
Writer | Bajo la metralla
Albert Camus was born on November 7, 1913, in Mondovi, Algeria. His parents were Spanish-French-Algerian (pied noir) colonists. His father, Lucien, died in the Battle of Marne (1914) during WWI. His mother, named Catherine Helene Sintes was of Spanish origin, she was a deaf mute due to a stroke, ...
La Peste 1992 - 1913 - 1960 ALG
16. Bertolt Brecht
Writer | Die Dreigroschenoper
Bertolt Brecht was born on 10 February 1898 in Augsburg, Germany and one of the country's most influential poets, playwrights and screenwriters. His most famous work was the musical "The Threepenny Opera" (with Kurt Weill), but his dramas such as "Mother Courage and Her Children" or "The Good ...
"The circle with the writing chalk" DE
17. Émile Zola
Writer | Bakjwi
Émile Zola was born on April 2, 1840, in Paris, France. His father was an Italian engineer. Young Zola studied at the Collége Bourbon in Provence, where his schoolmate and friend was Paul Cezanne. In 1858 Zola returned to Paris and became a student at the Lycée Saint-Louis, from which he graduated ...
Nana FR
18. Françoise Sagan
Writer | Les fougères bleues
After graduating from high school, Sagan studied at the Sorbonne in Paris. While she was still studying, she wrote her first novel at the age of 17: "Bonjour Tristesse" was published in 1954 and caused a scandal with its explicit depictions of sex, which soon made her known worldwide as a writer. ...
"Bonjour Tristesse", "La Chamade", "Aimez-vous Brahms?" - FR
19. Marguerite Duras
Writer | Le camion
Ms. Duras was born in southern Vietnam and lost her father at age 4. The family savings of 20 years bought the family a small plot in Cambodia, but everything was lost in a single season's flooding. The disaster killed her mother as a result. After high school in Saigon, Ms. Duras left Indochina to...
20. Federico García Lorca
Soundtrack | Take This Waltz
Federíco Garcia Lorca was born in the south of Spain (Andalusia) in 1898 and soon became the region's most famous artist. A poet, playwright, artist, musician and lecturer, he wrote groundbreaking plays such as 'Blood Wedding' and 'Yerma'. His support of the Spanish Republic in the 1930s led to his...
ES
21. Alberto Moravia
Writer | Le mépris
Alberto Moravia was born on November 22, 1907 in Rome, Lazio, Italy. He was a writer and actor, known for Contempt (1963), The Conformist (1970) and From a Roman Balcony (1960). He was married to Carmen Llera and Elsa Morante. He died on September 26, 1990 in Rome, Lazio, Italy.
"La Noia" 1963, Il Conformista 1970, Ieri Oggi Domani 1963, Le Mépris (Contempt) 1963, Two Women (La Ciociara) 1960 - IT
22. Eugène Ionesco
Actor | Ariane
In 1909, Eugen Ionescu was born in Slatina, Romania to a lawyer, Eugen Ionescu Sr. and a French lady by the name of Therese Zicard. In 1913 they moved to France, but in 1924 when his parents divorced, he returned with his father to Romania. He studied in Craiova and in 1929 he attended the ...
RO
23. James Agee
Writer | The African Queen
James Agee, Pulitzer Prize winning author, was born in Knoxville in 1909. The intense writer was to enjoy little real success in his lifetime, but after death won accolades. In 1958 he won the Pulitzer Prize in fiction for his uncompleted biographical novel A Death in the Family. Agee also wrote ...
"Splendor in the Grass", by Elias Kazan US
24. F. Scott Fitzgerald
Writer | The Curious Case of Benjamin Button
"There are no second acts in American lives," wrote F. Scott Fitzgerald, who himself went from being the high priest of the Jazz Age to a down-and-out alcoholic within the space of 20 years, but not before giving the world several literary masterpieces, the most famous of which is "The Great Gatsby...
"The Great Gatsby" 1974 - US
25. Zelda Fitzgerald
Self | The Twentieth Century
Zelda Sayre Fitzgerald was born in Montgomery, Alabama. She was strikingly beautiful and intelligent, but wild and impatient with learning. In the summer of 1918, shortly after graduating from high school, she met an Army lieutenant and aspiring novelist named F. Scott Fitzgerald at a dance at the ...
