15 of the most famous American authors

15 of the most famous American authors

*Originally published by Lynn on March 2022 and Updated by Vanessa R on May 2023

American literature is literature predominantly written or produced in English in the United States of America and its preceding colonies. We can trace American literature came of age in the period between 1870 and 1920.

By reading America literature, we get an understanding into the history and culture of the United States of America. Below are 15 of the most famous American authors;

1. Mark Twain

Mark Twain – Wikimedia Commons

Born Samuel Langhorne Clemens on 30^th November 1835 he was popularly known by his pen name Mark Twain. Mark Twain was an American writer, humorist, entrepreneur, publisher, and lecturer who is regarded as the “greatest humorist the United States has produced,”

Today he is best remembered as the author of The Adventures of Tom Sawyer (1876) and its sequel, Adventures of Huckleberry Finn (1884), which has often been referred to as the “Great American Novel”. Twain was a master of rendering colloquial speech and helped to create and popularize distinctive American literature built on American themes and language.

2. Edgar Allan Poe

Edgar Allan Poe – Wikipedia

He was born Edgar Poe in January 19^th 1849. He was an American writer, poet, editor, and literary critic best known for his poetry and short stories, particularly his tales of mystery and the macabre. Poe is widely regarded as a central figure of Romanticism in the United States, and of American literature.

Poe was one of the country’s earliest practitioners of the short story, and considered to be the inventor of the detective fiction genre, as well as a significant contributor to the emerging genre of science fiction. His works influenced literature around the world, as well as specialized fields such as cosmology and cryptography.

Edgar Allan Poe’s best-known works include the poems “To Helen” (1831), “The Raven” (1845), and “Annabel Lee” (1849); the short stories of wickedness and crime “The Tell-Tale Heart” (1843) and “The Cask of Amontillado” (1846); and the supernatural horror story “The Fall of the House of Usher” (1839).

3. Sylvia Plath

Sylvia Plath – Flickr

Sylvia Plath was born on October 27, 1932. She was an American poet, novelist, and short-story writer credited with advancing the genre of confessional poetry.

The Collected Poems, which included many previously unpublished poems, appeared in 1981 and received the 1982 Pulitzer Prize for poetry.

Today Sylvia’s best-known works, including the poems “Daddy” and “Lady Lazarus” and the novel The Bell Jar, starkly express a sense of alienation and self-destruction closely tied to her personal experiences and, by extension, the situation of women in mid-20th-century America.

4. F. Scott Fitzgerald

F. Scott Fitzgerald & Zelda Sayre – Flickr

Francis Scott Key Fitzgerald was born on 24^th September 1896. He was an American novelist, essayist, short story writer and screenwriter best known for his novels depicting the flamboyance and excess of the Jazz Age, a term he popularized.

Fitzgerald uses vivid imagery and metaphors to provide a visual picture of his characters and settings and incorporate deeper meaning beyond just physical appearance. Additionally, his sentence structure mirrors the characters and settings by consisting primarily of compound-complex sentences.

Today he is best known for The Great Gatsby (1925) and Tender Is the Night (1934)—two keystones of modernist fiction.

5. Walter Whiteman

Walt Whitman – Wikipedia

Walter Whitman was born on May 31st, 1819. He was an American poet, essayist and journalist who identified as a humanist, he was a part of the transition between transcendentalism and realism, incorporating both views in his works.

Whitman is among the most influential poets in the American canon, often called the father of free verse. His work was controversial in its time, particularly his 1855 poetry collection Leaves of Grass, which was described as obscene for its overt sensuality. This particular poetry collection took him a lifetime to refine, and it stands today as a rhapsodic celebration of individuality, freedom, democracy, sexuality, and nationhood.

6. Emily Dickson

Emily Dickinson – Wikipedia

She was born Emily Elizabeth Dickinson on December 10, 1830. She was an American poet who is regarded as one of the most important figures in American poetry.

Her poems were unique for her era. They contain short lines, typically lack titles, and often use slant rhyme as well as unconventional capitalization and punctuation. Many of her poems deal with themes of death and immortality, two recurring topics in letters to her friends, and also explore aesthetics, society, nature and spirituality.

Today, the best-known poem by Dickinson is, “Hope is the Thing with Feathers”. It metaphorically describes hope as a bird that rests in the soul, sings continuously and never demands anything even in the direst circumstances.

7. Stephen King

Stephen King, 2011 – Wikimedia Commons

Stephen Edwin King was born on September 21, 1947. He is an American author of horror, supernatural fiction, suspense, crime, science-fiction, and fantasy novels hailed as the “King of Horror”, a play on his surname and a reference to his high standing in-pop culture.

