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Goodreads Top 100 Literary Novels of All Time

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Literary Works

REGISTRATION OPTIONS FOR NON-PHOTOGRAPHIC DATABASES

The Copyright Office provides resources and general guidance about the different registration options for databases that primarily consist of non-photographic content. Read more .

GROUP REGISTRATION OF SHORT ONLINE LITERARY WORKS (GRTX)

The Copyright Office has implemented a new group registration option for short online literary works, such as blog entries, social media posts, and short online articles. Read more .

GROUP REGISTRATION OF UNPUBLISHED WORKS (GRUW)

The “Unpublished Collection” registration option has been replaced by the “Group Registration Option for Unpublished Works.” Read more .

A literary work is a work that explains, describes, or narrates a particular subject, theme, or idea through the use of narrative, descriptive, or explanatory text, rather than dialog or dramatic action. Generally, literary works are intended to be read; they are not intended to be performed before an audience.

Statutory Definition

The Copyright Act defines “literary works” as “works, other than audiovisual works, expressed in words, numbers, or other verbal or numerical symbols or indicia, regardless of the nature of the material objects, such as books, periodicals, manuscripts, phonorecords, film, tapes, disks, or cards, in which they are embodied.” (17 U.S.C. § 101)

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Authors Index

A list of all of the authors featured at American Literature, organized alphabetically by last name (by row, left to right) so that you can find your favorite authors' stories, novels, poems and essays easily. Or use the "search" box above; mobile users should open the menu to access the search function.

Abbott, Eleanor Hallowell

Aldrich, Thomas Bailey

Alger, Horatio

Alighieri, Dante

Altsheler, Joseph A.

Andersen, Hans Christian

Assis, Joaquim Maria Machado de

Beach, Rex Ellingwood

Bjørnson, Bjørnstjerne

Burnett, Frances Hodgson

Burns, Robert

Burr, Amelia

Burroughs, Edgar Rice

Collins, William Wilkie

Cooke, Grace MacGowan

Cooper, James Fenimore

Cope, Wendy

Crane, Stephen

Crevecoeur, J. Hector St. John de

Crompton, Richmal

Dahl, Roald

Davis, Richard Harding

Doyle, Sir Arthur Conan

Dreiser, Theodore

Du Bois, W.E.B.

Dumas, Alexandre

Dumas fils, Alexandre

Dunbar, Paul Laurence

Edwards, Amelia Ann Blanford

Everett-Green, Evelyn

Freeman, Mary E. Wilkins

Gilman, Charlotte Perkins

Gilmore, Patrick

Gissing, George

Glaspell, Susan

Gogol, Nikolai Vasilievich

Grimm, Jacob and Wilhelm

Harvey, William Fryer

Herrick, Robert Welch

Hesse, Hermann

Higgins, Violet Moore

Hoffmann, Ernst Theodor Wilhelm Amadeus

Howells, William Dean

James, Montague Rhodes

Kronheim, Joseph Martin

Le Fanu, Joseph Sheridan

Lincoln, Natalie Sumner

Longfellow, Henry Wadsworth

Marquez, Gabriel Garcia

Martin, George

Maugham, William Somerset

Moliere, Jean-Baptiste

Montgomery, Lucy Maud

Nightingale, Florence

Post, Melville Davisson

Quiller-Couch, Arthur

Richards, Laura E.

Rickford, Katherine

Riley, James

Rinehart, Mary Roberts

Shelley, Percy Bysshe

Shelley, Mary

Sherman, Harold

Shiel, Matthew Phipps

Steele, Wilbur Daniel

Stein, Gertrude

Steinbeck, John

Stephenson, Carl

Stevenson, Robert Louis

Stine, Robert

Stockton, Frank

Stoker, Bram

Stowe, Harriet Beecher

St. Vincent Millay, Edna

Sweetser, Kate Dickinson

Tarkington, Newton Booth

Teasdale, Sara

Tennyson, Alfred

Thackeray, William Makepeace

Thayer, Ernest Lawrence

Thomas, Dylan

Thoreau, Henry David

Tocqueville, Alexis

Tolkien, John Ronald Reuel

Washington, Booker T.

Weaver, Louise Bennett

Wells, H.G.

Wharton, Edith

Wharton, Anne Hollingsworth

Wheatley, Phillis

White, E.B.

White, Stewart Edward

Williams, William Carlos

Yeats, William Butler

Yezierska, Anzia

Yonge, Charlotte M.

Zola, Emile

Famous Authors: The 30 Greatest Writers Of All Time

Who are the most most famous authors the world has ever known ? Perhaps that’s not the real question: we should instead be asking, ‘how can we judge’? With that in mind one can begin to talk about criteria. One can think about which famous writers had the most influence on the world as a result of what they wrote, or how their writings changed the world.

We don’t necessarily have to talk about their writing style or how good their prose is, as that is, in any case, far too subjective: their greatness could simply be about their ideas – ideas that grab the attention of the world and change the world’s perceptions forever. In that case the writing would only be a vehicle for the transmission of the idea they wish to convey. That idea or theory or research is the reason for writing the book.

And then, particularly if we are including Shakespeare as one of the influential writers, we need to look at what kind of writing we are talking about. Shakespeare falls into the fiction writer category and so, perhaps, to find our best writers we should look at other fiction writers whose work had something like the influence of William Shakespeare’s. It should therefore be clear that our list of the thirty greatest writers are all fiction writers. Our criterion will be that they should be poets, dramatists and prose fiction writers who have had a significant influence on the writers who came after them or on the direction of society.

But who, apart from Shakespeare, are the greatest writers of all time? Without further ado, here is a list of thirty of the greatest writers of all time offered by NoSweatShakespeare. It would be impossible to rank them so they are listed in order of their birth dates:

Homer ~850 BCE

Sophocles 496-406 BCE

Virgil (Publius Vergilius Maro) 70 BCE – 19 BCE

The Evangelist, Mark (Author of the Gospel of St Mark) 1st Century CE

Dante (Durante degli Alighieri) 1265-1321

Geoffrey Chaucer 1343-1400

Famous Authors: The 30 Greatest Writers Of All Time 1

Francois Rabelais 1498-1553

Cervantes (Miguel de Cervantes Cortinas) 1547-1616

John Donne 1572-1631

John Milton 1608-1674

John Bunyan (1628-1688)

Voltaire (François-Marie Arouet) 1694-1778

William Blake 1757-1827

Jane Austen 1775 – 1817

Hans Christian Andersen 1805-1875

Hans Christian Andersen was a Danish playwright, travel writer, poet, novelist and story writer. His fairy tales place him as one of the world’s greatest writers ever. Written basically for children they transcend age barriers because of their universal nature: they reach the deepest levels of the human condition, each story demonstrating something profound about what it means to be a human being… Read more on Hans Christian Anderson >>

Charles Dickens 1812-1870

Herman Melville 1819-1891

Gustave Flaubert 1821-1880

Fyodor Mikhailovich Dostoyevsky 1821-1881

Jules Verne 1828-1905

Leo Tolstoy (Count Lev Nikolayevich Tolstoy) 1828-1910

Emily Dickinson 1830-1886

Unknown as a poet during her lifetime, Emily Dickinson is now regarded by many as one of the most powerful voices of American culture. Her poetry has inspired many other writers, including the Brontes. In 1994 the critic, Harold Bloom, listed her among the twenty-six central writers of Western civilization. After she died her sister found the almost two thousand poems the poet had written… Read Emily Dickinson quotes . Read more on Emily Dickinson >>

Lewis Carroll (Charles Lutwidge Dodgson) 1832-1898

James Joyce 1882-1941

Franz Kafka 1883-1924

T.S. Eliot 1888-1965

F scott fitzgerald 1896-1940.

Jorge Luis Borges 1899-1986

George Orwell 1903-1950

Gabriel Garcia Marques 1927-2014

Like our list of the thirty greatest writers of all time? Any we’re missing? Check out our list of famous English writers , and most famous American authors .

Fiction writers do not write to transmit an idea or report on research they have done. They use language to make us think that their inventions are real, that the places they create actually exist and that their characters are real people, like us, who love and hate and suffer and strive. They invite us to enter into the world of their text and although they usually write only to entertain, there is a sense in that they point to truths just as real as those reached by Darwin and Einstein. If they do that at the highest level, in creating a world that we both recognise and can be inspired by, they reveal themselves as great writers and influence the world in that way. Like Shakespeare.

So who are these writers who can be placed in the same category as Shakespeare for doing that? Shakespeare is, of course, foremost among the great writers. Apart from writing plays that can be held up like mirrors in which we can see ourselves as human beings clearly, and come to an understanding of many of the things that make us human, Shakespeare’s poetry has had a profound effect on the English language: the way we use it today has been shaped by his words and phrases. It can be difficult at times to utter a sentence in English without using a construction first used by Shakespeare. And whenever we need to find a phrase that will sum something we want to say up perfectly and beautifully, we will find a phrase somewhere in Shakespeare’s works .

