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

Elie Wiesel
b. 9-30-1928; Sighet, Transylvania

Elie Wiesel, writer, professor, and Holocaust survivor, was awarded the 1986 Nobel Peace Prize as “a messenger to mankind; his message is one of peace, atonement and human dignity.”

Elie Wiesel quotes ~
• “Because I remember, I despair. Because I remember, I have the duty to reject despair.”
• “I decided to devote my life to telling the story because I felt that having survived I owe something to the dead. And anyone who does not remember betrays them again.”
• “The opposite of love is not hate, it's indifference.”
• “There is divine beauty in learning, just as there is human beauty in tolerance. To learn means to accept the postulate that life did not begin at my birth. Others have been here before me, and I walk in their footsteps. The books I have read were composed by generations of fathers and sons, mothers and daughters, teachers and disciples. I am the sum total of their experiences, their quests. And so are you.”

• The Night Trilogy: Night, Dawn, The Accident by Elie Wiesel
• more Elie Wiesel posters

Oscar Wilde
b. 10-16-1854; Dublin, Ireland
d. 11-30-1900

Writer and poet Oscar Wilde was one the most noted playwrights of the early 1890s. He is most remembered today for his witticisms, flamboyant lifestyle, imprisonment, and early death.

Wilde's only novel, The Picture of Dorian Gray, was made into a movie (1945); his play Salome, a work that was banned, was used by Richard Strauss as inspiration for an opera (1905) of the same name; and his play, The Importance of Being Earnest (1895) was first made into a movie in 1952.

Oscar Wilde quotes ~
• “The books that the world calls immoral are the books that show the world its own shame.”
• “Education is an admirable thing, but it is well to remember from time to time that nothing that is worth knowing can be taught.”
• “The whole theory of modern education is radically unsound. Fortunately... education produces no effect whatsoever. If it did, it would prove a serious danger to the upper classes, and probably lead to acts of violence.”
• “I can resist everything except temptation.”
• “...my tyrian galley waits for thee, come down the purple sail is spread...”
• “Art is the most intense mode of individualism that the world has known.”
• “Life is too important to be taken seriously.”

• Ballet quote poster: “It is through art, and through art only, that we can realise our perfection.”
• Motivational quote poster- “Moderation is a fatal thing. Nothing succeeds like excess.” Oscar Wilde
• The Complete Works of Oscar Wilde: Stories, Plays, Poems, Essays
• The Importance of Being Earnest book cover poster

Laura Ingalls Wilder
b. 2-7-1867; Pepin, WI
d. 2-10-1957; Mansfield, MO

Laura Ingalls Wilder said the reason she wrote the books known as the “Little House” series was “to preserve the stories of her childhood for today's children, to help them to understand how much America had changed during her lifetime.”

The Ingalls family lived in Wisconsin when Laura was born (Little House in the Big Woods), lived in Minnesota (On the Banks of Plum Creek), homesteaded in Kansas (Little House on the Prairie) and South Dakota (By the Shores of Silver Lake and The Long Winter, These Happy Golden Years), and The First Four Years describe Laura and Almanzo Wilder's marriage (his upstate New York boyhood is described in Farmer Boy). The Wilder's finally settled in Missouri. Author and editor Rose Wilder Lane, Laura and Almanzo's daughter, was a collaborator for the books.

Laura Ingalls Wilder was also a descendent of the Pilgrim Mayflower Delano family, making her related to Ulysses S. Grant, Franklin Delano Roosevelt, Calvin Coolidge, Conrad Aiken, and Alan B. Shepard.

Laura Ingalls Wilder wrote about the Big Slough, a wetland in South Dakota.

• Northern Plains Poster Map
• Meterologist Look at Laura's Long Winter

Thornton Wilder
b. 4-17-1897; Madison, Wisconsin
d. 12-7-1975; CT

Playwright and novelist Thornton Wilder was awarded three Pulitzer Prizes: the novel The Bridge of San Luis Rey and plays Our Town and The Skin of Our Teeth.

Thornton Wilder quotes ~
• “I am convinced that, except in a few extraordinary cases, one form or another of an unhappy childhood is essential to the formation of exceptional gifts.”
• “It is only in appearance that time is a river. It is rather a vast landscape and it is the eye of the beholder that moves.”
• “Man is not an end but a beginning. We are at the beginning of the second week. We are children of the eighth day.”

