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Famous Writers

The best-known novelists, poets and playwrights in our archive, ranked by historical popularity.

957 writers in our database, ranked by historical popularity. Page 1 of 20.

A writer becomes notable when their words keep finding new readers. Many of the names on this list wrote books, poems or plays that are still taught in schools, translated into dozens of languages and adapted for stage and screen. Others shaped how people think about politics, faith or society.

This list covers the novelists, poets, playwrights, essayists and other authors in our database, from ancient poets to contemporary bestsellers. We rank them by historical popularity rather than by literary prizes, so the order shows whose work and lives the world still reads about most.

Who is included: everyone in our database whose primary occupation matches this list. Each person must have an English Wikipedia article and a full date of birth recorded on Wikidata. A growing share of people also have an original profile, written to our editorial rules and marked with a Last reviewed date.

Most famous writer

Fyodor Dostoyevsky

Highest historical popularity score (HPI 93.2)

Most common birth month

February

92 of 957 were born in February

Living vs deceased

119 / 838

12% are still living

Most common nationality

American

186 people, 19% of the list

Editor-written profiles

289

30% have a full original profile so far

The ranked list

  1. 01Fyodor DostoyevskyFyodor DostoyevskyNovelist who wrote Crime and Punishment and The Brothers Karamazov, probing guilt, faith and morality with great psychological depth.🇷🇺Russian · Born November 11, 1821 · Died February 9, 1881View profile
  2. 02Dante AlighieriDante AlighieriFlorentine poet who wrote the Divine Comedy, an epic journey through Hell, Purgatory and Paradise.🇮🇹Italian · Born May 30, 1265 · Died September 13, 1321View profile
  3. 03Johann Wolfgang von GoetheJohann Wolfgang von GoetheWriter and polymath whose two-part drama Faust is a cornerstone of German literature.🇩🇪German · Born August 22, 1749 · Died March 22, 1832View profile
  4. 04J. R. R. TolkienJ. R. R. TolkienCreated Middle-earth, the setting of The Hobbit and the epic fantasy The Lord of the Rings.🇬🇧British · Born January 3, 1892 · Died September 2, 1973View profile
  5. 05Edgar Allan PoeEdgar Allan PoeWriter who pioneered the detective story and mastered gothic horror in works such as "The Raven" and "The Tell-Tale Heart".🇺🇸American · Born January 19, 1809 · Died October 7, 1849View profile
  6. 06Hans Christian AndersenHans Christian AndersenDanish storyteller whose literary fairy tales include The Little Mermaid, The Ugly Duckling and The Emperor's New Clothes.🇩🇰Danish · Born April 2, 1805 · Died August 4, 1875View profile
  7. 07Leo TolstoyLeo TolstoyRussian novelist who wrote the vast works War and Peace and Anna Karenina, both regarded as masterpieces of realism.🇷🇺Russian · Born September 9, 1828 · Died November 20, 1910View profile
  8. 08Franz KafkaFranz KafkaWrote The Trial and The Metamorphosis, whose nightmarish bureaucratic worlds gave rise to the word Kafkaesque.Austro-Hungarian · Born July 3, 1883 · Died June 3, 1924View profile
  9. 09Victor HugoVictor HugoWrote Les Misérables and The Hunchback of Notre-Dame, towering works of French Romantic literature.🇫🇷French · Born February 26, 1802 · Died May 22, 1885View profile
  10. 10VoltaireVoltaireEnlightenment satirist whose novella Candide and tireless campaigns against intolerance made him one of the most influential French writers.🇫🇷French · Born February 20, 1694 · Died May 30, 1778View profile
  11. 11James JoyceJames JoyceWrote Ulysses, the modernist novel that follows a single day in Dublin in 1904.🇮🇪Irish · Born February 2, 1882 · Died January 13, 1941View profile
  12. 12Jules VerneJules VernePioneer of adventure science fiction whose novels include Twenty Thousand Leagues Under the Sea and Around the World in Eighty Days.🇫🇷French · Born February 8, 1828 · Died March 24, 1905View profile
  13. 13MolièreMolièreFrench dramatist and actor whose comedies, including Tartuffe and The Misanthrope, satirised hypocrisy and remain staples of the stage.🇫🇷French · Born January 15, 1622 · Died February 16, 1673View profile
  14. 14Miguel de CervantesMiguel de CervantesSpanish author of Don Quixote, the novel often credited as a founding work of modern European fiction.🇪🇸Spanish · Born September 29, 1547 · Died April 22, 1616View profile
