Whether you prefer the classic author of a historical novel or a narrative story, rather than the greatest famous contemporary poets or the writers of the books adopted in our masters in Bari, in this article you will find what you are looking for. We will in fact go to know all the most important names and works of these writers.
Curious to find out more? Then don’t miss the next few paragraphs, because we will reveal all the secrets of the best contemporary writers, without neglecting any category. From the noir genre to the pulp, from thrillers to historians, from prose to science fiction. Continue to read and find out who are the most famous writers.
Famous writers
Dan Brown
American writer, author of some of the best thrillers of all time, so much so that he has abundantly exceeded the 200 million copies sold. Born and raised in Exeter, New Hampshire, he inherited the love for art from his mother musician and the passion for writing from his father, who was however a teacher and author of mathematics texts also awarded a Presidential Award.
George Orwell
George Orwell, too, is actually a pseudonym. His real name is Eric Arthur Blair. He is one of the most respected British writers of the 20th century, even though he was born in Motihari, Bihar, India. His works, full of bittersweet allegories towards man and totalitarianisms, represent a source of reflection for millions of readers, citizens and politics.
Gabriel García Márquez
Full first name Gabriel José de la Concordia García Márquez, nicknamed “Gabo”. Colombian writer, journalist and essayist naturalized Mexican, awarded the Nobel Prize for literature in 1982. A leading exponent of magical realism, his novels are characterized by a flowing style, rich and constantly pervaded by a bitter irony.
Umberto Eco
Italian semiologist, philosopher, writer, translator, academic and bibliophile. Nothing is missing from Eco’s curriculum. Disappeared in 2016, he was above all a very prolific essayist, particularly in the fields of semiotics, medieval aesthetics, linguistics and philosophy. But he was also one of the greatest contemporary writers of famous novels.
Famous female writers
Jane Austen
Still one of the most famous and fashionable writers in the world, almost 200 years after her death. Jane Austen, author of immortal masterpieces such as “Reason and sentiment” and “Proud and prejudice“, was certainly one of the most influential authors of all in terms of themes and literary style.
Mary Shelley
Another great female protagonist of the nineteenth-century cultural world, British like Jane Austen, Mary Shelley was a feminist forerunner and is best known for “Frankenstein”. With this groundbreaking work from 1818, written at the age of 19, Shelley entered the Olympus of popular culture.
Virginia Woolf
Author of “Trip to the Lighthouse” and “Mrs. Dalloway”, but also of many other novels and essays, Woolf was one of the greatest figures in the cultural world of the first half of the 20th century. As a feminist activist, she suffered from depression all her life.
Agatha Christie
The mystery writer par excellence. She is the most translated English writer ever and is known for her ability to build ingenious and perfect plots on the edge of suspense. Among her most famous characters Miss Marple and Hercule Poiroit, whose stories have inspired dozens of films and television series.
Famous male writers
Charles Dickens
His abandonment of studies was forced, in reality. In his early years Dickens enjoyed a privileged education because his family belonged to the middle class, but his father’s debts precluded this possibility and at the age of twelve he had to stop studying. Since then he has worked in a bitumen factory and, even if he will resume his studies at a later time, this experience has marked him deeply and has been fundamental for the writing of some of his most famous titles.
Mark Twain
Forced by circumstances, young Samuel Langhorne Clemens (this is Mark Twain’s real name) left his studies at the age of twelve, when his father died and he and his brothers had to take charge of supporting the family. His older brother, Orion, was a typographer and Twain learned this art.
George Bernard Shaw
The Irish writer, playwright, aphorist, linguist and music critic wandered from school to school throughout his youth until, at the age of fourteen, he realized that this was not his ideal environment. His real training ground was the National Gallery in Dublin. There he learned everything he needed in the field of art, history and literature to become that exceptional writer that he was then. In 1925 he won the Nobel Prize for literature “for his work steeped in idealism and humanity, whose stimulating satire is often infused with a poetic of singular beauty”. In 1939 he won the Oscar for best non-original screenplay for the film Pygmalion directed by Anthony Asquith and Leslie Howard.
HG Wells
As with Dickens and Twain, the author of The War of the Worlds had no choice but to drop out. Wells, in fact, was eleven years old when, following an accident, his father broke his thigh bone and he had to leave school to help his family financially. The many works he has done since have inspired the novels The Wheels of Chance (1896) and Kipps (1905). He too, therefore, ends up on our list of famous writers who have dropped out of school.
Famous poets
William Blake
Widely underestimated while he was alive, Blake’s work is now considered extremely significant and a source of inspiration in both poetry and the visual arts. From a young age William Blake claimed to have visions. It is no coincidence that William Blake was commissioned in 1824 by John Linnell to illustrate Dante’s Inferno , with the final intention of drawing a series of engravings from it. Blake’s death, which occurred in 1827, put an end to the ambitious project, of which 102 watercolors remain (72 from Hell, 20 from Purgatory, 10 from Paradise), in various stages of development.
