Sandro Botticelli, Italy, Venus and Mars, 1483
- Thomas a Kempis, Germany, 1418, The Imitation of Christ
- Niccolo Macchiavelli, Italy, 1513, The Prince
- Thomas More, England, 1516, Utopia
- Francois Rabelais, France, 1532, Gargantua and Pantagruel
- Michel Eyquem de Montaigne, France, 1580, Essays
- Christopher Marlow, England, 1587, Tamburlaine
- Wu Cheng-en, China, 1590, The Journey to the West
- Francis Bacon, England, 1597, Essays
- Miguel de Cervantes, Spain, 1605, Don Quixote
- William Shakespeare, England, 1601-1613, Richard III
- William Shakespeare, England, 1601-1613, Hamlet
- William Shakespeare, England, 1601-1613, The Tempest
- John Donne, England, 1633, Poems
- Rene Descartes, France, 1637, Discourse on Method
- Pedro deron de la Barca, Spain, 1636, Life is a Dream
- Thomas Hobbes, England, 1651, Leviathan
- John Milton, England, 1667, Paradise Lost
- Moliere, France, 1666, Tartuffe
- Moliere, France, 1666, Misanthrope
- Racine, France, 1667, Andromache
- John Bunyan, England, 1678, Pilgrim’s Progress
- Basho, Japan, 1702, The Narrow Road to the Deep North
- Blaise Pascal, France, 1623-1662, Pensees
- John Locke, England, 1690, Second Treatise on Government
- Samuel Pepys, England, 1669, Diary
- Daniel Defoe, England, 1660-1731, Robinson Crusoe
- Bishop Berkley, Ireland, 1710, Principles of Human Knowledge
- Alexander Pope, England, 1714, The Rape of the Lock
- Jonathan Swift, Ireland, 1735, Gulliver’s Travels
- Voltaire, France, 1759, Candide
- David Hume, Scotland, 1740, Concerning Human Understanding
- Henry Fielding, England, 1749, Tom Jones
- Ts’ao Hsueh-Chin, China, 1750, The Dream of the Red Chamber
