Authors who started their careers in the 19th century.
See also 19th Century Literature.
When adding entries, please put them in alphabetical order within the proper national section.
Authors:
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American
- Louisa May Alcott: Author of Little Women and several other novels, which in modern works would probably be considered Young Adult Literature.
- Horatio Alger, Jr.: Author of Ragged Dick and many other similar stories; the Trope Maker for Rags to Riches.
- Ambrose Bierce: Author of The Devil's Dictionary and contributor to the Cthulhu Mythos.
- Robert W. Chambers: Author of The King in Yellow, which inspired (and was subsumed into) the Cthulhu Mythos.
- Kate Chopin
- James Fenimore Cooper: The first American novelist to become a bestselling author worldwide and to influence the leading authors in Europe; father of the frontier novel and its offshoot, The Western (through his Leatherstocking Tales), as well as of the sea novel.
- Emily Dickinson (poet)
- Ralph Waldo Emerson
- Lucy Hamilton Hooper
- Nathaniel Hawthorne: best known for The Scarlet Letter
- O. Henry, best known for his short fiction chock-full of twist endings.
- William Dean Howells
- Washington Irving
- Henry James: Known for intimate, psychologically complex prose that helped lay a foundation for Modernism. Famous works include Daisy Miller, Washington Square, Portrait Of A Lady and The Turn of the Screw.
- Jack London: Best known for The Call of the Wild.
- Henry Wadsworth Longfellow
- Herman Melville: Author of Moby-Dick and the short story "Bartleby The Scrivener".
- Edgar Allan Poe: Pretty much the horror story writer. Also wrote the first detective story.
- Gene Stratton-Porter: Author of children's books.
- Henry David Thoreau: Essayist and thinker, best known for Walden and Civil Disobedience.
- Mark Twain: Author and humorist. Best known for The Adventures of Tom Sawyer and Adventures of Huckleberry Finn, and for being endlessly quotable due to his rather... direct outlook on life. Other notable works include Puddnhead Wilson and A Connecticut Yankee in King Arthur's Court.
- Edith Wharton
- Walt Whitman
- Mary Eleanor Wilkins Freeman
Argentinian
Australian
Austrian
Brazilian
British Isles
- John Yonge Akerman
- Jane Austen
- Matthew Arnold
- Hilaire Belloc
- William Blake
- The Brontë sisters:
- Robert Browning
- Edward Bulwer-Lytton
- Frances Hodgson Burnett
- Lord Byron (Trope Namer for Byronic Hero)
- Thomas Carlyle
- Lewis Carroll (Wrote Alice in Wonderland, which probably inspired the first use of the critique "What was he smoking?")
- Samuel Taylor Coleridge
- Wilkie Collins: Author of The Moonstone, arguably the first detective novel in English literature, and The Woman in White.
- Marie Corelli: Author of A Romance of Two Worlds, a very important novel in the origin of the New Age movement; and Ardath, a masterpiece of Worldbuilding. She also wrote a lot of Gothic Horror and Author Tract works exposing unfairness towards women, drug addiction and alcoholism, the hypocrisy of social classes and child suicide (via the evils of Cram School education). She believed in universal health care and women's right to vote. Like her friend Ouida, she was immensely popular and controversial.
- Samuel Rutherford Crockett
- Charles Darwin
- Thomas De Quincey
- Charles Dickens: Voluminous English writer known for A Tale of Two Cities, Oliver Twist, Great Expectations, etc.; a great deal of his writings shine a spotlight on the social ills of his day.
- Benjamin Disraeli (also known in his other career as a Prime Minister)
- Sir Arthur Conan Doyle: Creator of Sherlock Holmes and Professor Challenger (from The Lost World (1912)).
- George Eliot
- Elizabeth Gaskell
- H. Rider Haggard: Author of adventure stories including King Solomon's Mines and She
- Thomas Hardy: English novelist and poet.
- James Hogg
- Gerard Manley Hopkins: Catholic priest and poet.
- Joseph Jacobs: Fairy Tale collector
- Montague Rhodes James
- John Keats: Romantic poet with oodles of potential who popped his clogs at 25.
- Rudyard Kipling: Widely prolific Indian-born author and poet, best known for The Jungle Book and a good deal of poetry.
- Andrew Lang: Fairy Tale collector
- Joseph Sheridan Le Fanu
- George MacDonald
- Arthur Machen
- James Clarence Mangan
- W. Somerset Maugham: first published in 1897.
- William Morris
- Amanda McKittrick Ros
- E. Nesbit
- John Henry Newman
- Ouida: Author of Under Two Flags, A Dog of Flanders and forty other novels and many short stories featuring exceedingly well-dressed (and often bisexual) heroes, innocent young people, sexy villains, sensuous villainesses tragedies. Monumentally popular as well as controversial, and a Kindhearted Dog Lover.
- John William Polidori: Author of The Vampyre.
- Christina Rossetti
- Dante Gabriel Rossetti
- John Ruskin
- Walter Scott: Author of Ivanhoe, Rob Roy and a pile of 'Scottish novels'. He was the first to write historical novels in Europe.
