Browse the index
Filter by category and discipline, then by continent, country and century of birth. Countries not yet represented can be drafted at the research desk.
Category
Era
Countries (85)
All countriesAfghanistan2Algeria2Argentina4Australia5Austria10Bangladesh1Barbados2Belarus1Belgium2Botswana1Brazil6Bulgaria1Canada6Chile2China18Colombia2Costa Rica1Croatia1Cuba2Cyprus1Czech Republic3Denmark2DR Congo1Egypt6Ethiopia1Fiji1France16Germany21Ghana3Greece3Guatemala2Guinea-Bissau1Hungary5Iceland1India26Indonesia1Iran5Iraq1Ireland4Israel3Italy15Ivory Coast1Japan11Kenya3Liberia2Mali1Mexico3Morocco2Mozambique1Myanmar1Netherlands4New Zealand5Nigeria4Norway3Pakistan3Peru1Philippines1Poland5Portugal2Romania1Russia7Saint Lucia1Samoa1Senegal3Serbia1Singapore1Somalia1South Africa3South Korea3Spain5Sweden4Switzerland1Tanzania1Trinidad and Tobago1Tunisia1Türkiye3Ukraine1United Kingdom34United States76 (selected filter)Uruguay1Uzbekistan4Venezuela1Vietnam1Yemen1Zimbabwe1
9 figures
Frederick Douglass
1818 – 1895His Narrative was abolition's most powerful weapon.
United States·Literature · Philosophy
Walt Whitman
1819 – 1892Leaves of Grass invented American poetic voice.
United States·Literature
Emily Dickinson
1830 – 18861,800 poems found in a drawer redefined lyric compression.
United States·Literature
Prentice Mulford
1834 – 1891Essayist who popularised 'thoughts are things' and the idea of mental forces.
United States·New Thought · Literature
William Walker Atkinson
1862 – 1932Prolific author who named the law of attraction and wrote as Yogi Ramacharaka.
United States·New Thought · Literature
W. E. B. Du Bois
1868 – 1963The Souls of Black Folk and the concept of double consciousness.
United States·Philosophy · History · Literature
Florence Scovel Shinn
1871 – 1940Illustrator turned teacher whose parables made affirmation practice everyday.
United States·New Thought · Literature
William Faulkner
1897 – 1962Built Yoknapatawpha County and the Southern conscience.
United States·LiteratureNobel
Ernest Hemingway
1899 – 1961Stripped English prose to the bone.
United States·LiteratureNobel