Source: https://top-list.co/top-best-british-writers-of-all-time-v3999.html
- William Shakespeare
- Thomas More
- Jonathan Swift
- Daniel Defoe
- Jane Austen
- Charles John Huffam Dickens
- Sir Arthur Ignatius Conan Doyle
- Joseph Rudyard Kipling
- Henry Graham Green
- Joanne “Jo” Rowling
William Shakespeare
William Shakespeare was an English poet, dramatist, and actor who was born in Stratford-upon-Avon in 1564. Shakespeare’s birthday is commemorated on April 23 (see When was Shakespeare born), which is also the date he died in 1616. During the Elizabethan and Jacobean periods of British theatre, Shakespeare was a prolific writer (sometimes called the English Renaissance or the Early Modern Period). Shakespeare’s plays are undoubtedly his best famous works, yet they are far from his only works.
Shakespeare wrote 38 plays, two narrative poems, 154 sonnets, and a variety of other writings in total. His famous works are Romeo and Juliet, Much Ado About Nothing, Hamlet, King Lear, and Sonnets (1609). Shakespeare’s poems are still widely read today although he was dead long ago.
Romeo and Juliet is part of a long history of tragic love stories that dates back to antiquity. The plot is based on an Italian tale transcribed into verse by Arthur Brooke in 1562 as The Tragical History of Romeus and Juliet and repeated in prose by William Painter in 1567 as Palace of Pleasure. Shakespeare drew significantly on both but added to the story by fleshing out a cast of supporting characters, particularly Mercutio and Paris.
William Shakespeare
Romeo and Juliet
Thomas More
Thomas More, also known as Saint Thomas More, was an English humanist and statesman who served as chancellor of England (1529–32) and was beheaded for refusing to accept King Henry VIII as the head of the Church of England (born February 7, 1478, London, England—died July 6, 1535, London; canonized May 19, 1935; feast day June 22). The Roman Catholic Church has declared him a saint. More got a classical education at Oxford, where he began his studies in 1492. He studied Latin and Greek under Thomas Linacre and William Grocyn and became excellent in both languages. At his father’s request, More left Oxford after only two years to undertake legal studies at New Inn, one of the Inns of Chancery, in London. More enrolled in Lincoln’s Inn, one of the Inns of Court, in 1496 and stayed there until 1502, when he was admitted to the Bar.
Dialogue Concerning Heresies, Responsio ad Lutherum, Supplication for Souls, and an incomplete but influential (and slightly prejudiced) History of King Richard III are among More’s works. Utopia, published in 1516 CE, is his most renowned work, which envisions an ideal state based on an imagined island beyond the equator that has been cut off from Europe for 1,200 years.
Utopia was published in 1516 and was written in Latin. The novel is essentially a frame tale that depicts a fictional island society’s religious, social, and political norms. More’s description of Utopia is reminiscent of monastic life in many ways.
Thomas More
Uptopia
Jonathan Swift
Jonathan Swift was an Anglo-Irish satirist, writer, political pamphleteer (first for the Whigs, then for the Tories), poet, and Anglican cleric who served as Dean of St Patrick’s Cathedral in Dublin, earning him the nickname “Dean Swift”. Jonathan Swift was born on November 30, 1667, in the city of Dublin, Ireland. Jonathan Swift (1640–1667) and his wife Abigail Erick (or Herrick) of Frisby on the Wreake had two children. He was the sole son of Jonathan Swift (1640–1667) and his wife Abigail Erick (or Herrick) of Frisby on the Wreake. His father was a native of Goodrich, Herefordshire, but after his Royalist father’s farm was ruined during the English Civil War, he accompanied his brothers to Ireland to seek their fortunes in law. James Ericke, his maternal grandfather, was the vicar of Thornton in Leicestershire. The vicar was found guilty of Puritan practices in 1634. Ericke and his family, including their little daughter Abigail, moved to Ireland shortly after.
Swift’s publications include A Tale of a Tub (1704), An Argument Against Abolishing Christianity (1712), Gulliver’s Travels (1726), and A Modest Proposal (1728). He is considered the foremost prose humorist in the English language by the Encyclopaedia Britannica, while his poetry is less well recognized. All of his works were first published anonymously or under pseudonyms such as Lemuel Gulliver, Isaac Bickerstaff, and M. B. Drapier. He was a master of two satirical styles: Horatian and Juvenalian.
A Tale of a Tub was written between 1694 and 1697 and published in 1704. It is, without a doubt, his most difficult and probably best satire. The Story is a prose satire separated among sections of “digression” and a “tale” about three brothers, each representing one of western Christianity’s main branches.
