Interested in finding out the most famous English authors of all time? We’ve had a go at defining the world’s most famous authors, and the best American writers elsewhere, but here we present the ten best English authors (excluding the Bard of Avon). It was no easy task given the huge volume of high-quality English writers over the years, plus any list of great authors is going to be – at least on some level – very subjective. We’ve ended up going with the criteria of:
- Impact on the world of literature
- Relevance today
- Number of books sold
It’s worth also pointing out that here at NoSweatShakespeare we have no doubt that William Shakespeare is by far the best (and probably most famous) writer in English literary history. And that’s no mean feat, given the many centuries of English history that have been adorned with authors who have placed England as the leading literary nation in the world.
So, in no particular order, here is our pick of the ten most famous English authors of all time:
Jane Austen 1775 – 1817
The Jane Austen Centre’s website states: ‘Jane Austen is perhaps the best known and best loved of Bath’s many famous residents and visitors.’ One wonders at the restraint in that, considering that Jane Austen is indisputably one of the greatest English writers – some say the greatest after Shakespeare – and certainly the greatest English novelist and one of the most famous English women who ever lived. Read the best Jane Austin quotes.
William Blake 1757-1827
Although not highly regarded either as a painter or poet by his contemporaries William Blake has the distinction of finding his place in the top ten of both English writers and English painters. The reason he was disregarded is because he was very much ahead of his time in his views and his poetic style (read some wonderful William Blake quotes as an example), and also because he was regarded as being somewhat mad, due to behaviour that would be thought of as only slightly eccentric today– for example, his naturistic habit of walking about his garden naked and sunbathing there.
Read more about William Blake >>
Geoffrey Chaucer 1343-1400
Geoffrey Chaucer stands as the great giant of English poetry. His verse is still read and enjoyed today and often adapted for theatre performances. It is full of characters, still recognisable as types we encounter in daily life in spite of having been inspired by people Chaucer observed more than seven hundred years ago.
Read more on Geoffrey Chaucer >>
Charles Dickens 1812-1870
Charles Dickens was an extraordinary man. He is best known as a novelist but he was very much more than that. He was as prominent in his other pursuits but they were not areas of life where we can still see him today. We see him as the author of such classics as Oliver Twist, David Copperfield, Great Expectations, A Tale of Two Cities, Bleak House and many others. He was so prolific that we’ve pulled together Charles Dickens’ most famous quotes here.
Read more on Charles Dickens >>
John Donne 1572-1631
John Donne must be one of the most interesting writers who ever lived, both as a poet and a man. His life was a colourful adventure and his poems are significant feats of language. A Jacobean writer, more or less a contemporary of Shakespeare, Fletcher and Webster, but very distant from those theatre writers, both regarding his social class and his literary work.
George Eliot 1819-1880
George Eliot was the pen name of Mary Ann Evans, a novelist who produced some of the major classic novels of the Victorian era, including The Mill on the Floss, Adam Bede, Silas Marner, Romola, Felix Holt, Daniel Deronda and her masterpiece, Middlemarch. It is impossible to overestimate the significance of Eliot’s novels in the English culture: they went right to the heart of the small-town politics that made up the fabric of English society. Her novels were essentially political.
Read more about George Eliot >>
John Milton 1608-1674
English is often referred to as ‘the language of Shakespeare and Milton.’ Milton’s poetry has been seen as the most perfect poetic expression in the English language for four centuries. His most famous poem, the epic Paradise Lost is a high point of English epic poetry. Its story has entered into English and European culture to such an extent that the details of our ideas of heaven and hell and paradise, Adam and Eve, Satan.
Read more about John Milton >>
George Orwell 1903-1950
George Orwell was the pen name of Eric Blair, a twentieth-century writer, equally at home with journalism, essays, novels, literary criticism and social commentary. He was famous in all those areas, but will be particularly remembered for two of his novels, Animal Farm and Nineteen Eighty Four, both among the most significant works of literature of the twentieth century, packed with memorable quotes.
Read more about George Orwell >>
Harold Pinter 1930-2008
Harold Pinter won the Nobel Prize for Literature in 2005, three years before his death from cancer. He had a career of more than half a century as a playwright, director, actor, and writer of screenplays for television and film. He was, without doubt, the most influential English playwright of the twentieth century and so earns his place on this list.
Read more about Harold Pinter >>
Samuel Taylor Coleridge 1772-1834
Samuel Taylor Coleridge was an English poet, best known in his time as a literary critic and philosopher. He was immensely influential in English literature as one of the founders of the English Romantic Movement and when one talks about ‘the Romantic poets,’ it’s Coleridge’s name that springs to mind.
Read more about Samuel Taylor Coleridge >>
There are many other great English language writers closely associated with the English writing scene that would have been considered for this list had they been born in England. Writers like Irishmen, James Joyce, William Butler Yeats, Jonathan Swift and Oscar Wilde, and the American, T.S. Eliot.
In my understanding, the best writers of English are the ones who use the language most elegantly and effectively. This site conflates medium and message, and bases the judgement too much upon message (the story) rather than prose (i.e, literature) itself. The message is the topic. The medium, the language itself. The greatest writer of English prose (as a medium of pure expression of ideas) is indisputably Edward Gibbon, followed by Shakespeare, Austen, Swift, Hume and the compilers of the King James bible.
“…writers who, even if Shakespeare had never existed, would have placed England as the top literary country in the world”.
Quite a ridiculous claim. Good luck putting “Harold Pinter” against Dante, Cervantes, Goethe, Molière etc.
Grear Article! Love it!
How they did , what they did? How ?? Please tell me I wanna be a literary person too ! I mean they were the prodigies! Incomprehensible!
I cannot say that all of this writers are just famous but till now millions of people have many posters to these writers including me. I think that if other people do the same as what those intelligent people did, we will be a successful world, but unfortunately nowadays no one wants to work or be a successful person.Everyone in this world wants to be just sleeping and relaxing in bed without doing any work. I hope that those people would be like the famous writers that we all love.
I want India top 10 english literature writter showing their contribution
in development of India English literature , literary works , and there achievement
no.
ruskin bond is on top of that
I love every information that i get
Yeah. I ike you so much
Typical English arrogance, if Shakespeare is the model-T, Joyce is the Lamborghini. Ahem, Ireland? Dublin, Beckett, Wilde, it’s only a millionaire city. My God Thatcher really damaged ye with education cuts,, this nonsense merchantry; the Russians are the true masters(snow), then Ireland(rain), Spanish world? US? Bellow?
Back to bed lad, their concepts are beyond your stifled comprehension, I’m fuming at, again, the sheer arrogance, it’s questionable if Shakespeare worked 100% solo, and the Anglo-Irish? Yeats? Add up other countries first before continuing with these English delusions of grandeur; it could be a sign, God forbid even collectively, of a deeper seated issue, like your German cousins.
Jk
xxx
Hi JK, this page specifically looks at the best English writers. We do also have a page on the world’s best, which features Joyce: https://nosweatshakespeare.mystagingwebsite.com/resources/30-greatest-writers/, and a page on the best writers the USA has produced: https://nosweatshakespeare.mystagingwebsite.com/resources/20-best-american-authors/
Thanks,
NSS
Why/how do you expect these (great) Irish writers in a list of English writers?!
Are you for real? Ireland? They have 11, maybe 12 good writers. Joyce was a Homer knock off. England has far better writers. Your crazy, pal.
I would put England; Russia; Germany; Italy; France; and Spanish writers over Ireland.
Chaucer is terrible. Have you ever read the Canterbury tales?
do you have any copy?
Where’s Evelyn Waugh