26. W. Somerset Maugham
Writer | Quartet
Popular British novelist, playwright, short-story writer and the highest-paid author in the world in the 1930s, Somerset Maugham graduated in 1897 from St. Thomas' Medical School and qualified as a doctor, but abandoned medicine after the success of his first novels and plays. During World War I he...
"Razor's Edge" 1984 - UK
27. E.M. Forster
Writer | Howards End
E.M. Forster was born on January 1, 1879 in London, England, UK. He was a writer, known for Howards End (1992), A Room with a View (1985) and The Machine Stops (2009). He died on June 7, 1970 in Coventry, Warwickshire, England, UK.
"Howards End" (1910): "Dear Helen it is not what we expected. It's old, little but marvelous - all in red brick..." - UK
28. Edward Albee
Soundtrack | Who's Afraid of Virginia Woolf?
Edward Albee was born on March 12, 1928 in Washington, District of Columbia, USA. He was a writer, known for Who's Afraid of Virginia Woolf? (1966), A Delicate Balance (1973) and Qui a peur de Virginia Woolf? d'Edward Albee (2011). He died on September 16, 2016 in Montauk, New York, USA.
Who's Afraid of Virginia Woolf - US
29. Harold Pinter
Actor | Mansfield Park
Harold Pinter, the 2005 Nobel Laureate for Literature, was born October 10, 1930, in London's working-class Hackney district to Hyman and Frances Pinter, Eastern European Jews who had immigrated to the United Kingdom from Portugal. Hyman (known as "Jack") was a tailor specializing in women's ...
"The Servant" - UK
30. Paul Bowles
Writer | The Sheltering Sky
Composer and author, educated at the University of Virginia, he studied with Aaron Copland and Virgil Thomson, and received Guggenheim and Rockefeller grants. Paul Bowles joined ASCAP in 1945, and he researched folk music in Spain, North Africa, the Antilles, and South and Central America. He lived...
"Sheltering Sky" 1990, by B. Bertolucci - UK
31. William Makepeace Thackeray
Writer | Barry Lyndon
William Makepeace Thackeray (18 July 1811 - 24 December 1863) was a British novelist, author and illustrator. He is known for his satirical works, particularly his 1848 novel Vanity Fair, a panoramic portrait of British society, and the 1844 novel The Luck of Barry Lyndon, which was adapted for a ...
UK
32. Virginia Woolf
Writer | Orlando
London-born Virginia Woolf came from a wealthy family and, unlike her brothers, received her education at home, an unusual step for the times. Her parents had both had children from previous marriages, so she grew up with a variety of siblings, stepbrothers and stepsisters. Her father was a ...
Hours - UK
33. Henry James
Writer | What Maisie Knew
Henry James was born 15 April 1843, to a wealthy family. He was born in New York, New York USA. His parents were Henry James Sr. and Mary Robertson Walsh; He had one brother William James (January 11 1842-August 26 1910) and one sister Alice James. When Henry James was a young boy he would enjoy ...
UK
34. Agatha Christie
Writer | Les petits meurtres d'Agatha Christie
Agatha was born as "Agatha Mary Clarissa Miller" in 1890 to Frederick Alvah Miller and Clara Boehmer. Agatha was of American and British descent, her father being American and her mother British. Her father was a relatively affluent stockbroker. Agatha received home education from early childhood ...
Death on the Nile 1978, Ten Little Indians 1965, Witness for the Procecusion 1957 #85, by Billy Wilder - Uk
35. Eugene O'Neill
Writer | Long Day's Journey Into Night
Eugene O'Neill, the winner of four Pulitzer Prizes for Drama and the 1936 Nobel Prize for Literature, is widely considered the greatest American playwright. No one, not Maxwell Anderson, Tennessee Williams, Arthur Miller, nor Edward Albee, approaches O'Neill in terms of his artistic achievement or ...
