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Top 100 writers & artists of all time

The top 100 writers & artists of all time, ranked by everyone, one head-to-head pick at a time.

  1. Leonardo da Vinci 1452–1519
  2. William Shakespeare 1564–1616
  3. Vincent van Gogh 1853–1890
  4. Homer 900–800 BC
  5. Johann Wolfgang von Goethe 1749–1832
  6. Charles Dickens 1812–1870
  7. J. R. R. Tolkien 1892–1973
  8. Michelangelo 1475–1564
  9. Fyodor Dostoyevsky 1821–1881
  10. Dante Alighieri 1265–1321
  11. Agatha Christie 1890–1976
  12. Leo Tolstoy 1828–1910
  13. Edgar Allan Poe 1809–1849
  14. Gabriel García Márquez 1927–2014
  15. Victor Hugo 1802–1885
  16. Raphael 1483–1520
  17. Anne Frank 1929–1945
  18. Voltaire 1694–1778
  19. Antoine de Saint-Exupéry 1900–1944
  20. Claude Monet 1840–1926
  21. Alexander Pushkin 1799–1837
  22. Rembrandt 1606–1669
  23. Hans Christian Andersen 1805–1875
  24. Miguel de Cervantes 1547–1616
  25. Nikolai Gogol 1809–1852
  26. Andy Warhol 1928–1987
  27. Niccolò Machiavelli 1469–1527
  28. Oscar Wilde 1854–1900
  29. Jane Austen 1775–1817
  30. James Joyce 1882–1941
  31. Arthur Conan Doyle 1859–1930
  32. Rabindranath Tagore 1861–1941
  33. Peter Paul Rubens 1577–1640
  34. Frida Kahlo 1907–1954
  35. Alexandre Dumas 1802–1870
  36. Caravaggio 1571–1610
  37. Virgil 69–18 BC
  38. Helen Keller 1880–1968
  39. Ovid 42 BC–17 AD
  40. Émile Zola 1840–1902
  41. Franz Kafka 1883–1924
  42. Stephen King 1947–
  43. Sophocles 495–405 BC
  44. George Orwell 1903–1950
  45. Pablo Picasso 1881–1973
  46. J. K. Rowling 1965–
  47. Isaac Asimov 1920–1992
  48. Salvador Dalí 1904–1989
  49. Marcel Proust 1871–1922
  50. Lord Byron 1788–1824
  51. H. G. Wells 1866–1946
  52. Albert Camus 1913–1960
  53. Anton Chekhov 1860–1904
  54. Honoré de Balzac 1799–1850
  55. Jules Verne 1828–1905
  56. Jonathan Swift 1667–1745
  57. Virginia Woolf 1882–1941
  58. George R. R. Martin 1948–
  59. Rumi 1207–1273
  60. Henri Matisse 1869–1954
  61. Søren Kierkegaard 1813–1855
  62. Frank Lloyd Wright 1867–1959
  63. Le Corbusier 1887–1965
  64. Thomas Mann 1875–1955
  65. Umberto Eco 1932–2016
  66. Emily Brontë 1818–1848
  67. Ernest Hemingway 1899–1961
  68. Molière 1622–1673
  69. Coco Chanel 1883–1971
  70. Hesiod 775–700 BC
  71. Antoni Gaudí 1852–1926
  72. Aesop 619–563 BC
  73. Wassily Kandinsky 1866–1944
  74. Mario Vargas Llosa 1936–2025
  75. Mark Twain 1835–1910
  76. Toni Morrison 1931–2019
  77. Friedrich Schiller 1759–1805
  78. Maxim Gorky 1868–1936
  79. Federico García Lorca 1898–1936
  80. Walter Scott 1771–1832
  81. Emily Dickinson 1830–1886
  82. Sarah Bernhardt 1844–1923
  83. Francisco Goya 1746–1828
  84. Diego Velázquez 1599–1660
  85. Pierre-Auguste Renoir 1841–1919
  86. Sandro Botticelli 1445–1510
  87. Pliny the Elder 20–79
  88. Hermann Hesse 1877–1962
  89. William Blake 1757–1827
  90. Pier Paolo Pasolini 1922–1975
  91. Albrecht Dürer 1471–1528
  92. Mary Shelley 1797–1851
  93. Jack London 1876–1916
  94. Solon 629–559 BC
  95. Aleister Crowley 1875–1947
  96. Walt Disney 1901–1966
  97. George Sand 1804–1876
  98. Vladimir Nabokov 1899–1977
  99. Rainer Maria Rilke 1875–1926
  100. William Faulkner 1897–1962

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