Authors, Poets & Novelists Posters & Prints: “Ce-Ch”
for literature & language arts classrooms, homeschoolers, and scholars.

Miguel de Cervantes y Saavedra
b. 9-29-1547; Spain
d. 4-23-1616; Madrid

Spanish novelist, poet and playwright Miguel de Cervantes wrote Don Quijote, a classic of Western literature and one of the best novels ever written. The musical The Man of La Mancha is based on Don Quijote.

• Don Quixote by Picasso poster

Alain Chartier
b. c. 1392 France
d. c. 1430

Alain Chartier, poet and political writer, 1422 Quadrilogue-invectif is allegorical prose using a fictional dialogue between the Three Estates (“Le Peuple,” “Le Chevalier,” and “Le Clerge”) and the personfication of France as a woman, to expose the suffering and oppression of the lower classes.

John Keats wrote his ballad 'La Belle Dame Sans Merci' (“The Beautiful Lady without Pity”) using the title of Alain Chartier's 15th century work.

• Medieval Literature posters

Francois-Rene Vicomte de Chateaubriand
b. 9-4-1768; Saint-Malo, France
d. 7-4-1848; Paris

Chateaubriand, writer, politician and diplomat, is considered the founder of Romanticism in French literature, and influencing writers such as Hugo, Lord Byron, and Andre Malraux.

His visit to North America during the French Revolution resulted in descriptions of nature that were innovative for the time; he was also accomplished at describing emotions.

Late in his life he became a recluse only visiting his friend Jeanne Françoise Julie Adélaïde Récamier.

Chateaubriand quotes ~
• “The original writer is not he who refrains from imitating others, but he who can be imitated by none.”
• “You are not superior just because you see the world in an odious light.”
• “One does not learn how to die by killing others.”

Geoffrey Chaucer
b. c.1343; London
d. 10-25-1400

Geoffrey was a Medieval author, poet, philosopher, bureaucrat, courtier and diplomat best remembered for his unfinished narrative The Canterbury Tales.

Chaucer is sometimes called the father of English literature as the first author to use the vernacular English for an artistic work. Chaucer is also the first to associate the day commemorating two early martyrs of the Christian faith - Valentine - with courtly, romantic love.

Geoffrey Chaucer quotes ~
• “We little know the things for which we pray.”
• “The greatest scholars are not usually the wisest people.”
• “Love is blind.”

• Geoffrey Chaucer in Great British Authors series

Sydney Aaron “Paddy” Chayefsky
b. 1-29-1923; Bronx, NY
d. 8-1-1981

Paddy Chayefsky, writer of novels and scripts, was awarded the 1955 Oscar for the screenplay of his play “Marty” and for the film Network (1976).

Chayefsky quotes ~
• “I'm a man without a corporation.”
• “Television is democracy at its ugliest.”
• “You don't send a man to his death because you want a hero.”

• Mad As Hell: The Life and Work of Paddy Chayefsky

Anton Chekhov
b. 1-29-1850; Russia
d. 7-2-1904

Russian playwright and short story writer Anton Chekhov, best remembered for his plays The Seagull, Uncle Vanya, Three Sisters, and The Cherry Orchard, was also a medical doctor.

• The Portable Chekhov, Anton Chekhov

Chekhov quotes ~
• “Medicine is my lawful wife, and literature is my mistress.”
• “There is nothing new in art except talent.”
• “We learn about life not from plusses alone, but from minuses as well.”
• “The thirst for powerful sensations takes the upper hand both over fear and over compassion for the grief of others.”

Gilbert Keith Chesterton
b. 5-29-1874; London
d. 6-14-1936

The Innocence of Father Brown is G.K. Chesterton's first mystery about the unassuming little priest who solves crimes by imagining himself inside the mind and soul of criminals.

G. K. Chesterton quotes ~
• “Misers get up early in the morning; and burglars, I am informed, get up the night before.”
• “Comforts that were rare among our forefathers are now multiplied in factories and handed out wholesale; and indeed, nobody nowadays, so long as he is content to go without air, space, quiet, decency and good manners, need be without anything whatever that he wants; or at least a reasonably cheap imitation of it.”
• “None of the modern machines, none of the modern paraphernalia. . . have any power except over the people who choose to use them.”

Charles W. Chesnutt Stories, Novels and Essays (no commerically avaiable poster)

Charles W. Chestnutt
b. 6-20-1858; Cleveland, OH
d. 11-15-1932 (heart attack)

Novelist and short-story writer Charles W. Chesnutt broke new ground in American literature with his pioneering use of Arican-American folklore and candid exploration of racial identity.

Chestnutt was the son of free people of color (his paternal grandfather was a white slaveholder) and he could have “passed for white” by appearance but chose not to.

The NAACP awarded the Spingarn Medal to Chestnutt in 1928.

Kate Chopin
b. 2-8-1851; St. Louis, MO
d. 8-22-1904; St. Louis, MO

“But the beginning of things, of a world especially, is necessarily vague, tangled, chaotic, and exceedingly disturbing. How few of us ever emerge from such beginning! How many souls perish in its tumult!”
The Awakening

• more Women Writers posters
• 19th Cent Authors posters

Agatha Christie
b. 9-15-1890; England
d. 1-12-1976

Agatha Christie, the author of novels, short stories and plays, was the creator of detectives Hercule Poirot and Miss Jane Marple, is also noted as the best-selling writer of any kind, along with William Shakespeare. Only the Bible is known to have outsold her collected sales of roughly four billion copies of novels and UNESCO states that she is currently the most translated individual author in the world.

Agatha Christie quotes ~
• “An archaeologist is the best husband a woman can have. The older she gets the more interested he is in her.”
• “Crime is terribly revealing. Try and vary your methods as you will, your tastes, your habits, your attitude of mind, and your soul is revealed by your actions.”
• “I have sometimes been wildly, despairingly, acutely miserable, racked with sorrow, but through it all I still know quite certainly that just to be alive is a grand thing.”

• Agatha Christie Books