King has published 64 novels, including seven under the pen name Richard Bachman, and five non-fiction books. He has also written approximately 200 short stories, most of which have been published in book collections. He has received numerous awards for his contribution to literature.

Stephen King’s top-selling novel is The Shining. It centers on the life of Jack Torrance, a struggling writer and recovering alcoholic who accepts a position as the off-season caretaker of the historic Overlook Hotel in the Colorado Rockies.

8. Maya Angelo

Maya Angelou – Wikipedia

She was born Marguerite Annie Johnson on April 4^th 1928. She was an American poet, memoirist, and civil rights activist.  She made a deliberate attempt to challenge the common structure of the autobiography by critiquing, changing and expanding the genre. Her books center on themes including racism, identity, family and travel.

In her career spanning over 50 years, she has published seven autobiographies, three books of essays, several books of poetry, and is credited with a list of plays, movies, and television shows. She is best known for her series of seven autobiographies, which focus on her childhood and early adult experiences

9. Edith Wharton

Edith Wharton – Wikipedia

She was born Edith Newbold Jones on January 24, 1862. Edith was an American novelist, short story writer, and designer who drew upon her insider’s knowledge of the upper-class New York “aristocracy” to realistically portray the lives and morals of the Gilded Age.

A key recurring theme in Wharton’s writing is the relationship between the house as a physical space and its relationship to its inhabitant’s characteristics and emotions.

In 1921, she became the first woman to win the Pulitzer Prize in Literature, for her novel The Age of Innocence. She was inducted into the National Women’s Hall of Fame in 1996.

10. Alice Walker

Alice Walker – Wikipedia

She was born Alice Malsenior Tallulah-Kate Walker on February 9^th 1944. She is an American novelist, short story writer, poet, and social activist. Over the span of her career, Walker has published seventeen novels and short story collections, twelve non-fiction works, and collections of essays and poetry.

In 1982, she became the first African-American woman to win the Pulitzer Prize for Fiction, which she was awarded for her novel The Color Purple.

11. Toni Morrison

Ramah Willis and George Wofford have four children together, including Chloe Ardelia Morrison. She participated in the debate team, the theatre club, and the yearbook staff while she was a student at Lorain High School. Howard University awarded Toni with her English B.A., and Cornell University awarded her with her Master of Arts. Toni Morrison was hired as the first black woman editor by Random House in 1967.

She is one of the well-known American authors to have won honours during her career, including the Presidential Medal of Freedom in 2012, the Nobel Prize for Literature in 1993, the Pulitzer Prize in 1987, and the National Book Critics Circle Award in 1977.

12. J.D. Salinger

One of Marie Jillich and Sol Salinger’s two children was Jerome David. Before enrolling at the McBurney School for preparation, he spent several years attending public schools. Thereafter, Jerom attended the Valley Forge Military Institute in Pennsylvania and received his diploma in 1936.

One of the best books of the 20th century is thought to be The Catcher in the Rye. It ranks #15 on “The Big Read” from the BBC and is among the best 100 English novels of the 20th century according to Time Magazine and the Modern Library.

13. Nathaniel Hawthorne

Mathew Benjamin Brady, Public domain, via Wikimedia Commons

After completing his elementary schooling, Nathaniel received financial assistance from his Uncle Robert to attend Bowdoin College. His graduation was in 1825. Nathaniel Hawthorne worked as an editor after graduation in order to support his writing career.

With his election to Phi Beta Kappa in 1824, Hawthorne established himself as a popular writer. His reputation as one of America’s top writers, particularly in the field of dark romanticism, has been established throughout the years by praise from critics and other authors.

14. John Steinbeck

Young John Ernst Steinbeck Jr. worked in migrant fields and on ranches, which influenced his later writing. His father, John Ernst Steinbeck, was a well-known county treasurer, and his mother, Olive Hamilton, was a teacher. John attended Stanford University in Palo Alto after graduating from Salinas High School, but he did not complete his studies there. Steinbeck was a war journalist in addition to being a writer of short tales and novels.

He won the 1962 Nobel Prize in Literature and The Grapes of Wrath won the Pulitzer Award.

15. Harper Lee

Eric Draper, Public domain, via Wikimedia Commons

Before going to the University of Alabama, Lee attended Huntingdon College. Before receiving her degree, she dropped out after one semester. Harper Lee won the 1961 Pulitzer Prize for To Kill a Mockingbird. She received the Presidential Medal of Freedom in 2007 as a result of it being an American literary classic.