15 Most Influential Authors of All Time

The most influential thing in the world is words. The power-holders or the writers have always changed human perspective, brought revolution, gave voice to people, offered help, made people familiar with the unfathomable sufferings, empowered people, and whatnot. In this article, we are going to read about the 15 most influential authors of all time.

Virginia Woolf (1882-1941)

Virginia Woolf was an English writer. She was considered one of the most significant writers of the 20th century. She is the pioneer of the literary style – stream of consciousness. Virginia Woolf was a part of the popular Bloomsbury group. Some of her popular works are Mrs Dalloway, To the Lighthouse, Orlando, and A Room of One’s Own.

Franz Kafka (1883-1924)

Kafka was a German-speaking Bohemian novelist. He is considered one of the major figures of the-century literature. His works blend the fantastic and the realism. His works feature the main character suffering from surreal and unfathomable socio-bureaucratic powers. Three of his most popular works are The Metamorphosis, The Trial, and The Castle.

George Orwell (1903-1950)

Orwell’s real name is Eric Arthur Blair. George Orwell was his pen name. He was an English novelist, critic, essayist, and journalist. His works are focused on social criticism, support of democratic socialism, and opposition to totalitarianism. Two of Orwell’s most popular works are Animal Farm and 1984.

William Faulkner (1897-1962)

William Faulkner was an American writer. He is considered the greatest writer of Southern literature. Some of his popular works are The Sound and the Fury, As I Lay Dying, Light in August, and Absalom, Absalom! He received the Nobel Prize in Literature in the year 1949. He also received two Pulitzer Prizes for A Fable and The Reivers. 

Mark Twain (1835-1910)

Mark Twain was an American writer, humorist, and publisher. His keen eyes for the American society and humour are aspects that made him popular in literature. He is widely considered the greatest American writer of all time. Some of his popular works are The Adventures of Tom Sawyer and Adventures of Huckleberry Finn.

William Shakespeare (1564-1616)

Shakespeare was an English playwright, actor, and poet. He is the world’s greatest dramatist. He wrote during the Jacobean and Elizabethan eras. Even though we know a lot about his work we do not much about him – his physical appearance, religious belief, and sexuality will remain an enigma. His notable works are Hamlet, Macbeth, Romeo and Juliet, King Lear, and Othello.

Albert Camus (1913-1960)

Camus was an Algerian born French philosopher. He received the 1957 Nobel Prize in Literature. Camus’s perspective contributed to the wake of absurdism in philosophy. Some of his notable works are The Stranger, The Myth of Sisyphus, The Fall, The Rebel, and The Plague.

Mary Shelley (1797-1851)

Shelley was an English novelist who wrote the most popular Gothic novel, Frankenstein. Her father was a known political philosopher William Godwin and her mother was the famous feminist activist Mary Wollstonecraft her husband was one of the most known Romantic poets, Percy Bysshe Shelley. In that century she wrote something like Frankenstein that deals with several themes and the parenting aspect are very much applicable in today’s world.

Ray Bradbury (1920-2012)

Ray Bradbury was an American writer and screenwriter. He worked in different genres such as realistic fiction, science fiction, fantasy, mystery, and horror. The New York Times praised Bradbury for being the most responsible writer for bringing modern sci-fi into the literary mainstream. Some of his popular works are Fahrenheit 451, The Illustrated Man and The Martian Chronicles.

Toni Morrison (1931-2019)

Toni Morrison was an American novelist. Morrison and her work are popular for addressing the brutal consequence of racism in the United States. She received the Nobel Prize in 1993. Some of her notable works are Beloved, Song of Solomon, and The Bluest Eye.

Gabriel Garcia Marquez (1927-2014)

Gabo was a Colombian novelist, screenwriter, journalist, and short-story writer. He received the 1982 Nobel Prize in Literature. Some of his popular works are One Hundred Years of Solitude, Chronicle of Death Foretold and Love in the Time of Cholera.

Leo Tolstoy (1828-1910)

Leo Tolstoy was a Russian writer. He was nominated for the Novel Prize in literature 5 times and for the Nobel Peace Prize 3 times. One of the major controversies associated with him is the same that even though he was nominated so many times yet he did not receive any. Some of his notable works are War and Peace, Anna Karenina, The Death of Ivan Ilyich, and Resurrection.

James Joyce (1882-1941)

James Joyce was an Irish novelist, literary critic, short story writer, and poet. He was also popular for the use of stream of consciousness. His popular works are Ulysses, Dubliners, and A Portrait of the Artist as a Young Man.

Sylvia Plath (1932-1963)

Sylvia Plath was an American poet and novelist. She is known for advancing the genre of confessional poetry and her two popular published collections as Ariel (1965) and The Colossus and Other Poems (1960). One of her most popular aspects was her semi-autobiographical novel The Bell Jar. She was married to poet Ted Hughes but had a rough relationship and they separated a year before Plath’s death in 1963.

Fyodor Dostoevsky (1821- 1881)

Fyodor Dostoevsky was a Russian novelist, journalist, and short-story writer. Dostoevsky profoundly shaped notions of literary modernism, theology, psychology, existentialism, and more in his works based on the human condition in 19th century Russia. Some of his notable works are Crime and Punishment, The Brothers Karamazov, Demons, and The Idiot.

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