Historical Archives & Public Figures

John Donne

Great Britain

between 24 Jan and 19 June 1572 – 31 March 1631 (~59 years old)

Foremost English metaphysical poet and Dean of St Paul's whose passionate erotic elegies, complex extended conceits, and profound Holy Sonnets gave English literature 'No man is an island' and 'Death, be not proud'.

London, Great Britain

11 Full Record →

Literature & Poetry

2

🕯️ 0

Luis de Góngora y Argote

Kingdom of Spain

1561 – 1627 (65 years old)

Spanish Golden Age Baroque lyric poet who originated Culteranismo (Gongorism), celebrated for his complex masterpiece Soledades and mythological epic Polifemo.

Córdoba, Spain

2 Full Record →

Literature & Poetry

7

🕯️ 999

William Shakespeare

Great Britain

26 April 1564 (Baptism) – 23 April 1616 (~52 years old)

Universally regarded as the greatest writer in the English language and the preeminent dramatist in world history, whose 39 plays, 154 sonnets, and cosmic insight in Hamlet, King Lear, and Macbeth defined the human condition.

Stratford-upon-Avon, Great Britain

7 Full Record →

Literature & Poetry

11

🕯️ 998

Miguel de Cervantes Saavedra

Miguel de Cervantes

Spain

29 September 1547 (Baptism) – 22 April 1616 (~69 years old)

Titan of the Spanish Golden Age and creator of Don Quixote de la Mancha (1605/1615), universally revered as the first modern European novel and the eternal archetype of the noble dreamer tilting at windmills.

Madrid, Spain

11 Full Record →

Literature & Poetry

5

🕯️ 0

Torquato Tasso

Kingdom of Naples

1544 – 1595 (51 years old)

Italian Late Renaissance poet whose heroic epic Gerusalemme Liberata (Jerusalem Delivered) fused Christian chivalric grandeur with melancholy passion.

Rome, Italy

5 Full Record →

Literature & Poetry

3

🕯️ 0

Christopher Marlowe

England

1564 – 1593 (29 years old)

Pioneering Elizabethan dramatist and poet who perfected English blank verse with 'Marlowe's mighty line' in Tamburlaine and Doctor Faustus.

Deptford (London), United Kingdom

3 Full Record →

Literature & Poetry

2

🕯️ 0

Pierre de Ronsard

Kingdom of France

1524 – 1585 (61 years old)

Acclaimed as the 'Prince of Poets' and leader of the French Renaissance Pléiade, renowned for 'Mignonne, allons voir si la rose' and Sonnets pour Hélène.

La Riche (Tours), France

2 Full Record →

Literature & Poetry

3

🕯️ 0

Wu Cheng'en

吳承恩

Ming Dynasty China

c. 1500 – c. 1582 (82 years old)

Ming dynasty novelist and poet widely attributed as the author of Journey to the West, the mythical fantasy immortalizing the Monkey King Sun Wukong.

Huai'an, China

3 Full Record →

Literature & Poetry

3

🕯️ 0

Surdas

सूरदास

Delhi Sultanate

1478 – 1581 (103 years old)

Sixteenth-century blind Hindu poet, musician, and Bhakti saint (1478–1581) whose lyrical devotional hymns in 'Sur Sagar' immortalized the childhood and divine love of Krishna in the Braj Bhasha dialect.

Parsoli (Govardhan, Uttar Pradesh), India

3 Full Record →

Literature & Poetry

11

🕯️ 955

Luís Vaz de Camões

Luís de Camões

Portugal

c. 1524–1525 – 10 June 1580 (~56 years old)

Portugal's supreme national poet and adventurer who lost his right eye in battle in Ceuta, composing the monumental national epic Os Lusíadas (The Lusiads) in ten cantos celebrating Vasco da Gama's oceanic route to India.

Lisbon, Portugal

11 Full Record →

Literature & Poetry

4

🕯️ 0

Joachim du Bellay

Kingdom of France

c. 1522 – 1560 (38 years old)

French Renaissance poet and Pléiade theorist whose manifesto Défense et illustration and elegiac sonnets Les Regrets defined modern French poetic identity.

Paris, France

4 Full Record →

Literature & Poetry

7

🕯️ 920

François Rabelais (Alcofribas Nasier)

François Rabelais

France

c. 1494 – 9 April 1553 (~59 years old)

French Renaissance giant, physician, and humanist whose colossal satirical novels Gargantua and Pantagruel revolutionized world prose with boundless comedic exuberance, grotesque body humor, and the utopian humanist creed 'Do as thou wilt'.

Paris, France

7 Full Record →

Literature & Poetry

2

🕯️ 0

Ludovico Ariosto

Duchy of Ferrara

1474 – 1533 (58 years old)

Italian Renaissance epic poet whose romantic epic Orlando Furioso wove chivalry, irony, and ottava rima into one of the most influential masterworks of world literature.

Ferrara, Italy

2 Full Record →

Literature & Poetry

2

🕯️ 0

François Villon

Kingdom of France

1431 – c. 1463 (31 years old)

Greatest French lyric poet of the late Middle Ages, roguish outlaw, and author of Le Testament and the haunting Ballade des Pendus.

Paris, France

2 Full Record →

Literature & Poetry

8

🕯️ 985

Geoffrey Chaucer

Great Britain

c. 1340–1343 – 25 October 1400 (~60 years old)

Venerated as the Father of English Literature, who legitimized the vernacular Middle English tongue as a vehicle for grand literary art in his vibrant comedic and psychological masterwork, The Canterbury Tales.

London, Great Britain

8 Full Record →

Literature & Poetry

5

🕯️ 0

Luo Guanzhong

羅貫中

Yuan Dynasty China

c. 1330 – c. 1400 (70 years old)

Pioneering Chinese novelist of the Yuan-Ming transition who wrote Romance of the Three Kingdoms, one of the Four Great Classical Novels of Chinese literature.

Qingxu, China

5 Full Record →

Literature & Poetry

8

🕯️ 930

Giovanni Boccaccio

Italy

16 June 1313 – 21 December 1375 (62 years old)

Pioneering Florentine Renaissance humanist and author of The Decameron, who captured the tragedy of the 1348 Black Death and forged European storytelling prose through one hundred lively, witty tales of human wit, eros, and resilience.

Certaldo (Tuscany), Italy

8 Full Record →

Literature & Poetry

2

🕯️ 0

Francesco Petrarca

Republic of Florence

1304 – 1374 (69 years old)

Italian scholar and poet recognized as the 'Father of Humanism', whose Canzoniere established the Petrarchan sonnet and sparked the European Renaissance.

Arquà Petrarca, Italy

2 Full Record →

Public Figures & Cultural Luminaries