Charles Bukowski
He has written six novels, hundreds of short stories and thousands of poems, for a total of over sixty books. The content of these deals with her life, characterized by a morbid relationship with alcohol, by frequent sexual experiences (described in a realistic way and without too many euphemisms) and by stormy relationships with people. The literary current he is often associated with is that of dirty realism. The first work that made him famous is the Notebook of an Old Dirty (1969). Among the most successful books Post office (1971), Stories of ordinary madness. Erections Cumshots Performances (1972), Stories of a Buried Life (1973) Women (1978), Music for hot organs(1983), No Love Songs (1990), Confessions of a Coward (1996).
Vincenzo Cardarelli
His way of writing poetry can be summarized as descriptive and linked to memories of the past. Cardarelli points to a poem where the verses have a discursive development, which can bring to light the author’s secret psychological movements, with harmony, but always urgently, with an implacable rhythm, with a purpose to be immediately clear. A poem, that of Cardarelli, which is always ongoing, fluent, vivid speech.
Gabriele D’Annunzio
He was an Italian writer, poet, playwright, aviator, military man, politician, patriot and journalist, symbol of Italian Decadentism, of which he was the most illustrious representative together with Giovanni Pascoli, and a war hero. Nicknamed the Vate, that is ‘the prophet’, cantor of Umbertine Italy, he occupied a prominent position in Italian literature from about 1889 to 1910 and in political life from 1914 to 1924.
Famous female poets
Lalla Romano
Painter, poet, activist in the “women’s defense groups”: Lalla Romano was a multifaceted and committed woman. She had a strong and decisive character, as well as a marked sensitivity: when Einaudi refused to publish her debut collection, she decided to send him a copy anyway, writing: “to those who did not want to print this book”.
Amelia Rosselli
When the literary critic Pier Vincenzo Mengaldo built a sort of canon of 20th century Italian poetry, Amelia Rosselli was the only female writer to be included. We easily understand why: having received an important musical education, she was able to build lyrics that profound harmony and rhythm from everywhere. This kind of refinement, however, accompanied an extraordinary ability to tell the everyday – so much so that in her poems ungrammatical words and constructions drawn from speech appear here and there.
Antonia Pozzi
Her life was dramatic and short: she committed suicide when she was only twenty-six, putting an end to an existential torment that had consumed her over time. Her world probably appeared to her as being threatened by an underlying evil: after a relationship thwarted by her parents that she never managed to forget, she cultivated hopeful passions that turned out to be one-sided. Her war took her closest friends from her, just when she thought she had started living again.
Sibilla Aleramo
Sibilla Aleramo was a pacifist, active in the struggle for women’s rights and a courageous witness to the scandals of a patriarchal society. She was only fifteen when she was abused and, only two years later, she was forced to marry her rapist. From this suffering, and from the consequent decision to abandon her husband and son to find the semblance of a normal life, the precious biography of her A woman is born. But his social denunciation, so modern for the time in which he writes, also emerges in his poems.
Famous male poets
Charles Baudelaire
He is considered the quintessential French poet. When he was alive his poems were not appreciated by the general public and the poet and writer was deeply affected by this: his existence, in fact, was marked by alcohol, drugs and economic problems. Today, however, he is considered one of the greatest poets of the nineteenth century, but also a writer, essayist, translator, aphorist, journalist and art and literature critic. A strong influence on his art was exercised by India, a country in which he was sent by his stepfather, aware of his unruly life. In fact, in Mauritius, he started writing “ Les Fleurs du Mal ” and fell in love with everything that was exotic.
Arthur Rimbaud
He is one of the cursed poets who started writing his first poems at the age of only 10; at 16, after running away from home and during his wandering, he wrote his first work. Then he approached poets considered far from common morality, such as Baudelaire and Verlaine, and began to feel himself a prophet of poetry; in that period he wrote ” Lettre du Voyant ” and ” Une saison en enfer”.
Paul Verlaine
Particularly close to symbolism, a trend born after rationality suffered a strong crisis, Verlaine lived a life of melancholy, alcohol and wandering between France, England and Belgium, also marked by imprisonment and loneliness, which gave rise to reflections that reveal a great depth of soul. Among his most important works we remember ” le Fêtes galantes ” and ” La Bonne Chanson ” and ” Poètes maudits ” work that he dedicated, in fact, to the cursed poets that he attended personally.
Renee Vivien
Also known by the nickname of “ Sappho 1900 ”, Renée Vivien is now considered one of the greatest French poetesses, to the point that an important literary prize has been dedicated to her, attributed, among others, to Marguerite Yourcenar. Her life has not always met the approval of the public and, in fact, it will be necessary to wait until 1986 for her poems to be re-edited and finally appreciated by the public and literary critics: knowing her will certainly allow you to make a great impression!
