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Experience the timeless stories that have marked literature and continue to inspire generations. With our virtual library, save time and money while enjoying the best of the classic authors.

From the depth of Shakespeare to the imagination of Verne, we offer you immediate access to a carefully curated selection of literary classics, ready to be explored.

Immerse yourself in the tragedy of “Romeo and Juliet,” unravel mysteries with Sherlock Holmes, or travel with “Around the World in 80 Days.”

Here you will find that classic book that will accompany you on your next literary adventure.

1) Agatha Christie

Agatha Christie Books

Agatha Christie is considered one of the greatest authors of crime and mystery in world literature. Her prolific work still draws a legion of followers, being one of the most translated authors in the world and whose novels and stories are still the subject of reissues, performances and adaptations to the cinema.

Christie was the creator of great characters dedicated to the world of mystery, such as the endearing Miss Marple or the Belgian detective Hercule Poirot. To date, it is estimated that more than four billion copies of his books translated into more than 100 languages ​​have been sold worldwide. In addition, his play La ratonera remained on the bill for 23,000 performances.

2) Aldous Huxley

Aldous Huxley Books

Aldous Leonard Huxley was born on July 26, 1894 in Godalming – Surrey, Great Britain. His father was Leonard Huxley, also a biologist. And his mother was Julia Arnold, one of the first women to study at Oxford, granddaughter of the poet Matthew Arnold

Aldous Huxley was a renowned English novelist and essayist of encyclopedic and visionary prose; he is also considered one of the initiators of psychedelia.

His narrative stands out for its expository brilliance and intellectual lucidity, and shows the fabulous and reflective capacity of an author endowed with a great intelligence, a marked sensitivity and a vast encyclopedic culture.

3) Alexandre Dumas

Alexandre Dumas Books

Alexander Dumas was a celebrated French author best known for his historical adventure novels, which include “The Three Musketeers” and “The Count of Monte Cristo.” The popularity of his writings made Dumas a household name in France and a celebrity in much of Europe.

He was born on July 24, 1802 in Villers-Cotterêts, France. He took the surname “Dumas” from his grandmother, a former Haitian slave. Dumas established himself as one of the most popular and prolific authors in France, known for plays and historical adventure novels. He died on December 5, 1870 in Puys, France. His works have been translated into more than 100 languages ​​and adapted for numerous films.

4) Anton Chekhov

Anton Chekhov Books

Anton Pavlovich Chekhov was born in Taganrog, southern Russia, on the Sea of Azov, on January 17, 1860. Chekhov entered the medical faculty of Moscow University. He soon took his father’s place as head of the family, a responsibility he carried for the rest of his life.

In an attempt to increase his income in Moscow, Chekhov wrote for the humor magazines he liked. His first story was published in March 1880 by a magazine called Dragonfly, which later that year published nine of his stories, most of them signed as “Antosha Chekhonte”.

Chekhov’s first book published by someone else, Motley Stories, came out in 1886 under his real name. The book was successful and Chekhov was recognized as a new talent. He began practicing medicine less and writing more. In February 1887 he was elected a member of the Literary Fund, an honor given only to outstanding authors.

5) Aristotle

Aristotle Books

Aristotle was a philosopher, mathematician and logician born in 385 BC in the city of Estagira, Greece. His father was a renowned physician to King Amyntas III of Macedon. At the age of 17, when his father died, Proxeno de Atarneo his tutor, sent him to the intellectual school of Greece to study Plato. He spent more than 20 years learning all the knowledge that his great teacher could give him.

After Plato’s death in 347 BC, Aristotle decides to go on a journey through different cities in Greece. It is for this reason that in approximately 343 BC, King Philip II of Macedon called the Greek philosopher to be the advisor to his 13-year-old son, who would later be known as Alexander the Great.

6) Arthur Conan Doyle

Arthur Conan Doyle Books

On May 22, 1859, Arthur Conan Doyle was born in Edinburgh, Scotland.

Although Doyle’s family was highly respected in the artistic world, his father, Charles, who was a lifelong alcoholic, had few accomplishments to speak of. Doyle’s mother, Mary, was a lively, well-educated woman who loved to read.

As Doyle would later recall in his biography, «In my early childhood, as far as I can remember anything, the vivid stories she told me stand out so clearly as to obscure the real facts of my life».

While a medical student, Doyle made his first attempt to write, with a story called «The Mystery of Sasassa Valley». That was followed by a second story, «The American Tale», which was published in London Society.

7) Arthur Schopenhauer

Arthur Schopenhauer Books

Arthur Schopenhauer was born in Danzig on February 22, 1788.

