PEOPLE KNOWN FOR: satire
French dramatist
Molière was a French actor and playwright who became the greatest of all writers of French comedy. Although the sacred and secular authorities of 17th-century France often combined against him, the genius...
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...
Dutch humanist
Erasmus was a Dutch humanist who was the greatest scholar of the northern Renaissance, the first editor of the New Testament, and also an important figure in patristics and classical literature. Using...
Roman poet
Horace was an outstanding Latin lyric poet and satirist under the emperor Augustus. The most frequent themes of his Odes and verse Epistles are love, friendship, philosophy, and the art of poetry. Horace...
French author
François Rabelais was known to his contemporaries as an eminent physician and humanist. Today, he is remembered as the French writer responsible for the comic masterpiece Gargantua and Pantagruel, which...
Anglo-Irish author and clergyman
Jonathan Swift was an Anglo-Irish author, who was the foremost prose satirist in the English language. Besides the celebrated novel Gulliver’s Travels (1726), he wrote such shorter works as A Tale of a...
English author
Alexander Pope was a poet and satirist of the English Augustan period, best known for his poems An Essay on Criticism (1711), The Rape of the Lock (1712–14), The Dunciad (1728), and An Essay on Man (1733–34)....
British poet
Lord Byron was a British Romantic poet and satirist whose poetry and personality captured the imagination of Europe. Renowned as the “gloomy egoist” of his autobiographical poem Childe Harold’s Pilgrimage...
English author
Henry Fielding was a novelist and playwright, who, with Samuel Richardson, is considered a founder of the English novel. Among his major novels are Joseph Andrews (1742) and Tom Jones (1749). Fielding...
British author
John Dryden was an English poet, dramatist, and literary critic who so dominated the literary scene of his day that it came to be known as the Age of Dryden. The son of a country gentleman, Dryden grew...
Ukrainian-born writer
Nikolay Gogol was a Ukrainian-born humorist, dramatist, and novelist whose works, written in Russian, significantly influenced the direction of Russian literature. His novel Myortvye dushi (1842; Dead...
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...
Greek dramatist
Aristophanes was the greatest representative of ancient Greek comedy and the one whose works have been preserved in greatest quantity. He is the only extant representative of the Old Comedy—that is, of...
French writer
André Gide was a French writer, humanist, and moralist who received the Nobel Prize for Literature in 1947. Gide was the only child of Paul Gide and Juliette Rondeaux. His father was of southern Huguenot...
American author
After his debut in 1985 with the novel Less Than Zero, American writer Bret Easton Ellis was declared by many critics as the “voice of a generation.” Ellis’s darkly sardonic first novel captured the jaded...
Swedish dramatist
August Strindberg was a Swedish playwright, novelist, and short-story writer, who combined psychology and Naturalism in a new kind of European drama that evolved into Expressionist drama. His chief works...
English author [1835-1902]
Samuel Butler was an English novelist, essayist, and critic whose satire Erewhon (1872) foreshadowed the collapse of the Victorian illusion of eternal progress. The Way of All Flesh (1903), his autobiographical...
Scottish novelist
Tobias Smollett was a Scottish satirical novelist, best known for his picaresque novels The Adventures of Roderick Random (1748) and The Adventures of Peregrine Pickle (1751) and his epistolary novel The...
Greek writer
Lucian was an ancient Greek rhetorician, pamphleteer, and satirist. One is entirely dependent on Lucian’s writings for information about his life, but he says little about himself—and not all that he says...
Roman author
Gaius Petronius Arbiter was the reputed author of the Satyricon, a literary portrait of Roman society of the 1st century ad. The most complete and the most authentic account of Petronius’ life appears...
Roman philosopher and statesman [4 BCE – 65 CE]
Seneca was a Roman philosopher, statesman, orator, and tragedian. He was Rome’s leading intellectual figure in the mid-1st century ce and was virtual ruler with his friends of the Roman world between 54...
Chinese writer
Lu Xun was a Chinese writer, commonly considered the greatest in 20th-century Chinese literature, who was also an important critic known for his sharp and unique essays on the historical traditions and...
Irish writer
Roddy Doyle is an Irish author known for his unvarnished depiction of the working class in Ireland, particularly in his home city of Dublin. Since his literary debut in the 1980s, Doyle’s distinctively...
Persian poet
Ferdowsī was a Persian poet, author of the Shāh-nāmeh (“Book of Kings”), the Persian national epic, to which he gave a final and enduring form, although he based his poem mainly on an earlier prose version....
Scandinavian author
Ludvig Holberg, Baron Holberg was the outstanding Scandinavian literary figure of the Enlightenment period, claimed by both Norway and Denmark as one of the founders of their literatures. Orphaned as a...
