Writers, Novelists, Scriptwriters, Adapters screenwriters...
by celso-rlx | created - 30 May 2018 | updated - 05 Dec 2018 | Public
1. Homer
Writer | Troy
Homer is the name traditionally ascribed to the brilliant Greek bard that authored, most notably, the Iliad and the Odyssey (Western civilization's first complete stories). Nothing concrete is known of his life, but he is traditionally thought to be blind and was probably born in either Chios or ...
4. Sophocles
Writer | Atlantis
Versatile Greek poet and tragic dramatist. He was the son of Sophilus, a wealthy arms manufacturer. Sophocles studied tragedy under Aeschylus, whom he subsequently defeated in the dramatic festival of 468 BC, thus gaining his first victory at these competitions. He became a general under Nicias and...
5. Plato
Writer | Frogs: World's First Film in Ancient Greek
One of the greatest Greek philosophers (considered the greatest Greek writer of prose by some), Plato, was born into an aristocratic Athenian family. He met Socrates around 407 BC and became his disciple in philosophy. Socrates was executed in 399 BC. Plato and fellow disciples took refuge under ...
5. Publius Vergilius Maro
Writer | Troy: The Resurrection of Aeneas
Publius Vergilius Maro was born on October 15, 70 in Andes, Italy. Publius Vergilius was a writer, known for Troy: The Resurrection of Aeneas (2018), Great Performances (1971) and Dido & Aeneas (1995). Publius Vergilius died on September 21, 19 in Brundisium [now Brindisi, Italy].
6. Ovid
Writer | The Medusa
Born a year after the notorious murder of Julius Caesar, Ovid passed his childhood in relative peace despite the civil wars that wracked the Roman Empire. At last Augustus was crowned emperor and the Pax Romana began, and Ovid set out to study rhetoric in Rome. Despite a promising career in ...
7. Plutarch
Writer | Cleopatra
Greek biographer and philosopher who was born c. 46 AD in Chaeronea, Boeotia, central Greece. Son of Aristobulus. In A.D. 66 he was in Athens, studying physics, mathematics natural science, and rhetoric - though the subject which held the greatest interest for him was ethics. He lectured in Rome on...
9. Suetonius
Writer | Cleopatra
Latin biographer and antiquarian. His family was of a knightly rank and probably came from Hippo Regius (Annaba in Algeria). Suetonius taught literature at Rome for a while. He also practiced law and then served on the staff of Pliny the Younger in c. A.D. 110-12. Suetonius then held a post as "...
10. Giovanni Boccaccio
Writer | The Little Hours
Giovanni Boccaccio was born in June 1313 in Certaldo, Florence, Tuscany, Italy. He was a writer, known for The Little Hours (2017), Decameron n° 3 - Le più belle donne del Boccaccio (1972) and Decameron Nights (1953). He died on December 21, 1375 in Certaldo, Florence, Tuscany, Italy.
12. Miguel de Cervantes y Saavedra
Writer | Don Quixote
Miguel de Cervantes' baptism occurred on October 9, 1547, at Alcala de Henares, Spain, so it is reasonable to assume he was born around that time, and Alcala de Henares has long claimed itself as his birthplace. The son of Rodrigo de Cervantes, an itinerant and not-too-successful surgeon, Miguel ...
13. William Shakespeare
Writer | The Tragedy of Macbeth
William Shakespeare's birthdate is assumed from his baptism on April 25. His father John was the son of a farmer who became a successful tradesman; his mother Mary Arden was gentry. He studied Latin works at Stratford Grammar School, leaving at about age 15. About this time his father suffered an ...
13. Jonathan Swift
Writer | Gulliver's Travels
Jonathan Swift (30 November 1667 - 19 October 1745) was an Anglo-Irish satirist, author, essayist, political pamphleteer (first for the Whigs, then for the Tories), poet, and Anglican cleric who became Dean of St Patrick's Cathedral, Dublin, hence his common sobriquet, "Dean Swift".
Swift is ...
14. Johann Wolfgang von Goethe
Soundtrack | Valkyrie
Johann Wolfgang Goethe was born on 28 August 1749 in Frankfurt am Main, Germany as son of a lawyer. After growing up in a privileged upper middle class family, he studied law in Leipzig from 1765 to 1768, although he was more interested in literature. As he was seriously ill, he had to interrupt ...
