PEOPLE KNOWN FOR: epic
English poet
John Milton was an English poet, pamphleteer, and historian, considered the most significant English author after William Shakespeare. Milton is best known for Paradise Lost, widely regarded as the greatest...
Roman poet
Virgil was a Roman poet, best known for his national epic, the Aeneid (from c. 30 bce; unfinished at his death). Virgil was regarded by the Romans as their greatest poet, an estimation that subsequent...
Italian poet and scholar
Giovanni Boccaccio was an Italian poet and scholar, best remembered as the author of the earthy tales in the Decameron. With Petrarch he laid the foundations for the humanism of the Renaissance and raised...
Italian poet
Torquato Tasso was the greatest Italian poet of the late Renaissance, celebrated for his heroic epic poem Gerusalemme liberata (1581; “Jerusalem Liberated”), dealing with the capture of Jerusalem during...
Persian poet
Ferdowsī was a Persian poet, author of the Shāh-nāmeh (“Book of Kings”), the Persian national epic, to which he gave a final and enduring form, although he based his poem mainly on an earlier prose version....
Norwegian author
Bjørnstjerne Martinius Bjørnson was a poet, dramatist, novelist, journalist, editor, public speaker, theatre director, and one of the most prominent public figures in the Norway of his day. He was awarded...
Roman author
Quintus Ennius was an epic poet, dramatist, and satirist, the most influential of the early Latin poets, rightly called the founder of Roman literature. His epic Annales, a narrative poem telling the story...
Georgian poet
Shota Rustaveli was a Georgian poet, known as the author of Vepkhvistqaosani (The Knight in the Panther’s Skin, or The Lord of the Panther-Skin), the Georgian national epic. Very little is known of Rustaveli,...
Roman author
Lucan was a Roman poet and republican patriot whose historical epic, the Bellum civile, better known as the Pharsalia because of its vivid account of that battle, is remarkable as the single major Latin...
Roman poet
Statius was one of the principal Roman epic and lyric poets of the Silver Age of Latin literature (ad 18–133). His occasional poems, collected under the title Silvae (“Forests”), apart from their literary...
Greek poet
Apollonius of Rhodes was a Greek poet and grammarian who was the author of the Argonautica. The two lives contained in the Laurentian manuscript of the Argonautica say that Apollonius was a pupil of Callimachus;...
Russian writer
Peretz Markish was a Soviet Yiddish poet and novelist whose work extols Soviet Russia and mourns the destruction of European Jews in World War II. Markish, the son of poor parents, served with the Russian...
Roman poet
Silius Italicus was a Latin epic poet whose 17-book, 12,000-line Punica on the Second Punic War (218–201 bc) is the longest poem in Latin literature. Silius was a distinguished advocate in his earlier...
Roman author
Lucius Livius Andronicus was the founder of Roman epic poetry and drama. He was a Greek slave, freed by a member of the Livian family; he may have been captured as a boy when Tarentum surrendered to Rome...
American author
Robert McAlmon was an American author and publisher and an exemplar of the literary expatriate in Paris during the 1920s. Many of his short stories, however, are based on his own youthful experiences living...
Roman author
Claudian was the last important poet of the classical tradition. Coming to Italy and abandoning Greek, he showed his mastery of Latin in a poem celebrating the consulship (395) of Probinus and Olybrius....
Roman writer
Gnaeus Naevius was the second of a triad of early Latin epic poets and dramatists, between Livius Andronicus and Ennius. He was the originator of historical plays (fabulae praetextae) that were based on...
Austrian poet
Anastasius Grün was an Austrian poet and statesman known for his spirited collections of political poetry. As a member of the estates of Carniola in the Diet at Laibach, Grün was a critic of the Austrian...
Roman orator
Quintus Hortensius Hortalus was a Roman orator and politician, Cicero’s opponent in the Verres trial. Delivering his first speech at age 19, Hortensius became a distinguished advocate. He was leader of...
Tamil poet
Kampan was sometimes called the finest Tamil poet, whose principal achievement is the epic Irāmāvatāram (Rama’s Incarnation). Little is known about Kampan’s life. That he was a masterful poet and knowledgeable...
Swiss writer
Robert Faesi was a Swiss poet, dramatist, short-story writer, and literary critic, noted for his trilogy of novels on Zürich life and for important critical studies of literary figures. Faesi combined...
Italian courtier and poet
Bernardo Tasso was an Italian courtier and poet who was the father of Torquato Tasso, the greatest Italian poet of the late Renaissance. Bernardo Tasso was a cultivated man who served various noblemen...
Estonian physician, folklorist, and poet
F. Reinhold Kreutzwald was a physician, folklorist, and poet who compiled the Estonian national epic poem Kalevipoeg (1857–61, “The Son of Kalev”). A graduate of Tartu University, Kreutzwald was municipal...
Irish author
Standish James O’Grady was a historical novelist and literary historian whose popular English versions of the Irish heroic sagas earned him the title of “father of the Irish literary revival.” O’Grady...