Jonathan Swift
A Tale of a Tub
Daniel Defoe
Daniel Defoe (1660 – 24 April 1731) was an English writer, businessman, journalist, pamphleteer, and spy who lived from c. 1660 to 24 April 1731. He is most known for his novel Robinson Crusoe, which was published in 1719 and is said to have received more translations than the Bible. He is regarded as one of the earliest proponents of the English novel, and along with others such as Aphra Behn and Samuel Richardson, he helped to popularize the genre in the United Kingdom. Defoe was a prolific political tract writer who was frequently in trouble with the authorities and served time in prison. His new ideas drew the attention of intellectuals and political leaders, who occasionally sought his advice. Defoe was a prolific and varied writer who published over 300 works —books, pamphlets, and journals—on a wide range of subjects, including politics, crime, religion, marriage, psychology, and the supernatural. He was also a forerunner in the fields of business and economic journalism.
Defoe is credited with 545 publications, including humorous poetry, political and religious tracts, and volumes. An Essay Upon Projects, a collection of ideas for social and economic betterment published in 1697, was Defoe’s first major publication. He advocated King William III’s right to a standing army during disarmament following the Treaty of Ryswick (1697) ended the Nine Years’ War (1688–1697) from 1697 to 1698. While surrounded by a guard of sixteen gentlemen of the Legion, Defoe handed the Legion’s Memorial to Robert Harley, then Speaker of the House of Commons—and his later employer—in 1701.
The True-Born Englishman (1701), his most popular poem, defended William against xenophobic accusations from his political opponents in England, as well as English anti-immigration views in general. The poem quickly became a bestseller in England.
Daniel Defoe
The True-Born Englishman
Jane Austen
Jane Austen (16 December 1775 – 18 July 1817) was an English novelist best known for her six main novels that interpret, critiqued, and commented on the British landed gentry at the end of the eighteenth century. Austen’s stories frequently address women’s need for marriage in order to achieve social status and financial security. Her works are part of the shift to 19th-century literary realism and critique the novels of sensibility from the second half of the 18th century. Critics and academics have praised her use of stinging irony, as well as her realism and social critique. Austen’s six full-length books have never been out of print since her death, and her six full-length novels have never been out of print.
In her lifetime, she earned little success and, because the books were published anonymously, little celebrity with the publishing of Sense and Sensibility (1811), Pride and Prejudice (1813), Mansfield Park (1814), and Emma (1816). She also wrote two additional books, Northanger Abbey and Persuasion, both of which were published posthumously in 1818, and she started a third, Sanditon, but died before it was finished. She also left three manuscript volumes of juvenile works, the brief epistolary book Lady Susan, and an unfinished novel, The Watsons.
“Sense and Sensibility” was her first published work, appearing in 1811 under the pseudonym “A Lady”. It tells the story of the Dashwood sisters, Elinor and Marianne, and their lives and loves. The young girls are followed to their new home, a little cottage on the property of a distant relative, where they experience love, romance, and heartbreak.
Jane Austen
Sense and Sensibility
Charles John Huffam Dickens
Charles John Huffam Dickens was an English writer and social commentator who lived from 7 February 1812 to 9 June 1870. He is often recognized as the finest author of the Victorian era, having produced some of the world’s most well-known fictional characters. During his lifetime, his works achieved unparalleled popularity, and critics and historians regarded him as a literary genius by the twentieth century. His short stories and novels are still widely read today. Dickens’s literary career began with the serial publication of The Pickwick Papers in 1836, a publishing hit that inspired Pickwick goods and spin-offs thanks to the introduction of the character Sam Weller in the fourth episode. Dickens became international literary fame in a matter of years, known for his wit, satire, and sharp observations of character and society. His works, most of which were serialized and published in monthly or weekly installments, pioneered the serialization of narrative fiction, which became the dominant Victorian style of the novel publication.
The books The Pickwick Papers (1837), Oliver Twist (1838), A Christmas Carol (1843), David Copperfield (1850), Bleak House (1853), and Great Expectations (1853) are among Charles Dickens’ numerous works (1861).
David Copperfield is considered the greatest English novelist of the Victorian era. David Copperfield is also an autobiographical work, including events based on Dickens’ own life: “a very intricate weaving of reality and fabrication.” It was his favorite of the books he authored. It’s been dubbed “Dickens’ triumph of the art”, and it marks a turning point in his career, separating his youth and maturity novels.
Charles John Huffam Dickens
David Copperfield
Sir Arthur Ignatius Conan Doyle
Sir Arthur Ignatius Conan Doyle KStJ DL was a British writer and physician who lived from May 22, 1859, to July 7, 1930. In 1887, for A Study in Scarlet, the first of four books and fifty-six short tales about Holmes and Dr. Watson, he invented the character Sherlock Holmes. In the realm of crime fiction, the Sherlock Holmes stories are considered classics. Doyle married Louisa (often referred to as “Touie”) Hawkins (1857–1906) in 1885. She was the younger sister of one of Doyle’s patients and the youngest daughter of J. Hawkins of Minsterworth, Gloucestershire. Louisa was afflicted with TB. He married Jean Elizabeth Leckie (1874–1940) in 1907, a year after Louisa’s death. He had met and fallen in love with Jean in 1897, but had had a platonic connection with her out of loyalty to his former wife.
