Top American Writers of All Times

Do you wish to know of the top 10 American writers of all times?

Do you love to read and want to read books from writers that are known and most popular in America?

If you do, then we have you covered.

We think that writers are people who hold the future, culture, and the thoughts of our future generation, nation, and any civilization.

We think you as a reader will agree with us when we say that a pen holder controls the nation more than the one who carries a gun.

The question is, who are the top 10 American writers of all times?

Continue reading to find out.

1. Ernest Hemingway

Who does not know of Ernest Hemingway?

The leading 20th-century writer?

Ernest Hemingway was born on the 21st July 1899 in Illinois US.

He was famous for the straightforward, simple, and concise approach he had.

Ernest Hemingway was a writer, novelist, journalist, and author.

He was famous and celebrated for his novels like:

• The Sun Also Rises
• A Farewell to Arms
• For Whom the Bell Tolls
• The Old Man and the Sea

In 1953 he won the Pulitzer Prize for his novel The Old Man and the Sea.

Ernest Hemingway won the Nobel prize for literature in 1954.

Sadly, on 2nd July 1961, he died in Idaho.

2. Mark Twain

This list of the 10 American writers of all time would be incomplete without the mention of Mark Twain.

Mark Twain was born on the 30th November 1835 in Florida, US.

He is renowned for mastering English literature and is respected and known as the father of American literature.

Mark Twain was an American humorist, lecturer, journalist, and novelist. He was known internationally for his tales of his travels.

In total, he wrote twenty-eight books. The most known of which are:

• The Innocents Abroad
• Roughing It
• Life on The Mississippi
• The Adventures of Tom Sawyer
• Adventures of Huckleberry Finn.

Mark Twain died on the 21st April 1910 in Redding.

3. Danielle Steel

Danielle Steel is amongst the women who impacted the structure of American writing.

Danielle Steel was born on 14th August 1947 and is currently 74 years old.

She is an American writer who is the most known for her novels in the genre of romance.

Do you know she’s the bestselling alive author, who is the bestselling fiction author of all times?

She comes forth in this category.

She has sold more than 800 million copies. She has written 179 books, from which over 149 are novels.

She won the Golden Globe Award.

Furthermore, she holds the Guinness World Records for being the New York Times Bestseller for consecutive weeks.

This woman is for sure doing something right!

4. Dr. Seuss

Who does not know Dr. Seuss? If you have read the book The Cat in the Hat, then you for sure know him.

Dr. Seuss’s real name was Theodor Seuss Geisel and was born on 2nd March 1904 Massachusetts, U.S.

He was an American author of children’s books, political cartoonist, illustrator, poet, animator, and filmmaker.

Dr.Suess is well known and popular for writing children’s books which were fun and filled the kids with curiosity.

In total, he wrote 56 children’s books in his writing career.

The first book he publishes was And to Think That I Saw It On Mulberry Street.

However, the best sellers started from his book Horton Hatches the Egg.

He received and gained popularity of his household name after the book The Cat in The Hat.

Dr.Seuss died in 1991 in California.

5. Harold Robbins

Harold Robbin was born on 21st May 1916 in New York.

Harold Robbin became the world’s bestselling author. Where he published more than 20 books.

These books got translated into 32 languages and more than 750 million copies got sold.

Harold had controversy in his writing as it was more towards sexuality, money, and power.

One of his well-known books is The Carpetbaggers, which was based on Howard Hughes’s life.

Harold’s first book Never Love a Stranger caused a lot of controversy because of the sexual graphics it had.

Harold Robbins died on 14th October 1997 in California.

6. Stephen King

If you have seen IT, Carrie, or The Shining, then you will probably have heard of Stephen King.

Stephen King was born on 21st September 1947.

Stephen is the author of horror, science-fiction, suspense, supernatural, crime, and fantasy novels.

More than 350 million book copies have gotten sold, and many got made into films, TV shows, and comic books.

Stephen got recognized in the Guinness World Records for having the most motion pictures made from his books.

He has also won many other awards. Currently, he’s 73 years old.

Some of his well-known books are:

• Carrie
• IT
• The Green Mile
• The Shining
• Misery
• Pet Sematary
• The Stand
• The Dark Tower Series

7.    F.Scott Fitzgerald

1. Scott Fitzgerald is the author who dictated the writing world in the 1920s.

He was born in September 1896.

From a very young age, he was pulled into the writing world. He drafted articles for his school newspaper in his teen years.

The first book that F. Scott Fitzgerald wrote, which got him fame and popularity was This Side of Paradise.

