Discover the Authors Used on Our Exams
Standardized testing isn’t just about results. At Classic Learning Test, we believe standardized testing provides an invaluable opportunity to engage students with the texts and authors that have shaped history and culture.
Two-thirds of reading and writing passages for the CLT and CLT10 are drawn from the list of authors below. Want to learn more about these authors? Click on the linked names to read short essays about an author’s life and work, or check out our Journey Through the Author Bank seminar series, led by professors from our Partner Colleges.
Authors (By Time Period)
Ancients
The Epic of Gilgamesh, 18th c. BC?
Homer, 9th c. BC?
Hesiod, 8th c. BC?
Æsop, 621-565 BC
Confucius, 551-479 BC
Æschylus, 525-455 BC
Sophocles, 496-406 BC
Herodotus, 484-425 BC
Euripides, 480-406 BC
Thucydides, 460-400 BC
Hippocrates, 460-370 BC
Plato, 428-347 BC
Aristotle, 382-322 BC
Euclid, 4th-3rd c. BC
Archimedes, 287-212 BC
Terence, 195-159 BC
Cicero, 106-43 BC
Julius Cæsar, 100-44 BC
Lucretius, 99-55 BC
Virgil, 70-19 BC
Livy, 59 BC–AD 17
Ovid, 43 BC–AD 17
Seneca the Younger, 4 BC–AD 55
Josephus, 37-100
Plutarch, 46-120
Epictetus, 55-135
Tacitus, 56-120
Tertullian, 160-220
Origen, 184-253
St. Athanasius, 297-373
St. Gregory of Nyssa, 335-395
St. Jerome, 342-420
St. Augustine of Hippo, 354-430
Medievals
Boethius, 477-524
St. Benedict, 480-547
Procopius, 500-570
St. Gregory the Great, 540-604
St. Bede the Venerable, 673-735
Beowulf, 9th c.?
The Thousand and One Nights, 9th c.
Avicenna, 980-1037
St. Anselm of Canterbury, 1034-1109
Peter Abælard, 1079-1142
St. Bernard of Clairvaux, 1090-1153
Hugh of St. Victor, 1096-1141
St. Hildegard of Bingen, 1098-1179
Héloïse d’Argenteuil, 1100-1164
Averroës, 1126-1198
Moses Maimonides, 1138-1204
Marie de France, 1160-1215
The Nibelungenlied, c. 1200
Magna Carta, 1215
St. Thomas Aquinas, 1225-1274
The Saga of Erik the Red, 13th c.
Dante Alighieri, 1265-1321
Giovanni Boccaccio, 1313-1375
John Wycliffe, 1328-1384
Geoffrey Chaucer, 1343-1400
Julian of Norwich, 1343-1420
St. Catherine of Siena, 1347-1380
Christine de Pizan, 1364-1430
St. Thomas à Kempis, 1380-1471
Sir Thomas Malory, 1415-1471
Early Moderns
Desiderius Erasmus, 1466-1536
Niccolò Machiavelli, 1469-1527
Nicolaus Copernicus, 1473-1543
St. Thomas More, 1478-1535
Martin Luther, 1483-1546
Bartolomé de Las Casas, 1484-1566
John Calvin, 1509-1564
St. Teresa of Ávila, 1515-1582
Michel de Montaigne, 1533-1592
Francis Bacon, 1561-1626
William Shakespeare, 1564-1616
Galileo Galilei, 1564-1642
John Donne, 1572-1631
Thomas Hobbes, 1588-1679
René Descartes, 1598-1650
John Milton, 1608-1674
Blaise Pascal, 1623-1662
Margaret Cavendish, 1623-1673
Robert Boyle, 1627-1691
John Bunyan, 1628-1688
John Locke, 1632-1704
Isaac Newton, 1642-1727
Gottfried Leibniz, 1646-1716
Charles Montesquieu, 1689-1755
Voltaire, 1694-1778
Jonathan Edwards, 1703-1758
Benjamin Franklin, 1706-1790
David Hume, 1711-1776
Jean-Jacques Rousseau, 1712-1778
Adam Smith, 1723-1790
Immanuel Kant, 1724-1804
Edward Gibbon, 1737-1794
Antoine Lavoisier, 1743-1794
Thomas Jefferson, 1743-1826
Olaudah Equiano, 1745-1797
Johann Wolfgang von Goethe, 1749-1832
James Madison, 1751-1836
Mary Wollstonecraft, 1759-1797
Georg W. F. Hegel, 1770-1831
Late Moderns
Jane Austen, 1775-1817
Jakob & Wilhelm Grimm, 1785-1863 & 1786-1859
Mary Shelley, 1797-1851
Sojourner Truth, 1797-1883
St. John Henry Newman, 1801-1890
Alexis de Tocqueville, 1805-1859
Hans Christian Andersen, 1805-1875
John Stuart Mill, 1806-1873
Edgar Allan Poe, 1809-1849
Charles Darwin, 1809-1882
Charles Dickens, 1812-1870
Søren Kierkegaard, 1813-1855
Charlotte Brontë, 1816-1855
Henry David Thoreau, 1817-1862
Karl Marx, 1818-1883
Frederick Douglass, 1818-1895
George Eliot, 1819-1880
Herman Melville, 1819-1891
Susan B. Anthony, 1820-1906
Fyodor Dostoevsky, 1821-1881
Gregor Mendel, 1822-1884
Louis Pasteur, 1822-1895
Leo Tolstoy, 1828-1910
Mark Twain, 1835-1910
Friedrich Nietzsche, 1844-1900
Oscar Wilde, 1854-1900
Sigmund Freud, 1856-1939
Anna Julia Cooper, 1858-1964
Anton Chekhov, 1860-1904
Late Moderns, Cont.
Alfred North Whitehead, 1861-1947
Ida B. Wells, 1862-1931
W. E. B. Du Bois, 1868-1963
Mahatma Gandhi, 1869-1948
Willa Cather, 1873-1947
G. K. Chesterton, 1874-1936
Albert Einstein, 1879-1936
Virginia Woolf, 1882-1941
John Maynard Keynes, 1882-1946
Franz Kafka, 1883-1924
Ludwig Wittgenstein, 1889-1951
Zora Neale Hurston, 1891-1960
J. R. R. Tolkien, 1892-1973
Dorothy Sayers, 1893-1957
F. Scott Fitzgerald, 1896-1940
C. S. Lewis, 1898-1963
Ernest Hemingway, 1899-1961
Jorge Luis Borges, 1899-1986
Friedrich Hayek, 1899-1992
Langston Hughes, 1901-1967
John Steinbeck, 1902-1968
George Orwell, 1903-1950
Hannah Arendt, 1906-1975
Albert Camus, 1913-1960
Aleksandr Solzhenitsyn, 1918-2008
James Baldwin, 1924-1987
Flannery O’Connor, 1925-1964
Elie Wiesel, 1928-2016
Martin Luther King Jr., 1929-1968
Toni Morrison, 1931-2019
“Tyrannical power should not be the aim either of individuals or states, if they would be happy, but virtue.”
Plato
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