"A long day's journey into the night" - US
36. Arthur Schnitzler
Writer | Eyes Wide Shut
Arthur Schnitzler was born on May 15, 1862 in Vienna, Austrian Empire [now Austria]. He was a writer, known for Eyes Wide Shut (1999), The Affairs of Anatol (1921) and The Exposure. He was married to Olga Gussmann. He died on October 21, 1931 in Vienna, Austria.
AU
37. Thomas Mann
Writer | Morte a Venezia
Thomas Mann was probably Germany's most influential author of the 20th century, receiving the Nobel Prize in Literature in 1929. Born on 6 June 1875 in Lübeck, his family moved to Munich in 1893, where he lived until 1933 and wrote some of his most successful novels like "Buddenbrocks" (1901), "...
"Death in Venice" by L. Visconti - DE
38. Peter Shaffer
Writer | Amadeus
Peter Shaffer was born on May 15, 1926 in Liverpool, England, UK. He was a writer, known for Amadeus (1984), Equus (1977) and The Public Eye (1972). He died on June 6, 2016 in County Cork, Ireland.
UK
39. Marcel Pagnol
Writer | La fille du puisatier
Marcel Pagnol was born on February 28, 1895 in Aubagne, Bouches-du-Rhône, France. He was a writer and producer, known for The Well-Digger's Daughter (1940), Jean de Florette (1986) and Le schpountz (1938). He was married to Jacqueline Pagnol and Simone Collin. He died on April 18, 1974 in Paris, ...
"Jean de Florette", "Manon des Sources" - FR
40. Vassilis Vassilikos
Writer | Z
Vassilis Vassilikos was born on November 18, 1934 in Kavala, Thasos, Greece. He was a writer and actor, known for Z (1969), Young Aphrodites (1963) and Shanghai (2012). He was married to Vasso Papantoniou and Dimitra. He died on November 30, 2023.
Z - GR
41. Vassilis Alexakis
Writer | Oi Athinaioi
Vassilis Alexakis was a Greek-French writer and self-translator of numerous novels in Greek, his mother tongue, and in French. The son of actor Giannis Alexakis, he was born in Greece. He first came to France in 1961 to study journalism at the university in Lille and returned to Greece in 1964 to ...
42. Lev Trotskiy
Self | The Assassination of Trotsky
Communist leader. He was chief theorist, a leader in both the 1905 and 1917 Russian Revolutions alongside Vladimir Lenin. As commissar for foreign affairs, Trotsky arranged the Treaty of Brest-Litovsk with Germany. He next became head of the Red Army during the Russian Civil War, which resulted in ...
RUS
43. Patricia Highsmith
Writer | The Talented Mr. Ripley
Patricia Highsmith was born on January 19, 1921 in Fort Worth, Texas, USA. She was a writer, known for The Talented Mr. Ripley (1999), Strangers on a Train (1951) and The Two Faces of January (2014). She died on February 4, 1995 in Locarno, Switzerland.
Patricia Highsmith (1921–1995) - "The Talented Mr Ripley"
44. Pearl S. Buck
Writer | The Big Wave
Daughter of Christian missionaries, Pearl Buck was reared and educated in China. She received her university education in America but returned to China in the mid-1910s. She became a university instructor and writer, eventually authoring novels about China, some of which were turned into Hollywood ...
45. Betty Smith
Writer | A Tree Grows in Brooklyn
Betty Smith was born on December 15, 1896 in Williamsburg, Brooklyn, New York City, New York, USA. She was a writer, known for A Tree Grows in Brooklyn (1945), Joy in the Morning (1965) and Hour Glass (1946). She died on January 17, 1972.
46. Guy de Maupassant
Writer | La criada de la granja
Guy de Maupassant was born on August 5, 1850 in Château de Miromesnil, France. He was a writer, known for La criada de la granja (1953), Pierre & Jeanne and Black Sabbath (1963). He died on July 6, 1893 in Paris, France.
"Belami" - FR
47. Marcel Proust
Writer | La captive
Marcel Proust was a French intellectual, author and critic, best known for his seven-volume fiction 'In search of Lost Time'. He coined the term "involuntary memory", which became also known as "Proust effect" in modern psychology.
