Famous Fiction Authors a to z

Children's author Roald Dahl wrote the kids' classics Charlie and the Chocolate Factory and James and the Giant Peach, among other famous works. He was married to actress Patricia Neal.

Rubén Darío was an acclaimed Nicaraguan poet, essayist and journalist who introduced the style known as modernism to Spanish literature.

Jean de La Bruyère was a 17th century French writer known for his satirical work The Characters, or the Manners of the Age, with The Characters of Theophrastus.

Marquis de Sade was a French aristocrat and philosopher who became notorious for acts of sexual cruelty in his writings as well as in his own life.

English novelist, pamphleteer and journalist Daniel Defoe is best known for his novels Robinson Crusoe and Moll Flanders.

Philip Dick is an American novelist and short story writer best known for his science fiction short stories, many of which have been translated to film.

Charles Dickens was the well-loved and prolific British author of numerous works that are now considered classics.

James Dickey was a Poet Laureate and novelist best known for his 1970 book Deliverance.

Writer E.L. Doctorow is the author of novels such as Ragtime, Billy Bathgate and The Book of Daniel.

Author Arthur Conan Doyle wrote 60 mystery stories featuring the wildly popular detective character Sherlock Holmes and his loyal assistant Watson.

Dame Daphne du Maurier was a novelist and playwright whose famous works Rebecca and The Birds were made into films by Alfred Hitchcock.

Alexandre Dumas was a 19th-century French novelist and playwright whose best known works are The Three Musketeers and The Count of Monte Cristo.

African-American author Paul Laurence Dunbar is best known for his verse and short stories, many of which are written in black dialect.

Ralph Ellison was a 20th century African-American writer and scholar best known for his renowned, award-winning novel Invisible Man.

Laura Esquivel is the author of Like Water for Chocolate, an imaginative and compelling combination of novel and cookbook, as well as other books.

William Faulkner was a Nobel Prize-winning novelist of the American South, who wrote challenging prose and created the fictional Yoknapatawpha County. He is known for novels like Sartoris.

Jessie Fauset was a teacher and writer who worked as editor for The Crisis magazine, and penned the novels Comedy: American Style and Plum Bun.

Henry Fielding was an English writer and justice of the peace who crafted novels like Tom Jones and Amelia.

American short-story writer and novelist F. Scott Fitzgerald is known for his turbulent personal life and his famous novel The Great Gatsby.

French novelist Gustave Flaubert, born in 1821, is best known for his masterpiece Madame Bovary and is renowned as a classic French realist writer.

Ian Fleming is a 20th-century novelist known for inventing popular spy character James Bond.

Ken Follett is the author of numerous best-selling books, including Eye of the Needle, On Wings of Eagles and Whiteout.

Shelby Foote was an American historian and novelist who wrote The Civil War: A Narrative. He was also a significant contributor to the Ken Burns series The Civil War.

Writer John Fowles's works include The French Lieutenant's Woman and combine a respect for the Victorian novel and an interest in contemporary French novels.

Bethenny Frankel starred on the reality-TV show The Real Housewives of New York City and two spinoffs. She also launched the brand Skinnygirl.

Writer James Frey wrote the book, A Million Little Pieces. When The Smoking Gun discredited the book as a memoir, he had to apologize on the Oprah Winfrey Show.

Jacques Futrelle was a journalist and mystery writer who created the character Professor Augustus S.F.X. Van Dusen, also known as "The Thinking Machine." He died in the Titanic disaster.

John Galt was a prolific Scottish novelist admired for his depiction of country life. His masterpieces include The Ayrshire Legatees and Lawrie Todd.

Ricky Gervais is a British comedian best known for co-writing and co-directing the television series The Office.

Philosophical essayist, novelist, poet and artist Khalil Gibran wrote The Prophet, a book of poetic essays that achieved cult status among American youth.

Writer Charlotte Perkins Gilman penned the short story "The Yellow Wall-Paper." A feminist, she encouraged women to gain economic independence.

