Ordered by name. Order by date of birth
William Dean Howells (1837 - 1920) -- leading nineteenth century American novelist and critic, who promoted realism.
Ted Hughes (1930 - 1998) -- British author and poet laureate.
Victor Hugo (1802 - 1885) -- one of the greatest French poet and most important of the French Romantic movement..
David Hume (1711 - 1776) -- great eighteenth-century Scottish philosopher who sought to reveal the limitations of reason, and in doing so reached famous sceptical conclusions.
Edmund Husserl (1859 - 1938) -- German philosopher; founder of phenomenology.
Aldous Huxley (1894 - 1963) -- famous for novels with strong, sociological theories, British-born..
Henrik Ibsen (1828 - 1906) -- playwright; his works challenged the operation of his contemporary European society and revolutionised drama..
Washington Irving (1783 - 1859) -- early American man of letters, best known for his short stories.
Kazuo Ishiguro (1956 - 0) -- Booker Prize winner for Remains of the Day 1988 (film, 1993).
W.W. Jacobs (1863 - 1943) -- British writer of stories set at sea.
William James (1842 - 1910) -- nineteenth century American philosopher and psychologist, the son of Henry James.
Henry James (1843 - 1916) -- American author of psychological novels.
Thomas Jefferson (1743 - 1826) -- third president of the United States, and political philosopher who borrowed much from Locke and who argued that successful representative government was possible.
Jerome K. Jerome (1859 - 1927) -- English novelist, playwright.
Pauline Johnson (1861 - 1913) -- popular turn-of-the-century Canadian novelist and entertainer.
Samuel Johnson (1709 - 1784) -- writer who is remembered in philosophy for his rejection of sceptical metaphysics.
Ben Jonson (1572 - 1637) -- Jacobean dramatist, poet, and critic, some of whose plays were acted in by Shakespeare.
James Joyce (1882 - 1941) -- the most influential novelist of the 20th century.
Franz Kafka (1883 - 1924) -- Kafka's hugely influential novels and short stories prefigured existentialism and set the tone for much 20th century fiction.
Immanuel Kant (1724 - 1804) -- the most important philosopher of modern times, Kant argued that man is capable of posessing synthetic a priori knowledge, which is independent of experience; in morality, he proposed the famous 'categorical imperative'.
John Keats (1795 - 1821) -- nineteenth century English poet, a principal figure in the Romantic movement.
Søren Aabye Kierkegaard (1813 - 1855) -- Danish writer regarded as the first modern existentialist.
Yaaqub ibn Ishaq al- Kindi (870 - 870) -- one of the first Arab philosophers, who facilitated the exploration of Greek philosophy in the Islamic tradition.
Charles Kingsley (1819 - 1875) -- English clergyman, novelist.
Rudyard Kipling (1865 - 1936) -- English writer, noted for his fiction set in India and Burma during British rule.