Alfred Noyes (16 September 1880 – 25 June 1958) was a poet, short fiction author, and playwright most well known for the romantic ballad poem "The Highwayman." The only fiction that he ever published was called The Last Man (1940), in which weapons of mass destruction wipe out every living person except those few in steel chambers at the bottom of the sea.

Mary Shelley (30 August 1797 – 1 February 1851) was a novelist best known as the author of Frankenstein; or, The Modern Prometheus (1818), a foundational text of science fiction, the immeasurable impact of which has been felt through the centuries. Raised as a radical and anarchist, she wrote across an enormous number of genres on a wide variety of topics and is now recognized for her contributions to feminist thought and social reform, in addition to her literary pursuits.

Ella Wheeler Wilcox (November 5, 1850 – October 30, 1919) was a poet best known for the collection Poems of Passion and for "Solitude," which opens with the line, "Laugh, and the world laughs with you; weep, and you weep alone." She's also sometimes cited in lists of authors of bad poetry, but we think she'd agree that that's only by the haters.

William Butler Yeats (13 June 1865 – 28 January 1939) was a poet, playwright, fiction writer, and one of the most well regarded authors of the 20th century. A senator in the Irish Free State and winner of the Nobel Prize for Literature, he wrote "The Second Coming," "Easter 1916," and "Sailing to Byzantium," all of which are considered masterpieces in the English language.