No Shakespeare, no list.

Regarding the writer of the Gospel of Mark, your claim that Jesus was a fictional character is preposterous and outrageous. Even secular scholars overwhelmingly affirm that Jesus was a historical person—the evidence is undeniable. By claiming (without a hint of embarrassment) that Jesus was fictional, you entirely discredit yourself. You yourself become a laughing stock, and subject to scorn and ridicule from both ‘believers’ and seculars. Deservedly so.

Quite right. Jesus is not only not fictional, he is in fact alive.

You really should read more…. This should be titled the greatest white writers – There is no contest between Fitzgerald and Twain – Austen may be a token here… George Eliot makes just as much sense… Morrison?

100+ Famous Authors and Their Writing Spaces

Inspiration for your most important work.

Hi everybody! Just a quick note that I’ve just published a new post containing more than fifty additional writers… enjoy!

150+ Famous Authors In Their Writing Spaces

Inspirational quotes and photos hemingway to dickens to orwell to shakespeare..

writingcooperative.com

I often wish I had a special space in which to write my books. Sadly, the writing life doesn’t always come equipped with an idyllic woodland cabin in which to pen profound prose. For all the authors profiled below, they figured out how to be effective no matter the setting. They did the work .

Needless to say, this photo essay took a very long time to put together, but I hope it’s worth it. Now, for the first time, you can enjoy 100+ authors and their writing spaces, arranged alphabetically in one place. I hope you like the author photos and are inspired by all their incredible writing (and life) advice.

Agatha Christie

“ You start into it, inflamed by an idea, full of hope, full indeed of confidence. If you are properly modest, you will never write at all, so there has to be one delicious moment when you have thought of something, know just how you are going to write it, rush for a pencil, and start in exercise book buoyed up with exaltation. You then get into difficulties, don’t see your way out, and finally manage to accomplish more or less what you first meant to accomplish, though losing confidence all the time. Having finished it, you know it is absolutely rotten. A couple of months later you wonder if it may not be all right after all .”

Albert Camus

“ In the depth of winter, I finally learned that within me there lay an invincible summer. ”

Albert Einstein

“ Look deep into nature, and then you will understand everything better .”

Alfred Hitchcock

“ Drama is life with the dull bits cut out .”

Allen Ginsberg

“ The only thing that can save the world is the reclaiming of the awareness of the world. That’s what poetry does .”

André Gide

“ Man cannot discover new oceans unless he has the courage to lose sight of the shore .”

Andrew Carnegie

“ People who are unable to motivate themselves must be content with mediocrity, no matter how impressive their other talents .”

“ How wonderful it is that nobody need wait a single moment before starting to improve the world .”

Anne Morrow Lindbergh

“ Good communication is just as stimulating as black coffee, and just as hard to sleep after .”

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Anne Sexton

“ Put your ear down close to your soul and listen hard .”

Anthony Burgess

“ Readers are plentiful: thinkers are rare .”

Arthur C. Clarke

“ If the artist did not know his goal, even the most miraculous of tools could not find it for him .”

Arthur Conan Doyle

“ There is nothing more deceptive than an obvious fact .”

Arthur Miller

“ The structure of a play is always the story of how the birds came home to roost .”

“ Get outside. Get out into the world, man! You wanna read poetry, look at the stars. Light a candle and write under the new moon. That’s when The Operator comes to whisper the Secret Words to you .”

“ Everything that irritates us about others can lead us to an understanding of ourselves .”

Carl Sandburg

“ Time is the coin of your life. It is the only coin you have, and only you can determine how it will be spent .”

Charles Bukowski

“ What matters most is how well you walk through the fire .”

Charles Dickens

“ Have a heart that never hardens, and a temper that never tires, and a touch that never hurts .”

Want more writing tips? These 7 Pieces of Writing Advice Helped Create 494 New York Times Bestsellers

Charles M. Schulz

“ Learn from yesterday, live for today, look to tomorrow, rest this afternoon .”

C. S. Lewis

“ You are never too old to set another goal or to dream a new dream .”

Dalton Trumbo

“ When one many says, “No, I won’t,” Rome begins to fear .”

Damon Runyon

“ A person who asks questions can get a reputation such as a person who wishes to find things out .”

Daphne Du Maurier

“ Writers should be read, but neither seen nor heard .”

Dylan Thomas

“ A good poem is a contribution to reality. The world is never the same once a good poem has been added to it. A good poem helps to change the shape of the universe, helps to extend everyone’s knowledge of himself and the world around him .”

E. B. White

“ Advice to young writers who want to get ahead without any annoying delays: don’t write about Man, write about a man .”

Edith Wharton

“ There are two ways of spreading light: to be the candle or the mirror that reflects it .”

Edward Albee

“ Good writers define reality; bad ones merely restate it. A good writer turns fact into truth; a bad writer will, more often than not, accomplish the opposite .”

Edward Gorey

“ If a story is only what it seems to be about, then somehow the author has failed .”

Elmore Leonard

“ 1. Never open a book with weather. 2. Avoid prologues. 3. Never use a verb other than “said” to carry dialogue. 4. Never use an adverb to modify the verb “said”…he admonished gravely. 5. Keep your exclamation points under control. You are allowed no more than two or three per 100,000 words of prose. 6. Never use the words “suddenly” or “all hell broke loose.” 7. Use regional dialect, patois, sparingly. 8. Avoid detailed descriptions of characters. 9. Don’t go into great detail describing places and things. 10. Try to leave out the part that readers tend to skip. My most important rule is one that sums up the 10. If it sounds like writing, I rewrite it .”

Emil Cioran

“ I dream of a language whose words, like fists, would fracture jaws .”

Émile Zola

“ The artist is nothing without the gift, but the gift is nothing without work .”

“ Let’s put it this way: if you are a novelist, I think you start out with a 20 word idea, and you work at it and you wind up with a 200,000 word novel. We, picture-book people, or at least I, start out with 200,000 words and I reduce it to 20 .”

Ready to dive in ? Enter to win 5 great books on writing.

Ernest Hemingway

“ Never compete with living writers. You don’t know whether they’re good or not. Compete with the dead ones you know are good. Then when you can pass them up you know you’re going good. You should have read all the good stuff so that you know what has been done, because if you have a story like one somebody else has written, yours isn’t any good unless you can write a better one. In any art you’re allowed to steal anything if you can make it better, but the tendency should always be upward instead of down. And don’t ever imitate anybody .”

“ Great literature is simply language charged with meaning to the utmost possible degree .”

F. Scott Fitzgerald

“ The test of a first-rate intelligence is the ability to hold two opposed ideas in the mind at the same time, and still retain the ability to function .”

Frederick Douglass

“ It is not light that we need, but fire; it is not the gentle shower, but thunder. We need the storm, the whirlwind, and the earthquake .”

G. K. Chesterton

“ Fairy tales do not tell children the dragons exist. Children already know that dragons exist. Fairy tales tell children the dragons can be killed .”

Gabriel Garcia Marquez

“ Ultimately, literature is nothing but carpentry. With both you are working with reality, a material just as hard as wood .”

George Bernard Shaw

“ My method is to take the utmost trouble to find the right thing to say, and then to say it with the utmost levity .”

George Orwell

“ If liberty means anything at all, it means the right to tell people what they do not want to hear .”

George Plimpton

“ As anyone who listens to speeches knows, brevity is an asset .”

Georges Simenon

“ The fact that we are I don’t know how many millions of people, yet communication, complete communication, is completely impossible between two of those people, is to me one of the biggest tragic themes in the world .”

Gertrude Stein and Alice B. Toklas

“ It takes a lot of time to be a genius, you have to sit around so much doing nothing, really doing nothing .”

“ Style is knowing who you are, what you want to say, and not giving a damn .”

Hans Christian Andersen

“ Enjoy life. There’s plenty of time to be dead .”

Harlan Ellison

“ If you make people think they’re thinking, they’ll love you; but if you really make them think, they’ll hate you .”

Harper Lee (with Truman Capote)

“ You never really understand a person until you consider things from his point of view .”

Harriet Beecher Stowe

“ Since I began this note I have been called off at least a dozen times — once for the fish-man, to buy a codfish — once to see a man who had brought me some baskets of apples — once to see a book man…then to nurse the baby — then into the kitchen to make chowder for dinner and now I am at it again for nothing but deadly determination enables me to ever write — it is rowing against wind and tide .”

Heinrich Böll

“ It’s true and it’s easily said that language is material, and something does materialize as one writes .”

Henry Miller

“ All growth is a leap in the dark, a spontaneous unpremeditated act without the benefit of experience .”

H. L. Mencken

“ For every complex problem there is an answer that is clear, simple, and wrong .”

Hunter S. Thompson

“ When the going gets weird, the weird turn pro .”

Ian Fleming

“ Never say ‘no’ to adventures. Always say ‘yes,’ otherwise you’ll lead a very dull life .”

