On the others:
-T.S. Eliot was the greatest poet of the 20th Century, he was what Jean-Paul Sartre was to philosophy and Beckett, Stoppard, Ianesco, and their ilk were to the theatre world...if you've ever heard "April is the cruelest month," that's the opening line to his masterpiece, "The Waste Land," which you can read online or get a copy of cheap and I recommend it as highly as a Shakespeare text itself, it is THAT brilliant (and actually mixes classical myth, Biblical and operatic imagery, allusions to Dante and Shakespeare, and scenes from modern life to show the fragmentation and pollution of society, how it's become...a wasteland.) Also of note is his "Prufrock" poems, which are love poems that aren't love poems, but almost an attack on the conventional ideas of love, and many other works, including, as I said, his Shakespearean criticism and evaluations of the Bard's works.
-William Faulkner is, alongside Mark Twain, Edgar Allen Poe, and Tennessee Williams, one of the greatest of the already-great "Southern Writers" group of American writers...his sentences are long and unwieldy--even more so than Hawthorne, Conrad, or even Obi--and he's known for showing the decay and, in places, rebirth of Southern life in a post-Civil War world (so this being the 150th anniversary of the War, it's a good time to read his works) and tense style shifts, as well as the occaisional nod to Shakespeare (the title of one of, if not the, greatest works by Faulkner, "The Sound and the Fury," takes its title from Act V, Scene 5 of "Macbeth," where the titular character, having lost his wife, friends, repuation, and now about to lose everything else, gives his famous, nihilist, wat's-the-point-of-it-all speech "Tomorrow and tomorrow and tomorrow..." which famously concludes that life is "A tale told by an idiot, Full of sound and fury, Signifying nothing.")
-Johann Wolfgang von Goethe was one of the greatest German authors of all time--he might even be counted as the German Shakespeare--with his most famous work being his telling of the Faust Story, where Dr. Faustus sells his soul to the Devil...and, yes, all Hell breaks loose (literally and figuratively in Faustus's case.)
-Henrik Ibsen was and is probably the greatest Norwegian author and playwright of all time, with his plays concerning themselves with both the ills of modern--ie, Victorian--society as well as feminism; Nora and Hedda Gabler, two of his characters, heroinnes of "A Doll's House" (which should give you and idea about how Nora feels about her sad role in life as a mere housekeeper) and "Hedda Gabler," respectively, are recognized as two of the strongest feminist characters of all time and have, understandably, attracted a TON of strong and brilliant actresses over the years to play those roles, as Ibsen is, after Shakespeare, probably tied with one or two other palywrights for the "Most Often Performed" honors, even more than a century later.
-James Joyce was...James Joyce, I don't have much more to say on him...
-Franz Kafka was a German-Jewish author at the turn of the 20th Century who was one of if not the greatest short story writer of that century as well as being one of the greatest Existentialist and Absurdist authors, not to mention one of the earliest. He has a good amount of solid stories and then a few great ones and then his materpiece, "The Metamorphosis," which is to the short story world what Eliot's "The Waste Land" was to poetry--totally new when it came out, totally definitive of the genre, totaly definitive of the author, and totally influenced and descriptive of the modern world we live in, overflowing with themes of alienation, existentialist angst, confusion, fractured family lives, uncarirng corporate and outside forces tearing at family and intimate life...and all beginning with lines that are now infamous (and were arranged as such partly becuase of the sheer structure of the German language): "Gregor Samsa woke up one morning to find that he had transformed into a hideous bug." (The exact translation varies from version to version, but mostly it sticks to that general strucutre and content.)
-John Locke is the man who made Thomas Jefferson one of the most famous plagiarists in history and founded Aemrica 100 years before the Revolution even took place. ;) But that's not too far off; Locke was an Englis Empiricist philosopher in the mid-late 17th century, an ardent Christian, and the author of what basically WAS the founding document of the Revolution, "The Second Treatise of Government," which is where the infamous lines "all men are created equal" first appear, and where Jefferson got them from, as well as the idea that all men are entitled to life and liberty (though to be fair to Jefferson Locke writes "Life, Liberty, and the Protection of Property," so "Pursuit of Happiness" is a good substitution there for effect.) In addition to his political philosophy--which was and is still some of the msot important in world history--Locke argued for philosophic ideas such as empricism and the Tabula Rasa...and the fact the was friends with Isaac Newton makes that friendship quite possibly one of the most incredible and star-powered friendships of all time.
-John Milton, too, was a 17th-Century author, about 50 years after Shakespeare died, and is known for a good many great poems and then his magnum opus, "Paradise Lost," (which I just finished...and took forever to read, an oddity for me) which tells the Biblical story of both the War of Heaven between God and Satan as well as the story of Adam, Eve, and The Fall.
-Amanda Quick...I have no idea either, really, I just needed a "Q" name...
-Jean-Jacques Rousseau was an 18th-Century French philosopher who took some of the ideas Locke proposed a century later, gave them his own spin, put in his own political ideas on democracy, education, social reform, social contract theory, and freedom vs. control, and ran with it; where Locke's words were used as rallying cries and slogans for the American Revolution, Rousseau's words would do the same for the French Revolution.
-Urquhard...again, just needed a "U" name...moving on...
-Voltaire was the pen name of an Enlightenment-era Frenchman who did a little of everything, a little novel writing, a little satire, a little philosohy, I think a little playwrighting..."Candide" is by far his most famous and enduring work today, a satire on so much--including Christianity--he found laughable in his France.
-Xenephon was a Greek philosopher who defended Socrates' teachings and method after the latter was famously forced to drink poison and die for the terrible crime of daring to walk up to people in the street and ask them philosophical questions while questioning the Greeks' religion (thus, serving as an inspiration to those of us who get on the bus and do the same thing, ask questions to random, unknown people and hope to both get a good answer and not to get stabbed...) ;)
-William Butler Years was an Irish poet in the 20th Century, and see the rest of the 20th Century crowd for details and fill in Yeats' name. ;)
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