16. Jane Austen
Writer | Sense and Sensibility
Jane Austen was born on December 16th, 1775, to the local rector, Rev. George Austen (1731-1805), and Cassandra Leigh (1739-1827). She was the seventh of eight children. She had one older sister, Cassandra. In 1783 she went to Southampton to be taught by a relative, Mrs. Cawley, but was brought ...
16. Stendhal
Writer | The Red and the Black
A foremost French writer of the Romantic era, Stendhal was born Marie-Henri Beyle in Grenoble, France in 1783. A loyal Bonapartist he followed Napoleon closely during his military campaigns Stendhal's novels reflect his intense love of Italy, his political convictions and the moral and ...
17. Mary Shelley
Writer | Young Frankenstein
Mary Wollstonecraft Shelley (née Godwin; 30 August 1797 - 1 February 1851) was an English novelist, short story writer, dramatist, essayist, biographer, and travel writer, best known for her Gothic novel "Frankenstein: or, The Modern Prometheus" (1818). She also edited and promoted the works of her...
17. Honoré de Balzac
Writer | Intimità proibita di una giovane sposa
Honoré de Balzac was a French writer whose works have been made into films, such as, Cousin Bette (1998) starring Jessica Lange, and television serials, such as Cousin Bette (1971), starring Margaret Tyzack and Helen Mirren.
He was born on March 20, 1799, in Tours, France. His father, Bernard ...
19. Victor Hugo
Writer | Les Misérables
Although Hugo was fascinated by poems from childhood on, he spent some time at the polytechnic university of Paris until he dedicated all his work to literature. He was one of the few authors who were allowed to reach popularity during his own lifetime and one of the leaders of French romance.
After...
20. Alexandre Dumas
Writer | The Count of Monte Cristo
His paternal grandparents were Marie Cessete Dumas (a Haitian slave) and Marquis Antoine Davy de la Pailleterie. Antoine disapproved of their son, Thomas-Alexandre, joining the French army under the "Davy de la Pailleterie" name, so Thomas-Alexandre used his mother's surname instead. He became a ...
21. Nathaniel Hawthorne
Writer | Graves and Goblins
Nathaniel Hawthorne was an American novelist, dark romantic, and short story writer. His works often focus on history, morality, and religion. He was born in 1804 in Salem, Massachusetts, from a family long associated with that town. Hawthorne entered Bowdoin College in 1821, was elected to Phi ...
21. Hans Christian Andersen
Writer | Frozen
Andersen experienced an unhappy childhood marked by deep poverty. When he was 14 years old, he left his parents' home and fled alone to Copenhagen. Here the director of the Royal Theater, Jonas Collin, took care of the child and gave him shelter and work. With his help, the young Hans Christian ...
22. Edgar Allan Poe
Writer | Stonehearst Asylum
Edgar Allan Poe was born on January 19, 1809, in Boston, Massachusetts. His father, named David Poe Jr., and his mother, named Elizabeth Arnold Hopkins Poe, were touring actors. Both parents died in 1811, and Poe became an orphan before he was 3 years old. He was adopted by John Allan, a tobacco ...
23. Nikolay Gogol
Writer | Burnt Hickory
Nikolai (Mykola) Gogol was a Russian humorist, dramatist, and novelist of Ukrainian origin. His ancestors were bearing the name of Gogol-Janovsky and claimed belonging to the upper class Polish Szlachta. Gogol's father, a Ukrainian writer living on his old family estate, had five other children. He...
23. Charles Dickens
Writer | Great Expectations
Charles Dickens' father was a clerk at the Naval Pay Office, and because of this the family had to move from place to place: Plymouth, London, Chatham. It was a large family and despite hard work, his father couldn't earn enough money. In 1823 he was arrested for debt and Charles had to start ...
25. Charlotte Brontë
Writer | Jane Eyre
Charlotte was born 1816, the third of the six children of Patrick Brontë, an Anglican clergyman, and his wife Maria Branwell Brontë. After their mother's death in 1821, Charlotte and her sisters, Maria and Elizabeth, were sent to Cowan Bridge Clergy Daughters' School, which Charlotte would later ...
