Most Popular Writers in the world and the Writings

William Shakespeare

Was an English poet and playwright, widely regarded as the greatest writer in the English language and the world's pre-eminent dramatist. He is often called England's national poet and the "Bard of Avon". His surviving works, including some collaboration, consist of about 38 plays, 154 sonnets, two long narrative poems, and several other poems. His plays have been translated into every major living language and are performed more often than those of any other playwright.

Shakespeare was born and brought up in Stratford-upon-Avon. At the age of 18, he married Anne Hathaway, with whom he had three children: Susanna, and twins Hamnet and Judith. Between 1585 and 1592, he began a successful career in London as an actor, writer, and part owner of a playing company called the Lord Chamberlain's Men, later known as the King's Men. He appears to have retired to Stratford around 1613 at age 49, where he died three years later. Few records of Shakespeare's private life survive, and there has been considerable speculation about such matters as his physical appearance, sexuality, religious beliefs, and whether the works attributed to him were written by others.

Shakespeare produced most of his known work between 1589 and 1613. His early plays were mainly comedies and histories, genres he raised to the peak of sophistication and artistry by the end of the 16th century. He then wrote mainly tragedies until about 1608, including Hamlet, King Lear, Othello, and Macbeth, considered some of the finest works in the English language. In his last phase, he wrote tragicomedies, also known as romances, and collaborated with other playwrights.

Many of his plays were published in editions of varying quality and accuracy during his lifetime. In 1623, two of his former theatrical colleagues published the First Folio, a collected edition of his dramatic works that included all but two of the plays now recognized as Shakespeare's.

Shakespeare was a respected poet and playwright in his own day, but his reputation did not rise to its present heights until the 19th century. The Romantics, in particular, acclaimed Shakespeare's genius, and the Victorians worshiped Shakespeare with a reverence that George Bernard Shaw called "bardolatry". In the 20th century, his work was repeatedly adopted and rediscovered by new movements in scholarship and performance. His plays remain highly popular today and are constantly studied, performed, and reinterpreted in diverse cultural and political contexts throughout the world.

List of Work
Comedies

• All's Well That Ends Well ‡
• As You Like It
• The Comedy of Errors
• Love's Labour's Lost
• Measure for Measure ‡
• The Merchant of Venice
• The Merry Wives of Windsor
• A Midsummer Night's Dream
• Much Ado About Nothing
• Pericles, Prince of Tyre *†
• The Taming of the Shrew
• The Tempest *
• Twelfth Night
• The Two Gentlemen of Verona
• The Two Noble Kinsmen *†
• The winter’s Tale *

Histories

• King John
• Richard II
• Henry IV, Part 1
• Henry IV, Part 2
• Henry V
• Henry VI, Part 1 †
• Henry VI, Part 2
• Henry VI, Part 3
• Richard III
• Henry VIII †

Tragedies

• Romeo and Juliet
• Coriolanus
• Titus Andronicus †
• Timon of Athens †
• Julius Caesar
• Macbeth †
• Hamlet
• Troilus and Cressida ‡
• King Lear
• Othello
• Antony and Cleopatra
• Cymbeline *

Poems

• Shakespeare's sonnets
• Venus and Adonis
• The Rape of Lucrece
• The Passionate Pilgrim
• The Phoenix and the Turtle
• A Lover's Complaint

Lost plays

• Love's Labour's Won
• The History of Cardenio †

Apocrypha

• Main article: Shakespeare Apocrypha
• Arden of Faversham
• The Birth of Merlin
• Edward III

Locrine

• The London Prodigal
• The Puritan
• The Second Maiden's Tragedy
• Sir John Oldcastle
• Thomas Lord Cromwell
• A Yorkshire Tragedy
• Sir Thomas More

Charles John Huffam Dickens 

was an English writer and social critic who is generally regarded as the greatest novelist of the Victorian period and the creator of some of the world's most memorable fictional characters. During his lifetime Dickens' works enjoyed unprecedented popularity and fame, but it was in the twentieth century that his literary genius was fully recognized by critics and scholars. His novels and short stories continue to enjoy an enduring popularity among the general reading public.