In 1797 Schopenhauer was sent to live with a family in France, returning to Hamburg after 2 years to enter a private school. He later became interested in literature, which earned him the disapproval of his father, who nevertheless gave him a choice between pursuing serious literary studies or traveling with the family for 2 years. Schopenhauer chose to travel.

In 1851, Schopenhauer published the book that brought him fame and followers. Entitled “Parerga and Paralipomena”, it was a collection of highly polished and insightful essays and aphorisms. His style was probably the main reason for the book’s immediate success.

8) Brothers Grimm

Brothers Grimm Books

Jacob (1785) and Wilhelm Grimm (1786) were two writers born in Hanau (Germany) into a family of the German intellectual bourgeoisie. They were the eldest of six brothers and, under the influence of their father, studied Law and Medieval Literature at the University of Marburg, where they met the person who got them interested in the world of popular poetry.

Both brothers worked in a library when they were about 20 years old and before they were 30 they were already well-known writers, however, at that time several of their stories were censored or modified to adapt them a little more to social customs.

9) Charles Darwin

Charles Darwin Books

Charles Robert Darwin was born on February 12, 1809 in Shrewsbury, Shropshire – England. He was the fifth son of Robert Darwin (a physician and businessman) and Susannah Darwin (whose maiden name was Wedgwood).

When he was only eight years old, little Charles showed his inclination for natural history and for collecting specimens. In 1817 he entered the school run by the family preacher. That same year, in July, his mother died.

10) Charles Dickens

Charles Dickens Books

Charles John Huffam Dickens (Portsmouth, February 7, 1812 – Gads Hill Place, June 9, 1870) was an English writer and novelist, one of the most recognized in world literature, and the most outstanding of the Victorian era. Charles Dickens, as he is usually called, knew how to masterly handle the narrative genre, humor, the tragic feeling of life, irony, with a sharp and critical social criticism as well as descriptions of people and places, both real and imaginary. .

He learned shorthand and, little by little, he managed to earn a living from what he wrote; He began by writing court chronicles to later gain a position as a parliamentary journalist and, finally, under the pseudonym Boz, published a series of articles inspired by everyday life in London (Sketches by Boz).

11) Charles Perrault

Charles Perrault Books

Charles Perrault was a French writer born in Paris on January 12, 1628 and died in the same city on May 16, 1703. Although he wrote and published extensively during his lifetime in a variety of genres, he is best known today for his children’s books.

After practicing law for a time, he gained favor with various government and cultural figures, becoming a founding member of the Academy of Sciences and secretary (later librarian) of the French Academy.

With his Tales of Mother Goose he earned a secure place in the genre of fairy tales, being remembered for such endearing works as Little Red Riding Hood and Cinderella, the result of the compilation of numerous legends and stories from the oral tradition.

12) D.H. Lawrence

D.H. Lawrence Books

David Herbert Richards Lawrence of English origin, is one of the most outstanding writers of his time. In addition to becoming one of the most admired and well-known authors, he was an outstanding writer of novels, short stories, plays, poems, travel books, essays, translations, paintings and literary criticism.

His freedom to write and express himself was seen as brazenness and, in some cases, pornography. Such was the alarm generated by Lawrence’s books that he was the victim of an official order of persecution and his works were censored on several occasions.  

Despite being rejected and repudiated by a certain section of society, his writings have been championed by scholars who claim that he was one of the most honest and imaginative writers of his time.

13) Dante Alighieri

Dante Alighieri Books

Dante Alighieri was born in Florence in the year 1265, at that time Italy was a true mosaic of small states, and linguistic diversity was added to such fragmentation. Dante would come to establish that no less than fourteen dialects were spoken in Florence itself, without any of them prevailing over the rest.

In addition to being a poet and thinker, Dante was a committed and hapless politician who found no rest or reward far from letters. His brilliant contribution to universal literature has obscured a wandering and uprooted life: that of an exiled poet who had to leave behind family, fortune and the city to whose service he had consecrated his life.

14) Edgar Allan Poe

Edgar Allan Poe Books

Edgar Allan Poe was born in Boston, United States, on January 19, 1809 and died in Baltimore, United States, on October 7, 1849. He was an American romantic writer, poet, critic, and journalist, generally recognized as one of the teachers universal of the short story, of which he was one of the first practitioners in his country.

Orphaned of father and mother, Poe went through an irregular education, from the United States to Scotland and England, until his brief stint at the University of Virginia, where he published his first book anonymously, and through the army, publishing his second book.

