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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 14 of 20.

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 (from #651)

  1. 651Alexandra David-NéelAlexandra David-NéelExplorer who in 1924 became the first European woman to enter Lhasa.🇫🇷French · Born October 24, 1868 · Died September 8, 1969View profile
  2. 652Lafcadio HearnLafcadio HearnWriter and teacher who introduced Japanese folklore to Western readers through books such as Kwaidan and Glimpses of Unfamiliar Japan.British Empire · Born June 27, 1850 · Died September 26, 1904View profile
  3. 653Božena NěmcováBožena NěmcováCzech writer of the novel The Grandmother, a classic of the national revival that portrays village life in the countryside.🇦🇹Austrian · Born May 2, 1818 · Died January 21, 1862View profile
  4. 654Gustavo Adolfo BécquerGustavo Adolfo BécquerSpanish Romantic poet whose Rimas and Leyendas, published after his early death, shaped later Spanish poetry.🇪🇸Spanish · Born February 17, 1836 · Died December 22, 1870View profile
  5. 655PersiusPersiusRoman satirist whose six Satires, steeped in Stoic thought, criticised the affected literary fashions of Nero's Rome.Roman · Born December 4, AD 34 · Died November 24, AD 62View profile
  6. 656John DrydenJohn DrydenDominant literary figure of Restoration England, named the first official Poet Laureate and author of Absalom and Achitophel.🇬🇧English · Born August 7, 1631 · Died May 1, 1700View profile
  7. 657Alfred de VignyAlfred de VignyRomantic poet who also wrote the historical novel Cinq-Mars and the play Chatterton.🇫🇷French · Born March 27, 1797 · Died September 17, 1863View profile
  8. 658Jacques-Henri Bernardin de Saint-PierreJacques-Henri Bernardin de Saint-PierreWrote Paul et Virginie, a hugely popular sentimental romance set on the island of Mauritius.🇫🇷French · Born January 19, 1737 · Died January 21, 1814View profile
  9. 659
    AL
    Alexander LitvinenkoFormer FSB officer and defector who died in London after being poisoned with polonium-210.🇷🇺Russian · Born August 30, 1962 · Died November 23, 2006View profile
  10. 660Radoje DomanovićRadoje DomanovićSerbian satirist whose short stories, notably Stradija and Leader, ridiculed political servility and corruption.Kingdom of Serbia · Born February 4, 1873 · Died August 4, 1908View profile
  11. 661Robert GravesRobert GravesPoet and novelist who wrote the memoir Goodbye to All That and the Roman novel I, Claudius.🇬🇧British · Born July 24, 1895 · Died December 7, 1985View profile
  12. 662Clifford D. SimakClifford D. SimakScience fiction author whose pastoral novel Way Station won the Hugo Award for Best Novel in 1964.🇺🇸American · Born August 3, 1904 · Died April 24, 1988View profile
  13. 663William GibsonWilliam GibsonScience fiction author whose debut novel Neuromancer helped define cyberpunk and popularised the term cyberspace.🇺🇸American · Born March 17, 1948View profile
  14. 664P. L. TraversP. L. TraversCreated the magical nanny in the Mary Poppins books, later adapted into a celebrated Disney film.🇦🇺Australian · Born August 9, 1899 · Died April 23, 1996View profile
  15. 665Nikolay NekrasovNikolay NekrasovPoet of Who Is Happy in Russia?, and editor of the journal The Contemporary.🇷🇺Russian · Born November 28, 1821 · Died December 27, 1877View profile
  16. 666Paul BourgetPaul BourgetNovelist and critic whose psychological novel Le Disciple made him an influential voice in late nineteenth-century French literature.🇫🇷French · Born September 2, 1852 · Died December 25, 1935View profile