Born in Portsmouth, England, Dickens left school to work in a factory after his father was thrown into debtors' prison. Though he had little formal education, his early impoverishment drove him to succeed. He edited a weekly journal for 20 years, wrote 15 novels and hundreds of short stories and non-fiction articles, lectured and performed extensively, was an indefatigable letter writer, and campaigned vigorously for children's rights, education, and other social reforms.

Dickens rocketed to fame with the 1836 serial publication of The Pickwick Papers. Within a few years he had become an international literary celebrity, celebrated for his humour, satire, and keen observation of character and society. His novels, most published in monthly or weekly instalments, pioneered the serial publication of narrative fiction, which became the dominant Victorian mode for novel publication. The instalment format allowed Dickens to evaluate his audience's reaction, and he often modified his plot and character development based on such feedback. For example, when his wife's chiropodist expressed distress at the way Miss Mowcher in David Copperfield seemed to reflect her disabilities, Dickens went on to improve the character with positive lineaments. Fagin in Oliver Twist apparently mirrors the famous fence, Ikey Solomon; His caricature of Leigh Hunt in the figure of Mr Skimpole in Bleak House was likewise toned down on advice from some of his friends, as they read episodes: In the same novel, both Lawrence Boythorne and Mooney the beadle are drawn from real life – Boythorne from Walter Savage Landor) and Mooney from a certain 'Looney', a beadle at Salisbury Square. Though his plots were carefully constructed, Dickens would often weave in elements harvested from topical events into his narratives. Masses of the illiterate poor chipped in ha'pennies to have each new monthly episode read to them, opening up and inspiring a new class of readers.

Dickens was regarded as the 'literary colossus' of his age. His 1843 novella, A Christmas Carol, is one of the most influential works ever written, and it remains popular and continues to inspire adaptations in every artistic genre. His creative genius has been praised by fellow writers—from Leo Tolstoy to G. K. Chesterton and George Orwell—for its realism, comedy, prose style, unique characterisations, and social criticism. On the other hand Oscar Wilde, Henry James and Virginia Woolf complained of a lack of psychological depth, loose writing, and a vein of saccharine sentimentalism.

List of Work by Charles Dickens


Novels

• The Pickwick Papers - 1836
• Oliver Twist - 1837
• Nicholas Nickleby - 1838
• The Old Curiosity Shop - 1840
• Barnaby Rudge - 1841
• Martin Chuzzlewit - 1843
• Dombey and Son - 1846
• David Copperfield - 1849
• Bleak House - 1852
• Hard Times - 1854
• Little Dorrit - 1855
• A Tale of Two Cities - 1859
• Great Expectations - 1860
• Our Mutual Friend - 1864
• The Mystery of Edwin Drood – 1870

Partial Listing of Short Stories and Other Work by Charles Dickens in Alphabetical Order

• American Notes
• The Battle of Life 
• The Chimes: A Goblin Story
• A Christmas Carol
• A Christmas Tree 
• A Dinner at Poplar Walk
• Doctor Marigold's Prescriptions 
• A Flight
• Frozen Deep
• George Silverman's Explanation
• Going into Society 
• The Haunted Man
• Holiday Romance
• The Holly-Tree 
• Hunted Down
• The Long Voyage
• Master Humphrey's Clock 
• A Message from the Sea
• Mrs. Lirriper's Legacy
• Public Life of Mr. Trumble, Once Mayor of Mudfog 
• Sketches by Boz
• The Story of the Goblins Who Stole a Sexton 
• Sunday under Three Heads
• Tom Tiddler's Ground
• Travelling Abroad - City of London Churches
• The Uncommercial Traveller
• Wreck of the Golden Mary

J.K. Rowling

Joanne Kathleen Rowling (born July 31, 1965), commonly known as J.K. Rowling, is a British fiction writer. Rowling is most famous for being the author of the Harry Potter fantasy series. Rowling's books have gained international attention and have won multiple awards. In February 2004, Forbes magazine estimated her fortune as 576 million, making her the first person to become a billionaire (in terms of U.S. dollars) by writing books. Rowling is also the wealthiest woman in the United Kingdom, well ahead of even Queen Elizabeth II.

She was born in Chipping Sodbury, South Gloucestershire.