26. Emily Brontë
Writer | Wuthering Heights
The dreamiest of the talented Brontë clan, Emily Jane Brontë was born in 1818. Her mother died when she was barely more than a toddler, and Emily and her younger sister, Anne, became very close. Along with their other siblings, 'Charlotte Bronte' and Branwell Bronte, they invented the make-believe ...
26. Herman Melville
Writer | The Enigma of Benito Cereno
Herman Melville was an American novelist, short story writer, and poet of the American Renaissance period. Among his best-known works are Moby-Dick (1851); Typee (1846), a romanticized account of his experiences in Polynesia; and Billy Budd, Sailor, a posthumously published novella. Although his ...
28. Fyodor Dostoevsky
Writer | The Double
Fyodor Mikhailovich Dostoevsky was born on November 11, 1821, in Moscow, Russia. He was the second of seven children of Mikhail Andreevich and Maria Dostoevsky. His father, a doctor, was a member of the Russian nobility, owned serfs and had a considerable estate near Moscow where he lived with his ...
29. Alexandre Dumas fils
Writer | Traviata '53
Alexandre Dumas fils was born on July 27, 1824 in Paris, France. He was a writer, known for Traviata '53 (1953), Camille (1921) and Zorro: New Orleans (2020). He was married to Henriette Régnier de la Briére and Baroness Nadejda "Nadine" (von Knorring) Naryschkine. He died on November 27, 1895 in ...
29. Lew Wallace
Writer | Ben-Hur
The son of the governor of Indiana, Lew Wallace lived in Indianapolis as a young boy. He served in the Mexican War, and afterwards became a lawyer and was elected to the state Senate. He served again in the Union army during the Civil War, reaching the rank of major general. He was noted for ...
30. Jules Verne
Writer | 20,000 Leagues Under the Sea
Jules Gabriel Verne (1828-1905) was one of the most famous French novelists of all time. His major work is the "Extraordinary Journeys", a series of more than sixty adventure novels including "Journey to the Center of the Earth", "Around the World in 80 Days", "20.000 Leagues under the Seas" and "...
32. Lev Tolstoy
Writer | Anna Karenina
Count Lev Nikolaevich Tolstoy was born on September 9, 1828, in his ancestral estate Yasnaya Polyana, South of Moscow, Russia. He was the fourth of five children in a wealthy family of Russian landed Gentry. His parents died when he was a child, and he was brought up by his elder brothers and ...
34. Lewis Carroll
Writer | Alice in Wonderland
Lewis Carroll was the pen name of Charles L. Dodgson, author of the children's classics "Alice's Adventures in Wonderland" and "Through the Looking-Glass."
Born on January 27, 1832 in Daresbury, Cheshire, England, Charles Dodgson wrote and created games as a child. At age 20 he received a ...
35. Mark Twain
Writer | Big River
Mark Twain, born Samuel Langhorne Clemens in Florida, Missouri in 1835, grew up in Hannibal. He was a steamboat pilot on the Mississippi River. Throughout his career, Twain served as a writer, lecturer, reporter, editor, printer, and prospector. Twain took his pen name from an alert cry used on his...
35. Émile Zola
Writer | Bakjwi
Émile Zola was born on April 2, 1840, in Paris, France. His father was an Italian engineer. Young Zola studied at the Collége Bourbon in Provence, where his schoolmate and friend was Paul Cezanne. In 1858 Zola returned to Paris and became a student at the Lycée Saint-Louis, from which he graduated ...
36. Karl May
Writer | Auf den Trümmern des Paradieses
Karl May was born on February 25, 1842 in Hohenstein-Ernstthal, Kingdom of Saxony [now Saxony, Germany]. He was a writer, known for Auf den Trümmern des Paradieses (1920), Caravan of Death (1920) and Durch die Wüste (1936). He was married to Klara Plöhn and Emma Pollmer. He died on March ...
37. Friedrich Nietzsche
Soundtrack | Die Höhenluft - für Alle und Keinen
Friedrich Nietzsche was raised having five women around him - his mother, grandmother, two aunts and a sister, all living together. His father, a Lutheran pastor, died when Nietzsche was 5 years old. After a Catholic school he studied music and Greco-Roman culture at the famous Schulpfora from 1858...
