biography of english poets and writers

English History

Famous Poets from England and Around the World

Famous english poets, other famous poets, robert southey: a rebellious and influential poet.

Robert Southey was born in 1774, the son of a wealthy wine merchant. He was expelled from Westminster School for editing a magazine entitled the Flagellant and then went on to study at Balliol College, Oxford. There he became friendly with S.T. Coleridge; together they established their Pantisocratic Society, which preached Utopian ideals of social […]

Poet Laureate

A poet laureate is a poet appointed by a government or monarch to receive formal recognition for their work. The position can be traced back to Ancient Greece, and the first English poet laureate was appointed in 1668. Over the years, the role of poet laureate has evolved, and today it often includes other responsibilities […]

Romanticism

Romanticism is a complex artistic, literary, and intellectual movement that originated in the second half of the 18th century in Western Europe, and gained strength during the Industrial Revolution. It was partly a revolt against aristocratic social and political norms of the Age of Enlightenment and a reaction against the scientific rationalization of nature, and […]

Charlotte Brontë

Born: April 21, 1816, Thornton, England Died: March 31, 1855 (aged 38), Haworth, England Years Active: 1845—1855 Notable Works: Jane Eyre (1847), Shirley (1849), Villette (1853), The Professor (1857) Charlotte Brontë (21 April 1816 – 31 March 1855) is one of the most famous Victorian women writers and poets. She was the eldest of the […]

Emily Brontë

Born: July 30, 1818, Thornton, England Died: December 19, 1848 (aged 30), Haworth, England Years Active: 1845—1848 Notable Works: Wuthering Heights (1847) Emily Jane Brontë (30 July 1818 – 19 December 1848) was an English novelist and poet and one of the most famous women writers from the 19th century. She is best known for […]

Anne Brontë

Born: January 17, 1820, Thornton, England Died: May 28, 1849 (aged 29), Scarborough, England Years Active: 1836—1849 Notable Works: Agnes Grey (1847), The Tenant of Wildfell Hall (1848) Anne Brontë (17 January 1820 – 28 May 1849) was an English novelist and poet, best known for her two novels Agnes Grey and The Tenant of […]

Geoffrey Chaucer

Geoffrey Chaucer (c. 1340s – 25 October 1400) was an English author and poet, most known for his The Canterbury Tales. He is widely considered one of the greatest English poets of the Middle Ages and has been called the “father of English literature”. Chaucer had a career in the civil service as a bureaucrat, courtier, […]

John Dryden

Born: August 19, 1631, Northamptonshire, England Died: May 12, 1700 (aged 68), London, England Notable Works: “Absalom and Achitophel”, “Marriage à-la-Mode”, “Mac Flecknoe”, “The Indian Queen”, “The Conquest of Granada of the Spaniards”, “King Arthur”, “Secret Love, or the Maiden Queen”, “Annus Mirabilis”, “The Hind and the Panther”, “Of Dramatic Poesie, an Essay” John Dryden […]

Percy Bysshe Shelley

Born: August 14, 1792, Sussex, England Died: July 8, 1822 (aged 29), Gulf of La Spezia, Kingdom of Sardinia (now Italy) Notable Works: “Ode to the West Wind, “Ozymandias”, “Music, To a Skylark”, “The Cloud”, “The Mask of Anarchy”, “When Soft Voices Die” Percy Bysshe Shelley (4 August 1792 — 8 July 1822) was a […]

Born: c. June 11, 1572, Westminster, England Died: c. August 16, 1637 (aged 65), London, England Notable Works: Every Man in His Humour, Volpone, or The Fox, The Alchemist, Bartholomew Fair (Benjamin) Ben Jonson (c. 11 June 1572 — c. 16 August 1637) was an English playwright and poet, best known for his satirical plays […]

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Famous Writers

A list of famous writers/authors/poets throughout history.

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Citation: Pettinger, Tejvan “Famous Writers”, Oxford, UK. www.biographyonline.net – 10th March 2015. Last updated 5 March 2018.

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William Butler Yeats

(1865-1939)

Who Was William Butler Yeats?

William Butler Yeats published his first works in the mid-1880s while a student at Dublin's Metropolitan School of Art. His early accomplishments include The Wanderings of Oisin and Other Poems (1889) and such plays as The Countess Cathleen (1892) and Deirdre (1907). In 1923, he was awarded the Nobel Prize for Literature. He went on to pen more influential works, including The Tower (1928) and Words for Music Perhaps and Other Poems (1932). Yeats, who died in 1939, is remembered as one of the leading Western poets of the 20th century.

William Butler Yeats was born on June 13, 1865, in Dublin, Ireland, the oldest child of John Butler Yeats and Susan Mary Pollexfen. Although John trained as a lawyer, he abandoned the law for art soon after his first son was born. Yeats spent much of his early years in London, where his father was studying art, but frequently returned to Ireland as well.

In the mid-1880s, Yeats pursued his own interest in art as a student at the Metropolitan School of Art in Dublin. Following the publication of his poems in the Dublin University Review in 1885, he soon abandoned art school for other pursuits.

Career Beginnings

Around this time, Yeats founded the Rhymers' Club poetry group with Ernest Rhys. He also joined the Order of the Golden Dawn, an organization that explored topics related to the occult and mysticism. While he was fascinated with otherworldly elements, Yeats's interest in Ireland, especially its folktales, fueled much of his output. The title work of The Wanderings of Oisin and Other Poems (1889) draws from the story of a mythic Irish hero.

Acclaimed Poet and Playwright

In addition to his poetry, Yeats devoted significant energy to writing plays. He teamed with Lady Gregory to develop works for the Irish stage, the two collaborating for the 1902 production of Cathleen Ni Houlihan . Around that time, Yeats helped found the Irish National Theatre Society, serving as its president and co-director, with Lady Gregory and John Millington Synge. More works soon followed, including On Baile's Strand , Deirdre and At the Hawk's Well .

Following his marriage to Georgie Hyde-Lees in 1917, Yeats began a new creative period through experiments with automatic writing. The newlyweds sat together for writing sessions they believed to be guided by forces from the spirit world, through which Yeats formulated intricate theories of human nature and history. They soon had two children, daughter Anne and son William Michael.

The celebrated writer then became a political figure in the new Irish Free State, serving as a senator for six years beginning in 1922. The following year, he received an important accolade for his writing as the recipient of the Nobel Prize in Literature. According to the official Nobel Prize website, Yeats was selected "for his always inspired poetry, which in a highly artistic form gives expression to the spirit of a whole nation."

Yeats continued to write until his death. Some of his important later works include The Wild Swans at Coole (1917), A Vision (1925), The Tower (1928) and Words for Music Perhaps and Other Poems (1932). Yeats passed away on January 28, 1939, in Roquebrune-Cap-Martin, France. The publication of Last Poems and Two Plays shortly after his death further cemented his legacy as a leading poet and playwright.

