PEOPLE KNOWN FOR: nonfiction
prime minister of United Kingdom
Winston Churchill was a British statesman, orator, and author who as prime minister (1940–45, 1951–55) rallied the British people during World War II and led his country from the brink of defeat to victory....
French philosopher and author
Voltaire was one of the greatest of all French writers. Although only a few of his works are still read, he continues to be held in worldwide repute as a courageous crusader against tyranny, bigotry, and...
English writer
D.H. Lawrence was an English author of novels, short stories, poems, plays, essays, travel books, and letters. His novels Sons and Lovers (1913), The Rainbow (1915), and Women in Love (1920) made him one...
Austrian-German poet
Rainer Maria Rilke was an Austro-German poet who became internationally famous with his lyric poems and such works as Duino Elegies (1923) and Sonnets to Orpheus (1923). Since his death in 1926, he has...
Irish dramatist and critic
George Bernard Shaw was an Irish comic dramatist, literary critic, and socialist propagandist, winner of the Nobel Prize for Literature in 1925. (Read George Bernard Shaw’s 1926 Britannica essay on socialism.)...
French philosopher and scientist
Blaise Pascal was a French mathematician, physicist, religious philosopher, and master of prose. He laid the foundation for the modern theory of probabilities, formulated what came to be known as Pascal’s...
American poet
Ezra Pound was an American poet and critic, a supremely discerning and energetic entrepreneur of the arts who did more than any other single figure to advance a “modern” movement in English and American...
American author
Tillie Olsen was an American writer and social activist known for her powerful fiction about the inner lives of the working poor, women, and minorities. Her interest in long-neglected women authors inspired...
British essayist and historian
Thomas Carlyle was a Scottish historian and essayist, whose major works include The French Revolution, 3 vol. (1837), On Heroes, Hero-Worship, and the Heroic in History (1841), and The History of Friedrich...
German general [1800–1891]
Helmuth von Moltke was the chief of the Prussian and German General Staff (1858–88) and the architect of the victories over Denmark (1864), Austria (1866), and France (1871). Moltke’s father, a man of...
German author
Heinrich Heine was a German poet whose international literary reputation and influence were established by the Buch der Lieder (1827; The Book of Songs), frequently set to music, though the more sombre...
Indian writer
Khushwant Singh was one of the best-known writers of India. He wrote novels such as Train to Pakistan (1956) and I Shall Not Hear the Nightingale (1959), several essays and short stories, and a definitive...
American author
Vladimir Nabokov was a Russian-born American novelist and critic and the foremost of the post-1917 émigré authors. He wrote in both Russian and English, and his best works, including Lolita (1955), feature...
American author
Michael Lewis is an American author and long-form journalist who uses compelling personalities to explain complicated and arcane subjects. Lewis is popularly known for his books of nonfiction, three of...
Indian author and activist
Arundhati Roy is an Indian author and political activist who is best known for the Booker Prize-winning novel The God of Small Things (1997) and for her advocacy of environmental and human rights issues....
Irish-born author and scholar
C.S. Lewis was an Irish-born scholar, novelist, and author of about 40 books, many of them on Christian apologetics, including The Screwtape Letters and Mere Christianity. His works of greatest lasting...
Peruvian author
Mario Vargas Llosa was a Peruvian Spanish writer who was one of the most influential authors of contemporary literature, particularly as a leading figure in the boom of 20th-century Latin American literature....
American journalist and novelist
From 1985 to 2021 Carl Hiaasen wrote a popular syndicated opinion column for The Miami Herald. Hiaasen’s acerbic, often humorous columns tackled both Florida-specific and national issues. A lifelong Florida...
American activist and author
Michael Harrington was an American socialist activist and author, best known for his book The Other America (1962), about poverty. He was also chairman of the Socialist Party of America from 1968 to 1972....
American televangelist, author, and speaker
Joyce Meyer is a prominent American televangelist, author, and speaker known for her dynamic teaching style and practical approach to Christian living. Her ministry grew in popularity throughout the 1990s...
British author and scientist
Arthur C. Clarke was an English writer, notable for both his science fiction and his nonfiction. His best known works are the script he wrote with American film director Stanley Kubrick for 2001: A Space...
American author
Isabel Wilkerson is known for chronicling the lives of unsung African Americans and exposing deeply embedded systems of social injustice in her reporting for The New York Times and in her celebrated works...
American poet
Langston Hughes was an American writer who was an important figure in the Harlem Renaissance and made the African American experience the subject of his writings, which ranged from poetry and plays to...
American author
Wendell Berry is an American author whose nature poetry, novels of America’s rural past, and essays on ecological responsibility grew from his experiences as a farmer. His best-known nonfiction work is...