38. Bram Stoker
Writer | Dracula
Bram Stoker was born in Dublin, Ireland, in 1847, and gained fame for his novel "Dracula" about an aristocratic vampire in Transylvania. The sequel, "Dracula's Guest," was not published for 17 years after the publication of "Dracula," two years after Stoker's death. Stoker also wrote "The Mystery ...
39. Robert Louis Stevenson
Writer | Muppet Treasure Island
Robert Louis Stevenson was a Scottish novelist, poet, and travel writer from Edinburgh. His most popular works include the pirate-themed adventure novel "Treasure Island" (1883), the poetry collection "A Child's Garden of Verses" (1885), the Gothic horror novella "Strange Case of Dr Jekyll and Mr ...
41. Oscar Wilde
Writer | The Picture of Dorian Gray
A gifted poet, playwright and wit, Oscar Wilde was a phenomenon in 19th-century England. He was illustrious for preaching the importance of style in life and art, and of attacking Victorian narrow-mindedness.
Wilde was born in Dublin, Ireland, in 1854. He studied at Trinity College in Dublin before ...
41. H. Rider Haggard
Writer | The League of Extraordinary Gentlemen
H. Rider Haggard was born on June 22, 1856 in Bradenham, Norfolk, England, UK. H. Rider was a writer, known for The League of Extraordinary Gentlemen, King Solomon's Mines (1985) and Allan Quatermain. H. Rider was married to Mariana Louisa Margitson. H. Rider died on May 14, 1925 in London, England...
43. George Bernard Shaw
Writer | My Fair Lady
The Anglo-Irish playwright George Bernard Shaw (1856-1950), winner of the Nobel Prize for Literature in 1925, acquired a reputation as the greatest dramatist in the English language during the first half of the 20th Century for the plays he had written at the height of his creativity from "Mrs. ...
45. Arthur Conan Doyle
Writer | Sherlock Holmes
Arthur Conan Doyle was a British writer of Irish descent, considered a major figure in crime fiction. His most famous series of works consisted of the "Sherlock Holmes" stories (1887-1927), consisting of four novels and 56 short stories. His other notable series were the "Professor Challenger" ...
46. Anton Chekhov
Writer | Kis Uykusu
Anton Pavlovich Chekhov was born in 1860, the third of six children to a family of a grocer, in Taganrog, Russia, a southern seaport and resort on the Azov Sea. His father, a 3rd-rank Member of the Merchant's Guild, was a religious fanatic and a tyrant who used his children as slaves. Young Chekhov...
46. Rabindranath Tagore
Writer | Streer Patra
Rabindranath Tagore was born on May 6, 1861 in Calcutta, Bengal Presidency, British India [now India]. He was a writer and composer, known for Streer Patra (1972), Natir Puja (1932) and Shyama (2008). He was married to Mrinalini Devi. He died on August 7, 1941 in Calcutta, Bengal Presidency, ...
46. Edith Wharton
Writer | The Age of Innocence
Edith Wharton (née Jones) was an American novelist and short story writer from New York City. She had insider knowledge of New York's upper class, which she realistically portrayed in her works. In 1921, Wharton became the first woman to win the Pulitzer Prize for Fiction. She won the award for her...
47. Arthur Schnitzler
Writer | Eyes Wide Shut
Arthur Schnitzler was born on May 15, 1862 in Vienna, Austrian Empire [now Austria]. He was a writer, known for Eyes Wide Shut (1999), The Affairs of Anatol (1921) and The Exposure. He was married to Olga Gussmann. He died on October 21, 1931 in Vienna, Austria.
49. H.G. Wells
Writer | The War of the Worlds
Writer, born in Bromley, Kent. He was apprenticed to a draper, tried teaching, studied biology in London, then made his mark in journalism and literature. He played a vital part in disseminating the progressive ideas which characterized the first part of the 20th-c. He achieved fame with scientific...
49. Rudyard Kipling
Writer | The Man Who Would Be King
Rudyard Kipling was born in Bombay, Maharashtra, India, the son of John Lockwood Kipling, a museum director and author and illustrator. This was at the height of the "British Raj", so he was brought up by Indian nurses ("ayahs"), who taught him something of the beliefs and tongues of India. He was ...
50. Maxim Gorky
Writer | Famine
Maksim Gorky is a pseudonym of Aleksei Maksimovich Peshkov, who was born into a poor Russian family in Nizhnii Novgorod on Volga river. Gorky lost his father at an early age, he was beaten by his stepfather and became an orphan at age 9, when his mother died. He was brought up by his grandmother, ...