QUICK FACTS

• Name: William Butler Yeats
• Birth Year: 1865
• Birth date: June 13, 1865
• Birth City: Dublin
• Birth Country: Ireland
• Gender: Male
• Best Known For: William Butler Yeats was one of the greatest English-language poets of the 20th century and received the Nobel Prize for Literature in 1923.
• Fiction and Poetry
• Journalism and Nonfiction
• Astrological Sign: Gemini
• Metropolitan School of Art (Dublin)
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• Death Year: 1939
• Death date: January 28, 1939
• Death City: Menton
• Death Country: France

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• Article Title: William Butler Yeats Biography
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• Biography in Context This link opens in a new window Online biographical reference database in the fields of literature, science, business, entertainment, politics, sports, history, current events and the arts.Biographical information on over one million people throughout history, around the world.
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• Literature Online (LION) This link opens in a new window Literature Online includes full text of literary works in English from the Middle Ages to the twentieth century. It also includes the Annual Bibliography of English Language and Literature, together with biographic and bibliographic reference materials for each author. More information less... A fully searchable library of more than 350,000 works of English and American poetry, drama and prose. LION is the single most extensive and wide-ranging online collection of English and American literature.Resources included in this resource are: Bibliographies Biographies Columbia Companion to the 20th Century American Short Story Columbia Dictionary of Modern European Literature Columbia Dictionary of Modern Literary and Cultural Criticism Concise Oxford Companion to English Literature Concise Oxford Dictionary of Literary Terms Encyclopedia of African Literature Encyclopedia of American Poetry: The Nineteenth Century Encyclopedia of Latin American and Caribbean Literature, 1900-2003 Encyclopedia of Linguistics (2 vols.) Encyclopedia of the Novel Handbook of African American Literature New Princeton Encyclopedia of Poetry and Poetics Oxford Companion to Irish Literature Penguin Classics Introductions Routledge Encyclopedia of Narrative Theory Routledge Encyclopedia of Post-Colonial Literatures in English (2nd Edition)
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• Allen Ginsberg Project The website of the Allen Ginsberg Estate which offers access to the vast collection of Ginsberg material. Explore published and never-before-published text, photos, hand-written documents and audio and video materials representing Allen's life-work.
• The First World War Poetry Digital Archive The First World War Poetry Digital Archive is an online repository of text, images, audio, and video for teaching, learning, and research. The heart of the archive consists of collections of primary material from major poets of the period, including Wilfred Owen, Isaac Rosenberg, Robert Graves, Vera Brittain, and Edward Thomas. This is supplemented by multimedia artifacts from the Imperial War Museum, a separate archive of over 6,500 items contributed by the general public, and a set of specially developed educational resources.
• The Poetess Archive This archive constitutes a resource for studying the literary history of popular British and American poetry. Much of it composed during what can be called the “bull market” of poetry's popularity, late eighteenth- and nineteenth-century popular poetry was often written in what came to be designated an "effeminate" style, whether written by men or women. Writings in the poetess tradition were disseminated in myriad collections: miscellanies, beauties, literary annuals, gift books. They achieved a place of prominence in virtually every middle-class household. The Poetess Archive Database now contains a bibliography of over 4,000 entries for works by and about writers working in and against the “poetess tradition,” the extraordinarily popular, but much criticized, flowery poetry written in Britain and America between 1750 and 1900.
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• Walt Whitman Archive (University of Nebraska-Lincoln) The Walt Whitman Archive is an electronic research and teaching tool that sets out to make Whitman's vast work, for the first time, easily and conveniently accessible to scholars, students, and general readers. Includes digitized versions of all six editions of Leaves of Grass, plus a growing collection of Whitman's manuscripts.
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The Best English Poets of All Time

Who is the best English poet? From the Renaissance, to the Jacobean era, to the Restoration, to the modern day, great English poets have been making readers think across the ages. If you love to debate, "Who is the best poet in English literature?" then this is the list for you. 

Written works have the ability to make us feel. They make us want to believe, be inspired, and live vicariously through the stories we read on the page. This list of English poets and their works demonstrate this particular skill. It all begins with the words written on the page. Whether short or long form, poetry is often illusory, and full of rich imagery or hidden meaning. It is these elements which provoke readers to dig deeper and make poetry so engaging and moving.

The best of poems and poets are read throughout the ages. They are read from generation to generation and taught throughout school to young students. Poets and their poetry have the ability to take us places and into the lives of those we’ve never imagined. Poets are often tortured souls or great thinkers who show readers a new view of the world they never would have imagined.  This list includes the great English poets, such as Rudyard Kipling, John Keats, Geoffrey Chaucer, and William Shakespeare. 

These greatest English poets provide the kind of emotional connection to the written word that few can. So, who are the best of the famous English poets? Vote up the absolute best English poets on the list below, or add a famous poet from England who is truly great, but isn't already on the list.

William Shakespeare

William Shakespeare, the Bard of Avon, is renowned for his plays, but his poetic prowess is equally remarkable. His sonnets are considered some of the finest in the English language, exploring themes of love, beauty, and mortality with unparalleled eloquence and depth.

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• # 51 of 752 on The Greatest Minds of All Time

John Milton

John Milton, a 17th-century poet, is best known for his epic poem "Paradise Lost," which recounts the biblical story of humanity's fall from grace. A master of blank verse, Milton's work is characterized by its intellectual rigor and profound exploration of religious and political themes.

• Dig Deeper... The Best John Milton Quotes
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• # 209 of 752 on The Greatest Minds of All Time

William Wordsworth

William Wordsworth, a key figure in the Romantic movement, revolutionized poetry by focusing on nature and the ordinary human experience. His magnum opus, The Prelude , is an autobiographical epic that traces his personal growth and development as a poet.

• # 426 of 752 on The Greatest Minds of All Time
• # 100 of 508 on The 500+ Best Writers of All Time
• # 1431 of 3,183 on The Most Influential People Of All Time

John Keats, a Romantic poet, possessed an extraordinary gift for sensuous imagery and emotional intensity. His odes, particularly "Ode to a Nightingale" and "Ode on a Grecian Urn," are celebrated for their vivid evocations of beauty and the transience of life.

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• # 73 of 508 on The 500+ Best Writers of All Time
• # 17 of 342 on The Greatest Poets of All Time

Percy Bysshe Shelley

Percy Bysshe Shelley, another leading Romantic poet, championed radical ideas and the power of imagination. His lyrical works, like "Ozymandias" and "To a Skylark," convey a sense of wonder and challenge conventional beliefs about society, religion, and nature.

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• # 149 of 508 on The 500+ Best Writers of All Time
• # 39 of 72 on The Hottest Dead Writers

William Blake

William Blake, a visionary poet and artist, defied convention with his prophetic works that blended mysticism, social criticism, and vivid imagination. His illuminated poems, such as "Songs of Innocence and Experience," reveal a unique perspective on the human condition and the divine.

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• # 206 of 752 on The Greatest Minds of All Time
• # 90 of 508 on The 500+ Best Writers of All Time

John Donne, a metaphysical poet, is renowned for his wit, wordplay, and inventive conceits. His passionate and often erotic love poetry, along with his deeply reflective religious verse, demonstrates his mastery of both intellectual and emotional expression.

• # 134 of 508 on The 500+ Best Writers of All Time
• # 73 of 123 on The Best Gay Authors
• # 7 of 342 on The Greatest Poets of All Time

Geoffrey Chaucer

Geoffrey Chaucer, the father of English literature, is best known for The Canterbury Tales , a collection of stories told by a diverse group of pilgrims. Chaucer's use of Middle English vernacular and his keen observations of human nature make his work both accessible and enduring.

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• # 195 of 752 on The Greatest Minds of All Time
• # 44 of 508 on The 500+ Best Writers of All Time

Samuel Taylor Coleridge

Samuel Taylor Coleridge, a central figure in the Romantic movement, is celebrated for his vivid imagination and his ability to evoke the sublime. His poems, such as "The Rime of the Ancient Mariner" and "Kubla Khan," are marked by their rich imagery and supernatural themes.

