From Shakespeare and Jane Austen to Gabriel Garca Mrquez and Toni Morrison, this DK book features more than 100 biographies of the worlds greatest writers.

Introduced with a stunning portrait of each featured novelist, playwright, or poet, biographical entries trace the friendships, loves, and rivalries that inspired each individual and influenced their work, revealing insights into the larger-than-life characters, plots, and evocative settings that they created. Each entry explains how the persons writing developed during their lifetime, and sets it in context, conveying a powerful sense of the place and the period of history in which they lived.

Lavishly illustrated with photographs and paintings of writers homes, studies, and personal artifactsalong with pages from original manuscripts, first editions, and their correspondencethis book introduces the key ideas, themes, and literary techniques of each writer, revealing the imaginations and personalities behind some of the worlds greatest novels, short stories, poems, and plays. Covering an eclectic range of authors from the Middle Ages to the present day,Writersprovides a compelling glimpse of the lives and loves of each great writer.