He was born Valentin Louis Georges Eugéne Marcel Proust, on July 10, ...
"D' a côté de chez Swan", "Time Regained" 1999 - FR
48. Aleksandr Solzhenitsyn
Writer | Bob Hope Presents the Chrysler Theatre
Aleksandr Solzhenitsyn was a Russian writer who was imprisoned for his criticism of the Soviet dictator Joseph Stalin, and later exposed Stalin's prison system in his novels and spent 20 years in exile.
He was born Aleksandr Isaakovich Solzhenitsyn on December 11, 1918, in Kislovodsk, Southern ...
"A day in the life of Ivan Denisovitch" - RU
49. Boris Pasternak
Writer | Doctor Zhivago
Boris Pasternak was born in Moscow on February 10, 1890 into an artistic family of Russian-Jewish heritage. His father was an acclaimed artist named Leonid Pasternak, who converted to Christianity, and his mother was a renown concert pianist named Rosa Kaufman. Their home was open to family friends...
"Doctor Zhivago" - RU
50. Jean-Paul Sartre
Writer | Les orgueilleux
Jean-Paul Charles-Aymard Sartre was born on June 21, 1905, in Paris, France. His father, Jean-Baptiste Sartre, was an officer in the French Navy. His mother, Anne-Marie Schweitzer, was the cousin of Nobel Prize laureate Dr. Albert Schweitzer. Sartre was one year old when his father died. He was ...
"La Nausée" - FR
51. Simone de Beauvoir
Writer | Le monologue de la femme rompue
Simone Ernestine Lucie Marie Bertrand de Beauvoir was born on January 9, 1908, in Paris, France. She was raised in an upper class bourgeois Catholic family. Her father, named Georges de Beauvoir, had a passion for books and theatre. He taught Simone reading at the age of 3, and she attempted to ...
All men are mortal 1995
52. Jean Anouilh
Director | Deux sous de violettes
Jean Anouilh was born on June 23, 1910 in Bordeaux, Gironde, France. He was a writer and director, known for Deux sous de violettes (1951), Le Voyageur sans bagage (1944) and Anna Karenina (1948). He was married to Nicole Lançon and Monelle Valentin. He died on October 3, 1987 in Lausanne, Vaud, ...
"Thomas Becket" with Richard Burton as Archibishop of Canterburry, "Jeanne d' Arc" - FR
53. William Faulkner
Writer | To Have and Have Not
William Faulkner, one of the 20th century's most gifted novelists, wrote for the movies in part because he could not make enough money from his novels and short stories to support his growing number of dependants. The author of such acclaimed novels as "The Sound and the Fury" and "Absalom, Absalom...
"As I lay Dying" 2013 - New Albany, Mississippi, US
54. Alexandre Dumas fils
Writer | Traviata '53
Alexandre Dumas fils was born on July 27, 1824 in Paris, France. He was a writer, known for Traviata '53 (1953), Camille (1921) and Zorro: New Orleans (2020). He was married to Henriette Régnier de la Briére and Baroness Nadejda "Nadine" (von Knorring) Naryschkine. He died on November 27, 1895 in ...
"Camille Claudel" 1988 FR
55. Bernard Malamud
Writer | The Natural
Celebrated writer Bernard Malamud was born in Brooklyn, NY, in 1914. He was educated at the City College of New York (CCNY) and New York's Columbia University, from which he graduated with an M.A. in 1942. After graduation he was a high-school English teacher for most of the rest of the decade and ...
The Natural 1984 - An average baseball player becomes a legend in that game, The Model 1994, Short - Brooklyn, New York US
56. Neil Simon
Writer | The Odd Couple
Neil Simon was born on July 4, 1927 in The Bronx, New York City, New York, USA. He was a writer and producer, known for The Odd Couple (1968), Murder by Death (1976) and The Goodbye Girl (1977). He was married to Elaine Joyce, Diane Lander, Marsha Mason and Joan Baim. He died on August 26, 2018 in ...
