Authors, Poets & Novelists Posters & Prints, “Pe...-”
for literature, language arts and social studies classrooms and home schoolers.

Norman Vincent Peale
b. 5-31-1898; Bowersville, OH
d. 12-24-1993; New York

Norman Vincent Peale was one of the most famous ministers in the United States and author of The Power of Positive Thinking.

Samuel Pepys, FRS
b. 2-23-1633; London
d. 5-26-1703; England

Samuel Pepys, most noted for the diary he kept between 1660-1669, is one of the most important primary history sources for the English Restoration period. The diary provides eyewitness reports of the Great Plague of London (1665), the Great Fire of London (1666), and several floods of the River Thames.

• The Diary of Samuel Pepys

Saint-John Perse (Alexis Léger)
b. 5-31-1887; Guadeloupe
d. 9-20-1975

Poet and French diplomat Alexis Leger, who used the pseudonym Saint-John Perse, was the 1960 Nobel Prize for Literature recipient for “for the soaring flight and evocative imagery of his poetry.”

• Anabasis: A Poem

Charles Perrault
b. 1-6-1628; Paris, France
d. 5-16-1703; Paris

Charles Perrault was a French author who laid foundations for a new literary genre, the fairy tale. He was the younger brother of French architect Claude Perrault.

Francesco Petrarca
“Petrarch”
b. 7-20-1304; Arezzo, Tuscany, Italy
d. 7-19-1374

Petrarch, called the “father of humanism”, was a priest for a few years, and one of the earliest Renaissance scholars and poets. In 1341 he became the first poet laureate since antiquity, hence Petrarch is often portrayed crowned with a laural wreath.

Petrarch is also considered one of the earliest tourists in that he traveled for pleasure. In 1336 he had a “peak experience” in his climb of Mont Ventoux in southern France; he said “[W]e look about us for what is to be found only within. .... How many times, think you, did I turn back that day, to glance at the summit of the mountain which seemed scarcely a cubit high compared with the range of human contemplation ... ”. Jungian analyst James Hillman called Petrarch's rediscovery of the inner world the beginning of the Renaissance.

Petrarch's muse was Laura whom he adored from afar, and inspired his most famous works.

Petrarch, also considered an historian, is credited with coining the phrase “Dark Ages” to describe the dismal quality of the era preceding his own. He was also in correspondense with Giovanni Boccaccio.

• The Portable Petrarch