  15. 15Jean-Paul SartreJean-Paul SartreExistentialist philosopher of Being and Nothingness who turned down the 1964 Nobel Prize in Literature.🇫🇷French · Born June 21, 1905 · Died April 15, 1980View profile
  16. 16T. S. EliotT. S. EliotModernist poet who wrote The Waste Land and Four Quartets, and received the Nobel Prize in Literature in 1948.American-born British · Born September 26, 1888 · Died January 4, 1965View profile
  17. 17Alexandre DumasAlexandre DumasProlific writer of historical adventures, including The Three Musketeers and The Count of Monte Cristo.🇫🇷French · Born July 24, 1802 · Died December 5, 1870View profile
  18. 18Albert CamusAlbert CamusWrote the novels The Stranger and The Plague and won the Nobel Prize in Literature in 1957.🇫🇷French · Born November 7, 1913 · Died January 4, 1960View profile
  19. 19Anton ChekhovAnton ChekhovPlaywright and short story writer whose dramas The Seagull, Uncle Vanya and The Cherry Orchard transformed modern theatre.🇷🇺Russian · Born January 29, 1860 · Died July 15, 1904View profile
  20. 20RumiRumiPersian poet whose Masnavi and Divan-e Shams-e Tabrizi became landmarks of Sufi literature, and who inspired the Mevlevi Order.Persian · Born September 30, 1207 · Died December 17, 1273View profile
  21. 21PetrarchPetrarchScholar and poet whose Canzoniere, a sequence of love poems to Laura, shaped the sonnet and early Renaissance humanism.Republic of Florence · Born July 19, 1304 · Died July 18, 1374View profile
  22. 22Honoré de BalzacHonoré de BalzacCreated La Comédie humaine, a vast sequence of novels portraying French society after Napoleon.🇫🇷French · Born May 20, 1799 · Died August 18, 1850View profile
  23. 23Antoine de Saint-ExupéryAntoine de Saint-ExupéryAviator and writer who produced the much-loved novella The Little Prince, as well as Night Flight and Wind, Sand and Stars.🇫🇷French · Born June 29, 1900 · Died July 31, 1944View profile
  24. 24Gabriel García MárquezGabriel García MárquezColombian novelist who wrote One Hundred Years of Solitude, a landmark of magical realism, and won the 1982 Nobel Prize in Literature.🇨🇴Colombian · Born March 6, 1927 · Died April 17, 2014View profile
  25. 25Giovanni BoccaccioGiovanni BoccaccioWrote the Decameron, a collection of one hundred tales told by young Florentines sheltering from the plague.🇮🇹Italian · Born June 16, 1313 · Died September 21, 1375View profile
  26. 26Agatha ChristieAgatha ChristieCreated the detectives Hercule Poirot and Miss Marple, and wrote the long-running West End play The Mousetrap.🇬🇧British · Born September 15, 1890 · Died January 12, 1976View profile
  27. 27H. G. WellsH. G. WellsPioneer of science fiction who wrote The Time Machine, The War of the Worlds and The Invisible Man.🇬🇧British · Born September 21, 1866 · Died August 13, 1946View profile
  28. 28Kahlil GibranKahlil GibranAuthor of The Prophet, a book of poetic essays that became one of the most widely read works of the twentieth century.Ottoman · Born January 6, 1883 · Died April 10, 1931View profile
  29. 29Anne FrankAnne FrankTeenage diarist whose account of hiding from the Nazis in Amsterdam became one of the most read books of the war.German-Dutch · Born June 12, 1929 · Died March 12, 1945View profile
  30. 30George OrwellGeorge OrwellWrote the dystopian novel Nineteen Eighty-Four and the satirical fable Animal Farm, both still widely read and debated.🇬🇧British · Born June 25, 1903 · Died January 21, 1950View profile
  31. 31Charles DickensCharles DickensVictorian novelist who created Oliver Twist, A Christmas Carol and Great Expectations.🇬🇧British · Born February 7, 1812 · Died June 9, 1870View profile
  32. 32Hermann HesseHermann HesseWrote Siddhartha and Steppenwolf, and won the Nobel Prize in Literature in 1946.🇩🇪German · Born July 2, 1877 · Died August 9, 1962View profile
  33. 33Emily DickinsonEmily DickinsonReclusive poet who wrote nearly eighteen hundred short, unconventional poems, most of them published only after her death.🇺🇸American · Born December 10, 1830 · Died May 15, 1886View profile
  34. 34Ernest HemingwayErnest HemingwayNovelist whose spare prose in The Old Man and the Sea earned him the Pulitzer Prize and a Nobel Prize.🇺🇸American · Born July 21, 1899 · Died July 2, 1961View profile
  35. 35F. Scott FitzgeraldF. Scott FitzgeraldChronicler of the Jazz Age whose novel The Great Gatsby is regarded as a classic of American fiction.🇺🇸American · Born September 24, 1896 · Died December 21, 1940View profile
  36. 36Alexander PushkinAlexander PushkinPoet who wrote the verse novel Eugene Onegin and shaped the modern Russian literary language.🇷🇺Russian · Born June 6, 1799 · Died February 10, 1837View profile