The Odd Couple 1968 (play), Barefoot in the Park 1967 (play) - US
57. Claude Mauriac
Writer | Thérèse Desqueyroux
Claude Mauriac was born on April 25, 1914 in Paris, France. He was a writer and actor, known for Therese (1962), The Seven Deadly Sins (1962) and Une légende, une vie (1973). He was married to Marie-Claude Mante-Proust. He died on March 22, 1996.
58. Erich Maria Remarque
Writer | A Time to Love and a Time to Die
The German novelist Erich Maria Remarque was born in Osnabrück in 1898. His first novel, the famous anti-war epic All Quiet on the Western Front (1930), was written based on his experiences as a soldier in WWI, and published in 1929. He moved to Switzerland until 1939 and later emigrated to the US....
"Arc de Triomphe", "Promissed Land", "Bobby Deerfield" by Sydney Pollack (1977) DE
59. Abbé Prévost
Writer | Manon Lescaut
Abbé Prévost was born on April 1, 1697 in Hesdin, Artois, France. He was a writer, known for Manon Lescaut (1914), The Metropolitan Opera HD Live (2006) and Manon Lescaut (1918). He died on November 25, 1763 in Paris, France.
French Novelist Manon Lescaut 1914
60. Marquis de Sade
Writer | Sinfonía erótica
Born a rich nobleman, Marquis being his title rather than his birth name, De Sade gradually became a decadent libertine among the French society of Louis XVI. A liberally educated iconoclast, he wrote prose and verse, and specialized in testing the limits of decency, breaking tabboos and shocking ...
61. Honoré de Balzac
Writer | Intimità proibita di una giovane sposa
Honoré de Balzac was a French writer whose works have been made into films, such as, Cousin Bette (1998) starring Jessica Lange, and television serials, such as Cousin Bette (1971), starring Margaret Tyzack and Helen Mirren.
He was born on March 20, 1799, in Tours, France. His father, Bernard ...
French Novelist - "La comédie Humaine" La cousine Bette 1998
62. Prosper Mérimée
Writer | Carmen nue
Prosper Mérimée (28 September 1803 - 23 September 1870)was a French writer in the movement of Romanticism, and one of the pioneers of the novella, a short novel or long short story. He was also a noted archaeologist and historian, and an important figure in the history of architectural preservation...
French Novelist - "La Carrosse d' Or"
63. Tennessee Williams
Writer | A Streetcar Named Desire
Tennessee Williams met long-term partner Frank Merlo in the summer of 1948 (Merlo died of lung cancer in the fall of 1963). Though separated briefly in 1961 and again in 1962, the two were partners for 15 years. Merlo acted as his personal manager/secretary.
Williams spent much of his most prolific ...
American Playwright - Wrote many plays which have been transfered to cinema: The Roman Spring of Mrs Stone, Cat on a Hot Tin Roof, A street car named desire, Suddenly Last Summer, Sweet Bird of Youth etc. - US
64. Alexander Pushkin
Soundtrack | Florence Foster Jenkins
Born to noble parents (his father Sergei was a retired major, and his mother, Nadezhda, was the granddaughter of an ennobled Ethiopian general) on the 26th of May, 1799 in Moscow, Alexander Sergeevich Pushkin became involved with a liberal underground revolutionary group that saw him exiled to the ...
Russian Poet - "Queen of Spades" (short story) - Dame de Pique 1938, (2) 1960 /(Pikovaya Dama)
65. Norman Mailer
Writer | Tough Guys Don't Dance
Norman Mailer, the Brooklyn-born and -bred writer who fought for what he characterized as the "heavyweight championship" of American letters after the 1961 death of Ernest Hemingway, never came close to his dream of writing the Great American novel, but he was a colossus of American culture and ...
US
66. John Steinbeck
Writer | Lifeboat
John Steinbeck was the third of four children and the only son born to John Ernst and Olive Hamilton Steinbeck. His father was County Treasurer and his mother, a former schoolteacher. John graduated from Salinas High School in 1919 and attended classes at Stanford University, leaving in 1925 ...
"Grapes of Rage" 1940 by John Ford - US
67. George Sand
Writer | Fanchon the Cricket
George Sand was born on July 1, 1804 in Paris, France. She was a writer, known for Fanchon, the Cricket (1915), Leoni Leo (1917) and Red Wing (2013). She was married to Casimir Dudevant. She died on June 8, 1876 in Nohant, Indre, France.