52. Stephen Crane
Writer | The Red Badge of Courage: A Soldier's Tale
Stephen Crane was the 14th child of parents who were both writers. Descended from a line of soldiers and clergymen (his father, Rev. Jonathan T. Crane, was a Methodist minister), Crane inherited from his forebearers the obsessive subject of war, stoical compassion and, particularly in his poetry, a...
53. W. Somerset Maugham
Writer | Quartet
Popular British novelist, playwright, short-story writer and the highest-paid author in the world in the 1930s, Somerset Maugham graduated in 1897 from St. Thomas' Medical School and qualified as a doctor, but abandoned medicine after the success of his first novels and plays. During World War I he...
53. Thomas Mann
Writer | Morte a Venezia
Thomas Mann was probably Germany's most influential author of the 20th century, receiving the Nobel Prize in Literature in 1929. Born on 6 June 1875 in Lübeck, his family moved to Munich in 1893, where he lived until 1933 and wrote some of his most successful novels like "Buddenbrocks" (1901), "...
54. Edgar Rice Burroughs
Writer | John Carter
His father had been a major in the Union army during the Civil War. Edgar Rice Burroughs attended the Brown School then, due to a diphtheria epidemic, Miss Coolie's Maplehurst School for Girls, then the Harvard School, Phillips Andover and the Michigan Military Academy. He was a mediocre student ...
56. Jack London
Writer | The Ballad of Buster Scruggs
Jack London was the best-selling, highest paid and most popular American author of his time.
He was born John Griffith Chaney, on January 12, 1876, in San Francisco. He was raised by his mother Flora Wellman and his stepfather John London (he didn't know who his father was until his adulthood). ...
56. Hermann Hesse
Soundtrack | The Hours
Hermann Hesse was born on July 2, 1877 in Calw, Germany. He was a writer, known for The Hours (2002), Siddhartha (1972) and Poem: I Set My Foot Upon the Air and It Carried Me (2003). He was married to Ninon Ausländer, Ruth Wenger and Maria Bernoulli. He died on August 9, 1962 in Montagnola, ...
57. Stefan Zweig
Writer | The Grand Budapest Hotel
Here he grew up in the educated Jewish middle class, together with his brother Alfred. The Zweig family was not religious. He passed his high school diploma at the Wasagymnasium in Vienna. Zweig wrote his first poems here. At that time he was influenced by writers such as Hugo von Hofmannstahl and ...
58. James Joyce
Joyce was born at 41 Brighton Square, Rathgar, Dublin, on 2 February 1882. His father invested unwisely, and the family's fortunes declined steadily. Joyce graduated from University College Dublin (UCD), in 1902. He briefly studied medicine in Paris but his mother's impending death from cancer ...
60. Nikos Kazantzakis
Writer | The Last Temptation of Christ
Nikos Kazantzakis was born in Heraklion, Crete (Greece). He studied Law in Athens and in Paris, but soon he studied philosophy and literature. He travelled almost everywhere; he learnt many foreign languages and left his scientific research for Nitsche. At philosophy: "Ascetics" (Salvatores Dei, ...
60. Franz Kafka
Writer | Le procès
Franz Kafka was born into a German-speaking Jewish family in Prague, Austrian Empire, in 1883. His father, Hermann Kafka, was a business owner and a domestic tyrant, frequently abusing his son. Kafka later admitted to his father, "My writing was all about you...". He believed that his father broke ...
62. D.H. Lawrence
Writer | Lady Chatterley's Lover
David Herbert Lawrence was born in Nottinghamshire, England, 11 September 1885. His father was a coal miner, his mother a genteel woman who sought education and refinement for her son. Lawrence earned a university degree and taught school for a short time. While still a student he began to publish ...
63. Raymond Chandler
Writer | Double Indemnity
An American novelist, writer of crime fiction featuring the private detective Philip Marlowe, Raymond (Thornton) Chandler was born in Chicago of an American father and an Anglo-Irish mother. He moved to England when his parents divorced. He attended Dulwich College and studied languages in France ...
