Edgar Allan Poe
January 19, 1809 – October 7, 1849
American writer, poet, author, editor, and literary critic who is best known for his poetry and short stories, particularly his tales of mystery and the macabre.
He is widely regarded as a central figure of Romanticism and Gothic fiction in the United States, and of American literature. Poe was one of the country's earliest practitioners of the short story, and is considered the inventor of the detective fiction genre, as well as a significant contributor to the emerging genre of science fiction. He is the first well-known American writer to earn a living through writing alone, resulting in a financially difficult life and career.
H. G. Wells
Herbert George Wells
21 September 1866 – 13 August 1946
English writer, prolific in many genres, he wrote more than fifty novels and dozens
of short stories. His non-fiction output included works of social commentary, politics, history, popular science, satire, biography, and autobiography. Wells' science fiction novels are so well regarded that he has been called the "father of science fiction"
Nikolai Leskov
Nikolai Semyonovich Leskov
16 February 1831 – 5 March 1895
Russian novelist, short-story writer, playwright, and journalist, who also wrote under the pseudonym M. Stebnitsky. Praised for his unique writing style and innovative experiments in form, and held in high esteem by Leo Tolstoy, Anton Chekhov and Maxim Gorky among others, Leskov is credited with creating a comprehensive picture of contemporary Russian society using mostly short literary forms. His major works include Lady Macbeth of Mtsensk (1865) (which was later made into an opera by Shostakovich), The Cathedral Folk (1872), The Enchanted Wanderer (1873), and "The Tale of Cross-eyed Lefty from Tula and the Steel Flea" (1881)
Mikhail Saltykov-Shchedrin
Mikhail Yevgrafovich Saltykov-Shchedrin
27 January 1826 – 10 May 1889
Russian writer and satirist of the 19th century. He spent most of his life working
as a civil servant in various capacities. After the death of poet Nikolay Nekrasov, he acted as editor of a Russian literary magazine Otechestvenniye Zapiski until the Tsarist government banned it in 1884. In his works Saltykov mastered both stark realism and satirical grotesque merged with fantasy. His most famous works, the family chronicle novel The Golovlyov Family (1880) and the political novel The History of a Town (1870) became important works of 19th-century fiction, and Saltykov is regarded as a major figure of Russian literary Realism
Bram Stoker
Abraham Stoker
8 November 1847 – 20 April 1912
Irish author who wrote the 1897 Gothic horror novel Dracula. During his lifetime,
he was better known as the personal assistant of actor Sir Henry Irving and business manager of the West End's Lyceum Theatre, which Irving owned.
In his early years, Stoker worked as a theatre critic for an Irish newspaper, and wrote stories as well as commentaries. He also enjoyed travelling, particularly to Cruden Bay in Scotland where he set two of his novels. During another visit to the English coastal town of Whitby, Stoker drew inspiration for writing Dracula. He died on 20 April 1912 due to locomotor ataxia and was cremated in north London. Since his death, his magnum opus Dracula has become one of the best-known works in English literature, and the novel has been adapted for numerous films, short stories, and plays
John Ruskin
8 February 1819 – 20 January 1900
English writer, philosopher, art critic and polymath of the Victorian era. He wrote on subjects as varied as geology, architecture, myth, ornithology, literature, education, botany and political economy.
Ruskin was heavily engaged by the work of Viollet le Duc which he taught to all his pupils including William Morris, notably Viollet le Duc's Dictionary which he considered as "the only book of any value on architecture"
Giambattista Basile
Joannes Baptista
15 February 1566 (baptisted)– February 1632
was an Italian poet, courtier, and fairy tale collector. His collections include the oldest recorded forms of many well-known (and more obscure) European fairy tales.
He is chiefly remembered for writing the collection of Neapolitan fairy tales known
as Il Pentamerone
Charles Perrault
12 January 1628 – 16 May 1703
French author and member of the Académie Française. He laid the foundations for a new literary genre, the fairy tale, with his works derived from earlier folk tales, published in his 1697 book Histoires ou contes du temps passé (Stories or Tales from Past Times). The best known of his tales include Le Petit Chaperon Rouge ("Little Red Riding Hood"), Cendrillon ("Cinderella"), Le Maître chat ou le Chat botté ("Puss in Boots"), La Belle au bois dormant ("Sleeping Beauty"), and Barbe Bleue ("Bluebeard").
Some of Perrault's versions of old stories influenced the German versions published by the Brothers Grimm more than 100 years later. The stories continue to be printed and have been adapted to most entertainment formats. Perrault was an influential figure in the 17th-century French literary scene and was the leader of the Modern faction during the Quarrel of the Ancients and the Moderns
