Best Poets of All Time

Lascelles Abercrombie (also known as the Georgian Laureate) (January 9, 1881 – October 27, 1938) was a British poet and literary critic, one of the "Dymock poets". He was born in Ashton-on-Mersey and educated at the University of Manchester.

Delmira Agustini was born in Montevideo, Uruguay on October 24, 1886. She is considered one of the greatest female Latin American and Uruguayan poets of the early 20th century.

Dante Alighieri is an Italian Florentine poet (born in Florence, Italy in 1265). His greatest work is la Divina Commedia (The Divine Comedy).

Matthew Arnold (Matthew) was an English Victorian Era poet and critic. He was educated at Winchester, Rugby, and Oxford, where he won the Newdigate prize. In 1857 he was elected Professor of Poetry at Oxford. Mr. Arnold has a lucid style and is abreast of the thought of his age. He may be said in his own words to wander "between two worlds, one dead, the other powerless to be born."

A Chinese poet who lived during the Tang Dynasty.. major Chinese poet of the Tang dynasty poetry period

Charles Pierre Baudelaire is one of the most influential French poets of the nineteenth century. French poet essayist art critic and translator, b. Paris, 9 April 1821, the son of a distinguished friend of Cabanis and Condorcet. He first became famous by the publication of Fleurs du Mal, 1857, in which appeared Les Litanies de Satan. The work was prosecuted and suppressed. Baudelaire translated some of the writings of E. A. Poe, a poet whom he resembled much in life and character. The divine beauty of his face has been celebrated by the French poet, Théodore de Banville, and his genius in some magnificent stanzas by the English poet, Algernon Swinburne. Died Paris 31 Aug. 1867.

William Blake (born on November 28, 1757 in London's West End) was an English poet, painter, and printmaker. He was one of the greatest poets of the Romantic era.

Charlotte Brontë was an English novelist and poet, the eldest of the three Brontë sisters who survived into adulthood and whose novels are English literature standards. She wrote Jane Eyre under the pen name Currer Bell.

A celebrated Romantic English poet of the Victorian era, Elizabeth Barrett Browning is still one of the most influential figures within English poetry.

Robert Burns was a poet and songwriter widely regarded as the national poet of Scotland. This celebrated Scottish poet and lyricist was born at Alloway, near Ayr, in 1759. Burns' poem "A Red, Red Rose" is considered one of the greatest poems of all-time.

George Gordon Byron, 6th Baron Byron, later George Gordon Noel, 6th Baron Byron, FRS (22 January 1788 – 19 April 1824), commonly known simply as Lord Byron, was an English poet and a leading figure in the Romantic movement. Among Byron's best-known works are the lengthy narrative poems Don Juan and Childe Harold's Pilgrimage and the short lyric " She Walks in Beauty ." He is regarded as one of the greatest British poets and remains widely read and influential.

Lewis Carroll was an English author, mathematician, logician, Anglican clergyman, and photographer. His fame rests on his books for children of which Alice's Adventures in Wonderland, and its sequel, Through the Looking-glass, are the best.

Samuel Taylor Coleridge was an English poet, Romantic, literary critic and philosopher who, with his friend William Wordsworth, was a founder of the Romantic Movement in England and a member of the Lake Poets. He is probably best known for his poems The Rime of the Ancient Mariner and Kubla Khan, as well as for his major prose work Biographia Literaria. His critical work, especially on Shakespeare, was highly influential, and he helped introduce German idealist philosophy to English-speaking culture. He coined many familiar words and phrases, including the celebrated suspension of disbelief. He was a major influence, via Emerson, on American transcendentalism.. English poet

Stephen Crane was an American novelist, short story writer, poet and journalist. Prolific throughout his short life, he wrote notable works in the Realist tradition as well as early examples of American Naturalism and Impressionism. He is recognized by modern critics as one of the most innovative writers of his generation.. American novelist short story writer poet and journalist

Gopabandhu Dash, known as Utkalamani (Gem of Odisha ), was a social worker, reformer, political activist, journalist, poet and essayist. Gopabandhu Das is one of the founders of the modern Orissa state, is also remembered for his patriotic lyrical poems and lucid, thought provoking prose writings.

John Donne (1572 – March 31, 1631) was a Jacobean poet, satirist, lawyer and preacher/cleric in the Church of England. He is considered the founding figure of the so-called metaphysical poetry movement.