63. T.E. Lawrence
Writer | Sabaton: Seven Pillars of Wisdom
T.E. Lawrence was born on August 16, 1888 in Tremadoc, Caernarvonshire, Wales, UK. He was a writer, known for Sabaton: Seven Pillars of Wisdom (2019), With Lawrence in Arabia (1927) and T. E. Lawrence 1888-1935 (1962). He died on May 19, 1935 in Clouds Hill, Dorset, England, UK.
64. Agatha Christie
Writer | Les petits meurtres d'Agatha Christie
Agatha was born as "Agatha Mary Clarissa Miller" in 1890 to Frederick Alvah Miller and Clara Boehmer. Agatha was of American and British descent, her father being American and her mother British. Her father was a relatively affluent stockbroker. Agatha received home education from early childhood ...
66. Henry Miller
Actor | Reds
Henry Miller was born on December 26, 1891 in New York City, New York, USA. He was a writer and actor, known for Reds (1981), Quiet Days in Clichy (1970) and Quiet Days in Clichy (1990). He was married to Hoki Tokuda, Evelyn Byrd (Keven) McClure, Janina Martha Lepska, June Edith Smith and Beatrice ...
67. J.R.R. Tolkien
Writer | The Lord of the Rings: The Fellowship of the Ring
English writer, scholar and philologist, Tolkien's father was a bank manager in South Africa. Shortly before his father died (1896) his mother took him and his younger brother to his father's native village of Sarehole, near Birmingham, England. The landscapes and Nordic mythology of the Midlands ...
67. Pearl S. Buck
Writer | The Big Wave
Daughter of Christian missionaries, Pearl Buck was reared and educated in China. She received her university education in America but returned to China in the mid-1910s. She became a university instructor and writer, eventually authoring novels about China, some of which were turned into Hollywood ...
68. Dashiell Hammett
Writer | The Thin Man
Dashiell Hammett was born May 27, 1894, in St. Mary's County, Maryland, to Richard Hammett and Mary Bond. He joined the Baltimore branch of the Pinkerton Detective Agency in 1915. He enlisted in the US Army's Ambulance Corps in June 1918 and was posted to a camp 20 miles from Baltimore, where he ...
70. Aldous Huxley
Writer | A Woman's Vengeance
Aldous Leonard Huxley was born on July 26, 1894, at Laleham in Godalming, Surrey, England. He was the third of four children. His brother Julian Huxley was a biologist known for his theories of evolution. His grandfather, named Thomas Henry Huxley, was a naturalist known as "Darwin's Bulldog." His ...
70. F. Scott Fitzgerald
Writer | The Curious Case of Benjamin Button
"There are no second acts in American lives," wrote F. Scott Fitzgerald, who himself went from being the high priest of the Jazz Age to a down-and-out alcoholic within the space of 20 years, but not before giving the world several literary masterpieces, the most famous of which is "The Great Gatsby...
72. William Faulkner
Writer | To Have and Have Not
William Faulkner, one of the 20th century's most gifted novelists, wrote for the movies in part because he could not make enough money from his novels and short stories to support his growing number of dependants. The author of such acclaimed novels as "The Sound and the Fury" and "Absalom, Absalom...
73. Erich Maria Remarque
Writer | A Time to Love and a Time to Die
The German novelist Erich Maria Remarque was born in Osnabrück in 1898. His first novel, the famous anti-war epic All Quiet on the Western Front (1930), was written based on his experiences as a soldier in WWI, and published in 1929. He moved to Switzerland until 1939 and later emigrated to the US....
73. Vilhelm Moberg
Writer | Änkeman Jarl
Vilhelm Moberg is considered to be one of the greatest writers in Sweden of all time. He is most known for The Immigrants-series about the Swedish emigration to the United States in the 19th century. Moberg was also a journalist, author, historian and political debater. He struggled with depression...
74. C.S. Lewis
Writer | The Chronicles of Narnia: The Lion, the Witch and the Wardrobe
C.S. Lewis was born in 1898 and brought up in a very strict, religious household. While he was quite young, his mother died of cancer but the "stiff upper lip" in favour at the time meant he wasn't allowed to grieve. He became an Oxford don and led a sheltered life. He seriously questioned his ...
75. Vladimir Nabokov
Writer | Lolita
Vladimir Vladimirovich Nabokov was born on April 22, 1899, the eldest of five children in a wealthy aristocratic family in St. Petersburg, Russia. His grandfather was a Justice Minister to the Czar Alexander II. His father, named Vladimir Dmitrievich Nabokov, was a liberal political leader, the ...
