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The Book List's Top Authors
Based on The 1,276 Best Books of All-Time

The Book List includes 1,276 books by 879 authors. Below is a brief analysis of the best of those authors, ranked by both breadth and depth of their respective canons...

Most Aggregate Points
Most Total Books
Best Quality per Book
One-Hit Wonders

Top Authors by Aggregate Points

Rank	Picture	Author	Aggregate Points
1		J.R.R. Tolkien	1043
2		William Shakespeare	743
3		George Orwell	619
4		Harper Lee	611
5		Gabriel Garcia Marquez	552
6		John Steinbeck	478
7		Kurt Vonnegut	469
8		Charles Dickens	436
9		F. Scott Fitzgerald	415
10		J.D. Salinger	404

Top Authors by Total Number of Books

Rank	Picture	Author	Total Books
1		William Shakespeare	14
2		C.S. Lewis	13
3		Kurt Vonnegut	12
4		Stephen King	12
5		Stephen R. Donaldson	9
6		Ray Bradbury	7
7		Isaac Asimov	7
8		Tom Robbins	7
9		Nine Authors Tied	6

Tie broken by number of aggregate points on List



Top Authors by Highest Quality per Book
(Requires at least two books on List)

Rank	Picture	Author	Points per Book
1		George Orwell	309.50
2		J.R.R. Tolkien	208.60
3		J.D. Salinger	134.67
4		Vladimir Nabokov	125.67
5		Gabriel Garcia Marquez	110.40
6		F. Scott Fitzgerald	103.75
7		Homer	102.00
8		Leo Tolstoy	101.00
9		Ken Kesey	91.00
10		James Joyce	89.25

Top "One-Hit Wonder" Authors
(Most points per book - requires exactly one book on List)

Rank	Picture	Author	Points per Book	Book
1		Harper Lee	611	To Kill a Mockingbird
2		Joseph Heller	295	Catch-22
3		Herman Melville	230	Moby-Dick
4		Charlotte Bronte	219	Jane Eyre
5		Elie Wiesel	218	Night
6		Emily Bronte	196	Wuthering Heights
7		Richard Adams	174	Watership Down
8		Miguel de Cervantes	165	Don Quixote
9		Nathaniel Hawthorne	149	The Scarlet Letter
10		William Golding	144	Lord of the Flies

Author images courtesy of Wikipedia.