- Robert Louis Stevenson : Author of Treasure Island, Kidnapped and other novels.
- Bram Stoker: Author of Dracula.
- Mary Shelley: Author of Frankenstein and mother of Science Fiction.
- Percy Bysshe Shelley: Husband of Mary Shelley, friend of Lord Byron. Poet.
- Algernon Charles Swinburne
- Alfred, Lord Tennyson
- Anthony Trollope
- H. G. Wells: British science fiction writer, who, along with Jules Verne, practically invented the genre. The War of the Worlds and The Time Machine are probably his two best known works.
- Oscar Wilde: Author of The Picture of Dorian Gray. Known for his wit as well as his life's Downer Ending.
- William Wordsworth
- William Butler Yeats
Czech
- Jára Cimrman – an unrecognised Czech genius.
- Karel Jaromír Erben – a folklorist and a poet, the author of many fairy-tale collections and a poem collection A Bouquet which focuses on women's role in the society and includes folklore/fantasy/horror themes.
- Karel Hynek Mácha - a romantic poet, author of a poem May
.
Danish
- Hans Christian Andersen: Known mostly for his fairy tales, such as "The Little Mermaid" and the "The Ugly Duckling".
- Søren Kierkegaard, a writer, better known as the Ur-Example for existentialism, who wrote on the Christian religion, morality, and society using pseudonyms, parables, and irony.
- Jens Peter Jacobsen
French
- Honoré de Balzac, who wrote La Comédie Humaine.
- Charles Baudelaire, who wrote The Flowers of Evil.
- Leon Bloy
- François-René de Chateaubriand
- Alexandre Dumas, père: Wrote The Three Musketeers, The Count of Monte Cristo and a pile of other stuff.
- Alexandre Dumas, fils, who wrote La Dame aux Camelias.
- Paul Féval, author of John Devil, The Black Coats, The Vampire Countess, and Vampire City.
- Georges Feydeau, master farceur.
- Gustave Flaubert, author of Madame Bovary, Sentimental Education, Salammbo.
- Théophile Gautier
- Victor Hugo, author of The Hunchback of Notre Dame and Les Misérables.
- Joris Karl Huysmans
- Guy de Maupassant, a pioneer of the modern short story.
- Charles Peguy
- Stendhal
- Jules Verne, Father of Science Fiction and author of 20,000 Leagues Under the Sea, Journey to the Center of the Earth and Around the World in Eighty Days.
- Auguste Villiers De L Isle Adam
- Emile Zola
Galician
German
- Wilhelm Busch
- Theodor Fontane: poet, critic, and novelist, who among other things wrote Effi Briest and Der Stechlin.
- The Brothers Grimm: while best known for publishing collections of fairy tales and folk stories, the Brothers Grimm were also prominent in linguistics.
- E. T. A. Hoffmann: Germany's most prominent author of Gothic Horror and dark romanticism.
- Heinrich Von Kleist, a German Romantic era writer who killed a terminally ill woman and himself in a suicide pact.
- Kurd Laßwitz, an early science-fiction author; his Auf zwei Planeten told of a different kind of Martian invasion one year before The War of the Worlds.
- Karl Marx, the catalyst of communism and socialism.
- Karl May, famous in particular for the Winnetou novels and infamous for falsely claiming accuracy to his fans because he let them believe his novels were factual accounts of his own adventures, although he had no first-hand experience and rather imperfect knowledge of his books' settings when he wrote them.
- Friedrich Nietzsche, prolific philosopher and writer who wrote Thus Spoke Zarathustra and Trope Namer for Eternal Recurrence, God Is Dead, He Who Fights Monsters, Nietzsche Wannabe and Übermensch. Quoted too many times to count.
- Franz Xaver von Schönwerth: Important collector of German fairy tales, folk stories and legends.
Hungarian
Indian
Italian
Norwegian
- Asbjørnsen and Moe
- Knut Hamsun
- Henrik Ibsen (playwright)
- Henrik Wergeland
Polish
- Joseph Conrad (early Modernist author whose works extend into the early twentieth century, though best known for Heart of Darkness)
Russian
- Alexander Afanasyev: Fairy Tale collector.
- Anton Chekhov: Playwright and short story author. Tropers will know this man best for his concept of Chekhov's Gun. Famous works include The Seagull, Three Sisters, Uncle Vanya and The Cherry Orchard.
- Fyodor Dostoevsky: wrote Crime and Punishment, The Brothers Karamazov, and Notes from Underground.
- Nikolai Gogol: Ukrainian-born writer best known for Dead Souls, the play Revizor (The Government Inspector), and fantastic short stories such as "The Nose" and "The Overcoat."
- Alexander Pushkin: Writer of Eugene Onegin and Boris Godunov, the Russian answer to William Shakespeare.
- Leo Tolstoy, author of such famed doorstoppers as War and Peace and Anna Karenina.
- Ivan Turgenev
Serbian
Spanish
Swedish