• # 214 of 508 on The 500+ Best Writers of All Time
• # 14 of 342 on The Greatest Poets of All Time

George Gordon Byron

George Gordon Byron, commonly known as Lord Byron, was a leading Romantic poet whose works were characterized by their passion, wit, and defiance of societal norms. His narrative poems, like "Childe Harold's Pilgrimage" and "Don Juan," captured the spirit of his age and cemented his reputation as a literary icon.

• # 612 of 752 on The Greatest Minds of All Time
• # 122 of 508 on The 500+ Best Writers of All Time
• # 160 of 296 on The Best Novelists of All Time

T. S. Eliot

T. S. Eliot, a modernist poet, revolutionized 20th-century poetry with his innovative style and profound exploration of the human condition. His seminal work, "The Waste Land," is a complex and allusive masterpiece that reflects the disillusionment and fragmentation of the post-World War I era.

• # 47 of 508 on The 500+ Best Writers of All Time
• # 15 of 142 on The Greatest American Writers of All Time
• # 41 of 72 on The Hottest Dead Writers

Alfred Tennyson, 1st Baron Tennyson

Alfred Tennyson, 1st Baron Tennyson, was a Victorian poet whose lyrical and narrative works grappled with themes of love, loss, and the quest for meaning. His elegy "In Memoriam A.H.H." and his Arthurian epic "Idylls of the King" showcase his mastery of form and his deep sensitivity to the human experience.

• # 109 of 508 on The 500+ Best Writers of All Time
• # 102 of 162 on The Best Fantasy Authors

Thomas Hardy

Thomas Hardy, a Victorian novelist and poet, is celebrated for his evocative descriptions of rural life and his keen observations of human nature. His poems, such as "The Darkling Thrush" and "Tess of the d'Urbervilles," are marked by their melancholy tone and their exploration of fate, loss, and the passage of time.

• # 88 of 508 on The 500+ Best Writers of All Time
• # 22 of 296 on The Best Novelists of All Time
• # 69 of 142 on The Greatest American Writers of All Time

Edmund Spenser

Edmund Spenser, a 16th-century poet, is best known for his epic allegory "The Faerie Queene," which celebrates the virtues of chivalry and the Tudor dynasty. His innovative use of the Spenserian stanza and his richly imaginative style make him a key figure in the development of English poetry.

Alexander Pope

Alexander Pope, an 18th-century poet, is celebrated for his satirical wit and his mastery of the heroic couplet. His works, such as "The Rape of the Lock" and "An Essay on Criticism," are marked by their biting humor, moral insight, and polished versification.

Gerard Manley Hopkins

Gerard Manley Hopkins, a Victorian poet and Jesuit priest, is known for his innovative style and his intense religious and natural imagery. His "sprung rhythm" and his exploration of the relationship between humanity and the divine make his works, like "Pied Beauty" and "The Windhover," truly unique.

• # 444 of 508 on The 500+ Best Writers of All Time
• # 94 of 123 on The Best Gay Authors
• # 71 of 342 on The Greatest Poets of All Time

W. H. Auden

W. H. Auden, a 20th-century poet, is known for his technical virtuosity and his wide-ranging exploration of love, politics, and culture. His works, such as "Funeral Blues" and "September 1, 1939," display his mastery of form and his ability to engage with the pressing issues of his time.

• # 192 of 508 on The 500+ Best Writers of All Time
• # 1744 of 3,183 on The Most Influential People Of All Time
• # 40 of 123 on The Best Gay Authors

Robert Browning

Robert Browning, a Victorian poet, is celebrated for his dramatic monologues, which reveal the inner lives of his characters with psychological insight and vivid detail. His works, such as "My Last Duchess" and "Porphyria's Lover," showcase his innovative approach to form and his keen understanding of human nature.

• # 200 of 508 on The 500+ Best Writers of All Time
• # 24 of 342 on The Greatest Poets of All Time
• # 88 of 124 on Famous People Buried at Westminster Abbey

Christina Rossetti

Christina Rossetti, a Victorian poet, is celebrated for her deeply personal and often melancholic verse. Her works, such as "Goblin Market" and "In the Bleak Midwinter," reveal her mastery of form and her ability to convey complex emotions with clarity and grace.

Emily Dickinson

Emily Dickinson, a 19th-century American poet, is renowned for her innovative style and her exploration of themes such as love, death, and the nature of the self. Her works, characterized by their brevity and their use of slant rhyme, display a unique voice and a deep understanding of the human experience.

• # 220 of 752 on The Greatest Minds of All Time
• # 36 of 508 on The 500+ Best Writers of All Time

Oscar Wilde

Oscar Wilde, a 19th-century poet and playwright, is celebrated for his wit, aestheticism, and his critique of Victorian society. His poems, such as "The Ballad of Reading Gaol" and "The Harlot's House," display his mastery of form and his ability to blend beauty and moral insight.

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• # 119 of 752 on The Greatest Minds of All Time

Elizabeth Barrett Browning

Elizabeth Barrett Browning, a Victorian poet, is renowned for her passionate love poetry and her exploration of social and political issues. Her works, such as "Sonnets from the Portuguese" and "Aurora Leigh," reveal her technical skill and her deep engagement with the world around her.

• # 219 of 508 on The 500+ Best Writers of All Time
• # 22 of 104 on The Best Female Authors of All Time

Dylan Thomas

Dylan Thomas, a 20th-century Welsh poet, is renowned for his distinctive voice and his evocative explorations of love, nature, and the human spirit. His works, such as "Do Not Go Gentle into That Good Night" and "Fern Hill," are marked by their musicality, emotional intensity, and vivid imagery.

• # 690 of 752 on The Greatest Minds of All Time
• # 45 of 72 on The Hottest Dead Writers

Wilfred Owen

Wilfred Owen, a 20th-century poet, is renowned for his powerful and moving depictions of the horrors of World War I. His poems, such as "Dulce et Decorum Est" and "Anthem for Doomed Youth," challenge the romanticized notions of war and reveal the true cost of conflict.

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• # 36 of 123 on The Best Gay Authors
• # 28 of 75 on The Best Poets of the 20th Century

Emily Brontë

Emily Brontë, a Victorian poet and novelist, is best known for her haunting and passionate novel "Wuthering Heights." Her poetry, marked by its intense emotion and vivid imagery, reveals her deep connection to the natural world and her keen insight into the human heart.

Robert Burns

Robert Burns, an 18th-century Scottish poet, is celebrated for his use of the Scots dialect and his keen observations of rural life. His works, such as "Auld Lang Syne" and "To a Mouse," reveal his deep love for his native land and his ability to find universal themes in everyday experiences.

• # 555 of 752 on The Greatest Minds of All Time
• # 43 of 72 on The Hottest Dead Writers

Christopher Marlowe

Christopher Marlowe, a 16th-century poet and playwright, is celebrated for his innovative use of blank verse and his exploration of themes such as ambition, desire, and power. His works, such as "Doctor Faustus" and "Hero and Leander," showcase his dramatic flair and his ability to engage with complex moral and philosophical issues.

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• # 136 of 508 on The 500+ Best Writers of All Time
• # 95 of 342 on The Greatest Poets of All Time

Rudyard Kipling

Rudyard Kipling, a Victorian poet and writer, is best known for his works that celebrate British imperialism and his tales of adventure, such as The Jungle Book . His poems, like "If—" and "Gunga Din," showcase his mastery of form and his ability to convey complex ideas with clarity and precision.

