Alexandre Dumas was born July 24, 1802, at Villiers-Cotterets, France, the son of Napoleon's famous mulatto general, Dumas.

Alexandre Dumas began writing at an early age and saw his first success in a play he wrote entitled Henri III et sa Cour (1829). A prolific author, Dumas was also an adventurer and took part in the Revolution of 1830.

Dumas is most famous for his brilliant historical novels, which he wrote with collaborators, mainly Auguste Maquet, and which were serialized in the popular press of the day.

His most popular works are The Three Musketeers (1844), The Count of Monte Cristo (1844-45), and The Man in Iron Mask (1848-50). Dumas made and lost several fortunes, and died penniless on December 5, 1870.

Nikolai Gogol was a Russian writer and dramatist. He was born in the Ukraine in 1809.

Edgar Allan Poe (1809-1849) is one of America's greatest and best-loved writers.

Known as the father of the detective story, Poe is perhaps most famous for his short stories particularly his shrewd mysteries and chilling, often grotesque tales of horror he was also an extremely accomplished poet and a tough literary critic.

Poe's life was not far removed from the drama of his fiction. Orphaned at a young age, he was raised by a foster family. As a young man, he developed problems with gambling, debts, and alcohol, and was even dismissed from the army.

His love life was marked by tragedy and heartbreak. Despite these difficulties, Poe produced many works now considered essential to the American literary canon.

Jonathan Swift (1667 – 1745) was a poet, satirist and clergyman; his parents were English but he was born in Dublin. His father died before he was born and his mother soon returned to England. Jonathan was brought up by his nurse in Cumbria and later by his Uncle Godwin back in Dublin. He was very unhappy as he was treated like the poor relative who had kindly been given a home. Jonathan went to Trinity College, Dublin where he was an unruly student and only just scraped through the examinations.

Through family connections he went to work in the home of Sir William Temple in Surrey, as secretary and later became both friend and editor. A young girl called Esther was also living in Sir William's house; she became Swift's closest friend and perhaps his wife. There is a mystery surrounding the relationship – Swift clearly loved her but we don't know whether or not they ever married.

Jonathan Swift's cousin, the poet John Dryden, told him he would never be a poet, but he soon became known as a poet and writer. He wrote many political pamphlets and was sometimes known as 'the mad parson'. He became dean of St Patrick's Cathedral in Dublin in 1713 and became popular in Ireland as a patriotic writer.

Swift was always afraid of madness and often suffered from depression; he suffered serious ill health in his last years. He wrote many volumes of prose and poetry but his best-known work is Gulliver's Travels in which he turned 'traveller's tales' into a biting satire on contemporary life. It has appealed to a wide range of readers over the years, including in its abridged form many children. As well as being a satire it is an exciting story, funny and very inventive.

Nathaniel Hawthorne was born in Salem, Massachusetts, where he wrote the bulk of his masterful tales of American colonial history.

His career as a novelist began with The Scarlet Letter (1850) and also includes The house of the Seven Gables, The Blithedale Romance, and The Marble Faun.

Franz Kafka (1883 - 1924) is a Jewish Czech who wrote in German, and who ranks among the twentieth-century's most acclaimed writers. His works evoke the bewildering oppressiveness of modern life, of anxiety and alienation in a world that is largely unfeeling and unfamiliar.

Although most of his work was published posthumously, his body of work, including the novels 'The Trial' (1925) and 'The Castle' (1926) and the short stories including 'The Metamorphosis' (1915) and 'In the Penal Colony' (1914), is now considered among the most original in Western literature.

Charles Dickens was born in 1812 and became the most popular novelist of the Victorian era.

A prolific writer, he published more than a dozen novels in his lifetime, including Oliver Twist, Great Expectations and Hard Times, most of which have been adapted many times over for radio, stage and screen.

The greatest German literary figure of the modern era, Johann Wolfgang von Goethe (1749–1832) was a poet, playwright, novelist, scientist, critic, theater director, and statesman. He is best known for Faust, which he started at the age of 23 and finished shortly before his death, 60 years later.

The Sorrows of Young Werther, written at the age of 25, quickly achieved cult status and remains an exemplar of the Sturm und Drang literary movement. In addition to hundreds of poems of all kinds, Goethe wrote a series of classic memoirs of his childhood and travels as well as numerous essays on scientific subjects.

Mary Wollstonecraft Shelley was born on August 30, 1797, into a life of personal tragedy. In 1816, she married the poet Percy Bysshe Shelley, and that summer traveled with him and a host of other Romantic intellectuals to Geneva.

Her greatest achievement was piecing together one of the most terrifying and renowned stories of all time: Frankenstein; or, The Modern Prometheus. Shelley conceived Frankenstein in, according to her, "a waking dream."

This vision was simply of a student kneeling before a corpse brought to life. Yet this tale of a mad creator and his abomination has inspired a multitude of storytellers and artists. She died on February 1, 1851.,

Voltaire (1694 1778) was a French man of letters and a leading figure of the Enlightenment, known for his outspokenness and polemical writings.

The philosophical novellas Candide and Zadig are among his most celebrated works.

The eldest of the famous sisters, Charlotte Bronte (1816–55) is best known as the author of Jane Eyre. The Brontes' first book - a collection of their poems, published under pseudonyms and at their own expense - met with scant notice.

Yet despite their remote Yorkshire residence, far from the London literary scene, and their tragically brief lives, all three achieved immortality with their individual novels. Charlotte's works are particularly prized for their moving and articulate depictions of the plight of educated but impoverished women in Victorian society.