15) Émile Zola

Émile Zola Books

Émile Zola was a writer of French origin, known as the greatest representative of naturalism. Despite not having finished his studies for economic reasons, the young Zola was able to develop his talent in the art of literary writing, bringing his ideas, creativity and stories to the French public.

One of the cornerstones of Zola’s career was his great project entitled “Les Rougon-Macquart”. The French writer initiated this collection of short stories in 1868 as an idea that began to take shape in 1871.

Despite his poor health, Zola worked until his last days on what was his passion: writing. His works are considered faithful portraits of the Parisian and French inhabitants of the time, which allows us to evoke those years with great ease.

16) F. Scott Fitzgerald

F. Scott Fitzgerald Books

Francis Scott Fitzgerald was born on September 24, 1896 in St. Paul, Minnesota. F. Scott Fitzgerald married Zelda Sayre on April 3, 1920 in New York. Zelda was Fitzgerald’s muse, and her image figures prominently in his works, such as This Side of Paradise, The Beautiful and Damned, The Great Gatsby and Tender is the Night.

After completing his masterpiece, The Great Gatsby, Fitzgerald’s life began to fall apart. Always a heavy drinker, he progressed into alcoholism and suffered prolonged bouts of writer’s block.

After two years lost to alcohol and depression, in 1937 Fitzgerald attempted to revive his career as a screenwriter and freelance writer in Hollywood, and achieved modest financial success. Fitzgerald died of a heart attack on December 21, 1940, at the age of 44, in Hollywood, California. 

17) Franz Kafka

Franz Kafka Books

Franz Kafka was born into a middle-class German-speaking Jewish family on July 3, 1883 in Prague, Bohemia, now the Czech Republic. Franz was the eldest of six children. He had two younger brothers who died in infancy and three younger sisters, who perished in concentration camps.

His father, Hermann Kafka (1852-1931), was described as a great, short-tempered domestic tyrant, who on many occasions directed his anger at his son and was disrespectful of his flight into literature. Throughout his life, Kafka struggled to reconcile with his domineering father.

18) Friedrich Engels

Friedrich Engels Books

Friedrich Engels, educator of the proletariat, leader, and close friend and collaborator of Marx, marked a milestone in world literature with his books about scientific communism.

In addition to his facet as a writer, philosopher, historian, and journalist, this German-born author also fought for the liberation of the working class and communism.

Thanks to Engels’ interest in the Russian revolutionary movement, he wrote a series of articles focused on the social relations in that country.

19) Friedrich Nietzsche

Friedrich Nietzsche Books

Friedrich Wilhelm Nietzsche was born on October 15, 1844 in Röcken bei Lützen, a small town in Prussia (part of present-day Germany). His father, Carl Ludwig Nietzsche, was a Lutheran preacher; he died when Nietzsche was 4 years old. Nietzsche and his younger sister, Elisabeth, were raised by their mother, Franziska.

Nietzsche attended a private school in Naumburg and then received a classical education at the prestigious Schulpforta School. After graduating in 1864, he attended the University of Bonn for two semesters. He transferred to Leipzig University, where he studied philology, a combination of literature, linguistics and history.

He was strongly influenced by the writings of the philosopher Arthur Schopenhauer. While in Leipzig, he befriended the composer Richard Wagner, whose music he greatly admired.

20) Fyodor Dostoevsky

Fyodor Dostoevsky Books

The Russian writer Fyodor Dostoyevsky is considered one of the most important authors of the 19th century, both within Russian and universal literature, thanks to the psychological and social depth of his novels.

Born into a noble family, Dostoyevsky began his training at Chermak, although after the death of his mother he was sent to the Saint Petersburg School of Military Engineers, where he came into contact with the works of the great classical and contemporary narrators, with great influence from romantic movement.

21) G. K. Chesterton

G. K. Chesterton Books

On May 29, 1874, G. K. Chesterton was born in London. Gilbert was a pupil at St. Paul’s. The teachers branded him a delinquent, but he gained some recognition as a writer and polemicist. From St. Paul’s, he went to the Slade School of Art, where he became a skilled draftsman and caricaturist; later he took courses in English literature at City College.

From art, Chesterton turned to journalism. He was deeply concerned about Britain’s injustices to its dependents. He moved from the newspaper to public debate. He used logic, laughter, paradox and his own winning personality to demonstrate that imperialism was destroying English patriotism.

During his literary career he published 90 books and numerous articles. He poured out a wealth of lighthearted essays, historical sketches, and metaphysical and polemical works, along with such well-known poems as “The Ballad of the White Horse”, “Lepanto” and “The Flying Inn” drinking songs.