J. D. Salinger

“ The mark of the immature man is that he wants to die nobly for a cause, while the mark of the mature man is that he wants to live humbly for one .”

Jack Kerouac

“ Great things are not accomplished by those who yield to trends and fads and popular opinion .”

Jack London

“ You can’t wait for inspiration. You have to go after it with a club .”

Jackie Kennedy

“ The deep desire to inspire people, to take an active part in the life of the country… We should all do something to right the wrongs that we see and not just complain about them .”

James Baldwin

“ Not everything that is faced can be changed, but nothing can be changed until it is faced .”

James Patterson

“ In my office in Florida I have, I think, 30 manuscript piles around the room. Some are screenplays or comic books or graphic novels. Some are almost done. Some I’m rewriting. If I’m working with a co-writer, they’ll usually write the first draft. And then I write subsequent drafts .”

Joan Didion and John Gregory Dunne

“ I write entirely to find out what I’m thinking, what I’m looking at, what I see and what it means. What I want and what I fear… We tell ourselves stories in order to live .”

John Cheever

“ The need to write comes from the need to make sense of one’s life and discover one’s usefulness .”

John F. Kennedy

“ As we express our gratitude, we must never forget that the highest appreciation is not to utter words, but to live by them .”

“ For your information, a good novel can change the world. Keep that in mind before you attempt to sit down at a typewriter. Never waste time on something you don’t believe in yourself .”

John Steinbeck

“ And the little screaming fact that sounds through all history: repression works only to strengthen and knit the repressed .”

John Updike

“ You cannot help but learn more as you take the world into your hands. Take it up reverently, for it is an old piece of clay, with millions of thumbprints on it .”

Joseph Brodsky

“ It is well to read everything of something, and something of everything .”

J. R. R. Tolkien

“ All we have to decide is what to do with the time that is given to us .”

Karen Blixen

“The cure for anything is salt water — sweat, tears, or the sea.”

Want to be an author someday ? Click for a chance to win 5 books on writing that will level up your game.

Katherine Anne Porter

“ I shall try to tell the truth, but the result will be fiction .”

Kurt Vonnegut

“ The arts are not a way to make a living. They are a very human way of making life more bearable. Practicing an art, no matter how well or badly, is a way to make your soul grow, for heaven’s sake .”

Want more? These 6 Pieces of Writing Advice Helped Sell More Than 6 Billion Books

Leo Tolstoy

“ Everyone thinks of changing the world, but no one thinks of changing himself .”

Louisa May Alcott

“ Good books, like good friends, are few and chosen; the more select, the more enjoyable .”

Margaret Mitchell

“ The world can forgive practically anything except people who mind their own business .”

“ Substitute ‘damn’ every time you’re inclined to write ‘very.’ Your editor will delete it and the writing will be just as it should be .”

Marlon Brando

“ Regret is useless in life. It’s in the past. All we have is now .”

“ It’s precisely the disappointing stories, which have no proper ending and therefore no proper meaning, that sound true to life .”

Michel Foucault

“ My job is making windows where there were once walls .”

Mickey Spillane

“ If you’re a singer you lose your voice. A baseball player loses his arm. A writer gets more knowledge, and if he’s good, the older he gets, the better he writes .”

Neil Gaiman

“ A freelance life, a life in the arts, is sometimes like putting messages in bottles, on a desert island, and hoping that someone will find one of your bottles and open it and read it, and put something in a bottle that will wash its way back to you: appreciation, or a commission, or money, or love. And you have to accept that you may put out a hundred things for every bottle that winds up coming back .”

Nigella Lawson

“ It’s true that I wouldn’t have written the first book had my sister and mother been alive. It was my way of continuing our conversation .”

Oliver Sacks

“ Every act of perception, is to some degree an act of creation, and every act of memory is to some degree an act of imagination .”

Orson Welles

“ If it is possible to cut a word out, always cut it out .”

Patricia Highsmith

“ Obsessions are the only things that matter .”

P. G. Wodehouse

“ Unseen in the background, Fate was quietly slipping lead into the boxing-glove .”

Philip Pullman

“ We don’t need a list of rights and wrongs, tables of dos and don’ts: we need books, time, and silence. Thou shalt not is soon forgotten, but Once upon a time lasts forever .”

Philip Roth

“ The road to hell is paved with works-in-progress .”

Pier Paolo Pasolini

“ An artist, if he’s unselfish and passionate, is always a living protest. Just to open his mouth is to protest: against conformism, against what is official, public, or national, what everyone else feels comfortable with, so the moment he opens his mouth, an artist is engaged, because opening his mouth is always scandalous .”

Ramón Gómez de la Serna

“ Writing is that they let you cry and laugh alone .”

Ray Bradbury

“ Don’t think. Thinking is the enemy of creativity. It’s self-conscious, and anything self-conscious is lousy. You can’t try to do things. You simply must do things…. You must stay drunk on writing so reality cannot destroy you .”

Raymond Carver

“ You’ve got to work with your mistakes until they look intended. Understand ?”

“ A person is a fool to become a writer. His only compensation is absolute freedom. He has no master except his own soul, and that, I am sure, is why he does it .”

Robert Frost

“ No tears in the writer, no tears in the reader. No surprise in the writer, no surprise in the reader .”

Roberto Calasso

“ Stories never live alone; They are the branches of a family that we have to trace back, and forward .”

Rudyard Kipling

“ Of all the liars in the world, sometimes the worst are our own fears .”

Saul Bellow

“ A writer is a reader moved to emulation .”

Shuzo Takiguchi

“ Now the globe suffers from severe nostalgia …”

Want to radically improve your writing ? Enter my free giveaway for a chance to win some of the best books on writing.

Simone de Beauvoir

“ Change your life today. Don’t gamble on the future, act now, without delay .”

Somerset Maugham

“ There are three rules for writing a novel. Unfortunately, no one knows what they are .”

Stephen King

“ Kill your darlings, kill your darlings, even when it breaks your egocentric little scribbler’s heart, kill your darlings .”

Susan Sontag

“ My library is an archive of longings .”

Sylvia Plath

“ Let me live, love, and say it well in good sentences .”

“ Considering the ways in which so many of us waste our time, what would be wrong with a world in which everybody were writing poems? After all, there’s a significant service to humanity in spending time doing no harm. While you’re writing your poem, there’s one less scoundrel in the world. And I’d like a world, wouldn’t you, in which people actually took time to think about what they were saying? It would be, I’m certain, a more peaceful, more reasonable place. I don’t think there could ever be too many poets. By writing poetry, even those poems that fail and fail miserably, we honor and affirm life. We say ‘We loved the earth but could not stay .”

Tennessee Williams

“ When I stop working the rest of the day is posthumous. I’m only really alive when I’m writing .”

Theodore Roosevelt

“ I don’t pity any man who does hard work worth doing. I admire him. I pity the creature who does not work, at whichever end of the social scale he may regard himself as being .”

Truman Capote

“ Failure is the condiment that gives success its flavor .”

“ There will be time, there will be time To prepare a face to meet the faces that you meet; There will be time to murder and create, And time for all the works and days of hands, That lift and drop a question on your plate; Time for you and time for me, And time yet for a hundred indecisions, And for a hundred visions and revisions, Before the taking of a toast and tea .”

Vera and Vladimir Nabokov

“ A writer should have the precision of a poet and the imagination of a scientist .”

Virginia Woolf

“ A woman must have money and a room of her own if she is to write fiction .”

W. Somerset Maugham

(I know I already shared a WSM pic, but I couldn’t resist the dog!)

“ I write only when inspiration strikes. Fortunately it strikes every morning at nine o’clock sharp .”

Wallace Stegner

“ Hard writing makes easy reading .”

Walt Whitman

“ The secret of it all, is to write in the gush, the throb, the flood, of the moment — to put things down without deliberation — without worrying about their style — without waiting for a fit time or place. I always worked that way. I took the first scrap of paper, the first doorstep, the first desk, and wrote — wrote, wrote…By writing at the instant the very heartbeat of life is caught .”

William F. Buckley Jr.

“ I get satisfaction of three kinds. One is creating something, one is being paid for it and one is the feeling that I haven’t just been sitting on my ass all afternoon .”

William Faulkner

“ Always dream and shoot higher than you know you can do. Do not bother just to be better than your contemporaries or predecessors. Try to be better than yourself .”

William S. Burroughs

“ Yes, for all of us in the Shakespeare Squadron, writing is just that: not an escape from reality, but an attempt to change reality .”

Winston Churchill

“ Writing a book is an adventure. To begin with it is a toy then an amusement. Then it becomes a mistress, and then it becomes a master, and then it becomes a tyrant and, in the last stage, just as you are about to be reconciled to your servitude, you kill the monster and fling him to the public .”

Bravery bonus: “ History will be kind to me for I intend to write it .”