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• # 242 of 752 on The Greatest Minds of All Time
• # 93 of 508 on The 500+ Best Writers of All Time

Andrew Marvell

Andrew Marvell, a 17th-century metaphysical poet, is celebrated for his wit, wordplay, and exploration of love, politics, and religion. His works, such as "To His Coy Mistress" and "The Garden," display his intellectual depth and his ability to convey profound ideas through vivid imagery and innovative metaphors.

Philip Larkin

Philip Larkin, a 20th-century poet, is known for his understated style and his exploration of the human experience in post-war Britain. His works, such as "Church Going" and "This Be The Verse," reveal his keen observations of everyday life and his ability to find beauty and meaning in the mundane.

Lists about and ranking the best poets and poems of all times, including rhymes, haiku, sonnets, free verse, blank verse, epics, ballads, love poems, villanelles, and even limericks.

The 20 Best Biographies of Writers

The best biographies of writers cut through the gossip, the scandals, the myths, and the legends to deftly balance the life of the author with their literary legacy. This list features the best literary biographies of writers who penned classic works across more than four hundred years of literary history. From Shakespeare to Richard Wright to Mary Shelley and Virginia Woolf, these favorite biographies of writers encompass a deep bench of the best biographies of famous writers. Let’s dive in!

But first, if you’re interested in more of the best literary biographies, be sure to check out our list of the 10 best biographies of poets :

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And now for an epic list of the 20 best biographies of writers…

Agatha christie: an elusive woman by lucy worsley.

Agatha Christie, one of the “Masters of Suspense,” lived a remarkable life while penning classics like Murder on the Orient Express and And Then There Were None . Read all about it in Lucy Worsley’s Agatha Christie: An Elusive Woman . Among the best literary biographies, this one dispels the mysteries in the real life of this iconic mystery writer.

How to read it: Purchase Agatha Christie: An Elusive Woman on Amazon

Also a poet: frank o’hara, my father, and me by ada calhoun.

This unusual literary biography blends personal memoir with a bio of one of the greatest poets of all time, Frank O’Hara (for his collected poems, check out this edition ). In Also a Poet , Ada Calhoun discovers tapes of interviews between Peter Schjeldahl, her father, an art critic, and poet Frank O’Hara. The recordings were intended to be used in Schjeldahl’s unfinished biography of O’Hara. One of the best biographies of writers, Calhoun sets out to complete her father’s book while also intertwining memoirs of her own complicated relationship with her father. The result is a raw and real read you won’t soon forget.

How to read it: Purchase Also a Poet on Amazon

Jane austen: a life by claire tomalin.

Among readers who have favorite biographies of writers, Claire Tomalin’s Jane Austen: A Life often ranks high among the best literary biographies. We all know Jane Austen—author of, among other classics, Pride and Prejudice and Emma —right? Not so fast. Tomalin’s biography uncovers the previously limited life of this incredibly influential writer.

How to read it: Purchase Jane Austen: A Life on Amazon

Begin again: james baldwin’s america and its urgent lessons for our own by eddie s. glaude jr..

The best biographies of writers explore the legacy of the famous author whose portrait they are trying to draw. And that’s exactly what Eddie S. Glaude Jr. does in Begin Again: James Baldwin’s America and Its Urgent Lessonsf or Our Own . This bio of James Baldwin, perhaps most famous for his novel with queer themes, Giovanni’s Room , argues that Baldwin’s vision of America remains relevant today.

How to read it: Purchase Begin Again on Amazon

Born to be posthumous: the eccentric life and mysterious genius of edward gorey by mark dery.

I’m a huge Edward Gorey fan. I’ve read his books—some of which are collected in Amphigorey: Fifteen Books —over and over again and count him as an influence on my own writing. So imagine how delightful it was to encounter Born to Be Posthumous , Mark Dery’s compelling portrait of Gorey, definitely one of he best biographies of writers. This engrossing literary biography captures the “eccentric life and mysterious genius” of Gorey in a book that illuminates this exceptional-but-often-overlooked pioneer of the macabre.

How to read it: Purchase Born to Be Posthumous on Amazon

The bradbury chronicles: the life of ray bradbury by sam weller.

I love Ray Bradbury. During a very difficult time in my life, I sought refuge in Bradbury’s imagination, devouring two of his most treasured short story collections, The Martian Chronicles and The Illustrated Man (get them both in this Ray Bradbury boxed collection by the Library of America). I was completely swept up in wonder and fascination. So I’m so excited to say that Sam Weller’s The Bradbury Chronicles illuminates the life of this towering figure in America’s literary history, easily one of the best biographies of famous writers. Read this book and learn about the incredible life of one of the most incredible authors ever.

How to read it: Purchase The Bradbury Chronicles on Amazon

The brontë myth by lucasta miller.

One of the best biographies of famous English writers, Lucasta Miller’s The Brontë Myth is a deep dive into the lives and literary works of the Brontë sisters, whom you may know best from Jane Eyre (Charlotte Brontë) and Wuthering Heights (Emily Brontë). Miller’s bio unfurls the tangled reputation of these three brilliant sisters, liberating them from the various schools of thought—psychoanalytical, feminist, etc.—that have embraced the Brontës and counted them as their own. Instead, we get a fresh update on the lives of these influential sister-authors, free of the various schools of criticism that have ensnared them in their jaws. (If you’re just getting started with the Brontës, check out this handsome box set of their most well-known novels .)

How to read it: Purchase The Brontë Myth on Amazon

Cross of snow: a life of henry wadsworth longfellow by nicholas a. basbanes.

Chances are you’ve heard of Henry Wadsworth Longfellow, but until now, this iconic 19th century American author has lived a life undiscovered. Read the best of Longfellow’s work before diving into this incredible look at an incredible writer. In Cross of Snow , Nicholas A. Basbanes reveals the life of Longfellow, charting his influences and the writer he influenced himself. This breakthrough study is easily one of the best literary biographies.

How to read it: Purchase Cross of Snow on Amazon

Every love story is a ghost story: a life of david foster wallace by d. t. max.

The turbulent life of David Foster Wallace, author of that infamous classic, Infinite Jest , is demystified in D. T. Max’s Every Love Story Is a Ghost Story , the must-read literary biography of this important America scribe. The best biographies of writers sort through the gossip, the speculation, and the larger-than-life reputations of their subjects, allowing the author’s life to be seen in line with their work without overtaking their literary genius. And that’s exactly what Max manages in one of the best biographies of famous writers.

How to read it: Purchase Every Love Story Is a Ghost Story on Amazon

I am alive and you are dead: a journey into the mind of philip k. dick by emmanuel carrère.

The genius of Philip K. Dick has left us with classic sci-fi works like Do Androids Dream of Electric Sheep (inspiration for the SF film Blade Runner ) and A Scanner Darkly . But who was the man behind these important books that helped establish the science fiction genre? You’ll find the answer to that question in Emmanuel Carrère’s I Am Alive and You Are Dead , an essential literary biography for any fan of Dick’s writing. Definitely one of the best biographies of writers, I Am Alive and You Are Dead is subtitled “A journey into the mind of Philip K. Dick,” an apt description of this deep dive into the brain of this key figure in science fiction and literature in general.

How to read it: Purchase I Am Alive and You Are Dead on Amazon

T.s. eliot: an imperfect life by lyndall gordon.

