Fleming is the creator of the fictional superspy James Bond. Bond is a suave, lady-killing British agent who travels the globe, battles super-villains bent on world domination, and famously prefers his vodka martinis "shaken, not stirred."...

Simone de Beauvoir was a French writer, intellectual, existentialist philosopher, political activist, feminist and social theorist. Though she did not consider herself a philosopher, she had a significant influence on both feminist existent...

Rachel Louise Carson was an American marine biologist and conservationist whose book Silent Spring and other writings are credited with advancing the global environmental movement. Carson began her career as an aquatic biologist in the U...

Georges Prosper Remi, known by the pen name Hergé, was a Belgian cartoonist. He is best known for creating The Adventures of Tintin, the series of comic albums which are considered one of the most popular European comics of the 20th century...

Samuel Barclay Beckett was an Irish avant-garde novelist, playwright, theatre director, and poet, who lived in Paris for most of his adult life and wrote in both English and French. He is widely regarded as among the most influential writer...

Burrhus Frederic Skinner was an American psychologist, author, inventor, social philosopher, and poet. He was the Edgar Pierce Professor of Psychology at Harvard University from 1958 until his retirement in 1974. Skinner invented the operan...

Eric Arthur Blair, known by his pen name George Orwell, was an English novelist, essayist, journalist and critic. His work is marked by lucid prose, awareness of social injustice, opposition to totalitarianism, and commitment to democratic...

John Ernst Steinbeck, Jr. was an American writer. He is widely known for the Pulitzer Prize-winning novel The Grapes of Wrath (1939) and East of Eden (1952) and the novella Of Mice and Men (1937). As the author of twenty-seven books, includ...

Antoine Marie Jean-Baptiste Roger, comte de Saint-Exupéry, was a French writer, poet, aristocrat, journalist, and pioneering aviator. He became a laureate of several of France's highest literary awards and also won the U.S. National Book Aw...

Margaret Munnerlyn Mitchell was the American author who won the Pulitzer Prize in 1937 for her immensely successful novel, Gone with the Wind, that was published in 1936. The novel is one of the most popular books of all time, selling more...

Ernest Miller Hemingway was an American author and journalist. His economical and understated style had a strong influence on 20th-century fiction, while his life of adventure and his public image influenced later generations. Hemingway...

Vladimir Nabokov was a multilingual Russian novelist and short story writer. Nabokov wrote his first nine novels in Russian, then rose to international prominence as a master English prose stylist. He also made contributions to entomology a...

Jan Jacob Slauerhoff was a Dutch poet and novelist. He is considered one of the most important Dutch language writers. Slauerhoff attended HBS(secondary school) in Harlingen, where he first met future fellow writer Simon Vestdijk. In 1916,...

Federico del Sagrado Corazón de Jesús García Lorca was a Spanish poet, dramatist and theatre director. García Lorca achieved international recognition as an emblematic member of the Generation of '27. He is believed to be one of thousands w...

Cornelis Gerard Anton de Kom was a Surinamese resistance fighter and anti-colonialist author. On May 10, De Kom was sent to The Netherlands without trial and exiled from his native country. He was unemployed and continued writing his boo...