77. Ernest Hemingway
Writer | To Have and Have Not
Ernest Hemingway was an American writer who won the Pulitzer Prize (1953) and the Nobel Prize in Literature (1954) for his novel The Old Man and the Sea, which was made into a 1958 film The Old Man and the Sea (1958).
He was born into the hands of his physician father. He was the second of six ...
77. Eduardo De Filippo
Writer | Napoli milionaria
Coming from a show-business family (his father Eduardo Scarpetta was a famous stage actor), Eduardo de Filippo made his stage debut at age 5 playing the role of "Peppiniello" in his father's comedy "Miseria e Nobiltà". At 32 he formed his own stage company with his brother Peppino de Filippo and ...
79. Antoine de Saint-Exupéry
Writer | Le Petit Prince
Antoine de Saint-Exupéry was born into a family of old provincial nobility. Failing his final exams at a preparatory school, he entered the École des Beaux-Arts to study architecture. In 1921, he began military service in the 2nd Regiment of Chasseurs, and sent to Strasbourg for pilot training. The...
79. Howard Koch
Writer | Casablanca
Playwright and author of sophisticated screenplays, a graduate of Bard College and Columbia University Law School. Howard Koch started out as a practicing lawyer in Hartsdale, New Jersey, but soon found himself dissatisfied with his career choice and began to write plays on the side. His first two ...
81. John Steinbeck
Writer | Lifeboat
John Steinbeck was the third of four children and the only son born to John Ernst and Olive Hamilton Steinbeck. His father was County Treasurer and his mother, a former schoolteacher. John graduated from Salinas High School in 1919 and attended classes at Stanford University, leaving in 1925 ...
82. Louise de Vilmorin
Writer | Madame de...
Louise de Vilmorin was born on April 4, 1902 in Verrières-le-Buisson, Seine-et-Oise, France. She was a writer and actress, known for The Earrings of Madame De... (1953), The Lovers (1958) and Julietta (1953). She was married to Count Paul Pálffy ab Erdöd and Henry Leigh Hunt. She died on December ...
83. George Orwell
Writer | Nineteen Eighty-Four
Born the son of an Opium Agent in Bengal, Eric Blair was educated in England (Eton 1921). The joined the British Imperial Police in Burma, serving until 1927. He then travelled around England and Europe, doing various odd jobs to support his writing. By 1935 he had adopted the 'pen-name' of 'George...
83. Marguerite Yourcenar
Writer | Der Fangschuß
Marguerite Yourcenar was born on June 8, 1903 in Brussels, Belgium. She was a writer, known for Coup de Grâce (1976), Memoirs of Hadrian and L'oeuvre au noir (1988). She died on December 17, 1987 in Mount Desert Island, Maine, USA.
85. Irving Stone
Writer | Lust for Life
Irving Stone was born on July 14, 1903 in San Francisco, California, USA. He was a writer, known for Lust for Life (1956), The Agony and the Ecstasy (1965) and Magnificent Doll (1946). He was married to Jean Factor and Lona Mosk. He died on August 26, 1989 in Los Angeles, California, USA.
86. Cornell Woolrich
Writer | The Window
Prolific mystery writer Cornell Woolrich was born in New York City, but his parents separated when he was young and he spent much of his childhood in Latin America with his father. Then he was sent back to New York to live with his rich, domineering mother, Claire. He attended Columbia University ...
86. Graham Greene
Writer | The Fallen Idol
Graham Greene was one of the greatest novelists of the 20th century and his influence on the cinema and theatre was enormous. He wrote five plays and almost all of his novels, including "Brighton Rock", "The Ministry of Fear" and "The End of the Affair", have been brought to the screen. A superb ...
87. Jean-Paul Sartre
Writer | Les orgueilleux
Jean-Paul Charles-Aymard Sartre was born on June 21, 1905, in Paris, France. His father, Jean-Baptiste Sartre, was an officer in the French Navy. His mother, Anne-Marie Schweitzer, was the cousin of Nobel Prize laureate Dr. Albert Schweitzer. Sartre was one year old when his father died. He was ...
