The 7 Most Important Writers In History
Ranking the most important writers in history is not an easy task. We can try to assess the quality of your work, but there will always be an influence of the taste of the selection.
In our case, writers were selected based on the quality of their work, their popularity, their imprint on literary history, and their influence.
The 7 most important writers in history
If you are curious to know who they were, what they wrote and when, we invite you to keep reading.
1. Dante Alighieri / Italy (1265-1321)
Appreciated for his great spirituality, Dante is nicknamed the “Supreme Poet” or “ il Sommo Poet”. Despite this, he was also a prose writer, literary theorist, philosopher and political thinker. His iconic work is The Divine Comedy (1304-1321), central to the transition from medieval to Renaissance thought and, of course, one of the classics of world literature.
The book revolves around the search for Beatriz, the woman who captivated him until he took him to paradise. For this, he will have to leave the jungle and follow Virgil, who will be his guide to enter the circles of hell.
2. William Shakespeare / England (1564-1616)
As Ben Jonson (a contemporary Shakespeare writer) announced: “William Shakespeare does not belong to a single age, but to eternity.” He was right because, as corroborated by a 2014 survey by the University of Jaén, his influence came to China thanks to playwright Cao Yu.
Undoubtedly, recognition is not for less. In addition to poems, he wrote fourteen comedies, ten tragedies and ten other historical dramas. His work is the object of analysis in several universities, in which students take courses that address his literary production.
3. Miguel de Cervantes, one of the most important writers in Spanish history (1547-1616)
Also recognized as “the one-armed maneta of Lepanto”, he gave life to Don Quixote, the book most published and translated into other languages after the Bible. Although he has also written a large number of novels, his figure will forever be linked to his main character.
The ingenious Don Quixote de la Mancha narrates the adventures of Alonso Quijano, a poor gentleman who, after reading so many chivalry novels, ends up going mad and thinking himself a knight errant.
His story was the key that opened the doors to metaliterature through parody. Furthermore, thanks to her, the history of Spain is still alive, as its pages describe with precision and detail many of the customs of the time.
4. Charles Dickens / England (1812 – 1870)
Considered one of the best English novelists of all time thanks to works such as:
- Oliver Twist (1838).
- A Christmas Carol (1843) .
- Little Dorrit (1857).
These are some of the most emblematic works of Charles Dickens, which demonstrate his struggle for the most disadvantaged social classes of the Victorian era, his relentless criticism of poverty and his enormous empathy for man.
For many, he was the author who, with the most success and emotion, knew how to translate Christmas with words in the form of a story.
6. Franz Kafka / Czech Republic (1883 – 1924)
His work is a fusion of fantastic and realistic elements that raised awareness in a period when the alienation of work was the order of the day. Kafka made people identify, in The Metamorphosis (1915), with Gregorio Samsa, who overnight turned into a frightening insect.
As a good expressionist and existentialist, the themes of his literary creations are centered on the condition of contemporary man, anguish, guilt, bureaucracy, frustration and loneliness, among others.
5. William Faulkner / United States (1897-1962)
Awarded the Nobel Prize for Literature, Faulkner was one of the best creators of experimental novels. Furthermore, he was the true father of many contemporary authors, such as Mario Vargas Llosa, Juan Rulfo, Ana María Matute and the great Hispanic-American existentialist Juan Carlos Onetti.
His final recognition came thanks to his fourth novel, The Noise and the Fury (1929), which features a polyphony of voices with different narrators that demonstrate Faulkner’s astonishing ability to literarily recreate even the most abnormal traits of the human mind.
7. Jorge Luis Borges / Argentina (1899-1986)
One of the key figures in both Hispanic and universal literature is Borges. His respect for the confluence of opposites with the Argentine presence in tango or knives was just the beginning in the writing of a child who was born almost with a book in his hands.
Thus was born La Biblioteca de Babel (1941) and more than 50 short stories, essays and poems, which allow readers (whether mathematicians, philosophers, chemists or philologists) to enter Borges’ labyrinth to admire life with different eyes and develop each one of them. your theory about it.
In this sense, his blindness caused by a genetic disease gave him the secret keys to write on various topics, all of them related to philosophy, existentialism, the universe, etc., and expressed through rationalism.
The greatest writers in history are known for their works
Unfortunately, the list of the most important writers in history had to be narrowed down, but there are many others. The truth is that authors who marked a before and an after in world literature were left out. So, we can’t forget about:
- The Magdalene of Proust.
- The stories of Camus.
- The tales of Poe.
- Ulysses, by James Joyce.
In addition, women writers who, over time, returned to the place in history where they should always have been are kept alive : Emily Dickinson and her intimate poems, Virginia Woolf with her own bedroom and Mary Shelley with her Frankenstein, are just a few one of the most influential on the world literary scene.
Without going so far in time, we also find renowned names, such as Philip Roth, Paul Auster, Murakami, Saramago, Zafón and JK Rowling, that writer who has marked the hearts of thousands of young people – and not so young – with her particular universe.