I consider many of T.S. Eliot’s poems to be perfect, not to mention Old Possum’s Book of Practical Cats , which was illustrated by Edward Gorey (whose bio I included above in this list of the best biographies of writers). But there’s no denying that Eliot lived a, well, complicated life that included anti-Semitism and misogyny. So how do we reconcile the poet’s work with the poet himself? You’ll find out in Lyndall Gordon’s T.S. Eliot: An Imperfect Life , among the greatest biographies of poets. Gordon takes Eliot on in this unflinching study of Eliot’s life and literature. The best literary biographies face their subject head on, revealing the “imperfect” lives of their subjects, and it’s precisely that approach that makes this book among the most essential biographies of famous English writers.

How to read it: Purchase T.S. Eliot: An Imperfect Life on Amazon

J.r.r. tolkien: a biography by humphrey carpenter.

Who was the man who wrote The Lord of the Rings , easily the most influential fantasy books ever written? You’ll find out in Humphrey Carpenter’s J.R.R. Tolkien: A Biography . This one definitely ranks among the best biographies of writers because of the nimble way Carpenter weaves together the life of Tolkien with his work, offering a master class of how to write literary biographies. Uncover the man from the myth in this close read on the man who penned a fictional universe as vast and complete as our own universe.

How to read it: Purchase J.R.R. Tolkien: A Life on Amazon

Mary shelley by miranda seymour.

She wrote the groundbreaking science fiction novel Frankenstein , but who was the woman behind this classic story? In Miranda Seymour’s Mary Shelley , we discover exactly that. Among the best literary biographies, this book is a saga of the life of Mary Shelley, a life that saw as much sorrow and trauma as joy. In this book, surely one of the must-have biographies of female writers, Seymour sifts through the documents about Shelley’s life to situate famous English author within her historical and cultural context while also surveying how Shelley influenced the canon of English literature.

How to read it: Purchase Mary Shelley on Amazon

Richard wright: the life and times by hazel rowley.

Richard Wright is perhaps best known for his novel Native Son , but the author also contributed many more books and writing to American letters. In this book, Hazel Rowley digs deep into Wright’s exceptional life and magnificent literature to braid the two together. The result is one of the best biographies of writers, one that highlights the important contributions of a leading figure in American literary history.

How to read it: Purchase Richard Wright: The Life and Times on Amazon

Savage beauty: the life of edna st. vincent millay by nancy milford.

The poetry of Edna St. Vincent Millay positions this influential author as one of the leading poets of twentieth century. And it’s precisely that legacy that Nancy Milford illuminates in Savage Beauty: The Life of Edna St. Vincent Millay . With this fresh perspective on Millay, the midcentury master of verse, readers get one of the best biographies of poets. If all biographies of female writers were this comprehensive and inquisitive, there’d be no time to read anything else, marking this as an exceptional biography. If you’re interested in important female authors, check out this one vibrant, bold life of Millay, and you won’t be disappointed.

How to read it: Purchase Savage Beauty on Amazon

Shirley jackson: a rather haunted life by ruth franklin.

I’m a big fan of Shirley Jackson. I count We Have Always Lived in the Castle among my all-time favorite books. So it’s with great pleasure that I share that Ruth Franklin’s Shirley Jackson: A Rather Haunted Life definitely counts as one of the best biographies of writers. This literary biography goes deep into the life of Jackson, and in so doing, you’ll realize why Franklin subtitles this as “a rather haunted life.” Franklin highlights how this iconic writer danced on the edge of the macabre, radicalized the American literary world, and scandalized the public. It’s a book that’s as dishy as it is illuminating, ranking as among the best literary biographies.

How to read: Purchase Shirley Jackson: A Rather Haunted Life on Amazon

Updike by adam begley.

John Updike. Just the name of this author conjures up visions of some of the best writing in the English language, like the Rabbit tetralogy and critically acclaimed short stories . How on earth do you begin to assemble the life of this significant author? Somehow Adam Begley manages it in Updike , one of the best biographies of writers. Begley’s bio of Updike meets its match, becoming as innovative and important as its titular subject. The result is a dazzling biography whose story is just as gripping as one of Updike’s novels. You won’t want to pass this one up.

How to read it: Purchase Updike on Amazon

Virginia woolf by hermione lee.

When I was a senior in college, I did an independent study of Virginia Woolf with a great professor. To get ready for the course, I read biographies of Virginia Woolf, including Hermione Lee’s bio that I’m including in this list of the best literary biographies. Lee tackles her larger-than-life subject, Virginia Woolf, known for her Modernist novels like Mrs. Dalloway and, my personal favorite, To the Lighthouse . Lee is more than up to the task, and the result is, according to The Philadelphia Inquirer : “A biography wholly worthy of the brilliant woman it chronicles. . . . It rediscovers Virginia Woolf afresh.” If you’re at all curious about Woolf, the Modernists, the Bloomsbury Group, or the history of English literature, pick this one up.

How to read it: Purchase Virginia Woolf on Amazon

Will in the world: how shakespeare became shakespeare by stephen greenblatt.

Any list of the best biographies of famous English writers would be incomplete without a bio of the father of English literature: yep, William Shakespeare. What’s left to say about the Bard, who penned some of the most important writing in the English language ? Turns out, plenty. And that’s exactly what you’ll find in Stephen Greenblatt’s masterful biography Will in the World , which attempts to uncover Shakespeare’s origin story. Greenblatt explores Shakespeare’s early life, and the cultural, historical, and artistic forces that explain, so the subtitle says, “How Shakespeare Became Shakespeare.” The outcome is Will in the World , a finalist for the Pulitzer Prize and part of the curriculum of anyone looking for the best biographies of writers. This literary biography proves it’s still possible to write fresh, surprising, captivating, and engrossing biographies of famous writers. And Will in the World is the ultimate mic-drop, making it the only Shakespeare biography you need.

How to read it: Purchase Will in the World on Amazon

Wrapped in rainbows: the life of zora neale hurston by valerie boyd.

Many people discover Harlem Renaissance author Zora Neale Hurston through her novel Their Eyes Were Watching God , but in the award-winning Wrapped in Rainbows , Valerie Boyd uncovers the writer’s total miraculous output and undeniable influence. This key book is for sure one of the best literary biographies that any student of American literature will want to check out.

How to read it: Purchase Wrapped in Rainbows on Amazon

And there you have it an essential list of the 20 best biographies of writers. which of these best literary biographies will you read first, share this:.

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Sarah S. Davis is the founder of Broke by Books, a blog about her journey as a schizoaffective disorder bipolar type writer and reader. Sarah's writing about books has appeared on Book Riot, Electric Literature, Kirkus Reviews, BookRags, PsychCentral, and more. She has a BA in English from the University of Pennsylvania, a Master of Library and Information Science from Clarion University, and an MFA in Writing for Children and Young Adults from Vermont College of Fine Arts.

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10 Most Famous English Poets of All Time

The work of a poet is beautiful, delicate, simple yet complex, and some of them left their marks forever in the history of literature.

Writing is a beautiful work, so as the writers, novelists and especially, poets. It is not easy to convey all thoughts, emotions and opinions into a few sentences and words, and yet make all the pieces rhythm in the ears. The best of poems and poets are read throughout the ages. They are read from generation to generation and taught throughout school to young students. Poets and their poetry have the ability to take us places and into the lives of those we’ve never imagined. Poets are often tortured souls or great thinkers who show readers a new view of the world they never would have imagined.

