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Top 101 Writers of All Time

The list in the source is a meta-list compiled out of various lists that are based on the factors critical assessments of the writer's work, readers' assessments, and readers' voting by virtue of purchasing the writers' work. Longevity was also taken into account, so if an author is well known and read 300 years after his/her lifetime, it counts more than if he/she has been read much during a short period of time.
Plays and poetry were weighed less in the list than novels, which is the reason why Shakespeare isn't No. 1.
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James Joyce
James Joyce
1
William Faulkner
William Faulkner
2
Vladimir Nabokov
Vladimir Nabokov
3
Virginia Woolf
Virginia Woolf
4
William Shakespeare
William Shakespeare
5
Henry James
Henry James
6
D.H. Lawrence
D.H. Lawrence
7
George Orwell
George Orwell
8
John Steinbeck
John Steinbeck
9
F. Scott Fitzgerald
F. Scott Fitzgerald
10
Ernest Hemingway
Ernest Hemingway
11
Joseph Conrad
Joseph Conrad
12
Leo Tolstoy
Leo Tolstoy
13
Fyodor Dostoevsky
Fyodor Dostoevsky
14
Marcel Proust
Marcel Proust
15
William Butler Yeats
William Butler Yeats
16
Miguel De Cervantes
Miguel De Cervantes
17
William Wordsworth
William Wordsworth
18
Herman Melville
Herman Melville
19
William Blake
William Blake
20
Ralph Ellison
Ralph Ellison
21
Charles Dickens
Charles Dickens
22
Franz Kafka
Franz Kafka
23
Walt Whitman
Walt Whitman
24
Edgar Allan Poe
Edgar Allan Poe
25
Toni Morrison
Toni Morrison
26
John Keats
John Keats
27
Joseph Heller
Joseph Heller
28
Kurt Vonnegut
Kurt Vonnegut
29
E.M. Forster
E.M. Forster
30
Willa Cather
Willa Cather
31
Aldous Huxley
Aldous Huxley
32
Homer
Homer
33
John Milton
John Milton
34
Rudyard Kipling
Rudyard Kipling
35
Dante Alighieri
Dante Alighieri
36
Jane Austen
Jane Austen
37
Mark Twain
Mark Twain
38
Gustave Flaubert
Gustave Flaubert
39
Stendhal
Stendhal
40
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