  17. 667Ilia ChavchavadzeIlia ChavchavadzeFounded the newspaper Iveria and led a cultural revival that made him a central figure of Georgian national identity under Tsarist rule.Born October 27, 1837 · Died August 30, 1907View profile
  18. 668Thomas PynchonThomas PynchonWrote Gravity's Rainbow, a vast, intricate postmodern novel that won the National Book Award in 1974.🇺🇸American · Born May 8, 1937View profile
  19. 669Bolesław PrusBolesław PrusPolish novelist and journalist who wrote The Doll and the historical epic Pharaoh, central works of nineteenth-century Polish literature.🇵🇱Polish · Born August 20, 1847 · Died May 19, 1912View profile
  20. 670Edith WhartonEdith WhartonNovelist who won the Pulitzer Prize for The Age of Innocence, a portrait of upper-class New York society.🇺🇸American · Born January 24, 1862 · Died August 11, 1937View profile
  21. 671Bernard-Henri LévyBernard-Henri LévyFrench philosopher and media figure known for his open white shirts and campaigns abroad.🇫🇷French · Born November 4, 1948View profile
  22. 672Pierre LouÿsPierre LouÿsPublished the prose-poem collection Songs of Bilitis, a work of sensual classical pastiche presented as translations from ancient Greek.🇫🇷French · Born December 10, 1870 · Died June 4, 1925View profile
  23. 673Yakub KolasYakub KolasPoet who wrote the epic New Land and the trilogy At the Crossroads, and who helped establish modern Belarusian literature.🇷🇺Russian · Born October 22, 1882 · Died August 13, 1956View profile
  24. 674Aleksey Konstantinovich TolstoyAleksey Konstantinovich TolstoyWrote the historical novel Prince Serebrenni and a dramatic trilogy that opens with The Death of Ivan the Terrible.🇷🇺Russian · Born August 24, 1817 · Died September 28, 1875View profile
  25. 675Henry Wadsworth LongfellowHenry Wadsworth LongfellowWrote The Song of Hiawatha and Paul Revere's Ride, becoming one of the most widely read American poets of his century.🇺🇸American · Born February 27, 1807 · Died March 24, 1882View profile
  26. 676Friedrich Reinhold KreutzwaldFriedrich Reinhold KreutzwaldCompiler of the Estonian national epic Kalevipoeg, who is regarded as the founder of his country's national literature.🇷🇺Russian · Born December 26, 1803 · Died August 25, 1882View profile
  27. 677Ernst BarlachErnst BarlachExpressionist sculptor whose work was condemned as degenerate by the Nazis.🇩🇪German · Born January 2, 1870 · Died October 24, 1938View profile
  28. 678Carlos Ruiz ZafónCarlos Ruiz ZafónBarcelona-set novel The Shadow of the Wind became an international bestseller and began his Cemetery of Forgotten Books series.🇪🇸Spanish · Born September 25, 1964 · Died June 19, 2020View profile
  29. 679Ivan CankarIvan CankarSlovene writer who helped bring modernism to Slovene literature, remembered for the novella "The Bailiff Yerney and His Rights".🇦🇹Austrian · Born May 10, 1876 · Died December 11, 1918View profile
  30. 680Juan RulfoJuan RulfoAuthor of the short novel Pedro Páramo, a haunting tale of a ghost-filled Mexican village that shaped later Latin American fiction.🇲🇽Mexican · Born May 16, 1917 · Died January 7, 1986View profile
  31. 681Oliver SacksOliver SacksNeurologist whose case-history book The Man Who Mistook His Wife for a Hat brought neurology to a wide readership.🇬🇧British · Born July 9, 1933 · Died August 30, 2015View profile
  32. 682Roberto BolañoRoberto BolañoNovelist whose sprawling works The Savage Detectives and 2666 made him a major figure in Latin American literature.🇨🇱Chilean · Born April 28, 1953 · Died July 14, 2003View profile
  33. 683Alexander OstrovskyAlexander OstrovskyPlaywright whose drama The Storm became a cornerstone of the Russian realist theatre repertoire.🇷🇺Russian · Born March 31, 1823 · Died June 2, 1886View profile