87. Roberto Rossellini
Writer | Roma città aperta
The master filmmaker Roberto Rossellini, as one of the creators of neo-realism, is one of the most influential directors of all time. His neo-realist films influenced France's nouvelle vague movement in the 1950s and '60s that changed the face of international cinema. He also influenced American ...
89. Jim Thompson
Writer | Paths of Glory
Jim Thompson was born on September 27, 1906 in Anadarko, Oklahoma, USA. He was a writer and actor, known for Paths of Glory (1957), The Killing (1956) and The Getaway (1972). He died on April 7, 1977 in Hollywood, California, USA.
90. Daphne Du Maurier
Writer | The Birds
Daphne Du Maurier was one of the most popular English writers of the 20th Century, when middle-brow genre fiction was accorded a higher level of respect in a more broadly literate age. For her services to literature, she was made a Dame Commander of the Order of the British Empire in 1969, the ...
92. Ian Fleming
Writer | Casino Royale
Born into a wealthy and influential English family, Ian Fleming spent his early years attending top British schools such as Eton and Sandhurst military academy. He took to writing while schooling in Kitzbuhel, Austria, and upon failing the entrance requirements for Foreign Service joined the news ...
92. Albert Maltz
Writer | Broken Arrow
Oscar-nominated screenwriter Albert Maltz was born on October 28, 1908 in Brooklyn, New York. After graduating from Columbia University in 1930, he attended the Yale School of Drama for two years as a tyro playwright. After striking out on his own as a dramatist, he developed sociopolitical plays ...
94. Pierre Boulle
Writer | The Bridge on the River Kwai
Pierre Boulle was a French novelist best known for two works, The Bridge over the River Kwai (1952) and Planet of the Apes (1963), that were both made into award-winning films.
He was an engineer serving as a secret agent with the Free French in Singapore, when he was captured and subjected to two ...
94. Chester Himes
Writer | Cotton Comes to Harlem
Chester Himes was born on July 29, 1909 in Jefferson City, Missouri, USA. He was a writer, known for Cotton Comes to Harlem (1970), Come Back Charleston Blue (1972) and A Rage in Harlem (1991). He was married to Lesley Packard and Jean Johnson. He died on November 12, 1984 in Moravia, Costa Blanca,...
95. Jorge Amado
Writer | Gabriela
Jorge Amado was born on August 10, 1912 in Itabuna, Bahia, Brazil. He was a writer, known for Gabriela (1975), Terras do Sem-Fim (1981) and Tieta (1989). He was married to Zélia Gattai and Matilde Garcia Rosa. He died on August 6, 2001 in Salvador, Bahia, Brazil.
96. Michelangelo Antonioni
Writer | Blow-Up
Together with Fellini, Bergman and Kurosawa, Michelangelo Antonioni is credited with defining the modern art film. And yet Antonioni's cinema is also recognized today for defying any easy categorization, with his films ultimately seeming to belong to their own distinctive genre. Indeed, the ...
96. Albert Camus
Writer | Bajo la metralla
Albert Camus was born on November 7, 1913, in Mondovi, Algeria. His parents were Spanish-French-Algerian (pied noir) colonists. His father, Lucien, died in the Battle of Marne (1914) during WWI. His mother, named Catherine Helene Sintes was of Spanish origin, she was a deaf mute due to a stroke, ...
98. William S. Burroughs
Actor | Drugstore Cowboy
William S. Burroughs, one of the three seminal writers of the Beat Generation (the other two being his friends Jack Kerouac and Allen Ginsberg), was born in St. Louis, Missouri, on February 5, 1914, to the son of the founder of the Burroughs Adding Machine Co. He grew up in patrician surroundings ...
99. Marguerite Duras
Writer | Le camion
Ms. Duras was born in southern Vietnam and lost her father at age 4. The family savings of 20 years bought the family a small plot in Cambodia, but everything was lost in a single season's flooding. The disaster killed her mother as a result. After high school in Saigon, Ms. Duras left Indochina to...
102. Howard Fast
Writer | Spartacus
Howard Fast was born on November 11, 1914 in New York City, New York, USA. He was a writer, known for Spartacus (1960), The Lives of Benjamin Franklin (1974) and Mirage (1965). He was married to Mercedes O'Connor and Bette Cohen. He died on March 12, 2003 in Old Greenwich, Connecticut, USA.
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