Ralph Waldo Emerson was born on May 25, 1803 in Boston, Massachusetts. He was a famous American preacher, philosopher, and poet of the 19th century who served as the center of the Transcendental movement.

Robert Frost was an American poet born on March 26, 1874 in San Francisco, California. One of the foremost poets of the 20th century and winner of four Pulitzer Prizes for Poetry.

Federico del Sagrado Corazón de Jesús García Lorca was a Spanish poet, dramatist and theatre director. García Lorca achieved international recognition as an emblematic member of the Generation of '27. He was executed by Nationalist forces during the Spanish Civil War. In 2008, a Spanish judge opened an investigation into Lorca's death. The García Lorca family eventually dropped objections to the excavation of a potential gravesite near Alfacar. However, no human remains were found.

Khwaja Shamsu d-Din Muhammad Hafez-e Shirazi, known by his pen name Hafez (1325/26–1389/1390), was a Persian poet. His collected works composed of series of Persian literature are to be found in the homes of most people in Iran, Afghanistan and Tajikistan, who learn his poems by heart and use them as proverbs and sayings to this day. His life and poems have been the subject of much analysis, commentary and interpretation, influencing post-fourteenth century Persian writing more than any other author.

George Herbert was a Welsh poet, orator and Anglican priest. Being born into an artistic and wealthy family, he received a good education which led to his holding prominent positions at Cambridge University and Parliament. As a student at Trinity College, Cambridge, England, George Herbert excelled in languages and music. He went to college with the intention of becoming a priest, but his scholarship attracted the attention of King James I/VI. Herbert served in parliament for two years. public orator and poet

Nâzim Hikmet Ran, commonly known as Nâzim Hikmet, was a Turkish poet, playwright, novelist and memoirist. He was acclaimed for the "lyrical flow of his statements". Described as a "romantic communist" and "romantic revolutionary", he was repeatedly arrested for his political beliefs and spent much of his adult life in prison or in exile. His poetry has been translated into more than fifty languages.

English humorist and poet; father of playwright and editor.

Langston Hughes was an American poet, social activist, novelist, playwright, short story writer, and newspaper columnist. He is noted as having been a creator of jazz poetry and as a leader of the Harlem Renaissance, an African American cultural movement that occurred during the 1920s and 1930s.

A Japanese writer of haikai (haiku) known for his hokku verses.. Japanese haikai poet

John Keats was an English poet who is now regarded as being one of the greatest lyric poets of his time and one of the principal poets of the English Romantic movement. He was born in London on October 31, 1795 and in his short lifetime had 54 poems published in various magazines and in three volumes of poetry. Recognition of his achievements as one of the leading poets of his time only came after his death in Rome on February 23, 1821.

Rudyard Kipling was a British short-story writer, poet, and novelist, born in Mumbai, India and educated in England. One of Kipling's most famous works is The Jungle Books; a collection of poems and stories.

Edward Lear was an English artist, illustrator, author, and poet, renowned today primarily for his literary nonsense, in poetry and prose, and especially his limericks, a form that he popularized.

American poet and educator Henry Wadsworth Longfellow is one of the greatest poets in American history. Born in Portland, Maine, He became professor of Modern Languages in Harvard University; wrote "Hyperion," a romance in prose, and a succession of poems as well as lyrics, among the former "Evangeline," "The Golden Legend," "Hiawatha," and "Miles Standish"

José Julián Martí Pérez was a Cuban national hero and an important figure in Latin American literature. In his short life he was a poet, an essayist, a journalist, a revolutionary philosopher, a translator, a professor, a publisher, and a political theorist. He was also a part of the Cuban Freemasons.

Vladimir Vladimirovich Mayakovsky was a Russian Soviet poet, playwright, artist and stage and film actor. He was born in Baghdati, Russian Empire on July 19, 1893. he was the youngest child of Ukrainian parents.

Gabriela Mistral is Chilean poet educator diplomat and feminist; Nobel Prize in Literature in 1945. Gabriela Mistral was the pseudonym of Lucila Godoy Alcayaga, born on April 7, 1889 in Vicuña, Chile.

Sarojini Naidu, (born as Sarojini Chattopadhyaya) also known by the sobriquet as The Nightingale of India, was a child prodigy, Indian independence activist and poet. Naidu was one of the formers of the Indian Constitution. Naidu was the first Indian woman to become the President of the Indian National Congress and the first woman to become the Governor of Uttar Pradesh state. Her birthday is celebrated as women's day all over India.