• Our Town: A Play in Three Acts by Thornton Wilder
• Thornton Wilder Society

Nathaniel Parker Willis
b. 1-20-1806; Portland, ME
d. 1-20-1867

Nathaniel Parker Willis was an author, poet and editor who worked with several notable writers including Edgar Allan Poe and Henry Wadsworth Longfellow. Though nearly forgotten today Willis was the highest-paid magazine writer of his day.

His brother was the composer Richard Storrs Willis (“It Came Upon the Midnight Clear”) and his sister Sara wrote under the name Fanny Fern. For a time, he was the employer of former slave and future writer Harriet Jacobs.

Nathaniel Parker Willis quotes ~
• “In comparing men and books, one must always remember this important distinction, – that one can put the books down at anytime.”
• “It is the month of June,
The month of leaves and roses,
When pleasant sights salute the eyes,
And pleasant scents the noses.”

Tennessee Williams
b. 3-26-1911; Columbus, Mississippi
d. 2-25-1983

Tennessee Williams quotes ~
• “Enthusiasm is the most important thing in life.”
• “All of us are guinea pigs in the laboratory of God. Humanity is just a work in progress.”
• “Time is the longest distance between two places.”

• Streetcar Named Desire book cover poster
• A Streetcar Named Desire by Tennessee Williams
• Tennessee Williams Bio

William Carlos Williams
b. 9-17-1883; Rutherford, NJ
d. 3-4-1963

Pediatrician and general practitioner of medicine, William Carlos Williams, is better remembered as a poet.

William Carlos Williams quotes ~
• “When they ask me, as of late they frequently do, how I have for so many years continued an equal interest in medicine and the poem, I reply that they amount for me to nearly the same thing.”
• “It is almost impossible to state what one in fact believes, because it is almost impossible to hold a belief and to define it at the same time.”
• “Poets are damned but they are not blind, they see with the eyes of the angels.”
• “It is not what you say that matters but the manner in which you say it; there lies the secret of the ages.”
• “What power has love but forgiveness?”
• “It is the imagination
which cannot be fathomed,
It is through this hole
we escape...”

• more Latino Writers posters

August Wilson
b. 4-27-1945; Pittsburgh, PA
d. 10-2-2005; Seattle, WA (liver cancer)

Playwright August Wilson's legacy is a ten play series, The Pittsburgh Cycle, for which he received two Pulitzer Prizes for Drama. Each play is set in a different decade, depicting the aspects of the African-American experience in the twentieth century.

August Wilson quotes ~
• “Confront the dark parts of yourself, and work to banish them with illumination and forgiveness. Your willingness to wrestle with your demons will cause your angels to sing. Use the pain as fuel, as a reminder of your strength.”
• “All you need in the world is love and laughter. That's all anybody needs. To have love in one hand and laughter in the other.”
• “Regardless of the medium, rewriting and more rewriting is still necessary. No one gets anything right the first time, and since I don't write with a hammer and chisel, it's relatively easy for me to change. It's just words on paper. Words are free. You don't go to the store and order a pound of words, or five hundred words, and pay your three dollars. They're free.”
• “What comes forth from you as an artist cannot be controlled. But you have responsibilities as a global citizen. Your history dictates your duty. And by writing about black people, you are not limiting yourself. The experiences of African-Americans are as wide open as God's closet.”

Augusta Jane Evans Wilson
b. 5-8-1859; Columbus, Georgia
d. 5-9-1906; Mobile, AL

Augusta Jane Evans Wilson, one of nineteenth-century America's most popular novelists, was an outspoken supporters of the Confederacy.

Her nine novels include Beulah, Macaria, and St. Elmo, which had sales rivaling those of Uncle Tom's Cabin and Ben-Hur.

Edmund Wilson
b. 5-8-1895; Red Bank, NJ
d. 6-12-1972; Talcottville, NY

Edmund Wilson is best remembered as an editor and critic who influenced the literary scene in the 20th century.

