Top 10 Greatest American Authors of All Time

Who is your favorite American author? Maybe it is the novelist whose book kept you up far too late on a school night. Maybe it is the poet who somehow put your own thoughts on the page before you ever found the words for them. Maybe it is the horror writer who made your bedroom feel unsafe, which is rude, but also kind of brilliant. If they wrote literature and held American citizenship, they belong in the conversation.

This list is for the writers you return to, quote, argue about, and shove into other people's hands with the sacred phrase, "Just read this." Great American authors have a way of getting into your head and rearranging the furniture. Some gave you unforgettable characters. Some built whole worlds out of dust, grief, humor, obsession, or plain old human mess. Others wrote with such force and clarity that a single paragraph can stop you cold and make the rest of the day feel slightly less important.

So vote for the author you think deserves a spot near the top. Go with the one whose voice still sounds alive years after you first read them. Pick the writer who changed your standards, ruined mediocre books for you, or made reading feel less like homework and more like a glorious obsession. America has produced plenty of literary giants, oddballs, geniuses, and beautifully troubled word-slingers. This is where you decide which one stands tallest.

1. Ernest Hemingway

   

   Ernest Hemingway was an American novelist and journalist born in 1899 in Oak Park, Illinois. He wrote works such as The Sun Also Rises, A Farewell to Arms, For Whom the Bell Tolls, and The Old Man and the Sea. He received the Nobel Prize in Literature in 1954.

2. Edgar Allan Poe

   

   Edgar Allan Poe was an American writer, editor, and literary critic born in 1809 in Boston, Massachusetts. He is associated with poems and stories such as "The Raven," "The Tell-Tale Heart," "The Fall of the House of Usher," and "The Cask of Amontillado." His work contributed to the development of detective fiction and psychological horror.

   Ligeia, The Black Cat, The Tell-Tale Heart, A Descent into the Maelström, The Gold-Bug, and many more awesome stories, as well as single poems such as Alone, A Dream Within a Dream, The Raven, and Lenore.

   Some of his stories are heavy, and others use just a few words to show what true beauty, and also what horror, can be like unlike any others. He was a man good with words but not with the ladies, though somewhat in a good way, actually.

   Better than King.

3. Stephen King

   

   Stephen King is an American author born in 1947 in Portland, Maine. He has written novels, short stories, and nonfiction, with major works including Carrie, The Shining, It, and Misery. Many of his books have been adapted into films, television series, and miniseries.

4. Mark Twain

   

   Mark Twain was the pen name of American writer Samuel Langhorne Clemens, who was born in 1835 in Florida, Missouri. He wrote The Adventures of Tom Sawyer, Adventures of Huckleberry Finn, A Connecticut Yankee in King Arthur's Court, and other works. He also worked as a lecturer, journalist, and riverboat pilot.

5. John Steinbeck

   

   John Steinbeck was an American author born in 1902 in Salinas, California. His major books include Of Mice and Men, The Grapes of Wrath, East of Eden, and Cannery Row. He won the Nobel Prize in Literature in 1962.

   He's awesome. It always seemed to pull me back in time with his stories, characters, locations, and descriptions.

6. F. Scott Fitzgerald

   

   F. Scott Fitzgerald was an American novelist and short story writer born in 1896 in Saint Paul, Minnesota. He is best known for The Great Gatsby, as well as This Side of Paradise, Tender Is the Night, and The Beautiful and Damned. His work is closely linked with the Jazz Age in the United States.

7. Dan Brown

   

   Dan Brown is an American author born in 1964 in Exeter, New Hampshire. He is known for thriller novels including The Da Vinci Code, Angels & Demons, The Lost Symbol, and Inferno. Several of his books feature the character Robert Langdon, a professor of symbology.

8. William Faulkner

   

   William Faulkner was an American novelist and short story writer born in 1897 in New Albany, Mississippi. He wrote The Sound and the Fury, As I Lay Dying, Light in August, and Absalom, Absalom! He received the Nobel Prize in Literature in 1949.

9. Robert Jordan

   

   Robert Jordan was the pen name of American author James Oliver Rigney Jr., who was born in 1948 in Charleston, South Carolina. He is best known for The Wheel of Time, a fantasy series that began with The Eye of the World. Before writing fantasy under the name Robert Jordan, he also wrote historical fiction and worked as an engineer.

10. Chuck Palahniuk

    

    Chuck Palahniuk is an American novelist born in 1962 in Pasco, Washington. He is known for works including Fight Club, Choke, Invisible Monsters, and Lullaby. His fiction often uses transgressive themes, satire, and minimalist prose.