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How to read 50 books per year without really trying (even if you’re a super slow reader), a straight-forward plan for automatically boosting your book count, want to be happier repeat this ancient four-word phrase every single day, a centuries-old monastic practice could be the key to happiness, the monk who saved a river, a story about why “changing the world” is wildly overrated., how to take back control of your life from addictive internet algorithms, practices and apps you can use to reclaim your attention and privacy — from simple to radical, and everything in…, facebook is dead (it just doesn’t know it yet), the $750+ billion company still has options, but none end well., level up 50 rules and tools for a healthier, wealthier, wiser life, my new ebook is available now for free., more from the writing cooperative.

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The 100 greatest novels of all time: The list

1. Don Quixote Miguel De Cervantes The story of the gentle knight and his servant Sancho Panza has entranced readers for centuries. Harold Bloom on Don Quixote – the first modern novel

2. Pilgrim's Progress John Bunyan The one with the Slough of Despond and Vanity Fair. Robert McCrum's 100 best novels: The Pilgrim's Progress

3. Robinson Crusoe Daniel Defoe The first English novel. Robert McCrum's 100 best novels: Robinson Crusoe

4. Gulliver's Travels Jonathan Swift A wonderful satire that still works for all ages, despite the savagery of Swift's vision. Robert McCrum's 100 best novels: Gulliver's Travels

5. Tom Jones Henry Fielding The adventures of a high-spirited orphan boy: an unbeatable plot and a lot of sex ending in a blissful marriage. Robert McCrum's 100 best novels: Tom Jones 6. Clarissa Samuel Richardson One of the longest novels in the English language, but unputdownable. Robert McCrum's 100 best novels: Clarissa

7. Tristram Shandy Laurence Sterne One of the first bestsellers, dismissed by Dr Johnson as too fashionable for its own good. Robert McCrum's 100 best novels: The Life and Opinions of Tristram Shandy, Gentleman

8. Dangerous Liaisons Pierre Choderlos De Laclos An epistolary novel and a handbook for seducers: foppish, French, and ferocious. Jason Cowley on the many incarnations of Dangerous Liaisons

9. Emma Jane Austen Near impossible choice between this and Pride and Prejudice. But Emma never fails to fascinate and annoy. Robert McCrum's 100 best novels: Emma

10. Frankenstein Mary Shelley Inspired by spending too much time with Shelley and Byron. Robert McCrum's 100 best novels: Frankenstein

11. Nightmare Abbey Thomas Love Peacock A classic miniature: a brilliant satire on the Romantic novel. Robert McCrum's 100 best novels: Nightmare Abbey

12. The Black Sheep Honoré De Balzac Two rivals fight for the love of a femme fatale. Wrongly overlooked. Balzac drank 50 cups of coffee a day: Daily Rituals of Creative Minds Jason Bourke on France's tradition of art imitating life Nick Lezard on a translated collection of short stories and Balzac's influence on other literary greats

13. The Charterhouse of Parma Stendhal Penetrating and compelling chronicle of life in an Italian court in post-Napoleonic France. The Charterhouse of Parma - review

14. The Count of Monte Cristo Alexandre Dumas A revenge thriller also set in France after Bonaparte: a masterpiece of adventure writing. Dumas's five best novels

15. Sybil Benjamin Disraeli Apart from Churchill, no other British political figure shows literary genius. Robert McCrum's 100 best novels: Sybil

16. David Copperfield Charles Dickens This highly autobiographical novel is the one its author liked best. Robert McCrum's 100 best novels: David Copperfield

17. Wuthering Heights Emily Brontë Catherine Earnshaw and Heathcliff have passed into the language. Impossible to ignore. Robert McCrum's 100 best novels: Wuthering Heights

18. Jane Eyre Charlotte Brontë Obsessive emotional grip and haunting narrative. Robert McCrum's 100 best novels: Jane Eyre

19. Vanity Fair William Makepeace Thackeray The improving tale of Becky Sharp. Robert McCrum's 100 best novels: Vanity Fair

20. The Scarlet Letter Nathaniel Hawthorne A classic investigation of the American mind. Robert McCrum's 100 best novels: The Scarlet Letter

21. Moby-Dick Herman Melville 'Call me Ishmael' is one of the most famous opening sentences of any novel. Robert McCrum's 100 best novels: Moby-Dick

22. Madame Bovary Gustave Flaubert You could summarise this as a story of adultery in provincial France, and miss the point entirely. Julian Barnes rewrites the ending to Madame Bovary The Everest of translation, by Adam Thorpe 23. The Woman in White Wilkie Collins Gripping mystery novel of concealed identity, abduction, fraud and mental cruelty. The Woman in White's 150 years of sensation

24. Alice's Adventures In Wonderland Lewis Carroll A story written for the nine-year-old daughter of an Oxford don that still baffles most kids. Robert McCrum's 100 best novels: Alice's Adventures in Wonderland

25. Little Women Louisa M. Alcott Victorian bestseller about a New England family of girls. Robert McCrum's 100 best novels: Little Women

26. The Way We Live Now Anthony Trollope A majestic assault on the corruption of late Victorian England. Robert McCrum's 100 best novels: The Way We Live Now

27. Anna Karenina Leo Tolstoy The supreme novel of the married woman's passion for a younger man. Rereading Anna Karenina, by James Meek

28. Daniel Deronda George Eliot A passion and an exotic grandeur that is strange and unsettling. A new novel from George Eliot - the Guardian's first review of Daniel Deronda, from 1876

29. The Brothers Karamazov Fyodor Dostoevsky Mystical tragedy by the author of Crime and Punishment. Stuart Jeffries on the incorrect title In Pictures: Readers suggest the 10 best long reads Author snapshot: Fyodor Dostoevky

30. The Portrait of a Lady Henry James The story of Isabel Archer shows James at his witty and polished best. Profound and flawed: Claire Messud on rereading The Portrait of a Lady Hermione Lee on the biography of a novel that changed literature

31. Huckleberry Finn Mark Twain Twain was a humorist, but this picture of Mississippi life is profoundly moral and still incredibly influential. Robert McCrum's 100 best novels - Huckleberry Finn

32. The Strange Case of Dr Jekyll and Mr Hyde Robert Louis Stevenson A brilliantly suggestive, resonant study of human duality by a natural storyteller. Ian Rankin on The Strange Story of Dr Jekyll and Mr Hyde

33. Three Men in a Boat Jerome K. Jerome One of the funniest English books ever written. Robert McCrum's 100 best novels - Three Men in a Boat

34. The Picture of Dorian Gray Oscar Wilde A coded and epigrammatic melodrama inspired by his own tortured homosexuality. Fiona MacCarthy on the inspiration behind The Picture of Dorian Gray Robert McCrum's 100 best novels: The Picture of Dorian Gray 35. The Diary of a Nobody George Grossmith This classic of Victorian suburbia will always be renowned for the character of Mr Pooter. Buy The Diary of a Nobody at the Guardian Bookshop

36. Jude the Obscure Thomas Hardy Its savage bleakness makes it one of the first twentieth-century novels. Robert McCrum's 100 best novels: Jude the Obscure

37. The Riddle of the Sands Erskine Childers A prewar invasion-scare spy thriller by a writer later shot for his part in the Irish republican rising. Classics Corner - The Riddle of the Sands

38. The Call of the Wild Jack London The story of a dog who joins a pack of wolves after his master's death. Robert McCrum's 100 best novels: The Call of the Wild

39. Nostromo Joseph Conrad Conrad's masterpiece: a tale of money, love and revolutionary politics. Chinua Achebe and Caryl Phillips discuss the case against Conrad

40. The Wind in the Willows Kenneth Grahame This children's classic was inspired by bedtime stories for Grahame's son. Robert McCrum's 100 best novels: The Wind in the Willows

41. In Search of Lost Time Marcel Proust An unforgettable portrait of Paris in the belle époque. Probably the longest novel on this list. Melvyn Bragg rereads In Search of Lost Time

42. The Rainbow D. H. Lawrence Novels seized by the police, like this one, have a special afterlife. Rachel Cusk rereads The Rainbow Adam Thorpe on The Rainbow

43. The Good Soldier Ford Madox Ford This account of the adulterous lives of two Edwardian couples is a classic of unreliable narration. Jane Smiley on The Good Soldier, stylistic perfection Robert McCrum's 100 best novels: The Good Soldier

44. The Thirty-Nine Steps John Buchan A classic adventure story for boys, jammed with action, violence and suspense. Robert McCrum's 100 best novels: The Thirty-Nine Steps

45. Ulysses James Joyce Also pursued by the British police, this is a novel more discussed than read. Robert McCrum's 100 best novels: Ulysses

46. Mrs Dalloway Virginia Woolf Secures Woolf's position as one of the great twentieth-century English novelists. Robert McCrum's 100 best novels: Mrs Dalloway

47. A Passage to India EM Forster Forster's great love song to India. Robert McCrum's 100 best novels: A Passage to India Damon Galgut on the unrequited love at the heart of A Passage to India