Other than Holmes stories, Doyle wrote fantasy and science fiction stories about Professor Challenger and comedic stories about Napoleonic soldier Brigadier Gerard, as well as plays, romances, poetry, non-fiction, and historical novels. The mystery of the Mary Celeste was popularized because of one of Doyle’s early short stories, “J. Habakuk Jephson’s Statement” (1884). Doyle had a hard time finding a publisher. A Study in Scarlet, Doyle’s first work featuring Sherlock Holmes and Dr. Watson, was written in three weeks when he was 27 and accepted for publication by Ward Lock & Co on November 20, 1886, in exchange for all rights to the narrative for £25 (equal to £2,900 in 2019).
Sherlock Holmes is a fictional detective created by Sir Arthur Conan Doyle, who refers to himself as a “consulting detective” in the stories. Holmes is known for his extraordinary abilities in observation, deduction, forensic science, and logical reasoning, which he employs when investigating cases for a variety of clients, including Scotland Yard.
Sir Arthur Ignatius Conan Doyle KStJ DL
Sherlock Homes
Joseph Rudyard Kipling
Joseph Rudyard Kipling was an English journalist, short story writer, poet, and novelist who lived from December 30, 1865, to January 18, 1936. He was born in British India, where he drew inspiration for a lot of his work. Kipling was one of the most popular writers in the United Kingdom in the late 19th and early 20th century. “Kipling strikes me as the most complete man of genius, as distinct from good intelligence, that I have ever known,” Henry James observed. He was the first English-language writer to receive the Nobel Prize in Literature in 1907, and at the age of 41, he was the prize’s youngest recipient to date.
The Jungle Book (1894), Kim (1901), and a number of short stories, including “The Man Who Would Be King,” are among Kipling’s works of fiction (1888). “Mandalay” (1890), “Gunga Din” (1890), “The Gods of the Copybook Headings” (1919), “The White Man’s Burden: The United States and the Philippines” (1899), and “If—” are some of his poems (1910). He is regarded as a pioneer in the field of short fiction. His children’s novels have become classics, with one critic describing him as having “a diverse and dazzling narrative gift”.
The Jungle Book became a motivational book for Cub Scouts, a junior aspect of the Scouting movement, because to its moral tone. After a direct petition from Robert Baden-Powell, the founder of the Scouting movement, who had originally asked for the author’s permission to use the Memory Game from Kim in his scheme to develop the morale and fitness of working-class youths in cities, Kipling approved this use of the book’s universe.
Joseph Rudyard Kipling
The Jungle Book (1894)
Henry Graham Green
Henry Graham Greene (October 2, 1904 – April 3, 1991) was an English author and journalist who was widely recognized as one of the most influential novelists of the twentieth century. Greene established a name early in his life as a great writer of both serious Catholic novels and thrillers, combining literary recognition with widespread popularity (or “entertainments” as he termed them). In 1966 and 1967, he was nominated for the Nobel Prize in Literature. He tackled the competing moral and political dilemmas of the modern world throughout the course of 67 years of writing, which encompassed over 25 novels. He received the Shakespeare Prize in 1968 and the Jerusalem Prize in 1981.
He released his debut novel, The Man Within, in 1929, and it was well-received, allowing him to work as a novelist full-time. Greene originally divided his fiction into two genres (which he referred to as “entertainments” and “novels”): thrillers (often with notable philosophic overtones), such as The Ministry of Fear, and literary works, such as The Power and the Glory, on which he believed his literary reputation would be built. Greene’s keen interest in the workings and intrigues of international politics and espionage can be seen in a number of works, including The Confidential Agent, The Quiet American, Our Man in Havana, The Human Factor, and his script for The Third Man.
The novel The Power and the Glory was published in 1940. The title is a play on the doxology “For thine is the kingdom, the power, and the glory, forever and ever, Amen,” which is typically chanted at the end of the Lord’s Prayer. The Labyrinthine Ways was the title given to it when it was first published in the United States.
Henry Graham Greene
The Power and the Glory
Joanne “Jo” Rowling
J. K. Rowling is the pen name of Joanne Rowling, a British author and philanthropist who was born on July 31, 1965. Rowling has received numerous awards for her work. For her contributions to writing and philanthropy, she was named to the Order of the British Empire and made a member of the Order of the Companions of Honour. Harry Potter brought her fame and fortune, which she has used to support philanthropic and political causes. She co-founded Lumos, a nonprofit organization, and established the Volant Charitable Trust, which is named after her mother. Rowling’s philanthropic contributions are focused on medical causes and assisting women and children who are at risk.
From 1997 to 2007, he authored Harry Potter, a seven-volume children’s fantasy series. The series has sold over 500 million copies worldwide, has been translated into at least 70 languages, and has produced a global media franchise that includes films and video games. Her first adult novel, The Casual Vacancy (2012), was published in 2012. As Robert Galbraith, she is the author of the ongoing crime fiction series Cormoran Strike.
Harry Potter series consists of seven fantasy novels. The books follow the adventures of Harry Potter, a young wizard, and his companions Hermione Granger and Ron Weasley, who are all students at Hogwarts School of Witchcraft and Wizardry.
J. K. Rowling
Harry Potter