French Novelist
68. William Inge
Writer | Splendor in the Grass
William (Motter) Inge brought small-town life in the American Midwest to Broadway with four successive dramatic triumphs: "Come Back Little Sheba" (1950), "Picnic" (1953; Pulitzer Prize), "Bus Stop" (1955) and "The Dark at the Top of the Stairs" (1957). With the exception of his Academy ...
US
69. Arthur Miller
Writer | The Crucible
Arthur Asher Miller was born on October 17, 1915, in New York City, one of three children born to Augusta (nee Barnett) and Isidore Miller. His family was of Austrian Jewish descent. His father manufactured women's coats, but his business was devastated by the Depression, seeding his son's ...
American playwright The Mishifts 1961 by John Huston, The Death of a Salesman 1985, Everybody Wins 1990 The Crusible 1996 by Nicholas Hytner - US
70. Henry Miller
Actor | Reds
Henry Miller was born on December 26, 1891 in New York City, New York, USA. He was a writer and actor, known for Reds (1981), Quiet Days in Clichy (1970) and Quiet Days in Clichy (1990). He was married to Hoki Tokuda, Evelyn Byrd (Keven) McClure, Janina Martha Lepska, June Edith Smith and Beatrice ...
"Quite Days in Clichy" - US
71. Edgar Allan Poe
Writer | Stonehearst Asylum
Edgar Allan Poe was born on January 19, 1809, in Boston, Massachusetts. His father, named David Poe Jr., and his mother, named Elizabeth Arnold Hopkins Poe, were touring actors. Both parents died in 1811, and Poe became an orphan before he was 3 years old. He was adopted by John Allan, a tobacco ...
American Novelist of Mystery stories
72. Nikolay Gogol
Writer | Burnt Hickory
Nikolai (Mykola) Gogol was a Russian humorist, dramatist, and novelist of Ukrainian origin. His ancestors were bearing the name of Gogol-Janovsky and claimed belonging to the upper class Polish Szlachta. Gogol's father, a Ukrainian writer living on his old family estate, had five other children. He...
Russian Playwright, Novelist
73. Charles Dickens
Writer | Great Expectations
Charles Dickens' father was a clerk at the Naval Pay Office, and because of this the family had to move from place to place: Plymouth, London, Chatham. It was a large family and despite hard work, his father couldn't earn enough money. In 1823 he was arrested for debt and Charles had to start ...
British Novelist
74. Fyodor Dostoevsky
Writer | The Double
Fyodor Mikhailovich Dostoevsky was born on November 11, 1821, in Moscow, Russia. He was the second of seven children of Mikhail Andreevich and Maria Dostoevsky. His father, a doctor, was a member of the Russian nobility, owned serfs and had a considerable estate near Moscow where he lived with his ...
Russian Novelist - The Gambler 1997, Notes from the Underground 1995, Idiot 1958, Le Notti Bianche 1957, "The Idiot" 1958 by Ivan Pyryev - (Prince Myshkin), "Karamazof Brothers" 1958, "Crime and Punishment"
75. Lev Tolstoy
Writer | Anna Karenina
Count Lev Nikolaevich Tolstoy was born on September 9, 1828, in his ancestral estate Yasnaya Polyana, South of Moscow, Russia. He was the fourth of five children in a wealthy family of Russian landed Gentry. His parents died when he was a child, and he was brought up by his elder brothers and ...
Russian Novelist of many pages books ex. Anna Karenina has more than 700 pages, War & Peace
76. Mark Twain
Writer | Big River
Mark Twain, born Samuel Langhorne Clemens in Florida, Missouri in 1835, grew up in Hannibal. He was a steamboat pilot on the Mississippi River. Throughout his career, Twain served as a writer, lecturer, reporter, editor, printer, and prospector. Twain took his pen name from an alert cry used on his...