After looking through multiple sources, social media and literature websites, we have compiled a list of top 10 most famous English poets of all time, in which their works are still used in teaching and researching in school, university nowadays.

List of top 10 most famous English poets of all time

10. charles dickens, 9. robert browning, 8. t.s. eliot, 7. john milton, 6. john donne, 5. oscar wilde, 4. sylvia plath, 3. john keats, 2. william blake, 1. william shakespeare, who are the most famous english poets of all time.

(Biography source: Poetry Foundation , Poets.org )

Charles Dickens was born on February 7, 1812, the son of a clerk at the Navy Pay Office. His father, John Dickens, continually living beyond his means, was imprisoned for debt in the Marshalsea in 1824. 12-year-old Charles was removed from school and sent to work at a boot-blacking factory earning six shillings a week to help support the family.

This dark experience cast a shadow over the clever, sensitive boy that became a defining experience in his life, he would later write that he wondered "how I could have been so easily cast away at such an age."

This childhood poverty and feelings of abandonment, although unknown to his readers until after his death, would be a heavy influence on Dickens' later views on social reform and the world he would create through his fiction.

Dickens would go on to write 15 major novels including, Oliver Twist, Bleak House, Great Expectations, A Tale of Two Cities, and his personal favorite, David Copperfield. He will forever be associated with the celebration of Christmas due to his Christmas Books, the most popular being A Christmas Carol. Dickens also edited, and contributed to, weekly journals Household Words and All the Year Round. Near the end of his life he traveled throughout Britain and America giving public readings of his work.

Charles Dickens died an old man of 57, worn out with work and travel, on June 9, 1870. He wished to be buried, without fanfare, in a small cemetery in Rochester, Kent, but the Nation would not allow it. He was laid to rest in Poet's Corner, Westminster Abbey, the flowers from thousands of mourners overflowing the open grave. Among the more beautiful bouquets were many simple clusters of wildflowers, wrapped in rags.

Browning was born on May 7, 1812 in Camberwell, a middle-class suburb of London. He was the only son of Robert Browning, a clerk in the Bank of England, and a devoutly religious German-Scotch mother, Sarah Anna Wiedemann Browning. He had a sister, Sarianna, who like her parents was devoted to Browning. While Mrs. Browning’s piety and love of music are frequently cited as important influences on the poet’s development, his father’s scholarly interests and unusual educational practices may have been equally significant. The son of a wealthy banker, Robert Browning the elder had been sent in his youth to make his fortune in the West Indies, but he found the slave economy there so distasteful that he returned, hoping for a career in art and scholarship. A quarrel with his father and the financial necessity it entailed led the elder Browning to relinquish his dreams so as to support himself and his family through his bank clerkship.

Browning’s early career has been characterized by Ian Jack as a search for an appropriate poetic form, and his first published effort, Pauline: A Fragment of a Confession (1833), proved in retrospect to be a false start. Browning’s next poetic production, Paracelsus (1835), achieved more critical regard and began to move toward the greater objectivity of the dramatic monologue form that Browning perfected over the next several years. Browning also wrote several plays intended for the stage, along with closet dramas; however, he was not suited to be a playwright. His chief theatrical patron, William Macready, was already becoming disillusioned by the plays’ lack of success and the poet’s persistent difficulties in creating theatrical plots.

Before that estrangement, however, the alliance between Browning and Macready had one salutary effect: it provided the occasion for Browning’s composition of “The Pied Piper.” In May 1842 Macready’s son Willie was sick in bed; Willie liked to draw and asked Browning to give him “some little thing to illustrate” while in confinement. The poet responded first with a short poem, “The Cardinal and the Dog,” and then, after being impressed with Willie’s drawings for it, with “The Pied Piper of Hamelin.” The story of the Pied Piper was evidently well known in Browning’s home. The poet’s father began his own poem on the subject in 1842 for another young family friend, discontinuing his effort when he learned of his son’s poem. The primary source of the story was a 17th-century collection, Nathaniel Wanley’s Wonders of the Little World (1678). Browning claimed many years later that this was the sole source, but William Clyde DeVane notes that some significant details in Browning’s account, including an erroneous date for the event described, occur in an earlier work, Richard Verstegen’s Restitution of Decayed Intelligence in Antiquities (1605), but not in Wanley.

Browning wrote relatively little during the marriage, in part because the family frequently moved and, because of Elizabeth’s frail health, he was usually busy making all the arrangements for housing and transportation. The Brownings had one child, Robert Wiedemann Barrett Browning, called “Pen,” born in 1849 (the same year Browning’s mother died). Both parents doted on the boy, and Robert Browning took particular responsibility for his son’s education—yet another diversion from poetic production. The poet who some years earlier had produced a major children’s poem to amuse the son of a friend made no similar creations for his own son, however, but continued to work on longer philosophical poems for an adult audience.

Browning became in his later years that curious phenomenon, the Victorian sage—widely regarded for his knowledge and his explorations of philosophical questions of great resonance in Victorian life. He witnessed the creation (by F.J. Furnivall in 1881) of the Browning Society, dedicated to the study of the poet’s work and thought. Just before his death in 1889, Browning finally published the other poem written for young Willie Macready, “The Cardinal and the Dog.” This 15-line poem, like “The Pied Piper,” originated in one of the legends recounted in Wanley’s Wonders of the Little World. It tells how Cardinal Crescenzio, a representative of the pope at the Council of Trent, was frightened by the apparition of a large black dog that only he could see, after which he became seriously ill; on his deathbed he again saw the dog. The poem has elicited little critical response and has seldom been anthologized; its interest today lies primarily in its role as a warm-up to “The Pied Piper.”

Anyone as widely adulated as Browning was during the later years of his life is bound to suffer a decline in critical valuation. Along with other Victorians, Browning was dismissed by influential figures among the modernists, including T.S. Eliot (although Ezra Pound paid tribute to Browning as one of his literary fathers). Following World War II, however, Browning’s reputation has been salvaged by a more objective generation of critics who note his poetic failings but also trace his influence on the poetic forms and concerns of his 20th-century successors. Through all the vicissitudes of critical reputation, however, Browning’s major contribution to the canon of children’s literature, “The Pied Piper of Hamelin,” has retained its popular audience.

At the time of his death in 1889, he was one of the most popular poets in England.

Thomas Stearns Eliot OM (26 September 1888 – 4 January 1965) was a poet, essayist, publisher, playwright, literary critic and editor. Considered one of the 20th century's major poets, he is a central figure in English-language Modernist poetry.

Born in St. Louis, Missouri, to a prominent Boston Brahmin family, he moved to England in 1914 at the age of 25 and went on to settle, work, and marry there. He became a British citizen in 1927 at the age of 39, subsequently renouncing his American citizenship.

Eliot first attracted widespread attention for his poem "The Love Song of J. Alfred Prufrock" in 1915, which was received as a modernist masterpiece. It was followed by some of the best-known poems in the English language, including "The Waste Land" (1922), "The Hollow Men" (1925), "Ash Wednesday" (1930), and Four Quartets (1943). He was also known for his seven plays, particularly Murder in the Cathedral (1935) and The Cocktail Party (1949). He was awarded the Nobel Prize in Literature in 1948, "for his outstanding, pioneer contribution to present-day poetry".