The Newcomers
11. ?

    Frank G. Slaughter

12. ?

    Andrew Neiderman

The Contenders

13. Walt Whitman

    

    Walt Whitman was an American poet, essayist, and journalist born in 1819 in West Hills, New York. He is best known for Leaves of Grass, a poetry collection that he revised and expanded over many years. During the American Civil War, he worked in Washington, D.C., and wrote prose and poetry influenced by that experience.

14. H. P. Lovecraft

    

    H. P. Lovecraft was an American writer born in 1890 in Providence, Rhode Island. He is known for stories such as "The Call of Cthulhu," "The Shadow over Innsmouth," At the Mountains of Madness, and "The Colour Out of Space." His fiction helped shape modern cosmic horror and weird fiction.

15. Jack Kerouac

    

    Jack Kerouac was an American novelist and poet born in 1922 in Lowell, Massachusetts. He is closely associated with the Beat Generation and is best known for On the Road, The Dharma Bums, and Big Sur. His writing often used spontaneous prose and drew from his travels and personal experiences.

16. George R. R. Martin

    

    George R. R. Martin is an American novelist and screenwriter born in 1948 in Bayonne, New Jersey. He is best known for A Song of Ice and Fire, the fantasy series that began with A Game of Thrones. His work has also included television writing, short fiction, and edited anthologies.

17. Harper Lee

    

    Harper Lee was an American novelist born in 1926 in Monroeville, Alabama. She is best known for To Kill a Mockingbird, which won the Pulitzer Prize for Fiction in 1961. Her later published novel Go Set a Watchman was released in 2015, though it had been written earlier.

18. Jack London

    

    Jack London was an American novelist, journalist, and short story writer born in 1876 in San Francisco, California. He is known for works such as The Call of the Wild, White Fang, The Sea-Wolf, and "To Build a Fire." His fiction often drew on experiences connected to travel, labor, and the Klondike Gold Rush.

19. Tennessee Williams

    

    Tennessee Williams was an American playwright born in 1911 in Columbus, Mississippi. He wrote A Streetcar Named Desire, The Glass Menagerie, Cat on a Hot Tin Roof, and other plays. His work became a major part of twentieth-century American theater and was frequently adapted for film.

20. J. D. Salinger

    

    J. D. Salinger was an American writer born in 1919 in New York City. He is best known for The Catcher in the Rye and for stories featuring the Glass family, including Franny and Zooey and Nine Stories. After achieving wide recognition, he lived for decades in relative seclusion.

    The Catcher in the Rye may be one of the best American books ever written. It certainly was one of the best I've ever read.

21. Robert Frost

    

    Robert Lee Frost (March 26, 1874 - January 29, 1963) was one of the most popular and critically respected American poets of the 20th century. He was honored frequently during his lifetime, receiving four Pulitzer Prizes for Poetry. Frost is best known for poems such as The Road Not Taken and Stopping... read more

22. Harry Turtledove

23. Ray Bradbury

    

    Ray Bradbury was an American author born in 1920 in Waukegan, Illinois. He wrote novels and story collections including Fahrenheit 451, The Martian Chronicles, Something Wicked This Way Comes, and The Illustrated Man. His work spans science fiction, fantasy, horror, and mainstream literary fiction.

24. Frederick Douglass

    

    Frederick Douglass was an American writer, orator, and abolitionist born into slavery in Maryland around 1818. He is known for autobiographical works including Narrative of the Life of Frederick Douglass, an American Slave, My Bondage and My Freedom, and Life and Times of Frederick Douglass. He also published newspapers and spoke extensively on abolition, civil rights, and political reform.

25. Adam Grant

    

    Adam Grant is an American author, organizational psychologist, and professor born in 1981. He has written books such as Give and Take, Originals, Think Again, and Hidden Potential. He teaches at the Wharton School of the University of Pennsylvania.

26. Raymond Chandler

    

    Raymond Chandler was an American-British novelist and screenwriter born in 1888 in Chicago, Illinois. He is best known for detective novels featuring private investigator Philip Marlowe, including The Big Sleep, Farewell, My Lovely, and The Long Goodbye. His writing had a major influence on hardboiled crime fiction.

    Why has nobody thought of him? Don't you people know the importance of this man to today's literature?

27. Maya Angelou

    

    Maya Angelou was an American poet, memoirist, and civil rights activist born in 1928 in St. Louis, Missouri. She is widely known for I Know Why the Caged Bird Sings, the first volume of her autobiographical series. Her career also included acting, directing, teaching, and public speaking.