Top Ten American Authors of All Time

Who is you favorite American author? As long as they wrote literature and were an American citizen they are eligible for this list.
The Top Ten
1 Ernest Hemingway Ernest Miller Hemingway (July 21, 1899 – July 2, 1961) was an American novelist, short story writer, and journalist. His economical and understated style had a strong influence on 20th-century fiction, while his life of adventure and his public image influenced later generations. Hemingway produced most of his work between the mid-1920s and the mid-1950s, and won the Nobel Prize in Literature in 1954. He published seven novels, six short story collections, and two non-fiction works. Additional works, including three novels, four short story collections, and three non-fiction works, were published posthumously. Many of his works are considered classics of American literature.
2 Edgar Allan Poe Edgar Allan Poe (January 19, 1809 – October 7, 1849) was an American writer, editor, and literary critic. Poe is best known for his poetry and short stories, particularly his tales of mystery and the macabre. He is widely regarded as a central figure of Romanticism in the United States and American literature as a whole, and he was one of the country's earliest practitioners of the short story. Poe is generally considered the inventor of the detective fiction genre and is further credited with contributing to the emerging genre of science fiction.

Ligeia, The Black Cat, The Tell Tale Heart, A Descent into the Maelström, The Golden Bug and much 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 just on a few words and shows what true beauty yet also what horror can and may be like no others. Was a man well with words but not with the ladies, yet somewhat in a good way actually.

Better than King

3 Mark Twain Samuel Langhorne Clemens, better known by his pen name Mark Twain, was an American writer, humorist, entrepreneur, publisher, and lecturer.
4 Stephen King Stephen Edwin King is an American author of contemporary horror, supernatural fiction, suspense, science fiction, and fantasy. Many of his most well-known novels include Carrie, It, The Shinning, The Stand, Misery, The Dark Tower series, and Rita Hayworth and the Shawshank Redemption, which was later adapted into the film The Shawshank Redemption which is widely regarded as one of the greatest films of all time.

Doesn't beat England's Peter James, though...

5 John Steinbeck John Ernst Steinbeck, Jr. was an American author of twenty-seven books, including sixteen novels, six non-fiction books, and five collections of short stories.

He’s awesome. Always seemed to be pull back in time with his stories, characters, locations, and descriptions.

6 F. Scott Fitzgerald Francis Scott Key Fitzgerald was an American novelist and short story writer, whose works are the paradigmatic writings of the Jazz Age.
7 Robert Jordan James Oliver Rigney Jr. (1948-2007), better known by his pen name Robert Jordan, was an American author known for writing the epic fantasy series The Wheel of Time. He was also known for writing stories about Conan the Barbarian, and for writing other books with different pseudonyms. He died from cardiac amyloidosis in 2007 before he could finish the whole Wheel of Time series. Fortunately, author and long-time Wheel of Time fan Brandon Sanderson was able to finish and publish the last three books in the series.
8 William Faulkner William Cuthbert Faulkner (September 25, 1897 – July 6, 1962) was an American writer and Nobel Prize laureate from Oxford, Mississippi. Faulkner wrote novels, short stories, a play, poetry, essays, and screenplays. He is primarily known for his novels and short stories set in the fictional Yoknapatawpha County, based on Lafayette County, Mississippi, where he spent most of his life.
9 Dan Brown
10 Chuck Palahniuk
The Contenders
11 Walt Whitman Walter "Walt" Whitman (May 31, 1819 – March 26, 1892) was an American poet, essayist and journalist. 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 very controversial in its time, particularly his poetry collection Leaves of Grass, which was described as obscene for its overt sexuality.
12 H.P. Lovecraft Howard Phillips Lovecraft (August 20, 1890 – March 15, 1937) was an American author who achieved posthumous fame through his influential works of horror fiction. Virtually unknown and published only in pulp magazines before he died in poverty, he is now regarded as one of the most significant 20th-century authors in his genre. ...read more.
13 Jack Kerouac Jack Kerouac (March 12, 1922 – October 21, 1969), born Jean-Louis Kérouac (though he called himself Jean-Louis Lebris de Kérouac) was an American novelist and poet of French-Canadian descent.

He is considered a literary iconoclast and, alongside William S. Burroughs and Allen Ginsberg, a pioneer of the Beat Generation. Kerouac is recognized for his method of spontaneous prose. Thematically, his work covers topics such as Catholic spirituality, jazz, promiscuity, Buddhism, drugs, poverty, and travel. He became an underground celebrity and, with other beats, a progenitor of the hippie movement, although he remained antagonistic toward some of its politically radical elements. ...read more.
14 Jack London John Griffith "Jack" London, born John Griffith Chaney (January 12, 1876 – November 22, 1916) was an American novelist, journalist, and social activist. A pioneer in the then-burgeoning world of commercial magazine fiction, he was one of the first fiction writers to obtain worldwide celebrity and a large fortune from his fiction alone, including science fiction.
15 Tennessee Williams Thomas Lanier "Tennessee" Williams III was an American playwright. Along with Eugene O'Neill and Arthur Miller, he is considered among the three foremost playwrights of 20th-century American drama.
16 Ray Bradbury Ray Douglas Bradbury (August 22, 1920 – June 5, 2012) was an American author and screenwriter. He worked in a variety of genres, including fantasy, science fiction, horror, and mystery fiction. ...read more.
17 Frederick Douglass Frederick Douglass was an African-American social reformer, abolitionist, orator, writer, and statesman.
18 Raymond Chandler

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

19 Adam Grant
20 Emily Dickinson Emily Elizabeth Dickinson (December 10, 1830 – May 15, 1886) was an American poet . Dickinson was born in Amherst, Massachusetts .

Although part of a prominent family with strong ties to its community, Dickinson lived much of her life in reclusive isolation . ...read more.
21 George R.R. Martin George Raymond Richard Martin (born George Raymond Martin), also known as George R. R. Martin, is an American author known for his epic fantasy series A Song of Ice and Fire, which was later adapted into the famous HBO series Game of Thrones.
22 Maya Angelou
23 Harper Lee Nelle Harper Lee, better known by her pen name Harper Lee, was an American novelist widely known for To Kill a Mockingbird, published in 1960. Immediately successful, it won the 1961 Pulitzer Prize and has become a classic of modern American literature.
24 Brandon Sanderson
25 Herman Melville Herman Melville was an American novelist, short story writer, and poet of the American Renaissance period best known for Typee, a romantic account of his experiences in Polynesian life, and his whaling novel Moby-Dick.
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