48. The Great Gatsby F. Scott Fitzgerald The quintessential Jazz Age novel. Robert McCrum's 100 best novels: The Great Gatsby What makes Gatsby great? by Sarah Churchwell

49. The Trial Franz Kafka The enigmatic story of Joseph K. John Banville on the story behind Kafka's great novel of judgment and retribution

50. Men Without Women Ernest Hemingway He is remembered for his novels, but it was the short stories that first attracted notice. Chis Power salutes some of the greatest short stories ever written

51. Journey to the End of the Night Louis-Ferdinand Celine The experiences of an unattractive slum doctor during the Great War: a masterpiece of linguistic innovation. Tibor Fischer on Celine's journey to the cutting edge of literature Celine: great author and absolute bastard

52. As I Lay Dying William Faulkner A strange black comedy by an American master. Robert McCrum's 100 best novels: As I Lay Dying Alison Flood on the anniversary edition of The Sound and the Fury in coloured ink

53. Brave New World Aldous Huxley Dystopian fantasy about the world of the seventh century AF (after Ford). Robert McCrum's 100 best novels: Brave New World Read the original Guardian review from 1932

54. Scoop Evelyn Waugh The supreme Fleet Street novel. Ann Pasternak Slater on the journalistic experiences that shaped Waugh's novel Robert McCrum's 100 best novels: Scoop

55. USA John Dos Passos An extraordinary trilogy that uses a variety of narrative devices to express the story of America. Charlotte Jones on New York in books Robert McCrum's 100 best novels: Nineteen Nineteen (the second book in the trilogy)

56. The Big Sleep Raymond Chandler Introducing Philip Marlowe: cool, sharp, handsome - and bitterly alone. John Dugdale on Chandler's crime-writing revolution Robert McCrum's 100 best novels: The Big Sleep

57. The Pursuit Of Love Nancy Mitford An exquisite comedy of manners with countless fans. Olivia Laing on Mitford's genius wicked humour

58. The Plague Albert Camus A mysterious plague sweeps through the Algerian town of Oran. Marina Warner's review of The Plague Tony Judt on the man behind the novel Ed Vulliamy on The Plague, 55 Years later

59. Nineteen Eighty-Four George Orwell This tale of one man's struggle against totalitarianism has been appropriated the world over. Robert McCrum's 100 best novels: Nineteen Eighty-Four Sam Jordison discusses Will Self's criticism of Nineteen Eighty-Four From the Archives: the original review from 1949

60. Malone Dies Samuel Beckett Part of a trilogy of astonishing monologues in the black comic voice of the author of Waiting for Godot. Robert McCrum's 100 best novels: Murphy (the first part of the trilogy) Keith Ridgway rereads his favourite Beckett Peter Conrad and Philip Hensher review the Collected Letters, vols 1 and 2

61. Catcher in the Rye J.D. Salinger A week in the life of Holden Caulfield. A cult novel that still mesmerises. Ten things you should know about The Catcher in the Rye Stephen Bates on the possible sequel to The Catcher in the Rye David Barnett offers his take on the controversy Anne Roiphen rereads Salinger's novel

62. Wise Blood Flannery O'Connor A disturbing novel of religious extremism set in the Deep South. The Reading Group takes on O'Connor's debut Peter Wild takes a look at O'Connor's cartoons Is Flannery O'Connor a Catholic writer?

63. Charlotte's Web EB White How Wilbur the pig was saved by the literary genius of a friendly spider. John Updike on EB White Stephen Amidon remains enchanted with Charlotte's Web 50 years after its publication Alison Flood on the spider that inspired Charlotte's Web

64. The Lord Of The Rings J. R. R. Tolkien Enough said! Claire Armitstead remembers reading The Lord of the Rings in Lagos Visuals: The Lord of the Rings family tree and demographics chart Sarah Crown's guide to The Lord of the Rings

65. Lucky Jim Kingsley Amis An astonishing debut: the painfully funny English novel of the Fifties. Olivia Laing on not reading Amis on the bus John Mullan analyses Lucky Jim for the Guardian Book Club John Crace "digests" Lucky Jim for the Guardian Podcast

66. Lord of the Flies William Golding Schoolboys become savages: a bleak vision of human nature. Writers' desktops: William Golding's former home in pictures Steven Morris on the composition history of Lord of the Flies

67. The Quiet American Graham Greene Prophetic novel set in 1950s Vietnam. Zadie Smith on the genius of Graham Greene Terry Eagleton reviews the collected letters of Graham Greene

68 On the Road Jack Kerouac The Beat Generation bible. Read more about Kerouac and his coterie in the Beats week special David Mills' response to Beats Week

69. Lolita Vladimir Nabokov Humbert Humbert's obsession with Lolita is a tour de force of style and narrative. From the archives: Lolita and its critics David Lodge on Nabokov's sexual style Baddies in Books: Humbert Humbert

70. The Tin Drum Günter Grass Hugely influential, Rabelaisian novel of Hitler's Germany. The Tin Drum summarised the 20th century in three words Jonathan Steele on Grass's influence on Germay's conscience A life in writing: Günter Grass by Maya Jaggi

71. Things Fall Apart Chinua Achebe Nigeria at the beginning of colonialism. A classic of African literature. Read the first page of Achebe's great novel here Nadine Gordimer remembers Achebe Chinua Achebe in pictures

72. The Prime of Miss Jean Brodie Muriel Spark A writer who made her debut in The Observer - and her prose is like cut glass. James Wood on Muriel Spark Muriel Spark didn't just write novels. Adam Mars-Jones reviews Spark's short stories Martin Stannard writes about the influence of Spark's life on her fiction

73. To Kill A Mockingbird Harper Lee Scout, a six-year-old girl, narrates an enthralling story of racial prejudice in the Deep South. To Kill A Mockingbird has been in and out of classrooms for decades. Read John Sutherland on Lee's and other American classics

74. Catch-22 Joseph Heller 'He would be crazy to fly more missions and sane if he didn't, but if he was sane he had to fly them. If he flew them he was crazy and didn't have to; if he didn't want to he was sane and had to.' Stephen Bates on surprises in Heller's Letters Chris Cox reads Catch-22 fifty years after its publication

75. Herzog Saul Bellow Adultery and nervous breakdown in Chicago. Alex Clark reviews Bellow's short stories John Crace 'digests' Herzog James Wood on Saul Bellow

76. One Hundred Years of Solitude Gabriel García Márquez A postmodern masterpiece. Gabriel Garcia Marquez - 5 Must reads Gabriel García Márquez - a life in pictures From the archive: the 1970 review of One Hundred Years of Solitude One Hundred Years of Solitude tops world literature polls

77. Mrs Palfrey at the Claremont Elizabeth Taylor A haunting, understated study of old age. Charlotte Mendelssohn celebrates the other Liz Taylor's short stories Read Natasha Tripney's review of an early novel here

78. Tinker Tailor Soldier Spy John Le Carré A thrilling elegy for post-imperial Britain. William Boyd on the A-Z of Tinker, Tailor The Reading Group discusses Tinker, Tailor and the spy novel genre

79. Song of Solomon Toni Morrison The definitive novelist of the African-American experience. Take the Toni Morrison quiz Morrison on America, by Rachel Cooke Read interviews with Morrison here and here

80. The Bottle Factory Outing Beryl Bainbridge Macabre comedy of provincial life. Laura Potter interviews Beryl Bainbridge at 74 Kate Kellaway on Bainbridge's art beyond writing Alex Clark asks, which is Bainbridge's best novel? Beryl Bainbridge earns a Booker at last

81. The Executioner's Song Norman Mailer This quasi-documentary account of the life and death of Gary Gilmore is possibly his masterpiece. Dead Calm: Gordon Burn rereads The Executioner's Song Alpha Mailer: McCrum meets Mailer Jay Parini weighs up Mailer's journalistic and novelistic qualitites

82. If on a Winter's Night a Traveller Italo Calvino A strange, compelling story about the pleasures of reading. John Sutherland (and quite a few Guardian readers) just can't get to the end of the novel David Mitchell thinks back on Calvino's novel about writing Chris Power writes about Calvino's short fiction Ian Thomson reviews the new collection of Calvino's letters

83. A Bend in the River VS Naipaul The finest living writer of English prose. This is his masterpiece: edgily reminiscent of Heart of Darkness. Robert McCrum's World of Books column on Naipaul Naipaul as the summer read of 2008 The Shadow of Empire: DJ Taylor's look at recent post-colonial novels

84. Waiting for the Barbarians JM Coetzee Bleak but haunting allegory of apartheid by the Nobel prizewinner. James Meek writes about Coetzee's alter-egos Rory Carroll on the South African novelist who's unread at home The Voice of Africa: Robert McCrum on Coetzee

85. Housekeeping Marilynne Robinson Haunting, poetic story, drowned in water and light, about three generations of women. Notes to Self: Robinson and others look back on their work Read Emma Brockes's interviews here Marilynne Robinson talks to Robert McCrum John Mullan on Housekeeping