22) Gustave Flaubert

Gustave Flaubert Books

Flaubert was born on December 12, 1821 in Rouen, France. His father was chief surgeon at the Rouen hospital.

During the 1830s, Flaubert attended school at the Collége Royal de Rouen and wrote for the school newspaper. Flaubert spent much of his time traveling and reading Shakespeare.

Gustave Flaubert was a novelist, short-story writer and playwright. He is a very celebrated author and one of the most influential novelists of his time who wrote fiction in a naturally realistic manner. He was known for thoroughly researching his characters and infusing psychological realism into them.

23) Guy de Maupassant

Guy de Maupassant Books

Guy de Maupassant was probably born in the Château de Miromesnil, Dieppe, on August 5, 1850.

In 1869, Maupassant began studying law in Paris, but soon, at the age of 20, he volunteered to serve in the army during the Franco-Prussian period. During the war, between 1872 and 1880, Maupassant was a civil servant, first in the ministry of maritime affairs and then in the ministry of education.

During the 1880s, Maupassant created some 300 short stories, six novels, three travel books and a volume of verses. The tone of his stories is marked by objectivity, a very controlled style and, sometimes, pure comedy.

24) H. G. Wells

H. G. Wells Books

Herbert George Wells, better known as H.G. Wells was a British writer, novelist, historian, and philosopher. He is especially recognized for being one of the pioneers of science fiction. In his work there are more than 100 books and a multitude of stories.

Wells also wrote encyclopedic character essays and history works such as “A Brief History of the World” and “Outline of Universal History.” In general, his writings are very marked by his attempt to create a different world, more just and supportive.

In 1997 he was inducted into the Science Fiction Hall of Fame, posthumously in recognition of his pioneering work in that genre. In 1998 he was reviewed in the Locus Survey for his novel “The Time Machine”, recognized as the 17th best novel before 1990 and “The War of the Worlds” as the 28th.

25) H. P. Lovecraft

H. P. Lovecraft Books

Howard Phillips Lovecraft (Providence, United States, August 20, 1890 – ibid, March 15, 1937) commonly abbreviated and known as H.P. Lovecraft was an American writer famous for his work in the horror genre writing short stories published in pulp magazines during his lifetime.

Lovecraft is recognized for having created the genre of cosmic horror, also known as Lovecraftian horror or simply Lovecraftian. The genre combines elements of horror along with science fiction. Lovecraft was also the founder of the literary philosophy called cosmicism. His works have been taken as inspiration by various authors and films.

26) Hans Christian Andersen

Hans Christian Andersen Books

Hans Christian Andersen owes his celebrity to the magnificent collections of fairy tales that he published between 1835 and 1872. His creations are stories such as The Ugly Duckling, The Little Mermaid, The Tin Soldier, The Brave Little Tailor or The Snow Queen, which are so popular and acquaintances that are sometimes taken for anonymous traditional tales.

Due to his powerful inventiveness and the balanced simplicity of his style and narrative technique, Andersen is the first great classic of children’s literature. He was a man of humble origins and essentially self-taught training, who was powerfully influenced by his readings of Goethe, Schiller and E.T.A. Hoffmann.

27) Henry James

Henry James Books

Henry James was born on April 15, 1843 in New York, United States. He was named after his father, a prominent social theorist and lecturer, and was the younger brother of the pragmatist philosopher William James.

By his mid-20s, James was considered one of America’s most skillful short story writers. Critics, however, deplored his tendency to write about the life of the mind rather than the action. He wrote short stories, reviews, and articles for nearly a decade before attempting a full-length novel.

With his moral support for Britain’s fight in World War I, James became a British subject in 1915 and was awarded the Order of Merit (O.M.) by King George V.

28) Herman Melville

Herman Melville Books

Herman Melville was born in New York City on August 1, 1819, the son of Allan and Maria Gansevoort Melvill. In the mid-1820s, young Melville became ill with scarlet fever and, although he regained his health shortly thereafter, the disease permanently affected his eyesight.

In 1851, the author presented what would become his signature work, Moby-Dick. This work was based on Melville’s years of experience aboard whalers and the actual disaster of the whaler Essex.

Melville had begun work on another novel when he died of a heart attack in New York on September 28, 1891.

29) Hermann Hesse

Hermann Hesse Books

Hermann Hesse was a German writer and poet, although later he decided to become a Swiss citizen. Hesse is one of the great representatives of European literature during the first half of the 20th century.

Born in Germany, he traveled to India on several occasions, where his father was a missionary. Eastern culture had a decisive influence on his later work, especially in one of his most important books, “Siddhartha” —written in 1922— which explores the life of Buddha.

