Entertaining and informative, this collection of brief, informal biographies spans the centuries from Sophocles in ancient Greece to Harper Lee in Americaas Deep South. Along the way, readers will enjoy pithy biographical sketches of existentialists Albert Camus and Jean-Paul Sartre, French satirist Voltaire and Edwardian satirist Oscar Wilde, dramatists from William Shakespeare to Samuel Beckett and Harold Pinter, poets from Dante to William Wordsworth and T.S. Eliot, and novelists who include Charles Dickens, Jane Austen, James Joyce, Virginia Woolf, Fyodor Dostoevsky, Toni Morrison, John Updike, and hundreds more. Each biographical entry includes an assessment of the writeras literary innovations and cultural impact, supplemented with a list of the authoras major works, fascinating quotes, and intriguing asides. This book covers a broad range of literary artists who have shaped the course of fiction, poetry, drama, and philosophical thought across a span of more than 2,500 years. Both a handy quick-reference source and an inspiration for readers to delve into the world of the literary arts, "501 Great Writers" is certain to be opened and referred to time and time again. Filled with photos and illustrations.

朱利安·帕特里克是多伦多大学英文和比较文学教授，过去25年来，他一直主持维多利亚学院的文学研究项目——这是一个关于世界文学、翻译、哲学和文学理论的有史以来最有创新性的项目。他曾在多伦多大学和耶鲁大学读书，编撰了多本关于本·琼森和文学理论的著作。他发表的文章有关于莎士比亚到奥登作品的，也有关于心理分析学的。他目前的研究项目还有：从蒙田到《克里夫斯公主》的早期现代文学作品中，传统的模仿与新式的表达之间的重叠关系。