Top 5: Classic American

Authors
5: Walt Whitman (1819-1892)
• Upon studying his biography, it doesn't seem like Walter Whitman was
destined to become one of the most celebrated American poets in history.
After minimal schooling, he studied the printing trade, became a
schoolteacher, and finally founded a weekly newspaper in his Long Island
domicile — all before the age of 20. He later worked as a journalist for a
number of different newspapers throughout the country.

• Famous work: "I Sing the Body Electric," from Leaves of Grass
• Famous excerpt:"The armies of those I love engirth me, and I
engirth them. They will not let me off till I go with them,
respond to them."
Walt Whitman
4: William Faulkner (1897-1962)
• William Faulkner was fortunate enough to have parents who encouraged their children to read.
Still, young William dropped out of high school during his sophomore year to write poetry. When
his high school sweetheart married another man, he fled Mississippi and joined the British Royal
Flying Corps in Canada, although he never got to fight in World War I. Back from the military, a
friend funded the publication of his book of poems and he published a novel two years later.
• Going even further, his next novel, As I Lay Dying, contained 59 interior monologues. Since his
books — Light in August and Absalom, Absalom among them — were difficult for the masses to
digest, despite their universal Southern Gothic themes, he wrote movies for Hollywood, most
notably the Humphrey Bogart vehicle The Big Sleep. Nonetheless, he did win the Nobel Prize in
Literature in 1949.
• Famous work: The Sound and the Fury
• Famous excerpt: "The field only reveals to man his own folly and despair, and victory is an illusion
of philosophers and fools."
William Faulkner
(1897-1962)
3: Mark Twain (1835-1910)
Samuel Langhorne Clemens is the name on Twain's birth certificate, while his date of
birth reads November 30th. While growing up in Florida, Missouri, he was offered a
writing job at a young age; but after being disappointed by the work, decided to
become a steamboat captain instead. Following a miserable bout in the Confederate
Army, he took up humorous writing once more, this time using the pseudonym "Mark
Twain," a nautical term.
Mark Twain
• He traveled the world for different
newspapers, sending in amusing
reports of his adventures. He then
turned to writing short stories and
finally novels in which he explored
human nature, always in an
entertaining manner like he did with
The Prince and the Pauper, A
Connecticut Yankee in King Arthur's
Court and The Adventures of Tom
Sawyer. Twain gained recognition with
The Adventures of Huckleberry Finn
by painting the pre-Civil War South as
a place where there was indeed
racism, contradicting widespread
reports of the time. Twain's work
easily translates onto the big screen;
his novels were adapted in one form
3: Mark Twain (1835-1910)
• Famous work: The Adventures of Huckleberry Finn
• Famous excerpt: "It was a dreadful thing to see. Human
beings can be awful cruel to one another."
2: Edgar Allan Poe (1809-1849)
This Boston native grew up in Richmond,
Virginia, with his wealthy foster parents,
the Allans. Penniless, Poe published
some poems after having joined the
Army. A sergeant major, and the author
of classics such as The Murders in the
Rue Morgue and The Man That Was
Used Up, Poe was accepted to West
Point; but decided to leave the military
for Baltimore, where he started
contributing to magazines.
2: Edgar Allan Poe (1809-1849)
• At 27, he married his 13-year-old cousin
and took up drinking, as his writing
wasn't taking him where he wanted to
go. Constantly on the brink of panic, his
health deteriorated but he still
managed to write first-rate poems
depicting the darkest side of the human
experience. His popularity, which he
mostly achieved after his death, stems
from his pessimistic outlook on life and
his ability to turn it into art. He is the
only poet to have an NFL team named
after one of his works.
2: Edgar Allan Poe (1809-1849)
• Famous work: "The Raven"
• Famous excerpt: "Once upon a midnight dreary, while I pondered, weak and
weary/Over many a quaint and curious volume of forgotten lore/While I nodded,
nearly napping, suddenly there came a tapping/As of some one gently rapping,
rapping at my chamber door."
1: Ernest Hemingway (1899-1961)
• Born in Oak Park, Illinois, Ernest
Hemingway dreamed of adventure
ever since a very young age. After high
school, he tried to enlist in the Army
to fight in World War I but had to
settle for being an ambulance driver
on account of a defective eye. He later
kept busy with war correspondence in
the Spanish Civil War and World War
II, bullfighting in Spain, and deep-sea
fishing off Cuba. In between those
thrill-seeking activities, Hemingway
wrote the novels that would make him
a legend.
1: Ernest Hemingway (1899-1961)
• Living with other American expatriates
in Paris, he wrote about his carefree
adventures, giving the world novels like
The Sun Also Rises, A Farewell to Arms
and For Whom the Bell Tolls. A
philandering alcoholic, his prose was
undeviating and blunt, a style no one
had yet dared to try. To date, there
have been over 30 screen adaptations
of his work, and Hemingway has been
portrayed in a number of movies. A
Nobel Prize laureate, he's the
quintessential figurehead of machismo.
1: Ernest Hemingway (1899-1961)
• Famous work: The Old Man and the Sea
• Famous excerpt: "There are many good fishermen and some great
ones. But there is only one you."
The end