British novelist William Golding wrote the critically acclaimed classic Lord of the Flies, and was awarded the Nobel Prize for Literature in 1983.

Edward Gorey was an American illustrator best known for his cartoons of Edwardian children coming to macabre ends. He work can be seen in the animated credits of PBS' Masterpiece Mystery.

Maxim Gorky was a Russian author who wrote about the lower depths of society. He was a critic of both Vladimir Lenin and Joseph Stalin, and died under mysterious circumstances.

Stephen Jay Gould was an American paleontologist and evolutionary biologist, and the best-selling writer of popular science books.

Author Sue Grafton is the creator of the popular mystery novels featuring private investigator Kinsey Millhone, which began with 1982's A Is for Alibi.

Kenneth Grahame was a Scottish author best known for writing the children's book The Wind in the Willows.

Seth Grahame-Smith is author of the best-selling novels Pride and Prejudice and Zombies and Abraham Lincoln: Vampire Hunter and screenwriter for Dark Shadows.

British poet Robert Graves is best known for writing his first volumes of poetry, primarily about war, while serving at the Western Front during World War I.

Jacob Grimm was a 19th century German scholar who, along with brother Wilhelm, published Grimms' Fairy Tales, a collection famous for its children's stories.

Wilhelm Grimm was a 19th century German author who, along with brother Jacob, published Grimms' Fairy Tales, a collection famous for stories like Cinderella and Rapunzel.

Alex Haley was an American writer whose works of historical fiction and reportage depicted the struggles of African Americans.

Virginia Hamilton was a multiple award-winning children's author whose work celebrated diversity and the African-American experience.

Dashiell Hammett was an American writer of hard-boiled crime fiction, including the novels The Maltese Falcon and The Thin Man.

Thomas Hardy was an English novelist and poet who set his work--including The Return of the Native and Far from the Madding Crowd--in the semi-fictionalized county of Wessex.

Based on his experience, novelist Joseph Heller wrote the satirical novel Catch-22, considered one of the most significant works of postwar protest literature.

Nobel Prize winner Ernest Hemingway is seen as one of the great American 20th century novelists, and is known for works like A Farewell to Arms and The Old Man and the Sea.

James Herriot was a British veterinarian and author best known for his books detailing life as a country vet. Two films and a TV series were based on his book All Creatures Great and Small.

Mary Higgins Clark is a bestselling author of mystery and suspense books, best known for the novel Where Are the Children?

Maxine Hong Kingston is a Chinese American author of memoirs and fiction. Her best known work is The Woman Warrior: Memoirs of a Girlhood among the Ghosts.

Writer Ted Hughes wrote poetry, non-fiction and children’s books. He was married to poet Sylvia Plath who committed suicide a year after he left her.

Poet, playwright and novelist Victor Hugo was the heart of French Romanticism, with works such as The Hunchback of Notre-Dame and Les Misérables.

Anthropologist and novelist Zora Neale Hurston was a fixture of the Harlem Renaissance before writing her masterwork, Their Eyes Were Watching God.

Cuban born writer Guillermo Infante was a success for many works, including Tres tristes tigres, winning the Miguel Cervantes literary prize in 1997.

Award-winning, bestselling American novelist John Irving is known for works like The Cider House Rules and The World According to Garp.

Writer Shirley Jackson is best known for her story “The Lottery," which suggests a sinister underside to small-town America, and The Haunting of Hill House.

E.L. James is the pen name of Erika Leonard, author of the best-selling erotic novel Fifty Shades of Grey.

An American novelist and naturalized Englishman, Henry James was an important figure in transatlantic literary culture of the day.

P.D. James is an English mystery writer best known for her series of novels featuring fictional detective Adam Dalgliesh of Scotland Yard.

James Joyce was an Irish, modernist writer who wrote in a ground-breaking style that was known both for its complexity and explicit content.

Author Franz Kafka explored the human struggle for understanding and security in his novels such as Amerika, The Trial and The Castle.