Historical Archives & Public Figures

صادق هدایت

Qajar Iran

1903 – 1951 (48 years old)

Iranian author universally recognized as the father of modern Persian prose fiction, whose surrealist psychological masterpiece The Blind Owl is the most translated Iranian literary work in history.

Paris, France

1 Full Record →

Literature & Poetry

3

🕯️ 0

George Bernard Shaw

Ireland

1856 – 1950 (94 years old)

Irish playwright, critic, socialist, and 1925 Nobel laureate who transformed English theater with biting satirical wit in Pygmalion, Saint Joan, and Man and Superman.

Ayot St Lawrence, United Kingdom

3 Full Record →

Literature & Poetry

11

🕯️ 999

Eric Arthur Blair (George Orwell)

India

25 June 1903 – 21 January 1950 (46 years old)

Supreme political satirist and essayist of the 20th century whose devastating warnings against totalitarianism—Animal Farm ('All animals are equal, but some are more equal than others') and Nineteen Eighty-Four (Big Brother, Newspeak, Thoughtcrime)—permanently armed the free world.

London, Great Britain

11 Full Record →

Literature & Poetry

3

🕯️ 0

Ali Douagi

علي الدوعاجي

Tunisia

1909 – 1949 (40 years old)

Brilliant Tunisian bohemian writer, playwright, caricaturist, and songwriter who founded the modern Tunisian short story and animated the celebrated 'Taht Es-Sour' literary circle in the Bab Souika quarter.

Tunis, Tunisia

3 Full Record →

Literature & Poetry

1

🕯️ 0

Chairil Anwar

Dutch East Indies

1922 – 1949 (26 years old)

Indonesian poet who spearheaded the 'Generation of 45' (Angkatan 45), liberating Indonesian poetry from archaic Malay poetic forms with intense, raw existential free verse.

Jakarta, Indonesia

1 Full Record →

Literature & Poetry

1

🕯️ 0

Sarojini Naidu

सरोजिनी नायडू

India

1879 – 1949 (70 years old)

Indian poet and political leader celebrated as the 'Nightingale of India' (Bharat Kokila), who blended lyrical English romanticism with Indian folk motifs and served as the first woman governor of an Indian state.

Lucknow, India

1 Full Record →

Literature & Poetry

4

🕯️ 0

Osamu Dazai

太宰治

Empire of Japan

1909 – 1948 (38 years old)

Major 20th-century Japanese novelist and master of the 'I-novel' (watakushi shōsetsu) whose No Longer Human and The Setting Sun captured post-war existential anguish.

Mitaka (Tokyo), Japan

4 Full Record →

Literature & Poetry

4

🕯️ 0

H.G. Wells

Herbert George Wells

England

1866 – 1946 (79 years old)

Visionary English author and social prophet revered as the 'Father of Science Fiction' for The Time Machine, The War of the Worlds, and The Invisible Man.

English Channel, United Kingdom

4 Full Record →

Literature & Poetry

0

🕯️ 0

Shimazaki Toson

島崎藤村 (Shimazaki Haruki)

Meiji Japan

1872 – 1943 (71 years old)

Foremost figure of Japanese literary naturalism (1872–1943), author of 'The Broken Commandment' (Hakai) and the historical epic 'Before the Dawn' (Yoakemae), who chronicled Japan's transition from feudalism to modernity.

Oiso (Kanagawa), Japan

0 Full Record →

Literature & Poetry

0

🕯️ 0

Akiko Yosano

与謝野晶子 (Yosano Shoyo)

Meiji Japan

1878 – 1942 (63 years old)

Groundbreaking Japanese poet, feminist, and social reformer (1878–1942) whose daring 1901 poetry collection 'Midaregami' (Tangled Hair) revolutionized modern tanka verse, and whose anti-war poem 'Thou Shalt Not Die' challenged militarism.

Fuchu (Tokyo), Japan

0 Full Record →

Literature & Poetry

4

🕯️ 0

Marina Tsvetaeva

Марина Ивановна Цветаева

Russian Empire

1892 – 1941 (48 years old)

Russian Silver Age lyric poet of incandescent emotional intensity, tragic passion, and rhythmic virtuosity in Poem of the End and Mileposts.

Yelabuga, Russia

4 Full Record →

Literature & Poetry

9

🕯️ 998

Rabindranath Tagore (Gurudev)

রবীন্দ্রনাথ ঠাকুর

India

7 May 1861 – 7 August 1941 (80 years old)

Towering polymath and spiritual voice of Asia who became the first non-European to win the Nobel Prize in Literature (1913) for Gitanjali, founded the open-air university Visva-Bharati at Santiniketan, and composed the national anthems of both India and Bangladesh.

Calcutta (Kolkata), India

9 Full Record →

Literature & Poetry

10

🕯️ 995

Adeline Virginia Woolf (née Stephen)

Virginia Woolf

Great Britain

25 January 1882 – 28 March 1821 (59 years old)

Foremost British modernist novelist and pioneering feminist essayist whose stream-of-consciousness triumphs Mrs Dalloway and To the Lighthouse, alongside her rallying manifesto A Room of One's Own ('five hundred a year and a room of her own'), reshaped 20th-century consciousness.

River Ouse (near Rodmell, Sussex), Great Britain

10 Full Record →

Literature & Poetry

8

🕯️ 998

James Augustine Aloysius Joyce

James Joyce

Ireland

2 February 1882 – 13 January 1941 (58 years old)

Revolutionary Irish avant-garde novelist whose landmark masterwork Ulysses (1922)—recounting a single Dublin day, 16 June 1904 (Bloomsday), through Leopold Bloom's stream of consciousness—permanently transformed modern world literature.

Zurich, Switzerland

8 Full Record →

Literature & Poetry

5

🕯️ 0

F. Scott Fitzgerald

Francis Scott Key Fitzgerald

United States

1896 – 1940 (44 years old)

Voice of the Jazz Age and Lost Generation whose tragic masterpiece The Great Gatsby captured the glamour, excess, and disillusionment of the American Dream.

Rockville, Maryland, United States

5 Full Record →

Literature & Poetry

1

🕯️ 0

Taneda Santoka

種田山頭火 (Taneda Shoichi)

Meiji Japan

1882 – 1940 (57 years old)

Twentieth-century free-verse haiku poet and Zen mendicant monk (1882–1940) whose unconventional, unrhymed poems distilled the solitude of walking, begging bowls, flowing waters, and sake into spontaneous spiritual art.

Matsuyama (Ehime), Japan

1 Full Record →

Literature & Poetry

4

🕯️ 0

Selma Lagerlöf

Selma Ottilia Lovisa Lagerlöf

Sweden

1858 – 1940 (81 years old)

First woman to win the Nobel Prize in Literature (1909) and first female member of the Swedish Academy, famous for Gösta Berling's Saga and The Wonderful Adventures of Nils.

Sunne (Värmland), Sweden

4 Full Record →