Hesse was awarded the Nobel Prize in Literature in 1946, three years after his last book, “The Glass Bead Game.” From that date onward, he barely published anything other than a few nostalgic and dark poetry collections.

30) Homer

Homer Books

The Greek poet Homer was born sometime between the 12th and 8th centuries BC, possibly somewhere on the coast of Asia Minor.

The Greek epic poet to whom the enduring epic stories of “The Iliad” and “The Odyssey” are attributed is an enigma as to the actual events of his life. Some scholars believe that he was a single man; others think that these iconic stories were created by a group.

Homer’s works are designated as epic rather than lyric poetry, originally recited with a lyre in hand, in the same vein as oral performances.

31) Honoré de Balzac

Honoré de Balzac Books

Honoré de Balzac is one of the great authors of universal literature and a recognized master of nineteenth-century Francophone letters, being one of the fathers of realist literature.

Balzac decided to abandon his law studies for literature, causing the anger of his family. Disgraced and with little support, Balzac went bankrupt after trying to enter the printing business. It is precisely at this time that he publishes his first novel, Los chuanes, with which he achieves his first, albeit small, success.

Balzac was a prolific author, with more than ninety works that masterfully trace the French society of his time. For this reason, he decided to merge most of them into an ambitious magnum opus, The Human Comedy, along with new writings that came to total almost 150 parts.

32) Immanuel Kant

Immanuel Kant Books

Immanuel Kant was a German philosopher born in 1724 who is considered by many to be the most influential thinker of the modern age. His existence was spent practically entirely in his hometown, from which he did not get away more than a hundred kilometers when he lived for a few months in Arnsdorf as a tutor, an activity to which he dedicated himself to earn a living after the death of his father, in 1746.

For Immanuel Kant, philosophy encompasses the relationship of all events with the essential ends to which human reason tends. For this reason, once he discovered it, he gave himself to it completely, without conditions: he studied it, analyzed it, criticized it, wrote it down and disseminated it.

33) James Joyce

James Joyce Books

James Augustine Aloysius Joyce, was born on February 2, 1882 in Dublin, Ireland. He was the eldest of ten children who survived childhood, sent at the age of six to Clongowes Wood College, a Jesuit boarding school. But his father neglected his affairs and his family sank deeper and deeper into poverty. 

He wrote verse and experimented with short prose passages he called “epiphanies”. To support himself while writing, he decided to become a doctor, but borrowed what money he could and went to Paris, where he abandoned the idea of medicine, wrote some book reviews, and studied at the Bibliothèque Sainte-Geneviève.

Joyce began writing the stories published as Dubliners under the pseudonym Stephen Dedalus, before the publisher decided that Joyce’s work was not suitable for his readers.

34) Jane Austen

Jane Austen Books

Born on December 16, 1775, Jane Austen was the seventh child of Anglican clergyman George Austen and Cassandra Leigh, residents of Hampshire, southern England. Mr. Austen ran a modest boarding school for boys as an additional means of earning money, and it is believed that at times his daughter absorbed teachings from this school.

In 1783 Jane went to boarding school at Oxford with her sister Cassandra, but they had to withdraw because they became ill. They then continued their education at the Abbey School in Reading. Unfortunately, in 1786 they had to leave the school because their parents could not afford it. From then on, the education of the future writer would be self-taught.

35) Johann Wolfgang von Goethe

Johann Wolfgang von Goethe Books

Johann Wolfgang von Goethe was born in Frankfurt am Main, Germany, on August 28, 1749. The multifaceted Goethe, in addition to being a writer, was also a theoretical physicist, biologist, scholar, painter and statesman. His services to poetry and theater are an integral part of German literature.

Goethe enjoyed theater and drawing, and was deeply interested in literature, devoting much of his time to reading works by Friedrich Gottlieb Klopstock and Homer. Although Goethe studied law from 1765 to 1768 in Leipzig, he was more interested in learning about poetry and attended poetry classes by Christian Fürchtegott Gellert.

Some of Goethe’s most famous works that have been marked in history are Wilhelm Meister’s Apprenticeship, the dramas Iphigenie auf Tauris, Egmont, Torquato Tasso, The Natural Daughter, the fable Reineke Fuchs. Besides, Faust Part One, Elective Affinities, The West-Eastern Divan, his autobiography Aus meinem Leben: Dichtung und Wahrheit and Faust Part Two, completed and published posthumously.

36) Jules Verne

Jules Verne Books

Jules Verne (Nantes, February 8, 1828 – Amiens, March 24, 1905), was a French writer, poet and playwright famous for his adventure novels and for his profound influence on the literary genre of science fiction.