Eliot died of emphysema at his home in Kensington in London, on 4 January 1965, and was cremated at Golders Green Crematorium. In accordance with his wishes, his ashes were taken to St Michael and All Angels' Church, East Coker, the village in Somerset from which his Eliot ancestors had emigrated to America. A wall plaque in the church commemorates him with a quotation from his poem East Coker: "In my beginning is my end. In my end is my beginning."

In 1967, on the second anniversary of his death, Eliot was commemorated by the placement of a large stone in the floor of Poets' Corner in London's Westminster Abbey. The stone, cut by designer Reynolds Stone, is inscribed with his life dates, his Order of Merit, and a quotation from his poem Little Gidding, "the communication / of the dead is tongued with fire beyond / the language of the living."

In 1986, a blue plaque was placed on the apartment block - No. 3 Kensington Court Gardens - where he lived and died.

John Milton’s career as a writer of prose and poetry spans three distinct eras: Stuart England; the Civil War (1642-1648) and Interregnum, including the Commonwealth (1649-1653) and Protectorate (1654-1660); and the Restoration. Milton’s chief polemical prose was written in the decades of the 1640s and 1650s, during the strife between the Church of England and various reformist groups such as the Puritans and between the monarch and Parliament. Designated the antiepiscopal or antiprelatical tracts and the antimonarchical or political tracts, these works advocate a freedom of conscience and a high degree of civil liberty for humankind against the various forms of tyranny and oppression, both ecclesiastical and governmental. In line with his libertarian outlook, Milton wrote Areopagitica (1644), often cited as one of the most compelling arguments on the freedom of the press. In March 1649 Milton was appointed secretary for foreign tongues to the Council of State. His service to the government, chiefly in the field of foreign policy, is documented by official correspondence, the Letters of State, first published in 1694. Milton vigorously defended Cromwell’s government in Eikonoklastes (1649), or Imagebreaker, which was a personal attack on Charles I likening him to William Shakespeare‘s duke of Gloucester (afterward Richard III), a consummate hypocrite. Up to the Restoration, Milton continued to write in defense of the Protectorate despite going blind by 1652. After Charles II was crowned, Milton was dismissed from governmental service, apprehended, and imprisoned. Payment of fines and the intercession of friends and family, including Andrew Marvell, Sir William Davenant, and perhaps Christopher Milton, his younger brother and a Royalist lawyer, brought about Milton’s release. In the troubled period at and after the Restoration he was forced to depart his home which he had occupied for eight years in Petty-France, Westminster. He took up residence elsewhere, including the house of a friend in Bartholomew Close; eventually, he settled in a home at Artillery Walk toward Bunhill Fields. On or about 8 November 1674, when he was almost sixty-six years old, Milton died of complications from gout.

Placing himself in a line of poets whose art was an outlet for their public voice and using, like them, the pastoral poem to present an outlook on politics, Milton aimed to promote an enlightened commonwealth, not unlike the polis of Greek antiquity or the cultured city-states in Renaissance Italy. In 1645 he published his first volume of poetry, Poems of Mr. John Milton , Both English and Latin, much of which was written before he was twenty years old. The volume manifests a rising poet, one who has planned his emergence and projected his development in numerous ways: mastery of ancient and modern languages—Greek, Latin, Hebrew, Italian; awareness of various traditions in literature; and avowed inclination toward the vocation of poet. The poems in the 1645 edition run the gamut of various genres: psalm paraphrase, sonnet, canzone, masque, pastoral elegy, verse letter, English ode, epigram, obituary poem, companion poem, and occasional verse. Ranging from religious to political in subject matter, serious to mock-serious in tone, and traditional to innovative in the use of verse forms, the poems in this volume disclose a self-conscious author whose maturation is undertaken with certain models in mind, notably Virgil from classical antiquity and Edmund Spenser in the English Renaissance. When one considers that the 1645 volume was published when Milton was approximately thirty-seven years old, though some of the poems were written as early as his fifteenth year, it is evident that he sought to draw attention to his unfolding poetic career despite its interruption by governmental service. Perhaps he also sought to highlight the relationship of his poetry to his prose and to call attention to his aspiration, evident in several works in the 1645 volume, to become an epic poet. Thus, the poems in the volume were composed in Stuart England but published after the onset of the English Civil War. Furthermore, Milton may have begun to compose one or more of his mature works—Paradise Lost, Paradise Regained, and Samson Agonistes—in the 1640s, but they were completed and revised much later and not published until after the Restoration.

The English writer and Anglican cleric John Donne is considered now to be the preeminent metaphysical poet of his time. He was born in 1572 to Roman Catholic parents, when practicing that religion was illegal in England. His work is distinguished by its emotional and sonic intensity and its capacity to plumb the paradoxes of faith, human and divine love, and the possibility of salvation. Donne often employs conceits, or extended metaphors, to yoke together “heterogenous ideas,” in the words of Samuel Johnson, thus generating the powerful ambiguity for which his work is famous. After a resurgence in his popularity in the early 20th century, Donne’s standing as a great English poet, and one of the greatest writers of English prose, is now assured.

The history of Donne’s reputation is the most remarkable of any major writer in English; no other body of great poetry has fallen so far from favor for so long. In Donne’s own day his poetry was highly prized among the small circle of his admirers, who read it as it was circulated in manuscript, and in his later years he gained wide fame as a preacher. For some 30 years after his death successive editions of his verse stamped his powerful influence upon English poets. During the Restoration his writing went out of fashion and remained so for several centuries. Throughout the 18th century, and for much of the 19th century, he was little read and scarcely appreciated. It was not until the end of the 1800s that Donne’s poetry was eagerly taken up by a growing band of avant-garde readers and writers. His prose remained largely unnoticed until 1919.

In the first two decades of the 20th century Donne’s poetry was decisively rehabilitated. Its extraordinary appeal to modern readers throws light on the Modernist movement, as well as on our intuitive response to our own times. Donne may no longer be the cult figure he became in the 1920s and 1930s, when T.S. Eliot and William Butler Yeats, among others, discovered in his poetry the peculiar fusion of intellect and passion and the alert contemporariness which they aspired to in their own art. He is not a poet for all tastes and times; yet for many readers Donne remains what Ben Jonson judged him: “the first poet in the world in some things.” His poems continue to engage the attention and challenge the experience of readers who come to him afresh. His high place in the pantheon of the English poets now seems secure.

Donne’s love poetry was written nearly 400 years ago; yet one reason for its appeal is that it speaks to us as directly and urgently as if we overhear a present confidence.

Oscar Fingal O'Flahertie Wills Wilde (16 October 1854 – 30 November 1900) was an Irish poet and playwright. After writing in different forms throughout the 1880s, he became one of the most popular playwrights in London in the early 1890s. He is best remembered for his epigrams and plays, his novel The Picture of Dorian Gray, and the circumstances of his criminal conviction for gross indecency for consensual homosexual acts in "one of the first celebrity trials", imprisonment, and early death from meningitis at age 46.

Wilde's parents were Anglo-Irish intellectuals in Dublin. A young Wilde learned to speak fluent French and German. At university, Wilde read Greats; he demonstrated himself to be an exceptional classicist, first at Trinity College Dublin, then at Oxford. He became associated with the emerging philosophy of aestheticism, led by two of his tutors, Walter Pater and John Ruskin. After university, Wilde moved to London into fashionable cultural and social circles.