Do you know he wrote his book when he was 23 years old?

In total, he wrote 178 stories, which were published in different publications.

His most famous, and brilliant novel is The Great Gatsby.

F.Scott Fitzgerald died in December 1940 in California.

8. Sidney Sheldon

Sydney Sheldon is an Oscar winner and loved by many teenage readers.

Sydney Sheldon was born in 1917.

He was an American writer, director, and producer.

Sydney has a very simple and humble starting and slowly rose to become an internationally celebrated writer and storyteller.

Sydney had a net worth of $3 billion.

His top five novels are:

1. The Stars Shine Down
2. Rage Angels
3. The Sands of Time
4. Windmills of the Gods
5. Master of the Game.

Sidney Sheldon dies in 2007.

9. Louis L’Amour

Louis L’Amour is a famous American writer known for his books based on westerns.

He was born in 1908 in North Dakota.

Louis was a novelist, short story writer and wrote the genres, which were western, science fiction, adventure, and non-fiction.

Louis L’Amour wrote 100 books and 400 short stories, which got read in 10 diverse languages.

He is renowned for traveling to the places that he would write about to ensure that the readers connect to what he wrote about.

His five best books are:

1. Son of a Wanted Man
2. Silver Canyon
3. The Lonesome Gods
4. The Sackett Brand
5. The Quick and the Dead

Louis L’Amour dies in 1988 in California.

10. William Faulkner

William Faulker, a novelist whose work is more focused on south history. His work was famous for being technical and having all the imaginations a person would have wanted.

William Cuthbert Faulkner was born on September 25, 1897.

William got a Nobel prize in 1949 for literature.

William Faulkner wrote many short stories, poetry, plays, essays, and screenplays.

His five best books are:

1. Sanctuary
2. Soldier’s Pay
3. A Rose for Emily
4. Light in August
5. As I Lay Dying

William died on 6th July 1962.

American writers, including some of the world’s most famous authors.

• Nathaniel Hawthorne 1804 – 1864
• Edgar Allan Poe 1809 –1849
• Herman Melville 1819 – 1891
• Walt Whitman 1819-1892
• Emily Dickinson 1830 – 1886
• Mark Twain 1835 – 1910
• Henry James 1843 – 1916
• T.S. Eliot 1888 – 1965
• F. Scott Fitzgerald 1896 – 1940
• William Faulkner 1897 –1962
• Tennessee Williams 1911-1983
• Arthur Miller 1915 – 2005
• Joseph Heller 1923 – 1999
• Ernest Hemingway 1899 – 1961
• Raymond Chandler 1888 – 1959
• Toni Morrison 1931 – 2019
• Vladimir Nabokov 1899 – 1977
• Flannery O’Connor 1925 – 1964
• John Steinbeck 1902 – 1968
• John Updike 1923 – 2009
• Kurt Vonnegut 1922 – 2007