Novelist
77. August Strindberg
Writer | The Stronger
He started to study at the Uppsala University but dropped out to pursue an economically unstable career as a journalist. In 1872 he published the first of his many masterpieces, 'Mäster Olof'. In 1874 he got a position at the Royal Library in Stockholm, which enabled him to marry 'Siri von Essen'. ...
Playwright
78. Octave Mirbeau
Writer | The Diary of a Chambermaid
Octave Mirbeau was born on February 16, 1850 in Trevières, Calvados, France. He was a writer, known for The Diary of a Chambermaid (1946), Diary of a Chambermaid (1964) and Business Is Business (1915). He was married to Alice Regnault. He died on February 16, 1917 in Paris, France.
79. Truman Capote
Actor | Murder by Death
Truman Capote was born on September 30, 1924 in New Orleans, Louisiana, USA. He was a writer and actor, known for Murder by Death (1976), The Innocents (1961) and Breakfast at Tiffany's (1961). He died on August 25, 1984 in Los Angeles, California, USA.
Breakfast at Tiffany's 1961, In Cold Blood 1964, by Alfred Hitchcock, Truman Capote 2005 (his life) by Benett Millier - New Orleans, Louisiana, US
80. Colette
Writer | Gigi
Colette was born on January 28, 1873 in Saint-Sauveur-en-Puisaye, Yonne, France. She was a writer, known for Gigi (1958), Chéri (2009) and Claudine (1913). She was married to Maurice Goudeket, Henri de Jouvenel des Ursins and Willy. She died on August 3, 1954 in Paris, France.
81. Gertrude Stein
Writer | Quest for Love
Gertrude Stein was the fifth child in the Daniel and Amelia Stein family. She grew up in a trilingual environment, spending her childhood in Vienna and Paris, then living in California. She graduated from Radcliffe College and went to the Medical School at Johns Hopkins University for 2 years. She ...
82. Mikhail A. Bulgakov
Writer | Ivan Vasilevich menyaet professiyu
Mikhail A. Bulgakov was a Russian writer and medical doctor known for big screen adaptations of his books, such as Beg (1971) and Master i Margarita (2006).
He was born Mikhail Afanasievich Bulgakov on May 15, 1891, in Kiev, Russia (now Kiev, Ukraine). He was the first of six children in the family ...
Russian Novelist - Based on his novel Master and Margarita the TV movie Pilatus und andere
83. Thomas Hardy
Writer | Far from the Madding Crowd
Thomas Hardy was born on June 2, 1840 in Upper Bockhampton, Dorset, England, UK. He was a writer, known for Far from the Madding Crowd (2015), Tess (1979) and Maiden No More. He was married to Florence Emily Dugdale and Emma Lavinia Gifford. He died on January 11, 1928 in Dorchester, Dorset, ...
English Novelist Far from the madding crowd 1967
84. George Bernard Shaw
Writer | My Fair Lady
The Anglo-Irish playwright George Bernard Shaw (1856-1950), winner of the Nobel Prize for Literature in 1925, acquired a reputation as the greatest dramatist in the English language during the first half of the 20th Century for the plays he had written at the height of his creativity from "Mrs. ...
Irish Playwright Pygamalion 1938, Arms & the Man b. IR, d. UK
85. J.D. Salinger
Writer | My Foolish Heart
U.S. writer whose novel "The Catcher in the Rye" (1951) won critical acclaim and devoted admirers, especially among the post-World War II generation of college students. His entire corpus of published works consists of that one novel and 13 short stories, all originally written in the period 1948-...
86. David Lipsky
Writer | The End of the Tour
David Lipsky is known for The End of the Tour (2015), Celebrity Deathmatch (1998) and America's Book of Secrets (2012).
The End of the tour 2015
87. Jason Segel
Actor | Forgetting Sarah Marshall
Multi-talented Jason Jordan Segel was born in Los Angeles, California, where he was raised by his parents, Jillian (Jordan), a homemaker, and Alvin Segel, a lawyer. His mother is of English, Scottish, and Irish ancestry, and his father is of Ashkenazi Jewish descent. He was educated at St. ...