  37. 37Simone de BeauvoirSimone de BeauvoirExistentialist writer whose book The Second Sex became a founding text of modern feminism.🇫🇷French · Born January 9, 1908 · Died April 14, 1986View profile
  38. 38Friedrich SchillerFriedrich SchillerDramatist whose plays The Robbers and Wilhelm Tell, and the verse of Ode to Joy, became cornerstones of German literature.🇩🇪German · Born November 10, 1759 · Died May 9, 1805View profile
  39. 39Charles BaudelaireCharles BaudelairePoet whose collection Les Fleurs du mal scandalised Paris and became a cornerstone of modern verse.🇫🇷French · Born April 9, 1821 · Died August 30, 1867View profile
  40. 40Thomas HardyThomas HardyWrote Wessex novels including Tess of the d'Urbervilles and Jude the Obscure, before turning to poetry in later life.🇬🇧British · Born June 2, 1840 · Died January 11, 1928View profile
  41. 41Marcel ProustMarcel ProustNovelist who wrote the seven-volume À la recherche du temps perdu, a landmark of modernist literature.🇫🇷French · Born July 10, 1871 · Died November 18, 1922View profile
  42. 42Denis DiderotDenis DiderotChief editor of the Encyclopédie, the vast Enlightenment reference work he produced with Jean le Rond d'Alembert.🇫🇷French · Born October 5, 1713 · Died July 30, 1784View profile
  43. 43Émile ZolaÉmile ZolaNovelist who led French naturalism with the Rougon-Macquart cycle and defended Dreyfus in the open letter "J'accuse".🇫🇷French · Born April 2, 1840 · Died September 29, 1902View profile
  44. 44Gustave FlaubertGustave FlaubertPainstaking stylist who brought literary realism to full force in Madame Bovary, the story of a doomed provincial wife.🇫🇷French · Born December 12, 1821 · Died May 8, 1880View profile
  45. 45Li BaiLi BaiTang dynasty poet celebrated for vivid, free-spirited verse such as "Quiet Night Thought", still widely memorised in China.🇨🇳Chinese · Born May 19, AD 701 · Died November 30, AD 762View profile
  46. 46Octave MirbeauOctave MirbeauSatirical novelist and critic who wrote Le Journal d'une femme de chambre, a sharp portrait of domestic service and bourgeois hypocrisy.🇫🇷French · Born February 16, 1848 · Died February 16, 1917View profile
  47. 47Astrid LindgrenAstrid LindgrenCreated Pippi Longstocking, the super-strong red-haired girl who became one of children's literature's best-loved heroines.🇸🇪Swedish · Born November 14, 1907 · Died January 28, 2002View profile
  48. 48Oscar WildeOscar WildePlaywright behind The Importance of Being Earnest, who also wrote the novel The Picture of Dorian Gray.🇮🇪Irish · Born June 16, 1854 · Died November 30, 1900View profile
  49. 49Mark TwainMark TwainAuthor of The Adventures of Tom Sawyer and Adventures of Huckleberry Finn, drawing on life along the Mississippi.🇺🇸American · Born November 30, 1835 · Died April 21, 1910View profile
  50. 50Henrik IbsenHenrik IbsenWrote A Doll's House and Hedda Gabler, plays that made him known as the father of modern drama.🇳🇴Norwegian · Born March 20, 1828 · Died May 23, 1906View profile

How we rank and select

  • Ranking: people are ordered by their Historical Popularity Index (HPI) from Pantheon. HPI combines how many Wikipedia language editions have an article about a person, how many page views those articles get, how evenly the views are spread across languages and how long ago the person lived. People Pantheon does not yet cover are listed after them, ordered by our own popularity score (the number of Wikipedia language editions with an article about them).
  • Membership: each person appears in one occupation list only, based on their primary occupation as classified by Pantheon (for example, a queen who wrote poetry is listed as royalty, not as a writer). Kings, queens, emperors, sultans and royal consorts are not listed as politicians or writers: anyone who held a monarch's office on Wikidata, and never served as a president or head of government, counts as royalty. For the few people Pantheon does not cover, we use the primary field recorded in our database.
  • One-line summaries: each summary is an original line written for this site with AI assistance under our editorial rules, then checked against the Wikipedia introduction so no wording is copied.
  • Statistics: every figure on this page is calculated live from our database each time the page loads, so it changes as we add people.

Further reading

Reviewed by the Who Shares My Birthday editorial team.

Last reviewed: October 2026

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