Born into a bourgeois family, he studied to follow in his father’s footsteps as a lawyer, but later decided to abandon that path to devote himself to literature.

Jules Verne’s life is, apparently, a succession of sensible decisions: he studied law following the family tradition, married a rich widow, reached a well-to-do position and only when his overwhelming success allowed him to do so did he devote himself exclusively to literature.

37) Karl Marx

Karl Marx Books

Karl Heinrich Marx was one of the nine children of Heinrich and Henriette Marx in Trier, Prussia. His father was a successful lawyer who revered Kant and Voltaire, and was a passionate activist for Prussian reform.

Although both parents were Jews of rabbinical descent, Karl’s father converted to Christianity in 1816, at the age of 35. When he was 6 years old, Karl was baptized along with the other children.

Marx was an average student. He was home-schooled until the age of 12 and spent five years, from 1830 to 1835, at the Jesuit high school in Trier. The headmaster of the school, a friend of Marx’s father, was liberal and Kantian, and the authorities considered it suspicious.

38) Leo Tolstoy

Leo Tolstoy Books

On September 9, 1828, Leo Tolstoy was born on his family’s estate, Yasnaya Polyana, in the Russian province of Tula. He was the youngest of four children. When Tolstoy’s mother died in 1830, a cousin of his father’s took over the care of the children. When his father, Count Nikolay Tolstoy, died only seven years later, his aunt was appointed his legal guardian. When the aunt passed away, Tolstoy and his siblings moved in with a second aunt, in Kazan, Russia.

Tolstoy received his primary education at home under French and German tutors. In 1843, he enrolled at Kazan University. His poor grades forced him to switch to an easier law program. Prone to carousing, Tolstoy finally left Kazan University in 1847, without a degree. He returned to his parents’ farm, where he tried unsuccessfully to become a farmer. However, he managed to pour his energies into a diary, the beginning of a habit that would inspire much of his fiction.

39) Lewis Carroll

Lewis Carroll Books

Charles Lutwidge Dodgson, better known by his pen name, Lewis Carroll, was born in the village of Daresbury – England, on January 27, 1832. He was the eldest in a family of 11 children, Carroll was very adept at entertaining himself and his siblings. Their father, a clergyman, raised them in the rectory.

As a child, Carroll excelled in mathematics and won many academic awards. At age 20, he received a scholarship to Christ College. In addition to being a mathematics professor, he was an avid photographer and wrote essays, political pamphlets and poetry.

Carroll suffered from a severe stutter, but was vocally fluent when speaking to children. The relationships he had with young people in his adulthood are of great interest, as they undoubtedly inspired his best-known writings and have been a point of disturbing speculation over the years.

40) Lord Dunsany

Lord Dunsany Books

Edward John Moreton Drax Plunkett, Lord Dunsany, was born in London in July 1878. He belonged to an old Irish family and obtained the family title as 18th Baron of Dunsany in 1899.

Although Dunsany always considered himself a poet, it was not through his verse that he achieved fame. Dunsany published several collections of short stories, but he first became known through his association with the Abbey Theatre in Dublin, which began with the production of The Glittering Gate in 1909.

He is remembered primarily for several of his stories, including “Two Bottles of Relish” (1932) and for several plays that became part of his complete works.

41) Ludwig von Mises

Ludwig von Mises Books

Ludwig von Mises was born on September 29, 1881 in the town of Lemberg, located in the former Austria-Hungary. He was the son of a respected and successful engineer.

After receiving his advanced degree, von Mises wrote the first of what would be a long list of phenomenal works, The Theory of Money and Credit (1912). In it he successfully argued that money had a price, no different from any other commodity.

Because of von Mises’ critical views on socialism, he remained in exile from the National Socialists in Geneva until his death in 1973. Von Mises’ most respected work was his 900-page Human Action, which was not published until 1949. The book had been written in early 1940; however, due to the effects of the war, it was put on hold.

42) Mark Twain

Mark Twain Books

Born in Florida on November 30, 1835, Samuel Langhorne Clemens, better known as Mark Twain, was a writer, journalist and humorist, recognized for many of his literary works. Twain went on to write more than 500 books, earning him the title of «the father of American literature» by William Faulkner.

Mark Twain found inspiration for his books in his own life. He grew up in a small town on the banks of the Mississippi called Hannibal. When he was only 12 years old, he was orphaned by his father, left school and began working as an apprentice typesetter in a publishing house. He was also a steamboat pilot, a miner in the Nevada silver mines and a Confederate soldier.