The End of the tour 2015
88. Stefan Zweig
Writer | The Grand Budapest Hotel
Here he grew up in the educated Jewish middle class, together with his brother Alfred. The Zweig family was not religious. He passed his high school diploma at the Wasagymnasium in Vienna. Zweig wrote his first poems here. At that time he was influenced by writers such as Hugo von Hofmannstahl and ...
89. François Mauriac
Writer | Thérèse Desqueyroux
François Mauriac was born on October 11, 1885 in Bordeaux, France. He was a writer, known for Therese (1962), Le pain vivant (1955) and Serpant's Skin (1963). He was married to Jeanne Lafon. He died on September 1, 1970 in Paris, France.
Thérèse Desquieroux 1962
90. Gabriel García Márquez
Writer | El año de la peste
Major Latin-American author of novels and short stories, a central figure in the so-called magical realism movement in Latin American literature. He was awarded the Nobel Prize for literature in 1982. Studied law and journalism in Bogotá and Cartagena. He began his career as a journalist in 1948, ...
91. Graham Greene
Writer | The Fallen Idol
Graham Greene was one of the greatest novelists of the 20th century and his influence on the cinema and theatre was enormous. He wrote five plays and almost all of his novels, including "Brighton Rock", "The Ministry of Fear" and "The End of the Affair", have been brought to the screen. A superb ...
92. Henrik Ibsen
Writer | While We're Young
Henrik Ibsen was born on March 20th in Stockmannsgerden in Skien. His mother was Marichen and his father was Knud, a merchant. On 1835 his father gave up his business and the family moved to Venstop, a farm in Gjerpen. In 1843 he confirmed in Gjerpen church and left home in order to apprentice to ...
Hedda Gabler TV movie 1962
93. Jean Cocteau
Writer | La Belle et la Bête
Jean Cocteau was one of the most multi-talented artists of the 20th century. In addition to being a director, he was a poet, novelist, painter, playwright, set designer, and actor. He began writing at 10 and was a published poet by age 16. He collaborated with the "Russian Ballet" company of Sergei...
94. Alain Fournier
Director | Le temple
Alain Fournier is known for Le temple (2022), La cité entre les murs (2011) and Sale gueule (2014).
Le grand Meaulnes 1966
95. Victor Hugo
Writer | Les Misérables
Although Hugo was fascinated by poems from childhood on, he spent some time at the polytechnic university of Paris until he dedicated all his work to literature. He was one of the few authors who were allowed to reach popularity during his own lifetime and one of the leaders of French romance.
After...
96. José Giovanni
Writer | Mon père, il m'a sauvé la vie
Joseph Damiani, a.k.a José Giovanni, was born on June 22th, 1923, to a Corsican family. He did many little jobs when he was a teenager. Washing dishes in a train-restaurant, lumberjack, coal miner, waiter in a hotel restaurant of Chamonix. He was arrested for fraud and condemned to one year in jail...
97. André Gide
Writer | Voyage au Congo
Andre Paul Guillaume Gide was born on November 22, 1869, in Paris, France. His father, named Paul Gide, was a professor of law at the University of Paris, he was a descendant from Cevennes Huhuenots. His mother, named Juliette Rondeaux, was a devoted Calvinist. He received an excellent private ...
98. Jean Cocteau
Writer | La Belle et la Bête
Jean Cocteau was one of the most multi-talented artists of the 20th century. In addition to being a director, he was a poet, novelist, painter, playwright, set designer, and actor. He began writing at 10 and was a published poet by age 16. He collaborated with the "Russian Ballet" company of Sergei...
99. Charles Baudelaire
Soundtrack | A Single Man
Charles Baudelaire was a 19th century French poet, translator, and literary/art critic. At his birth, Baudelaire's mother, Caroline Archimbaut-Dufays, was 28; his father Francois Baudelaire was 61. Charles' father instilled in him an appreciation for art, taking his young son to museums and ...
100. Jacqueline de Romilly
Self | Le grand échiquier
Jacqueline de Romilly was born on March 26, 1913 in Chartres, Eure-et-Loir, France. She was married to Michel Worms de Romilly and Michelle Works de Romilly. She died on December 18, 2010 in Boulogne-Billancourt, Hauts-de-Seine, France.
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