People quiz

Famous writers by birth year

This list ranks 70 entries by birth year. First on the list is Nostradamus (born 1503); last is Stephenie Meyer (born 1973). Right in the middle sits F. Scott Fitzgerald (born 1896).

Quick quiz

Sort these writers by birth year, born earliest at the top. Use the arrows, then press Check.

earliestlatest

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Full list

Birth years come from the Pantheon dataset (MIT Media Lab) and link to each person's Wikipedia page.

#	Name	Birth year
1	Nostradamus Writer	born 1503
2	Miguel de Cervantes Writer	born 1547
3	William Shakespeare Writer	born 1564
4	Molière Writer	born 1622
5	Voltaire Writer	born 1694
6	Donatien Alphonse François de Sade, Marquis de Sade Writer	born 1740
7	Johann Wolfgang von Goethe Writer	born 1749
8	William Blake Writer	born 1757
9	Jane Austen Writer	born 1775
10	Honoré de Balzac Writer	born 1799
11	Victor Hugo Writer	born 1802
12	Hans Christian Andersen Writer	born 1805
13	Edgar Allan Poe Writer	born 1809
14	Charles Dickens Writer	born 1812
15	Fyodor Dostoyevsky Writer	born 1821
16	Charles Baudelaire Writer	born 1821
17	Jules Verne Writer	born 1828
18	Leo Tolstoy Writer	born 1828
19	Lewis Carroll Writer	born 1832
20	Mark Twain Writer	born 1835
21	Émile Zola Writer	born 1840
22	Bram Stoker Writer	born 1847
23	Robert Louis Stevenson Writer	born 1850
24	Guy de Maupassant Writer	born 1850
25	Oscar Wilde Writer	born 1854
26	Arthur Rimbaud Writer	born 1854
27	Arthur Conan Doyle Writer	born 1859
28	Rudyard Kipling Writer	born 1865
29	H. G. Wells Writer	born 1866
30	Virginia Woolf Writer	born 1882
31	James Joyce Writer	born 1882
32	Franz Kafka Writer	born 1883
33	Agatha Christie Writer	born 1890
34	H. P. Lovecraft Writer	born 1890
35	J. R. R. Tolkien Writer	born 1892
36	F. Scott Fitzgerald Writer	born 1896
37	Bertolt Brecht Writer	born 1898
38	Federico García Lorca Writer	born 1898
39	C. S. Lewis Writer	born 1898
40	Ernest Hemingway Writer	born 1899
41	Jorge Luis Borges Writer	born 1899
42	Antoine de Saint-Exupéry Writer	born 1900
43	John Steinbeck Writer	born 1902
44	George Orwell Writer	born 1903
45	Pablo Neruda Writer	born 1904
46	Dr. Seuss Writer	born 1904
47	Jean-Paul Sartre Writer	born 1905
48	Ayn Rand Writer	born 1905
49	Albert Camus Writer	born 1913
50	Roald Dahl Writer	born 1916
51	Charles Bukowski Writer	born 1920
52	Isaac Asimov Writer	born 1920
53	Jack Kerouac Writer	born 1922
54	Gabriel García Márquez Writer	born 1927
55	Anne Frank Writer	born 1929
56	Leonard Cohen Writer	born 1934
57	Mario Vargas Llosa Writer	born 1936
58	Hunter S. Thompson Writer	born 1937
59	Stephen King Writer	born 1947
60	Paulo Coelho Writer	born 1947
61	Salman Rushdie Writer	born 1947
62	Tom Clancy Writer	born 1947
63	George R. R. Martin Writer	born 1948
64	Haruki Murakami Writer	born 1949
65	Douglas Adams Writer	born 1952
66	Stieg Larsson Writer	born 1954
67	Dan Brown Writer	born 1964
68	J. K. Rowling Writer	born 1965
69	Simon Pegg Writer	born 1970
70	Stephenie Meyer Writer	born 1973

Questions

What is the born earliest on this list?

Nostradamus, with born 1503.

What is the born most recently on this list?

Stephenie Meyer, with born 1973.

Where do these numbers come from?