43) Marquis de Sade

Marquis de Sade Books

Donatien-Alphonse-François, better known as Marquis de Sade, was a French writer and philosopher. Known for having given name to a sexual tendency that is characterized by obtaining pleasure by inflicting pain on others (sadism), he is the cursed writer par excellence.

Of aristocratic origin, he was educated with his uncle, the Abbe de Sade, a libertine scholar who followed Voltaire who had a great influence on him. A student of the Cavalry School, in 1759 he obtained the rank of captain of the Burgundy regiment and participated in the Seven Years’ War.

44) Nikolai Gogol

Nikolai Gogol Books

Nikolai Gogol was born on March 20, 1809 in the small Ukrainian town of Sorochyntsi. As a child, he was dreamy and withdrawn and was deeply affected by the death of a younger brother. 

In 1829 he self-published a more ambitious narrative poem, Hanz Küchelgarten, which narrated the attempts of a romantic hero to escape from an idyllic but stifling environment. The poem was poorly received by critics and Gogol attempted to recover and destroy all existing copies. 

He persisted in his writings and his work began to gain some attention. He attracted the interest of Vasily Zhukovsky, an important contemporary Russian poet, and in May 1831 he was introduced to Alexander Pushkin, Russia’s greatest poet. With the writing and publication of Evenings on a Farm Near Dikanka in 1831-1832, Gogol had risen to a position of importance in literary affairs.

45) Oscar Wilde

Oscar Wilde Books

Oscar Wilde was born on October 16, 1854 in Dublin – Ireland. He died on November 30, 1900 in Paris – France.

Wilde was born to professional and literary parents. His father, Sir William Wilde, was Ireland’s leading oto-ophthalmologic surgeon, who also published books on archaeology, folklore and the satirist writer Jonathan Swift. His mother, who wrote under the name Speranza, was a revolutionary poet and an authority on Celtic myths and folklore.

After attending the Portora Royal School, Enniskillen (1864-1871), Wilde was awarded successive scholarships to Trinity College, Dublin (1871-1874) and Magdalen College, Oxford (1874-1878), which awarded him a degree with honors. During these four years, he distinguished himself not only as a clever classical scholar and poseur but also as a poet by winning the coveted Newdigate Prize in 1878 with a long poem, Ravenna.

46) Plato

Plato Books

Born around 428 BC, the ancient Greek philosopher Plato was a student of Socrates and teacher of Aristotle. His writings explore justice, beauty and equality, and also contain discussions of aesthetics, political philosophy, theology, cosmology, epistemology and philosophy of language. Plato founded the Academy of Athens, one of the first institutions of higher learning in the Western world.

Due to the lack of primary sources of the time, much of Plato’s life has been constructed by scholars through his writings and those of his contemporaries and classical historians.

47) Rene Descartes

Rene Descartes Books

Descartes was born on March 31, 1596 in La Haye en Touraine, a small town in central France, which has since been named after its most famous son.

The subjects he studied, such as rhetoric and logic and the “mathematical arts”, which included music and astronomy, as well as metaphysics, natural philosophy and ethics, prepared him well for his future as a philosopher.

Descartes is considered by many to be the father of modern philosophy, because his ideas departed widely from the prevailing conception of the early seventeenth century, which was based more on feelings. Although the elements of his philosophy were not entirely new, his approach was.

48) Robert Louis Stevenson

Robert Louis Stevenson Books

Robert Louis Stevenson was a Scottish writer born in Edinburgh on November 13, 1850, he is considered one of the classics of 19th century literature.

Stevenson’s literature focuses on fantasy and adventure novels, resulting in an excellent production that would earn him popular success. Works such as Treasure Island (1883), The Strange Case of Dr.Jekyll and Mr.Hyde (1886) or Black Arrow (1888) have been translated into dozens of languages ​​and adapted to film, theater or television in many ways. occasions.

Due to his failing health, Stevenson traveled the world in search of healthier climates, becoming an expert in travel writing and essays. His last years were spent in the Samoa Islands, where he died on December 3, 1894.

49) Sigmund Freud

Sigmund Freud Books

Born in Freiberg – Moravia on May 6, 1856, the Austrian-born physician, psychoanalyst and neurologist is considered the creator of psychoanalysis. Sigmund Freud is one of the most influential psychologists in the history of mankind.

He grew up in a Jewish family with whom he moved to Vienna when he was four years old. Freud lived in the Austrian city until 1937, when he had to leave that territory due to the Nazi invasion, and took refuge in London where he died on September 23, 1939 due to a cancer of the jaw.