British author
John Gay was an English poet and dramatist, chiefly remembered as the author of The Beggar’s Opera, a work distinguished by good-humoured satire and technical assurance. A member of an ancient but impoverished...
American author
Washington Irving was described as the “first American man of letters.” He wrote numerous works but is best known for “The Legend of Sleepy Hollow” and “Rip Van Winkle,” which have been called the first...
American author
Dawn Powell was an American novelist, playwright, and short-story writer known for her biting social satires. Although she gained critical success in her lifetime, her work was not commercially successful...
English author [1612–1680]
Samuel Butler was a poet and satirist, famous as the author of Hudibras, the most memorable burlesque poem in the English language and the first English satire to make a notable and successful attack on...
Canadian actor and writer
Rick Mercer is a Canadian satirist, comedian, actor, and writer whose insightful lampooning of Canadian politics made him a national icon. Mercer grew up in an exurb of St. John’s in a middle-class family...
English writer
Thomas Nashe was a pamphleteer, poet, dramatist, and author of The Unfortunate Traveller; or, The Life of Jacke Wilton (1594), the first picaresque novel in English. Nashe was educated at the University...
Russian author
Yevgeny Zamyatin was a Russian novelist, playwright, and satirist, one of the most brilliant and cultured minds of the postrevolutionary period and the creator of a uniquely modern genre—the anti-Utopian...
American author
Ambrose Bierce was an American newspaperman, wit, satirist, and author of sardonic short stories based on themes of death and horror. His life ended in an unsolved mystery. Reared in Kosciusko county,...
French author
Pierre Marivaux was a French dramatist, novelist, and journalist whose comedies became, after those of Molière, the most frequently performed in French theatre. His wealthy, aristocratic family moved to...
Russian author
Mikhail Bulgakov was a Soviet playwright, novelist, and short-story writer best known for his humour and penetrating satire. Beginning his adult life as a doctor, Bulgakov gave up medicine for writing....
English poet
John Skelton was a Tudor poet and satirist of both political and religious subjects whose reputation as an English poet of major importance was restored only in the 20th century. His individual poetic...
New Zealand author
Allen Curnow was one of the major modern poets of New Zealand. The son of an Anglican clergyman, Curnow briefly attended Canterbury College before simultaneously studying theology at the College of St....
English writer
Thomas Lodge was an English poet, dramatist, and prose writer whose innovative versatility typified the Elizabethan Age. He is best remembered for the prose romance Rosalynde, the source of William Shakespeare’s...
Roman author
Marcus Terentius Varro was Rome’s greatest scholar and a satirist of stature, best known for his Saturae Menippeae (“Menippean Satires”). He was a man of immense learning and a prolific author. Inspired...
British dramatist
John Marston was an English dramatist, one of the most vigorous satirists of the Shakespearean era, whose best known work is The Malcontent (1604), in which he rails at the iniquities of a lascivious court....
English poet
Andrew Marvell was an English poet whose political reputation overshadowed that of his poetry until the 20th century. He is now considered to be one of the best Metaphysical poets. Marvell was educated...
Irish author
Brendan Behan was an Irish author noted for his earthy satire and powerful political commentary. Reared in a family active in revolutionary and left-wing causes against the British, Behan at the age of...
French author
Savinien de Cyrano de Bergerac was a French satirist and dramatist whose works combining political satire and science-fantasy inspired a number of later writers. He has been the basis of many romantic...
English poet
John Wilmot, 2nd earl of Rochester was a court wit and poet who helped establish English satiric poetry. Wilmot succeeded his father to the earldom in 1658, and he received his M.A. at Oxford in 1661....
Japanese author
Abe Kōbō was a Japanese novelist and playwright noted for his use of bizarre and allegorical situations to underline the isolation of the individual. He grew up in Mukden (now Shenyang), in Manchuria,...
Soviet author
Mikhail Mikhaylovich Zoshchenko was a Soviet satirist whose short stories and sketches are among the best comic literature of the Soviet period. Zoshchenko studied law and then in 1915 joined the army....
English dramatist
William Wycherley was an English dramatist who attempted to reconcile in his plays a personal conflict between deep-seated puritanism and an ardent physical nature. He perhaps succeeded best in The Country-Wife...
English poet
George Gascoigne was an English poet and a major literary innovator. Gascoigne attended the University of Cambridge, studied law at Gray’s Inn in 1555, and thereafter pursued careers as a politician, country...
Italian author
Pietro Aretino was an Italian poet, prose writer, and dramatist celebrated throughout Europe in his time for his bold and insolent literary attacks on the powerful. His fiery letters and dialogues are...
Scottish poet
William Dunbar was a Middle Scots poet attached to the court of James IV. He was the dominant figure among the Scottish Chaucerians (see makar) in the golden age of Scottish poetry. He was probably of...