100 Great American Authors who write about their best American experience.

1. To Kill a Mockingbird by Harper Lee
2. The Great Gatsby by F. Scott Fitzgerald
3. The Adventures of Huckleberry Finn by Mark Twain
4. The Catcher in the Rye by J.D. Salinger
5. The Grapes of Wrath by John Steinbeck
6. Of Mice and Men by John Steinbeck
7. Fahrenheit 451 by Ray Bradbury
8. The Scarlet Letter by Nathaniel Hawthorne
9. In Cold Blood by Truman Capote
10. Gone with the Wind by Margaret Mitchell
11. East of Eden by John Steinbeck
12. The Tell-Tale Heart and Other Writings by Edgar Allan Poe
13. The Old Man and the Sea by Ernest Hemingway
14. The Color Purple by Alice Walker
15. Little Women by Louisa May Alcott
16. Moby-Dick or, the Whale by Herman Melville
17. Slaughterhouse-Five by Kurt Vonnegut Jr.
18. Catch-22 by Joseph Heller
19. Death of a Salesman by Arthur Miller
20. The Poetry of Robert Frost by Robert Frost
21. The Complete Poems of Emily Dickinson by Emily Dickinson
22. The Stand by Stephen King
23. Leaves of Grass by Walt Whitman
24. The Wonderful Wizard of Oz (Oz, #1) by L. Frank Baum
25. The Crucible by Arthur Miller
26. One Flew Over the Cuckoo’s Nest by Ken Kesey
27. Charlotte’s Web by E.B. White
28. The Outsiders by S.E. Hinton
29. Beloved by Toni Morrison
30. A Farewell to Arms by Ernest Hemingway
31. The Adventures of Tom Sawyer by Mark Twain
32. I Know Why the Caged Bird Sings (Maya Angelou’s Autobiography, #1) by Maya Angelou
33. A Confederacy of Dunces by John Kennedy Toole
34. On the Road by Jack Kerouac
35. Absalom, Absalom! by William Faulkner
36. The Bell Jar by Sylvia Plath
37. Plays 1937-1955 by Tennessee Williams
38. The Sun Also Rises by Ernest Hemingway
39. Ethan Frome by Edith Wharton
40. Light in August by William Faulkner
41. The Call of the Wild, White Fang and Other Stories by Jack London
42. A Prayer for Owen Meany by John Irving
43. The Road by Cormac McCarthy
44. O Pioneers! (Great Plains Trilogy, #1) by Willa Cather
45. The Help by Kathryn Stockett
46. Atlas Shrugged by Ayn Rand
47. Columbine by Dave Cullen
48. Lonesome Dove (Lonesome Dove #1) by Larry McMurtry
49. The Things They Carried by Tim O’Brien
50. The Hunger Games (The Hunger Games, #1) by Suzanne Collins
51. The Big Sleep by Raymond Chandler
52. As I Lay Dying by William Faulkner
53. Rabbit, Run (Rabbit Angstrom, #1) by John Updike
54. Franny and Zooey by J.D. Salinger
55. The Portrait of a Lady by Henry James
56. The Last of the Mohicans (The Leatherstocking Tales #2) by James Fenimore Cooper
57. The Waste Land by T.S. Eliot
58. My Ántonia (Great Plains Trilogy, #3) by Willa Cather
59. The Glass Menagerie by Tennessee Williams
60. The Complete Short Stories of Ernest Hemingway by Ernest Hemingway
61. The Sound and the Fury by William Faulkner
62. Collected Works: Wise Blood / A Good Man is Hard to Find / The Violent Bear it Away /
63. Everything that Rises Must Converge / Essays and Letters by Flannery O’Connor
64. The Heart Is a Lonely Hunter by Carson McCullers
65. Winesburg, Ohio by Sherwood Anderson
66. Walden & Civil Disobedience by Henry David Thoreau
67. Breakfast at Tiffany’s and Three Stories by Truman Capote
68. All the King’s Men by Robert Penn Warren
69. Bartleby the Scrivener by Herman Melville
70. Long Day’s Journey into Night by Eugene O’Neill
71. The Good Earth (House of Earth, #1) by Pearl S. Buck
72. Midnight in the Garden of Good and Evil by John Berendt
73. The Age of Innocence by Edith Wharton
74. Cold Mountain by Charles Frazier
75. The Da Vinci Code (Robert Langdon, #2) by Dan Brown
76. Invisible Man by Ralph Ellison
77. Sister Carrie by Theodore Dreiser
78. Main Street / Babbitt by Sinclair Lewis
79. God Bless You, Mr. Rosewater by Kurt Vonnegut Jr.
80. The Fault in Our Stars by John Green
81. Gravity’s Rainbow by Thomas Pynchon
82. Travels with Charley: In Search of America by John Steinbeck
83. Lolita by Vladimir Nabokov
84. Cannery Row (Cannery Row #1) by John Steinbeck
85. The Lovely Bones by Alice Sebold
86. Infinite Jest by David Foster Wallace
87. Their Eyes Were Watching God by Zora Neale Hurston
88. Roots: The Saga of an American Family by Alex Haley
89. The Maltese Falcon by Dashiell Hammett
90. Giovanni’s Room by James Baldwin
91. American Psycho by Bret Easton Ellis
92. American Pastoral (The American Trilogy, #1) by Philip Roth
93. The Crying of Lot 49 by Thomas Pynchon
94. Fear and Loathing in Las Vegas by Hunter S. Thompson
95. Blood Meridian, or the Evening Redness in the West by Cormac McCarthy The Killer Angels (The Civil War Trilogy, #2) by Michael Shaara
96. The World According to Garp by John Irving
97. Herzog by Saul Bellow
98. Dandelion Wine (Green Town, #1) by Ray Bradbury
99. White Noise by Don DeLillo
100. Three Plays: Our Town, The Skin of Our Teeth, and The Matchmaker by Thornton Wilder

Final Thoughts

You need to read to work your imagination and see the world from another perspective. You should read to change something in this world and in yourself.

Let us Know which writer you like and why or which is your favorite book to read.