86. Lanark Alasdair Gray Seething vision of Glasgow. A Scottish classic. Janice Galloway rereads Lanark William Boyd on Lanark at 25 John Mullan considers Lanark's cover for the Guardian Book Club An interview with the 'Clydeside Michaelangelo'

87. The New York Trilogy Paul Auster Dazzling metaphysical thriller set in the Manhattan of the 1970s. Hadley Freedman interviews Paul Auster about New York Alison Flood in conversation with Paul Auster Charlotte Jones on New York in literature

88. The BFG Roald Dahl A bestseller by the most popular postwar writer for children of all ages. Listen to Roald Dahl read from The BFG Read about Chae Strathie's favourite nonsense words in children's books Read Alison Flood's piece on the planned film adaptation of The BFG

89. The Periodic Table Primo Levi A prose poem about the delights of chemistry. From the Archive: Michael Joseph's review Ian Thomson considers Levi's influence on our moral history The Periodic Table made its way into the hands of a Guardian Science journalist... ...and to the top of the Science book favourites list

90. Money Martin Amis The novel that bags Amis's place on any list. Buy Money at the Guardian Bookshop

91. An Artist of the Floating World Kazuo Ishiguro A collaborator from prewar Japan reluctantly discloses his betrayal of friends and family. Buy An Artist of the Floating World at the Guardian Bookshop

92. Oscar And Lucinda Peter Carey A great contemporary love story set in nineteenth-century Australia by double Booker prizewinner. Read Angela Carter's review of Oscar and Lucinda here... ...and find out what Sam Jordison thinks the second time around here In Pictures: See Carey's own annotations on his novel Emma Brockes interviews the Booker winner

93. The Book of Laughter and Forgetting Milan Kundera Inspired by the Soviet invasion of Czechoslovakia in 1968, this is a magical fusion of history, autobiography and ideas. Buy The Book of Laughter and Forgetting at the Guardian Bookshop

94. Haroun and the Sea of Stories Salman Rushdie In this entrancing story Rushdie plays with the idea of narrative itself. Buy Haroun and the Sea of Stories at the Guardian Bookshop

95. LA Confidential James Ellroy Three LAPD detectives are brought face to face with the secrets of their corrupt and violent careers. Hear Ellroy talk about the first novel in his LA quartet on the Guardian Books Podcast Read a short interview with Ellroy here

96. Wise Children Angela Carter A theatrical extravaganza by a brilliant exponent of magic realism. Read an extract from Susannah Clapp's memoir of Carter Kit Buchan's piece on Wise Children for the Families in Literature series

97. Atonement Ian McEwan Acclaimed short-story writer achieves a contemporary classic of mesmerising narrative conviction. Read the first chapter online John Mullan writes on the weather in Atonement for the Guardian Book Club John Sutherland's interview with the author can be found here Geoff Dyer is won over by Atonement, while Nick Lezard is less sure

98. Northern Lights Philip Pullman Lyra's quest weaves fantasy, horror and the play of ideas into a truly great contemporary children's book. Baddies in Books: Mrs Coulter might just be the mother of all evil Northern Lights named the 'Carnegie of Carnegies' Read Kate Kellaway's interview with Philip Pullman

99. American Pastoral Philip Roth For years, Roth was famous for Portnoy's Complaint . Recently, he has enjoyed an extraordinary revival. Tim Adams's review of American Pastoral From our My Hero series: James Wood on Philip Roth

100. Austerlitz W. G. Sebald Posthumously published volume in a sequence of dream-like fictions spun from memory, photographs and the German past. Read the 2001 review of Austerlitz here The Last Word: Maya Jaggi interviews Sebald Robert McCrum on Sebald's legacy

Who did we miss?

So, are you congratulating yourself on having read everything on our list or screwing the newspaper up into a ball and aiming it at the nearest bin?

Are you wondering what happened to all those American writers from Bret Easton Ellis to Jeffrey Eugenides, from Jonathan Franzen to Cormac McCarthy?

Have women been short-changed? Should we have included Pat Barker, Elizabeth Bowen, A.S. Byatt, Penelope Fitzgerald, Doris Lessing and Iris Murdoch?

What's happened to novels in translation such as Bulgakov's The Master and Margarita, Hesse's Siddhartha, Mishima's The Sea of Fertility, Süskind's Perfume and Zola's Germinal?

Writers such as JG Ballard, Julian Barnes, Anthony Burgess, Bruce Chatwin, Robertson Davies, John Fowles, Nick Hornby, Russell Hoban, Somerset Maugham and VS Pritchett narrowly missed the final hundred. Were we wrong to lose them?

Let us know what you think. Post your own suggestions for the 100 best books on the Observer blog .

More on this story

10 overlooked novels: how many have you read?

1000 novels everyone must read: the definitive list.

The 100 greatest non-fiction books

Top 100 Works in World Literature

The editors of the Norwegian Book Clubs, with the Norwegian Nobel Institute, polled a panel of 100 authors from 54 countries on what they considered the “best and most central works in world literature.” Among the authors polled were Milan Kundera, Doris Lessing, Seamus Heaney, Salman Rushdie, Wole Soyinka, John Irving, Nadine Gordimer, and Carlos Fuentes. The list of 100 works appears alphabetically by author. Although the books were not ranked, the editors revealed that Don Quixote received 50% more votes than any other book.

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10 Bands Who Took Their Names From Literature

by Alli Patton March 2, 2023, 11:14 am

To quote Shakespeare: “What’s in a band name? That which we call a group by any other name would sound just as rockin’.”

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Inspiration for a band name can be found anywhere and everywhere. Because words and music so often overlap, it only seems natural that a band’s moniker would be derived from a book, a poem, or any body of literary work. Below are 10 bands who hit the books and found inspiration for their names in literature.

1. The Doors

The ’60s-era rock icons took their band name from Aldous Huxley’s 1954 book, The Doors of Perception . The name of the autobiographical book about a mescaline-induced psychedelic experience took its own name from a William Blake book, The Marriage of Heaven and Hell , in which a particular line reads: “If the doors of perception were cleansed, everything would appear to man as it is: infinite.” What’s more lit than a band inspired by a book inspired by another book?

2. Steely Dan

Donald Fagen and Walter Becker of the jazz-rock outfit Steely Dan were fans of the writings of the beatniks, so when coming up with a band name, they drew inspiration from the greats … and the not-so-greats. Steely Dan was the name of a steam-powered dildo in William S. Burroughs’ 1959 novel Naked Lunch .

3. Veruca Salt

Spoiled, rich, and rotten are words that come to mind when Veruca Salt is mentioned. The character from the 1964 Roald Dahl Charlie and the Chocolate Factory that is. The ’90s alt-rock girl group with the same name, well, they just rocked.

4. Modest Mouse

The indie band Modest Mouse takes its name from a passage in Virginia Woolf’s 1917 short story, “The Mark on the Wall.” The lines in question read: “I wish I could hit upon a pleasant track of thought, a track indirectly reflecting credit upon myself, for those are the pleasantest thoughts, and very frequent even in the minds of modest, mouse-colored people, who believe genuinely that they dislike to hear their own praises.”

5. The Boo Radleys

English alt-rockers The Boo Radleys took their name from the reclusive character, Boo Radley, in To Kill a Mockingbird by Harper Lee.

6. Titus Andronicus

Rock band Titus Andronicus borrowed their moniker from the Shakespeare play of the same name.

7. Joy Division

The post-punk outfit Joy Division tried out several band names before landing on their literature-inspired moniker. They took the name from a reference in the 1953 novella, House of Dolls , by Jewish author and Holocaust survivor Ka-tzetnik 135633.

The story describes “Joy Divisions” in concentration camps where groups of Jewish women were kept for Nazi soldiers’ sexual pleasure.

8. Steppenwolf

The band name Steppenwolf was borrowed from the 1927 Hermann Hesse book of the same name. The Hesse novel itself was named after the German word for a subspecies of the grey wolf, the steppe wolf.

9. Uriah Heep

Uriah Heep is a famed prog-rock band, but Uriah Heep is also a devious character that appears in the 1850s Charles Dickens classic novel David Copperfield .

10. The Velvet Underground

The Velvet Underground’s name was inspired by the 1963 book of the same name. Written by journalist Michael Leigh, the book is an exploration of various “taboos” surrounding sex and sexual relationships.

Their song “Venus in Furs” was also lit-influenced by the Leopold von Sacher-Masoch penned novella of the same name.

Photo by Michael Ochs Archives/Getty Images

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Filmography

Right Icon This ranking is based on an algorithm that combines various factors, including the votes of our users and search trends on the internet.

Stan Lee was one of the most popular comic book writers, thanks to his appearances in several Marvel movies. He is well-known as the co-creator of many famous superheroes, including Iron Man, Spider-Man , and the Hulk . He pioneered a naturalistic method to writing superhero comics and challenged the Comics Code Authority , which ultimately led to changes in its policies.