Edmund Wilson quotes ~
• “No two persons ever read the same book.”
• “Real genius of moral insight is a motor which will start any engine.”
• “From the moment a New Yorker is confronted with almost any large city of Europe, it is impossible for him to pretend to himself that his own city is anything other than an unscrupulous real-estate speculation.”
• “No matter how thoroughly and searchingly we may have scrutinized works of literature from the historical and biographical point of view, we must be able to tell good from bad, the first-rate from the second-rate. We shall otherwise not write literary criticism at all, but merely social or political history as reflected in literary texts, or psychological case histories from past eras.”

Edward O. Wilson
b. 6-10-1929; Birmingham, AL

Biologist, naturalist, conservationist, author and professor, E. O. Wilson, is a two time winner of the Pulitzer Prize for General Non-Fiction. His specialty is myrmecology, the study of ants; he originally chose to study insects because he lost the sight in one eye as a child and observing at a distance was difficult, however a shortage of pins during WWII caused him to switch to ants that could be stored in a vial. Adaptation?

E. O. Wilson quotes ~
• “We are drowning in information, while starving for wisdom. The world henceforth will be run by synthesizers, people able to put together the right information at the right time, think critically about it, and make important choices wisely.” ~ Consilience: The Unity of Knowledge
• “True character arises from a deeper well than religion. It is the internalization of moral principles of a society, augmented by those tenets personally chosen by the individual, strong enough to endure through trials of solitude and adversity. The principles are fitted together into what we call integrity, literally the integrated self, wherein personal decisions feel good and true. Character is in turn the enduring source of virtue. It stands by itself and excites admiration in others. It is not obedience to authority, and while it is often consistent with and reinforced by religious belief, it is not piety.”
• “The toxic mix of religion and tribalism has become so dangerous as to justify taking seriously the alternative view, that humanism based on science is the effective antidote, the light and the way at last placed before us.”
• “We are not compelled to believe in biological uniformity in order to affirm human freedom and dignity.”
• “The borderline between normal and schizophrenic people is broad and nearly imperceptible.”
• “The emergence of civilization has everywhere followed a definable sequence.”
• “If history and science have taught us anything, it is that passion and desire are not the same as truth.”
• “Few will doubt that humankind has created a planet-sized problem for itself. No one wished it so, but we are the first species to become a geophysical force, altering Earth's climate, a role previously reserved for tectonics, sun flares, and glacial cycles. We are also the greatest destroyer of life since the ten-kilometer-wide meteorite that landed near Yucatan and ended the Age of Reptiles sixty-five million years ago. Through overpopulation we have put ourselves in danger of running out of food and water. So a very Faustian choice is upon us: whether to accept our corrosive and risky behavior as the unavoidable price of population and economic growth, or to take stock of ourselves and search for a new environmental ethic.”
• “The naturalist is a civilized hunter. He goes alone into the field or woodland and closes his mind to everything but that time and place, so that life around him presses in on all the senses and small details grow in significance. He begins the scanning search for which cognition was engineered. His mind becomes unfocused, it focuses on everything, no longer directed toward any ordinary task or social pleasantry.” ~ Biophilia
• “Stable climates with muted seasons allow more kinds of organisms to specialize on narrower pieces of the environment, to outcompete the generalists around them, and so persist for longer periods of time. Species are packed more tightly. No niche, it seems goes unfilled. Specialization is likely to be pushed to bizarre, beautiful extremes.” ~ Diversity of Life

Our Nigro or, Sketches from the Life of a Free Black, Harriet E. Wilson (not commerically available poster)

Harriet E. Wilson
b. 3-15-1825; Milford, NH
d. 6-28-1900; Seattle, WA

Harriet “Hattie” Wilson is traditionally considered the first African-American novelist of any gender to publish a novel, her autobiographical Our Nig, on the North American continent.

Owen Wister
b. 7-14-1860; Philadelphia, Pennsylvania
d. 7-21-1938; Rhode Island

“Father of the American Western”, Owen Wister, is best remembered as the author of “The Virginian”.

FYI - Wister, who was the grandson of actress and author Fanny Kemble, dedicated The Virginian to his classmate, Theodore Roosevelt.

Owen Wister quotes ~
• “When yu' can't have what you choose, yu' just choose what you have.”
• “When you call me that, smile.”