As her publisher, Bloomsbury, wanted to use initials on the cover of the Harry Potter books (suggesting that if they put an obviously female name on the cover, the target group of young boys might be reluctant to buy them), Rowling chose to adopt her grandmother's middle name, Kathleen.

Rowling wrote two novels for adults (neither of which she tried to publish) before she had the idea for Harry Potter during a four-hour train trip. According to her, by the time she reached her destination she had the characters and a good part of the plot for Harry Potter and the Philosopher's Stone in her head. She started writing during her lunch hours, and continued working on the manuscript throughout a stint in Portugal teaching English as a second language. After her marriage to Portuguese television journalist Jorge Arantes failed, she returned to the United Kingdom with her infant daughter and completed the book in Edinburgh, Scotland. The book was a huge success, and she has so far had four sequels published. The sales made her a multi-millionaire, and in 2001 she used the proceeds to buy a luxurious 19th century mansion on the banks of the River Tay in Perthshire, Scotland, where she married her second husband, Dr. Neil Murray, on December 26th, 2001.

Soon after the fourth book was published, she published two booklets for Comic Relief, supposedly Harry Potter's school-books, whose royalties go to charity. She has contributed an uncountable amount of money and support to many charitable causes over the world, especially research and treatment of Multiple Sclerosis, from which her mother died in 1990. This death above all has affected the book, according to Rowling.

The Harry Potter series is expected to run to seven volumes, one for each year Harry spends in school. Five of these have already been published. The fifth book, titled Harry Potter and the Order of the Phoenix, was delayed by an unsuccessful plagiarism suit directed towards her by rival author Nancy Stouffer (see below). Rowling took some time off writing at this point because, while in the process of writing the fourth book, she felt her workload was too heavy. She said that at one point she had considered breaking her arm to get out of writing, because the pressure on her was too much. After forcing her publishers to drop her deadline, she enjoyed three years of quiet writing and has commented she had some work done on something else she might return to when she is finished with the series. The fifth book was released on June 21, 2003.

In late 2003 she was approached by the television producer Russell T. Davies to contribute an episode to the famous British television science-fiction series Doctor Who. Although she was "amused by the suggestion", she turned the offer down as she is busy working on the next novel in the Potter series.

Naguib Mahfouz 

was an Egyptian writer who won the 1988 Nobel Prize for Literature. He is regarded as one of the first contemporary writers of Arabic literature, along with Tawfiq el-Hakim, to explore themes of existentialism. He published over 50 novels, over 350 short stories, dozens of movie scripts, and five plays over a 70-year career. Many of his works have been made into Egyptian and foreign films.

               

List of Work



Akhenaten: Dweller in Truth 
fiction
Arabian Nights and Days 
fiction
Children of Gebelawi 
fiction
Echoes of an Autobiography
memoir
Miramar 
fiction
Naguib Mahfouz at Sidi Gaber: Reflections of a Nobel Laureate 1994-2001
by Mohamed Salmawy (Editor), Naguib Mahfouz
interviews

Naguib Mahfouz at Sidi Gaber: Reflections of a Nobel Laureate 1994-2001

by Naguib Mahfouz, Mohamed Salmawy (Editor)

memoirs

Respected Sir

fiction

The Beggar, The Thief and the Dogs, Autumn Quail

anthology, fiction

The Beginning and the End

fiction

The Cairo Trilogy: Palace Walk, Palace of Desire, Sugar Street

fiction

The Day the Leader Was Killed

fiction

The Journey of Ibn Fattouma

fiction

Time and the Place

Short stories

Voices from the Other World: Ancient Egyptian Tales

Short stories

Edward FitzGerald
 was an English poet and writer, best known as the poet of the first and most famous English translation of The Rubaiyat of Omar Khayyam. The spelling of his name as both FitzGerald and Fitzgerald is seen. The use here of FitzGerald conforms with that of his own publications, anthologies such as Quiller-Couch's Oxford Book of English Verse, and most reference books up through about the 1960s.

The Rubaiyat  of Omar Khayyam

This is probably the best known poem in the world and it has a fascinating history, combining medieval Persia (Iran) with India, Victorian Europe and America, and much more.