Considered one of the greatest authors, JRR Tolkien is popularly called the father of the modern fantasy literature. He is best known for his high fantasy classic works The Hobbit and The Lord of the Rings , which is set in a conceived world called the Middle-Earth. Many years after his death, Tolkien continues to be one of the best-selling writers.

American writer Edgar Allan Poe is regarded as the architect of modern short story, the inventor of the detective-fiction genre and a major contributor towards science fiction genre. The influential writer is recognised for his tales of mystery and macabre. His notable works include The Raven (poem), The Tell-Tale Heart and The Fall of the House of Usher (short stories).

British writer, Roald Dahl, is considered as one of the greatest children’s authors. He is one of the best-selling authors of all-time and had a career spanning decades. Charlie and the Chocolate Factory , James and the Giant Peach , The Witches , The Twits and Matilda are some of his classic works. He also wrote short stories and novels meant for adults.

Rabindranath Tagore was an Indian polymath who contributed greatly to the fields of literature, art, and philosophy. Referred to as the Bard of Bengal , Tagore is credited with reshaping Bengali literature and music. The first non-European to receive the Nobel Prize in Literature , Tagore is also credited with composing the national anthems of India and Bangladesh.

Ernest Hemingway was an American novelist and short-story writer who had a strong impact on 20th-century fiction. He published seven novels and six short-story collections and won the Nobel Prize in Literature in 1954. A Farewell to Arms , For Whom the Bell Tolls and The Old Man and the Sea are some of his classic works. He ended his own life in July 1961.

Dr. Seuss was an American children's author, illustrator, and political cartoonist. He is credited with writing some of the most famous children's books ever, including The Cat in the Hat . His works were translated into over 20 languages and sold more than 600 million copies by the time of his death. Many of his creations were adapted into animated cartoons.

Even after four decades after her death, Agatha Christie remains an influential figure in the world of literature and entertainment as most of her books continue to serve as inspiration to films, TV series, and video games. With over two billion copies of her novels sold, she holds the Guinness World Records for best-selling fiction writer of all time.

Widely regarded as one of the most popular writers of all time, Oscar Wilde is best remembered for his plays and epigrams. He was also one of the best-known personalities during his time as he was popular for his conversational skills, flamboyant dressing sense, and biting wit. Imprisoned in 1895 for consensual homosexual acts, Oscar Wilde was pardoned posthumously in 2017.

Mark Twain, “the father of American literature,” was one of the world’s greatest 19-th century humorists and authors. His novels The Adventures of Tom Sawyer and the Adventures of Huckleberry Finn were drawn from his childhood experiences in Missouri. In his later life, he sunk into bankruptcy and also recovered.

Considered one of the greatest writers in English history, Jane Austen is best known for her six major novels - Sense and Sensibility , Pride and Prejudice , Mansfield Park , Emma , Persuasion and Northanger Abbey . Her writing was set among the British landed gentry and dealt with ordinary people in everyday ordinary situation. The author achieved great fame after her death.

The king of dystopia and satire , George Orwell, the pen name adopted by Eric Arthur Blair, was a well-known novelist and critic of the 20th century . A man with a strong mind of his own, Orwell never backed down from stating his views on the socio-political climate he lived in, which he expressed profusely through his influential essays and novels .

HP Lovecraft was a writer of weird and horror fiction and is known for his creation of Cthulhu Mythos , which has inspired a large body of games and music. His stories focused on his interpretation of humanity's place in the universe. He was virtually unknown during his lifetime, but is now considered a significant 20th-century author of supernatural horror fiction.

Social reformer and abolitionist, Frederick Douglass was a national leader of the abolitionist movement in Massachusetts and New York. Born into slavery, he had a difficult early life. Eventually, he managed to escape and dedicated the rest of his life to promoting the cause of abolition. He was a great orator and writer.

Novelist, essayist, screenwriter, and short-story writer F. Scott Fitzgerald is widely regarded as one of the greatest American writers of the 20th century. However, he wasn’t much popular during his lifetime. His works gained international acclaim only in the years following his untimely death at 44. Many of his works have been adapted into films.

C. S. Lewis was a British writer whose books have sold millions of copies worldwide after having been translated into over 30 languages. His works, such as The Chronicles of Narnia , have inspired the works of other famous authors. Lewis' work continues to attract readership and he was ranked 11th on The Times ' 50 greatest British writers since 1945 list.

Virginia Woolf was an English writer who pioneered a narrative mode called stream of consciousness to describe the thoughts and feelings of the narrator. Regarded as one of the most prominent modernist 20th-century writers, Woolf's works have gained much attention for inspiring feminism. Her life and work have inspired several films, novels, and plays.

Sylvia Plath was an American short-story writer, novelist, and poet. Plath is credited with popularizing confessional poetry and won a posthumous Pulitzer Prize in Poetry . Sylvia Plath achieved popularity and critical acclaim despite suffering from clinical depression for the most part of her adult life. Her story inspired the 2003 film Sylvia in which she was portrayed by Gwyneth Paltrow.

Russian writer, Leo Tolstoy, is widely considered as one of the greatest authors ever. After experiencing a profound moral crisis in the 1870s, Tolstoy went through a phase of spiritual awakening, which had a great impact on his subsequent works that incorporated ideas on nonviolent resistance. These works influenced personalities like Mahatma Gandhi, thereby effectively changing the course of history.

Isaac Asimov was an American writer. Best known for his science fiction works, Asimov was regarded as one of the Big Three writers along with Arthur C. Clarke and Robert A. Heinlein. Asimov is credited with influencing most sci-fi writers since the 1950s. Nobel Prize winner Paul Krugman stated that one of Asimov's works inspired him to take up Economics.

Guillermo del Toro is one of the most popular Mexican filmmakers of all time. Along with Alejandro Iñárritu and Alfonso Cuarón, he is known as one of the Three Amigos of Cinema . He also played a major role as a former special effects makeup artist. In 2018, he was named in Time's 100 most influential people in the world list.

Amongst the greatest writers of the 20th century and a leading literary voice in the civil rights movement, James Baldwin extensively explored issues like race, sexuality and humanity in his work. His best known work include his debut novel Go Tell It on the Mountain and his books of essays Notes of a Native Son and Nobody Knows My Name .

Considered one of the major authors of the 20th century, Franz Kafka was a Bohemian short-story writer and novelist. Franz Kafka is credited for being one of the earliest German-speaking authors to explore themes like absurdity, existential anxiety, and alienation. The term Kafkaesque is now widely used in the English language to explain those situations experienced by his characters.

Arthur Miller was an American essayist and playwright. Miller is credited with creating popular plays, such as Death of a Salesman , which is widely regarded as one of the best American plays of the 20th century. Thanks to his illustrious career, which spanned more than 70 years, Arthur Miller is regarded as one of the 20th century's greatest dramatists.

Ian Fleming was a British writer, naval intelligence officer, and journalist. Fleming is credited with creating one of the most popular characters of all time, James Bond . His James Bond series of novels have sold more than 100 million copies, making them one of the best-selling fictional book series in history. Jamaica’s Ian Fleming International Airport is named after him.

Science-fiction author Kurt Vonnegut is best remembered for the novel Slaughterhouse-Five , which became a New York Times bestseller. The Hugo Award -winner had also fought against the Germans in World War II and expressed his anti-war and atheist views through his works, which also include short stories, plays, and autobiographical works.

English poet William Wordsworth, along with Samuel Taylor Coleridge, released Lyrical Ballads in 1798, which set the tone for the Romantic Age of English Literature . Wordsworth was known for his poems I Wandered Lonely as a Cloud , The Prelude , and The Solitary Reaper . He also served as the Poet Laureate .

Widely considered one of the greatest British poets of all time, Lord Byron remains influential as his works are widely read even today. He was also one of the most important personalities of the Romantic Movement . He is also known for his role in the Greek War of Independence , for which the Greeks consider him a national hero.

Robert Frost was an American poet. An influential poet, Frost was honored with four Pulitzer Prizes for Poetry , the only poet to receive four such awards. One of America's public literary figures, Robert Frost received the Congressional Gold Medal in 1960. His works influenced other poets like Robert Francis, James Wright, Edward Thomas, Richard Wilbur, and Seamus Heaney.

H. G. Wells was an English writer. Although he was prolific in many genres, he is best remembered for his work on sci-fi novels, for which he is often referred to as the father of science fiction . His 1901 novel The First Men in the Moon became so influential that a lunar impact crater is named after him.

Harper Lee was an American novelist who wrote the Pulitzer Prize -winning classic To Kill a Mockingbird . Despite publishing only two books, Lee was honored with the Presidential Medal of Freedom for her contribution to literature, such was her impact in the world of literature. A friend of Truman Capote, Lee has been portrayed by popular actresses in Capote's biographical films.

Dante Alighieri was an Italian writer, poet, and philosopher. His work Divine Comedy is widely regarded as the greatest literary work ever produced in the Italian language and the most prominent poem of the Middle Ages. Often referred to as the father of the Italian language , Dante Alighieri played a crucial role in establishing the Italian literature.

