English writers!

Here at No Sweat Shakespeare we have no doubt that William Shakespeare is by far the best writer in English literary history. And that’s no mean feat given the centuries of English history have been adorned with writers who, even if Shakespeare had never existed, would have placed England as the top literary country in the world.

We now present the ten best English writers who would have ensured England’s place at the top of the literature league, even without including the Bard of Avon. It was no easy task as there have been so many English writers over the years, and the list ends up being very subjective. So, in no particular order, here is our pick of the top 10 English writers of all time:

Jane Austen 1775 – 1817

The Jane Austen Centre’s website states: ‘Jane Austen is perhaps the best known and best loved of Bath’s many famous residents and visitors.’ One wonders at the restraint in that, considering that Jane Austen is indisputably one of the greatest English writers – some say the greatest after Shakespeare – and certainly the greatest English novelist and one of the most famous English women who ever lived… Read more on Jane Austen

William Blake 1757-1827

Although not highly regarded either as a painter or poet by his contemporaries William Blake has the distinction of finding his place in the top ten of both English writers and English painters. The reason he was disregarded is because he was very much ahead of his time in his views and his poetic style, and also because he was regarded as being somewhat mad, due to behaviour that would be thought of as only slightly eccentric today– for example his naturistic habit of walking about his garden naked and sunbathing there… Read more about William Blake

Geoffrey Chaucer 1343-1400

Geoffrey Chaucer stands as the great giant of English poetry. His verse is still read and enjoyed today and often adapted for theatre performances. It is full of characters, still recognisable as types we encounter in daily life in spite of having been inspired by people Chaucer observed more than seven hundred years ago… Read more on Geoffrey Chaucer

Charles Dickens 1812-1870

Charles Dickens was an extraordinary man. He is best known as a novelist but he was very much more than that. He was as prominent in his other pursuits but they were not areas of life where we can still see him today.  We see him as the author of such classics as Oliver Twist, David Copperfield, Great Expectations, A Tale of Two Cities, Bleak House and many others. All of his novels are English classics… Read more on Charles Dickens

John Donne 1572-1631

John Donne must be one of the most interesting writers who ever lived, both as a poet and a man. His life was a colourful adventure and his poems are significant feats of language. A Jacobean writer, more or less a contemporary of Shakespeare, Fletcher and Webster, but very distant from those theatre writers, both regarding his social class and his literary work… Read more on John Donne

George Eliot 1819-1880

George Eliot was the pen name of Mary Ann Evans, a novelist who produced some of the major classic novels of the Victorian era, including The Mill on the Floss, Adam Bede, Silas Marner, Romola, Felix Holt, Daniel Deronda and her masterpiece, Middlemarch. It is impossible to overestimate the significance of Eliot’s novels in the English culture: they went right to the heart of the small-town politics that made up the fabric of English society. Her novels were essentially political…Read more about George Eliot

John Milton 1608-1674

English is often referred to as ‘the language of Shakespeare and Milton.’ Milton’s poetry has been seen as the most perfect poetic expression in the English language for four centuries. His most famous poem, the epic Paradise Lost is a high point of English epic poetry. Its story has entered into English and European culture to such an extent that the details of our ideas of heaven and hell and paradise, Adam and Eve, Satan… Read more about John Milton

George Orwell 1903-1950

George Orwell was the pen name of Eric Blair, a twentieth century writer, equally at home with journalism, essays, novels, literary criticism and social commentary. He was famous in all those areas, but will be particularly remembered for two of his novels, Animal Farm and Nineteen Eighty Four, both among the most significant works of literature of the twentieth century and two of the most influential… Read more about George Orwell

Harold Pinter 1930-2008

Harold Pinter won the Nobel Prize for Literature in 2005, three years before his death from cancer. He had a career of more than half a century as a playwright, director, actor and writer of screenplays for television and film. He was without doubt the most influential English playwright of the twentieth century and so earns his place on this list… Read more about Harold Pinter

Samuel Taylor Coleridge 1772-1834

Samuel Taylor Coleridge was an English poet, best known in his time as a literary critic and philosopher. He was immensely influential in English literature as one of the founders of the English Romantic Movement and when one talks about ‘the Romantic poets,’ it’s Coleridge’s name that springs to mind… Read more about Samuel Taylor Coleridge

There are other great English language writers closely associated with the English writing scene, and could have been included in this list had they been born in England. Writers like Irishmen, James Joyce, William Butler Yeats, Jonathan Swift and Oscar Wilde, and the American, T.S. Eliot.