Pablo Neruda is a Chilean poet, author, and communist activist considered one of the most influential poets of the 20th century. His real name was Ricardo Eliecer Neftalí Reyes Basoalto.

Sylvia Plath was a troubled American poet, novelist, short story writer, and essayist. Plath posthumously won the Pulitzer Prize in 1982.

​Edgar Allan Poe is an American poet and short story writer best known for his tales of the macabre. Poe was an author, poet, editor, and literary critic most famously known for his poem "The Raven".

Alexander Sergeyevich Pushkin was a Russian author of the Romantic era who is considered by many to be the greatest Russian poet and the founder of modern Russian literature. Pushkin pioneered the use of vernacular speech in his poems and plays, creating a style of storytelling—mixing drama, romance, and satire—associated with Russian literature ever since and greatly influencing later Russian writers. He also wrote historical fiction. His The Captain's Daughter provides insight into Russia during the reign of Catherine the Great. A Russian Romantic author who is considered to be the greatest Russian poet.

Beloved American writer and poet called the "Hoosier poet".. American writer poet; known as the Hoosier Poet and Children's Poet

Christina Georgina Rossetti was an English poet who wrote a variety of romantic, devotional, and children's poems. She is best known for her long poem Goblin Market, her love poem Remember, and for the words of the Christmas carol In the Bleak Midwinter.. English poet

A prolific Scottish historical novelist and romantic poet of the 19th century.. Scottish historical novelist playwright and poet

William Shakespeare was born in April 1564 in Stratford-upon-Avon, England. He is one of the world's most highly esteemed writers, and is thought to be the most quoted author in history, second only to the Bible. His plays and poems have been studied, analyzed, read, and loved for centuries.

Mary Shelley, born Mary Wollstonecraft Godwin, was an English novelist, short story writer, dramatist, essayist, biographer, and travel writer, best known for her Gothic novel Frankenstein: or, The Modern Prometheus (1818). She also edited and promoted the works of her husband, the Romantic poet and philosopher Percy Bysshe Shelley. .

Robert Southey was an English Romantic poet. One of the "Lake Poets"; Poet Laureate of the United Kingdom 1813–1843.

A Scottish novelist, poet, and travel writer, and a representative of Neo-romanticism in England.. Scottish novelist poet essayist and travel writer

Sara Teasdale was an American lyrical poet. She is the total embodiment of a tortured soul who had a gift for artistic expression. She was born on August 8, 1884 in St. Louis, Missouri. She died at the age of 48 on January 29, 1933 in New York City.

Suleiman I (Ottoman Turkish: Suleyman, Modern Turkish: Süleyman, Turkish pronunciation), almost always Kanuni Sultan Süleyman; was the tenth and longest-reigning Sultan of the Ottoman Empire, from 1520 to his death in 1566. He is known in the West as Suleiman the Magnificent and in the East, as the Lawgiver (Turkish: Kanuni; Arabic:, al-Qanuni), for his complete reconstruction of the Ottoman legal system. Ruler of the Ottoman Empire and Islamic poet.

Mark Twain is the famous pen name of Samuel Langhorne Clemens, who was born on November 30, 1835 in Florida, Missouri. He is one of the most beloved figures in the history of American literature, and was a journalist, novelist, humorist, literary critic, essayist, short story writer, and poet. He wrote The Adventures of Tom Sawyer (1876) and its sequel, Adventures of Huckleberry Finn (1885), the latter often called "the Great American Novel ."

A Tang Dynasty Chinese poet, musician, painter and statesman.. Chinese priestess and poet

An American Quaker poet and forceful advocate of the abolition of slavery in the United States.. American poet

William Wordsworth was a renowned English Romantic Movement poet who lived from 1770 to 1850. Known for his deep appreciation of nature, his poems often celebrated the beauty of the natural world and explored themes of memory, imagination, and childhood. Wordsworth's most famous works include "Lines Composed a Few Miles above Tintern Abbey" and "The Prelude," an autobiographical epic. Along with fellow poet Samuel Taylor Coleridge, he published the groundbreaking collection "Lyrical Ballads," which marked a turning point in English literature. Wordsworth's writings continue to be widely studied and cherished for their lyrical beauty and profound insights into the human experience.