The 100 Most Influential Authors of the 20th Century
Some lists rank. This one doesn't. These one hundred writers were chosen because their work travelled, because readers found them and kept finding them, across borders, languages, and generations. Nobel laureates sit alongside genre pioneers, voices of political exile alongside architects of popular fiction. What they share is reach, and the kind of staying power that makes their books worth owning in any form.
The list is deliberately broad. It draws from every continent and dozens of literary traditions, and it resists the idea that influence belongs only to the canonised or the critically approved. A book that has been pressed into a stranger's hands a million times has earned its place here.
Where we have individual pages for an author, you'll find a link to their full profile and any signed first editions currently available. For the rest, click the name to explore signed copies directly.
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Chinua Achebe
- Sherman Alexie
- Isabel Allende
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Maya Angelou
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Isaac Asimov
- Paul Auster
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Margaret Atwood
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James Baldwin
- Toni Cade Bambara
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Julian Barnes
- Simone de Beauvoir
- Samuel Beckett
- Saul Bellow
- Heinrich Böll
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Octavia E. Butler
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Italo Calvino
- Angela Carter
- Raymond Carver
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Arthur C. Clarke
- Paulo Coelho
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Don DeLillo
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Philip K. Dick
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Joan Didion
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Umberto Eco
- Ralph Ellison
- T. S. Eliot
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Louise Erdrich
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Sebastian Faulks
- William Faulkner
- F. Scott Fitzgerald
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Ken Follett
- Michel Foucault
- Khalil Gibran
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Gabriel García Márquez
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Graham Greene
- Günter Grass
- Ernest Hemingway
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Frank Herbert
- Zora Neale Hurston
- Aldous Huxley
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Kazuo Ishiguro
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Shirley Jackson
- James Joyce
- Franz Kafka
- Jack Kerouac
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Barbara Kingsolver
- Milan Kundera
- Hanif Kureishi
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Jhumpa Lahiri
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Ursula K. Le Guin
- Doris Lessing
- C. S. Lewis
- Clarice Lispector
- Jack London
- Naguib Mahfouz
- Katherine Mansfield
- Thomas Mann
- Carson McCullers
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Ian McEwan
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Cormac McCarthy
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Toni Morrison
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Haruki Murakami
- Vladimir Nabokov
- V. S. Naipaul
- Flannery O'Connor
- Michael Ondaatje
- George Orwell
- Amos Oz
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Ann Patchett
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Orhan Pamuk
- Sylvia Plath
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Terry Pratchett
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Annie Proulx
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Thomas Pynchon
- Philip Roth
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J. K. Rowling
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Arundhati Roy
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Salman Rushdie
- J. D. Salinger
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José Saramago
- Jean-Paul Sartre
- Marjane Satrapi
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Zadie Smith
- Muriel Spark
- Wole Soyinka
- John Steinbeck
- Ngũgĩ wa Thiong'o
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Colm Tóibín
- J. R. R. Tolkien
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John Updike
- Mario Vargas Llosa
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Alice Walker
- Patrick White
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Jeanette Winterson
- Richard Wright
- Virginia Woolf
- Richard Yates
- Carlos Ruiz Zafón
- Stefan Zweig
Signed works by John Steinbeck on eBay
John Steinbeck The Long Valley Signed Viking Press New York 1938 Hardcover
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SIGNED, JOHN STEINBECK, IN DUBIOUS BATTLE, 1963, VIKING PRESS, DEPRESSION NOVEL
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George R Stewart EAST OF THE GIANTS Signed to John Steinbeck 1st Edition 1938
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John Steinbeck, Fletcher Martin / Of Mice and Men Signed Limited Editions Club
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John Steinbeck / East of Eden Signed by Steinbeck Limited 1st Edition 1952
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John Steinbeck / The Red Pony Signed Limited Edition 1st Edition 1937
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East of Eden ~ JOHN STEINBECK ~ Signed Limited First Edition 1952 ~ 1st.
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EAST OF EDEN by John Steinbeck Viking Press Signed True 1st Edition 1952
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Of Mice and Men ~ JOHN STEINBECK ~ SIGNED Family Presentation Copy First Edition
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Suntup: Of Mice and Men by John Steinbeck ***Numbered, Signed, New***
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Robert DeMott Steinbeck's Typewriter HC Signed Inscribed Whitston 1996
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SIGNED The Log from the Sea of Cortez John Steinbeck English PB Compass Books
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