Victor Hugo was a French poet, dramatist, and novelist of the Romantic movement. Regarded as one of the best-known and greatest French writers of all time, Victor Hugo wrote abundantly during his career that spanned over six decades. Thanks to his works, such as Hernani and Cromwell , Victor Hugo was one of the leading figures of the Romantic literary movement.

David Foster Wallace was an American author who is regarded as one of the most innovative and influential writers of the past 20 years. His best-known work, Infinite Jest, was named one of the best English-language novels between 1923 and 2005 by Time magazine. Wallace continues to serve as an inspiration to writers like Darin Strauss and George Saunders.

Albert Camus was a French philosopher and the second-youngest recipient of the Nobel Prize in Literature . His philosophical views contributed to the rise of absurdism , a philosophical concept. Also a prolific writer, Albert Camus had an illustrious literary career; most of his philosophical essays and novels are still influential.

English journalist, short-story writer, poet, and novelist Rudyard Kipling is best remembered for his fiction work The Jungle Book. He was born in India and many of his works are inspired by his life in the country. He was one of the most popular English writers in the late 19th and early 20th century.

Margaret Atwood is a Canadian poet and novelist. Her works encompass themes, such as religion and myth, climate change, and gender and identity. An award-winning writer, many of Atwood's works have been made into films and television series; her work, The Handmaid's Tale, has had several adaptations. Perhaps, Margaret Atwood's most important contribution is her invention of the LongPen device.

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literature , a body of written works. The name has traditionally been applied to those imaginative works of poetry and prose distinguished by the intentions of their authors and the perceived aesthetic excellence of their execution. Literature may be classified according to a variety of systems, including language , national origin, historical period, genre , and subject matter.

For historical treatment of various literatures within geographical regions, see such articles as African literature ; African theatre ; Oceanic literature ; Western literature ; Central Asian arts ; South Asian arts ; and Southeast Asian arts . Some literatures are treated separately by language, by nation, or by special subject (e.g., Arabic literature , Celtic literature , Latin literature , French literature , Japanese literature , and biblical literature ).

Definitions of the word literature tend to be circular. The 11th edition of Merriam-Webster’s Collegiate Dictionary considers literature to be “writings having excellence of form or expression and expressing ideas of permanent or universal interest.” The 19th-century critic Walter Pater referred to “the matter of imaginative or artistic literature” as a “transcript, not of mere fact, but of fact in its infinitely varied forms.” But such definitions assume that the reader already knows what literature is. And indeed its central meaning, at least, is clear enough. Deriving from the Latin littera , “a letter of the alphabet,” literature is first and foremost humankind’s entire body of writing; after that it is the body of writing belonging to a given language or people; then it is individual pieces of writing.

Hear Clinton Terrell share his experience of going from solitary confinement to UC Berkeley

But already it is necessary to qualify these statements. To use the word writing when describing literature is itself misleading, for one may speak of “oral literature” or “the literature of preliterate peoples.” The art of literature is not reducible to the words on the page; they are there solely because of the craft of writing. As an art, literature might be described as the organization of words to give pleasure. Yet through words literature elevates and transforms experience beyond “mere” pleasure. Literature also functions more broadly in society as a means of both criticizing and affirming cultural values.

Row of colorful books on a bookshelf. Stack of books, pile of books, literature, reading. Homepage 2010, arts and entertainment, history and society

The scope of literature

Literature is a form of human expression. But not everything expressed in words—even when organized and written down—is counted as literature. Those writings that are primarily informative—technical, scholarly, journalistic—would be excluded from the rank of literature by most, though not all, critics. Certain forms of writing, however, are universally regarded as belonging to literature as an art. Individual attempts within these forms are said to succeed if they possess something called artistic merit and to fail if they do not. The nature of artistic merit is less easy to define than to recognize. The writer need not even pursue it to attain it. On the contrary, a scientific exposition might be of great literary value and a pedestrian poem of none at all.

The purest (or, at least, the most intense) literary form is the lyric poem, and after it comes elegiac, epic , dramatic, narrative, and expository verse. Most theories of literary criticism base themselves on an analysis of poetry , because the aesthetic problems of literature are there presented in their simplest and purest form. Poetry that fails as literature is not called poetry at all but verse . Many novels —certainly all the world’s great novels—are literature, but there are thousands that are not so considered. Most great dramas are considered literature (although the Chinese , possessors of one of the world’s greatest dramatic traditions, consider their plays, with few exceptions, to possess no literary merit whatsoever).

The Greeks thought of history as one of the seven arts, inspired by a goddess, the muse Clio. All of the world’s classic surveys of history can stand as noble examples of the art of literature, but most historical works and studies today are not written primarily with literary excellence in mind, though they may possess it, as it were, by accident.

The essay was once written deliberately as a piece of literature: its subject matter was of comparatively minor importance. Today most essays are written as expository, informative journalism , although there are still essayists in the great tradition who think of themselves as artists. Now, as in the past, some of the greatest essayists are critics of literature, drama , and the arts.

Some personal documents ( autobiographies , diaries , memoirs , and letters ) rank among the world’s greatest literature. Some examples of this biographical literature were written with posterity in mind, others with no thought of their being read by anyone but the writer. Some are in a highly polished literary style; others, couched in a privately evolved language, win their standing as literature because of their cogency, insight, depth, and scope.

Many works of philosophy are classed as literature. The Dialogues of Plato (4th century bc ) are written with great narrative skill and in the finest prose; the Meditations of the 2nd-century Roman emperor Marcus Aurelius are a collection of apparently random thoughts, and the Greek in which they are written is eccentric . Yet both are classed as literature, while the speculations of other philosophers, ancient and modern, are not. Certain scientific works endure as literature long after their scientific content has become outdated. This is particularly true of books of natural history, where the element of personal observation is of special importance. An excellent example is Gilbert White’s Natural History and Antiquities of Selbourne (1789).

Oratory , the art of persuasion, was long considered a great literary art. The oratory of the American Indian , for instance, is famous, while in Classical Greece, Polymnia was the muse sacred to poetry and oratory. Rome’s great orator Cicero was to have a decisive influence on the development of English prose style. Abraham Lincoln ’s Gettysburg Address is known to every American schoolchild. Today, however, oratory is more usually thought of as a craft than as an art. Most critics would not admit advertising copywriting, purely commercial fiction , or cinema and television scripts as accepted forms of literary expression, although others would hotly dispute their exclusion. The test in individual cases would seem to be one of enduring satisfaction and, of course, truth. Indeed, it becomes more and more difficult to categorize literature, for in modern civilization words are everywhere. Man is subject to a continuous flood of communication . Most of it is fugitive, but here and there—in high-level journalism, in television, in the cinema, in commercial fiction, in westerns and detective stories, and in plain, expository prose—some writing, almost by accident, achieves an aesthetic satisfaction, a depth and relevance that entitle it to stand with other examples of the art of literature.

Literary Works of Filipino Authors: Home

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Literary Works of Filipino Authors

The following links are composed of selected articles, novels, poems, short stories and other creative and/or academic publications of some of the great Filipino authors of the 20th Century.

Internet Sites

Lualhati Bautista

She is known for novels that were adapted for movies such as "Bata, Bata�Pa'no ka ginawa?" in 1998 and "Dekada '70" in 2002.

N. V. M. Gonzales

Nestor Vicente Madali Gonzales was the first recipient of the Commonwealth Literary Contest in 1940. He received the National Artist Award in 1990.

The Happiest Boy in the World [From the book Seven Hills Away] Situated in the island of Mindoro, it is a short story that talks about provincial life. http://www.4to40.com/story/print.asp?p=The_Happiest_Boy_in_the_World&k=Smell

Nick Joaquin Also known under his pseudonym "Quijano de Manila,"

Nick Joaquin is so far the most distinguished Filipino writer in English Writing. He was awarded as the National Artist for Literature in 1973.

F. Sionil Jose

Francisco founded the Philippine Chapter of PEN, an international organization for writers. Aside from the National Artist Award, he also obtained the Ramon Magsaysay Award for Journalism, Literature and Creative Communication Arts.

Bienvenido Lumbera

A critic, librettist and poet, Beny created famous musical plays such as the "Tales of the Manuvu and Rama Hari" at "Hibik at Himagsik Nina Victoria Laktaw."

Alejandro Roces

Anding won the Best Short Story award for "We Filipinos are Mild Drinkers" in the United States. He received the Rizal Pro Patria, one of the highest recognitions given by the Republic of the Philippines. As a nationalist, he was known for promoting Ati-atihan, Moriones and Penafrancia Festivals, to name a few.

Edith Tiempo

She is the only female among the receivers of the National Artist Award in Literature.

Should you have comments or suggestions on this pathfinders, please call us at these telephone numbers, 536-0244, 524-4611 local 620 or email us through "Ask LORA".

Compiled by: Adrian Dator Date : December 07, 2010

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