Write Like Historical Writers
Voices from centuries past that still resonate today. From Marcus Aurelius's meditations to Mark Twain's wit — timeless styles for modern writing.
Marcus Aurelius
Stoic meditations. Private journal entries from a Roman emperor. Full text of Meditations survives.
Benjamin Franklin
Witty, pragmatic, aphoristic. Autobiography + Poor Richard's Almanack + hundreds of letters.
Frederick Douglass
Thundering moral authority. Three autobiographies + hundreds of published speeches.
Mark Twain
America's voice. Dozens of novels, essays, speeches, and thousands of letters.
Virginia Woolf
Stream of consciousness pioneer. Novels, essays, diaries, and thousands of letters.
Oscar Wilde
Epigrammatic wit. Plays, novels, essays, letters, and courtroom transcripts.
Ralph Waldo Emerson
Transcendentalist essays. Hundreds of published lectures and journal entries.
Jane Austen
Ironic social observation. Six novels + extensive surviving letters.
Charles Dickens
Vivid, serialized storytelling. 15 novels + journalism + thousands of letters.
H.L. Mencken
Acerbic American commentary. Decades of newspaper columns + books + memoirs.
Walt Whitman
Expansive, democratic, catalogs of American life. Leaves of Grass (revised across decades) + journalism + letters.
Mary Shelley
Gothic imagination, philosophical ambition. Frankenstein + journals + letters + additional novels.