George Ade, (born Feb. 9, 1866, Kentland, Ind., U.S.died May 16, 1944, Brook, Ind.), American playwright and humorist whose Fables in Slang summarized the kind of wisdom accumulated by the country boy in the city.
Oscar Wilde(16 October 1854 30 November 1900) was an Irish poet and playwright. After writing in different forms throughout the 1880s, he became one of London's most popular playwrights in the early 1890s. He is best remembered for his epigrams and plays, his novel The Picture of Dorian Gray, and the circumstances of his criminal conviction for "gross indecency", imprisonment, and early death at age 46.
Anton Chekhov(29 January 1860 15 July 1904) was a Russian playwright and short-story writer, who is considered to be among the greatest writers of short fiction in history. His career as a playwright produced four classics, and his best short stories are held in high esteem by writers and critics.
Timothy Shay Arthur(June 6, 1809 March 6, 1885) known as T. S. Arthur was a popular 19th-century American author. He is most famous for his temperance novel Ten Nights in a Bar-Room and What I Saw There (1854), which helped demonize alcohol in the eyes of the American public.
Herbert George Wells(21 September 1866 13 August 1946) was an English writer. He was prolific in many genres, writing dozens of novels, short stories, and works of social commentary, satire, biography, and autobiography, and even including two books on recreational war games. He is now best remembered for his science fiction novels and is often called a "father of science fiction", along with Jules Verne and Hugo Gernsback.
William Sydney Porter(September 11, 1862 June 5, 1910), better known by his pen name O. Henry, was an American short story writer. His stories are known for their surprise endings.
Nathaniel Hawthorne(July 4, 1804 May 19, 1864) was an American novelist, dark romantic, and short story writer.