  34. 684Nikolai LeskovNikolai LeskovWrote the story Lady Macbeth of the Mtsensk District, later turned into Shostakovich's opera.🇷🇺Russian · Born February 4, 1831 · Died February 21, 1895View profile
  35. 685Aleksis KiviAleksis KiviWrote Seven Brothers, widely regarded as the first major novel in the Finnish language.🇷🇺Russian · Born October 10, 1834 · Died December 31, 1872View profile
  36. 686Chinua AchebeChinua AchebeWrote Things Fall Apart, the widely read novel of Igbo life and colonial upheaval.🇳🇬Nigerian · Born November 16, 1930 · Died March 21, 2013View profile
  37. 687Jorge SemprúnJorge SemprúnWrote The Long Voyage, a novel drawing on his imprisonment at Buchenwald, and later served as Spain's culture minister.🇪🇸Spanish · Born December 10, 1923 · Died June 7, 2011View profile
  38. 688Leonid AndreyevLeonid AndreyevWriter whose bleak, symbolic play He Who Gets Slapped and story The Seven Who Were Hanged helped shape Russian expressionism.🇷🇺Russian · Born August 9, 1871 · Died September 12, 1919View profile
  39. 689Will DurantWill DurantHistorian who wrote The Story of Civilization with his wife Ariel.🇺🇸American · Born November 5, 1885 · Died November 7, 1981View profile
  40. 690Walter LippmannWalter LippmannColumnist who popularised the term Cold War and wrote Public Opinion.🇺🇸American · Born September 23, 1889 · Died December 14, 1974View profile
  41. 691Elif ŞafakElif ŞafakNovelist writing in Turkish and English, known for The Forty Rules of Love and for The Bastard of Istanbul.🇹🇷Turkish · Born October 25, 1971View profile
  42. 692Sarojini NaiduSarojini NaiduPoet nicknamed the Nightingale of India, who became the first woman to serve as president of the Indian National Congress.🇮🇳Indian · Born February 13, 1879 · Died March 2, 1949View profile
  43. 693Rosalía de CastroRosalía de CastroPoet whose collection Cantares gallegos helped revive literature in the Galician language and made her its national voice.🇪🇸Spanish · Born February 23, 1837 · Died July 15, 1885View profile
  44. 694Alain-FournierAlain-FournierWrote Le Grand Meaulnes, a single celebrated novel of adolescent longing, before being killed in the First World War.🇫🇷French · Born October 3, 1886 · Died September 22, 1914View profile
  45. 695Andrei BelyAndrei BelySymbolist author of Petersburg, an experimental novel regarded as a landmark of Russian modernism.🇷🇺Russian · Born October 14, 1880 · Died January 8, 1934View profile
  46. 696Assia DjebarAssia DjebarAlgerian novelist and filmmaker whose book Fantasia, an Algerian Cavalcade explored women's lives and colonial history, later joining the Académie française.🇩🇿Algerian · Born June 30, 1936 · Died February 6, 2015View profile
  47. 697Gottfried KellerGottfried KellerWrote the novel Green Henry and the story cycle The People of Seldwyla, classics of Swiss German literature.🇨🇭Swiss · Born July 19, 1819 · Died July 15, 1890View profile
  48. 698P. G. WodehouseP. G. WodehouseComic novelist who created the bumbling Bertie Wooster and his resourceful valet Jeeves.🇬🇧British · Born October 15, 1881 · Died February 14, 1975View profile
  49. 699Marcel PagnolMarcel PagnolFilmmaker and writer behind the Marseille trilogy and the memoir Souvenirs d'enfance, and first filmmaker in the Académie française.🇫🇷French · Born February 28, 1895 · Died April 18, 1974View profile
  50. 700
    TM
    Tadeusz MazowieckiLed Poland's first non-communist government since the Second World War, guiding the country's early transition to democracy after 1989.🇵🇱Polish · Born April 18, 1927 · Died October 28, 2013View 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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