William Shakespeare (1564-1616), English poet and dramatist of the Elizabethan and early Jacobean period, is the most widely known author in all of English literature and often considered the greatest. He was an active member of a theater company for at least twenty years, during which time he wrote many great plays. Plays were not prized as literature at the time, and Shakespeare was not widely read until the middle of the eighteenth century, when a great upsurge of interest in his works began that continues today.

Alexandre Dumas fils (1824-1895), was the illegitimate son of Alexandre Dumas, pere, who followed in his father"s footsteps becoming a celebrated author and playwright. In 1831 his father legally recognized him and ensured the young Dumas received the best education possible at the Institution Goubaux and the College Bourbon. At that time, the law allowed the elder Dumas to take the child away from his mother. Her agony inspired Dumas fils to write about tragic female characters. In almost all of his writings, he emphasized the moral purpose of literature and in his 1858 play, Le fils Naturel (The Illegitimate Son), he espoused the belief that if a man fathers an illegitimate child, then he has an obligation to legitimize the child and marry the woman. In 1844 Dumas, fils, moved to Saint-Germain-en-Laye. There, he met Marie Duplessis, a young courtesan who would be the inspiration for his romantic novel, Camille (La Dame aux Camillas).

George Bernard Shaw (1856-1950), Irish-born playwright, critic, and political activist, began his writing career in London. In addition to writing sixty-three plays, his prodigious output as critic, pamphleteer, and essayist influenced numerous social issues. In 1925, he won the Nobel Prize for Literature and in 1938 an Oscar for the movie version of Pygmalion.

Anton Chekhov (1860-1904) was the author of hundreds of short stories and several plays and is regarded by many as both the greatest Russian storyteller and the father of modern drama.

Henrik Ibsen (1828-1906) was a major nineteenth-century Norwegian playwright, theater director, and poet. He is often referred to as "the father of prose drama" and is one of the founders of modernism in the theater. His major works include Brand, Peer Gynt, An Enemy of the People, Emperor and Galilean, A Doll"s House, Ghosts, The Wild Duck, and The Master Builder. Several of his plays were considered scandalous to many of his era, when European theater was required to model strict mores of family life and propriety. Ibsen"s work examined the realities that lay behind many facades, revealing much that was disquieting to many contemporaries. It utilized a critical eye and free inquiry into the conditions of life and issues of morality.