Japanese author
Haruki Murakami is a Japanese novelist, short-story writer, and translator whose deeply imaginative and often ambiguous books became international bestsellers. His famous works include the novels Hard-Boiled...
televangelist
Benny Hinn is a televangelist, faith healer, and author known for his “miracle crusades” that are held in major cities and broadcast on his Christian television show This Is Your Day. Hinn frequently espouses...
English explorer
Sir Walter Raleigh was an English adventurer and writer, a favourite of Queen Elizabeth I, who knighted him in 1585. Accused of treason by Elizabeth’s successor, James I, he was imprisoned in the Tower...
American author
Terry McMillan is a writer who frequently graced the bestseller lists in the 1990s and early 2000s with her massively popular contemporary romance novels portraying feisty, independent African American...
American attorney and law enforcement official
James Comey is a U.S. attorney and law enforcement official who served as director (2013–17) of the Federal Bureau of Investigation (FBI). Comey came from an Irish American family. His paternal grandfather...
Chilean-American author
Isabel Allende is a Chilean American writer in the magic realist tradition who is considered one of the finest contemporary novelists from Latin America. Her best-known works include The House of the Spirits...
British actor, writer, and director
Stephen Fry is a British actor, comedian, author, screenwriter, and director, known especially for his virtuosic command and comical manipulation of the English language—in both speech and writing. He...
American author
Naomi Wolf is a celebrated feminist writer whose groundbreaking work in the 1990s, including The Beauty Myth, gained her popular acclaim and occasional critical scrutiny. In 2019 serious questions about...
Australian author
Catherine Helen Spence, was a writer and activist who sought to improve educational and welfare programs in Australia and to reform the country’s voting system. An immigrant from Scotland, she was a major...
American author
Isaac Asimov was an American author and biochemist, a highly successful and prolific writer of science fiction and of science books for the layperson. He wrote or edited about 500 volumes, of which the...
American author
Marilynne Robinson is an American author known for her graceful language and studied observations on humankind and religion in works of fiction and nonfiction. Her best-known works include her debut novel,...
American author
James Patterson is an American author, principally known for his thriller and suspense novels. His prolific output and business savvy made him a ubiquitous presence on best-seller lists in the late 20th...
American author
Edmund White was an American writer of novels, short fiction, and nonfiction whose critically acclaimed work focuses on male homosexual society in America. His studies of evolving attitudes toward homosexuality...
British poet
Ted Hughes was an English poet whose most characteristic verse is without sentimentality, emphasizing the cunning and savagery of animal life in harsh, sometimes disjunctive lines. Hughes served as poet...
American writer and director
Richard Brooks was an American screenwriter and director whose best-known movies were adaptations of literary works, notably Blackboard Jungle (1955), Elmer Gantry (1960), and In Cold Blood (1967). (Read...
American playwright, actor, screenwriter, producer, and director
Tyler Perry is an American playwright, actor, screenwriter, producer, and director whose works—in which he often portrayed the character Mabel (“Madea”) Simmons, an outspoken grandmother—combined humour,...
American author
Anne Lamott is an American novelist, nonfiction writer, autobiographical essay author, and activist known for her self-deprecating humor, hard-hearted honesty, and unwavering compassion, which have earned...
American activist and scholar
Maulana Karenga is an American activist, scholar, and author. He is best known as the creator of Kwanzaa, the seven-day African American and Pan-African holiday. Ronald McKinley Everett was born to Levi...
American novelist
Kurt Vonnegut was an American writer noted for his wryly satirical novels that frequently used postmodern techniques as well as elements of fantasy and science fiction to highlight the horrors and ironies...
Canadian political leader
Michael Ignatieff is a Canadian author, literary critic, and politician who represented the Etobicoke-Lakeshore riding in the Canadian House of Commons (2006–11) and who served as leader of the Liberal...
Canadian author
Margaret Atwood is a Canadian writer best known for her prose fiction and for her feminist perspective. Among Atwood’s many acclaimed works of fiction, nonfiction, and poetry, her most celebrated is the...
American author, educator, and philanthropist
Chelsea Clinton is an American author, educator, and philanthropist who was perhaps best known as the only child of politicians Bill Clinton, the 42nd president of the United States (1993–2001), and Hillary...
Mexican writer and diplomat
Carlos Fuentes was a Mexican novelist, short-story writer, playwright, critic, and diplomat whose experimental novels won him an international literary reputation. The son of a Mexican career diplomat,...
American writer
John Grisham is an American writer, attorney, and politician whose legal thrillers often top best-seller lists and are adapted for film. In the late 20th century, Grisham became one of the fastest-selling...
British author
Arthur Conan Doyle was a Scottish writer best known for his creation of the detective Sherlock Holmes—one of the most vivid and enduring characters in English fiction. Conan Doyle, the second of Charles...
American actor and acting teacher
Sanford Meisner was an actor and one of the most influential teachers of acting in the United States after World War II (1939–45). His students acted on the screen and the stage across the United States...