As a spokesman for aestheticism, he tried his hand at various literary activities: he published a book of poems, lectured in the United States and Canada on the new "English Renaissance in Art" and interior decoration, and then returned to London where he worked prolifically as a journalist. Known for his biting wit, flamboyant dress and glittering conversational skill, Wilde became one of the best-known personalities of his day. At the turn of the 1890s, he refined his ideas about the supremacy of art in a series of dialogues and essays, and incorporated themes of decadence, duplicity, and beauty into what would be his only novel, The Picture of Dorian Gray (1890). The opportunity to construct aesthetic details precisely, and combine them with larger social themes, drew Wilde to write drama. He wrote Salome (1891) in French while in Paris but it was refused a licence for England due to an absolute prohibition on the portrayal of Biblical subjects on the English stage. Unperturbed, Wilde produced four society comedies in the early 1890s, which made him one of the most successful playwrights of late-Victorian London.

At the height of his fame and success, while The Importance of Being Earnest (1895) was still being performed in London, Wilde prosecuted the Marquess of Queensberry for criminal libel. The Marquess was the father of Wilde's lover, Lord Alfred Douglas. The libel trial unearthed evidence that caused Wilde to drop his charges and led to his own arrest and trial for gross indecency with men. After two more trials he was convicted and sentenced to two years' hard labour, the maximum penalty, and was jailed from 1895 to 1897. During his last year in prison, he wrote De Profundis (published posthumously in 1905), a long letter which discusses his spiritual journey through his trials, forming a dark counterpoint to his earlier philosophy of pleasure. On his release, he left immediately for France, and never returned to Ireland or Britain. There he wrote his last work, The Ballad of Reading Gaol (1898), a long poem commemorating the harsh rhythms of prison life.

Sylvia Plath was born on October 27, 1932, in Boston, Massachusetts. Her mother, Aurelia Schober, was a master’s student at Boston University when she met Plath’s father, Otto Plath, who was her professor. They were married in January of 1932. Otto taught both German and biology, with a focus on apiology, the study of bees.

In 1940, when Plath was eight years old, her father died as a result of complications from diabetes. He had been a strict father, and both his authoritarian attitudes and his death drastically defined Plath's relationships and her poems—most notably in her elegiac and infamous poem "Daddy."

Plath kept a journal from the age of eleven and published her poems in regional magazines and newspapers. Her first national publication was in the Christian Science Monitor in 1950, just after graduating from high school.

In 1950, Plath matriculated at Smith College, where she graduated summa cum laude in 1955.

After graduation, Plath moved to Cambridge, England, on a Fulbright Scholarship. In early 1956, she attended a party and met the English poet Ted Hughes. Shortly thereafter, Plath and Hughes were married, on June 16, 1956.

Plath returned to Massachusetts in 1957 and began studying with Robert Lowell. Her first collection of poems, Colossus, was published in 1960 in England, and two years later in the United States. She returned to England, where she gave birth to her children Frieda and Nicholas, in 1960 and 1962, respectively.

In 1962, Ted Hughes left Plath for Assia Gutmann Wevill. That winter, Plath wrote most of the poems that would comprise her most famous book, Ariel.

In 1963, Plath published a semi-autobiographical novel, The Bell Jar, under the pseudonym Victoria Lucas. She died on February 11 of that year.

Plath’s poetry is often associated with the Confessional movement, and compared to the work of poets such as Lowell and fellow student Anne Sexton. Often, her work is singled out for the intense coupling of its violent or disturbed imagery and its playful use of alliteration and rhyme.

John Keats was born in London on 31 October 1795, the eldest of Thomas and Frances Jennings Keats’s four children. Although he died at the age of twenty-five, Keats had perhaps the most remarkable career of any English poet. He published only fifty-four poems, in three slim volumes and a few magazines. But over his short development he took on the challenges of a wide range of poetic forms from the sonnet, to the Spenserian romance, to the Miltonic epic, defining anew their possibilities with his own distinctive fusion of earnest energy, control of conflicting perspectives and forces, poetic self-consciousness, and, occasionally, dry ironic wit.

Although he is now seen as part of the British Romantic literary tradition, in his own lifetime Keats would not have been associated with other major Romantic poets, and he himself was often uneasy among them. Outside his friend Leigh Hunt‘s circle of liberal intellectuals, the generally conservative reviewers of the day attacked his work as mawkish and bad-mannered, as the work of an upstart “vulgar Cockney poetaster” (John Gibson Lockhart), and as consisting of “the most incongruous ideas in the most uncouth language” (John Wilson Croker). Although Keats had a liberal education in the boy’s academy at Enfield and trained at Guy’s Hospital to become a surgeon, he had no formal literary education. Yet Keats today is seen as one of the canniest readers, interpreters, questioners, of the “modern” poetic project-which he saw as beginning with William Wordsworth—to create poetry in a world devoid of mythic grandeur, poetry that sought its wonder in the desires and sufferings of the human heart. Beyond his precise sense of the difficulties presented him in his own literary-historical moment, he developed with unparalleled rapidity, in a relative handful of extraordinary poems, a rich, powerful, and exactly controlled poetic style that ranks Keats, with the William Shakespeare of the sonnets, as one of the greatest lyric poets in English.

Blake was born on November 28, 1757. Unlike many well-known writers of his day, Blake was born into a family of moderate means. His father, James, was a hosier, and the family lived at 28 Broad Street in London in an unpretentious but “respectable” neighborhood. In all, seven children were born to James and Catherine Wright Blake, but only five survived infancy. Blake seems to have been closest to his youngest brother, Robert, who died young.

Poet, painter, engraver, and visionary William Blake worked to bring about a change both in the social order and in the minds of men. Though in his lifetime his work was largely neglected or dismissed, he is now considered one of the leading lights of English poetry, and his work has only grown in popularity. In his Life of William Blake (1863) Alexander Gilchrist warned his readers that Blake “neither wrote nor drew for the many, hardly for work’y-day men at all, rather for children and angels; himself ‘a divine child,’ whose playthings were sun, moon, and stars, the heavens and the earth.” Yet Blake himself believed that his writings were of national importance and that they could be understood by a majority of his peers. Far from being an isolated mystic, Blake lived and worked in the teeming metropolis of London at a time of great social and political change that profoundly influenced his writing. In addition to being considered one of the most visionary of English poets and one of the great progenitors of English Romanticism, his visual artwork is highly regarded around the world.

William Shakespeare was a renowned English poet, playwright, and actor born in 1564 in Stratford-upon-Avon. His birthday is most commonly celebrated on 23 April (see When was Shakespeare born), which is also believed to be the date he died in 1616.

Shakespeare was a prolific writer during the Elizabethan and Jacobean ages of British theatre (sometimes called the English Renaissance or the Early Modern Period). Shakespeare’s plays are perhaps his most enduring legacy, but they are not all he wrote. Shakespeare’s poems also remain popular to this day.

Altogether Shakespeare's works include 38 plays, 2 narrative poems, 154 sonnets, and a variety of other poems. No original manuscripts of Shakespeare's plays are known to exist today. It is actually thanks to a group of actors from Shakespeare's company that we have about half of the plays at all. They collected them for publication after Shakespeare died, preserving the plays. These writings were brought together in what is known as the First Folio ('Folio' refers to the size of the paper used). It contained 36 of his plays, but none of his poetry.

Shakespeare’s legacy is as rich and diverse as his work; his plays have spawned countless adaptations across multiple genres and cultures. His plays have had an enduring presence on stage and film. His writings have been compiled in various iterations of The Complete Works of William Shakespeare, which include all of his plays, sonnets, and other poems. William Shakespeare continues to be one of the most important literary figures of the English language.

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