His vocation for research arose at a very young age and he felt an inclination for everything related to physiology. Freud studied biology and medicine at the University of Vienna and specialized in clinical neurology.

50) Thomas Mann

Thomas Mann Books

Thomas Mann was born in 1875 in Lübeck, Germany. His writing career began with a short story, “Little Mr Friedemann”, published in 1898. Mann began writing his first novel in 1896, “Buddenbrooks”. It is a story about a merchant family that captured the public’s interest and made Mann rich and famous.

Mann’s writing style can be described as finely formed, full of humor, irony and satire. His writings are very delicately composed, with a deep and meaningful focus on an even deeper level of representation.

Thomas Mann was one of the most renowned and greatest writers of the 20th century and his writings are praised not only in Germany but all over the world. He died of thrombosis on August 12, 1955 in Zürich.

51) Victor Hugo

Victor Hugo Books

Victor-Marie Hugo was born in Besançon, France, on February 26, 1802, to mother Sophie Trébuchet and father Joseph-Léopold-Sigisbert Hugo. His father was a military officer who later served as a general under Napoleon.

Hugo studied law between 1815 and 1818, although he never practiced it. Encouraged by his mother, Hugo embarked on a literary career. He founded the Conservateur Litteraire, a magazine in which he published his own poetry and that of his friends. His mother died in 1821. That same year, Hugo married Adèle Foucher and published his first book of poetry, «Odes et poésies diverses». His first novel was published in 1823, followed by a series of plays.

52) Virginia Woolf

Virginia Woolf Books

Born on January 25, 1882, Adeline Virginia Stephen grew up in an extraordinary home. Her father, Sir Leslie Stephen, was a historian and writer, as well as a leading figure in the golden age of mountaineering. Woolf’s mother, Julia Prinsep Stephen, was born in India and later served as a model for several Pre-Raphaelite painters. She was also a nurse and wrote a book on the profession.

From birth until 1895, Woolf spent summers in St. Ives, a seaside town in the far southwest corner of England. The Stephens’ summer home, Talland House, which still stands, overlooks spectacular Porthminster Bay towards the Godrevy Lighthouse, which inspired her writing.

53) Vladimir Nabokov

Vladimir Nabokov Books

Vladimir Vladimirovich Nabokov was born on April 22, 1899 in St. Petersburg, Russia. He was born into an old aristocratic family.

His first novel, Mary, appeared in 1926; it was avowedly autobiographical. Nabokov did not draw as much on his personal experience again until his episodic novel Pnin (1957).

As Nabokov’s reputation grew in the 1930s, so did the ferocity of the attacks on him. His detractors interpreted his idiosyncratic and somewhat aloof style and his unusual novelistic preoccupations as snobbery.

54) Voltaire

Voltaire Books

Born in 1694, in Paris, France, Voltaire established himself as one of the main writers of the Enlightenment. Often at odds with the French authorities for his works of political and religious content, he was imprisoned twice and spent many years in exile. He died shortly after returning to Paris in 1778.

Voltaire was inspired by the philosophers of the Enlightenment, such as Isaac Newton, John Locke and Francis Bacon, and their ideals of a free and liberal society, along with freedom of religion and free trade.

55) Walter Scott

Walter Scott Books

Sir Walter Scott was born on August 15, 1771 in a small apartment on the third floor of College Wynd, in the old town of Edinburgh. Scott was the ninth child of Anne Rutherford and Walter Scott, a lawyer and member of the private Scottish society known as Writers of the Signet.

Walter, already an avid reader of epic romances, poetry, history and travel books, returned to Edinburgh to study classics at the University from November 1783. In March 1786, Walter began an apprenticeship in his father’s office with the intention of becoming a writer for Signet.

In the mid-1790s, Scott became interested in German romanticism, Gothic novels, and Scottish border ballads. Scott’s interest in border ballads bore fruit in his collection entitled Minstrelsy of the Scottish Border, 3 vol. (1802-03).

56) William Shakespeare

William Shakespeare Books

William Shakespeare was an English poet, playwright, and actor. He was born on April 26, 1564 in Stratford-upon-Avon. His father was a successful local businessman and his mother was the daughter of a landowner. Shakespeare is widely regarded as the best English-language writer and preeminent playwright in the world. He is often called the national poet of England and is known as the Bard of Avon.

He wrote about 38 plays, 154 sonnets, two long narrative poems and some other verses, of which the authorship of some is uncertain. His plays have been translated into all major living languages ​​and are performed more frequently than those of any other playwright.

So, here ends our selection of Classic Auhtors books. We hope you liked it and that you already have your next book!

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