Biographers, critics, and specialist non-fiction writers

Charles Lamb

Charles Lamb (1775–1834), English essayist also known as "Elia"; author of Essays of Elia (1823), The Last Essays of Elia (1833), and Tales from Shakespeare (1807) with his sister Mary; longtime East India Company clerk.

Charles Mauron

Charles Mauron (1899–1966) was a French literary critic and translator who founded psychocritique, a method for finding a writer's unconscious personality in texts; blind from 1940, he taught at Aix-en-Provence.

Charles Van Doren

Charles Van Doren (1926-2019), American Columbia academic and Britannica editor, won $129,000 on the rigged NBC quiz show Twenty-One in 1956-57, confessed to Congress in 1959, and inspired the film Quiz Show.

Chen Tingzhuo

Chen Tingzhuo (陳廷焯, courtesy name Yifeng, 1853–1892) was a Qing dynasty ci lyric critic from Dantu, Jiangsu, best known for the Baiyuzhai cihua and its shenyu doctrine.

Cheryl Strayed

Cheryl Strayed (born 1968), American author of the #1 NYT bestseller Wild about her 1995 1,100-mile Pacific Crest Trail hike; anonymous Dear Sugar columnist; books include Torch, Tiny Beautiful Things, Brave Enough.

Chinweizu

Chinweizu is a Nigerian critic, poet, and journalist, born in 1943, known for books on decolonization including The West and the Rest of Us and Decolonising the African Mind.

Chit Phumisak

Chit Phumisak (จิตร ภูมิศักดิ์) was a Thai Marxist historian, poet, and linguist, remembered as one of Thailand's most influential left-wing intellectuals until his death in 1966.

Chloe Dalton (author)

Chloe Dalton is a British writer, political adviser, and foreign policy specialist, author of the debut memoir Raising Hare (La liebre y yo), a Wainwright Prize-winning bestseller about raising a wild leveret during the COVID lockdowns.

Choe Myeong-gil

Choe Myeong-gil (崔鳴吉, 1586–1647), pen name Changnang, was a Joseon dynasty Chief State Councillor best known for advocating peace with the Manchus in the wars of 1627 and 1636.

Chrisann Brennan

Chrisann Brennan, American artist and writer, Steve Jobs's first long-time girlfriend and mother of Lisa Brennan-Jobs; author of the 2013 memoir The Bite in the Apple.

Christopher Robin Milne

Christopher Robin Milne (1920-1996), English bookseller and writer, son of A. A. Milne and the real-life basis of Christopher Robin in Winnie-the-Pooh; author of The Enchanted Places.

Christopher Ryan (American author and podcaster)

Christopher Ryan is an American author and podcaster based in Barcelona, co-author with Cacilda Jethá of Sex at Dawn (2010), a New York Times bestseller arguing that pre-agricultural humans were largely promiscuous.

Christopher Tolkien

Christopher John Reuel Tolkien (1924–2020), C. J. R. Tolkien, English medievalist and youngest son of J.R.R. Tolkien; Oxford Old and Middle English professor, drew The Lord of the Rings maps, literary executor from 1973, editor of The Silmarillion and the twelve-volume History of Middle-earth.

Chuck Klosterman

Chuck Klosterman, American cultural critic and New York Times bestselling author born 1972 in Wyndmere, North Dakota; wrote Sex, Drugs, and Cocoa Puffs, The Nineties, and Football, co-founded Grantland, and lives in Portland, Oregon.

Clay Shirky

Clay Shirky is an American technology writer and NYU professor, author of Here Comes Everybody (2008) and Cognitive Surplus, and NYU's vice provost for AI in education.

Clive James

Clive James (Vivian Leopold James, 1939–2019), Australian-born critic, poet, memoirist, and TV presenter based in England; Observer TV critic 1972–1982, host of Clive James on Television, author of Unreliable Memoirs, Cultural Amnesia, and Dante's Divine Comedy translation.

Columella

Columella, born Lucius Iunius Moderatus Columella (c. 4–70 CE), was a Roman agricultural writer from Gades in Spain whose twelve-book De re rustica on farming survives complete.

Conrad Busken Huet

Conrad Busken Huet (1826–1886) was a Dutch writer and critic, regarded as the most important Dutch literary critic of the nineteenth century, whose cultural history Het land van Rembrand opened a new genre in Dutch letters.

Constancia de la Mora

Constancia de la Mora (1906–1950) was a Spanish writer, granddaughter of Antonio Maura, who directed the Republican foreign press office and wrote the 1939 autobiography In Place of Splendor.

Curtius Rufus

Quintus Curtius Rufus was a Roman historian, probably active in the 1st century CE, who wrote the only surviving Latin history of Alexander the Great, the Historiae Alexandri Magni.

Cyril Connolly

Cyril Connolly (1903–1974), English critic and editor of Horizon (1939–1949), author of Enemies of Promise (1938), The Rock Pool (1936), and The Unquiet Grave (1944).

Da Chen

Da Chen, born in Fujian, China, in 1962, was a Chinese American author and Columbia Law School graduate known for his bestselling memoir Colors of the Mountain.

Damodaram Pillai

Damodaram Pillai, also known as C. W. Thamotharam Pillai, was a Tamil scholar born near Jaffna in 1832 who recovered and printed ancient Tamil works from palm-leaf manuscripts.

Daniel James Brown

Daniel James Brown is an American narrative nonfiction author of The Boys in the Boat (2013 Carnegie Medal), Under a Flaming Sky, The Indifferent Stars Above, and Facing the Mountain; distinct from thriller writer Dan Brown.

Daniel Tammet

Daniel Tammet (born Daniel Paul Corney, 1979) is an English autistic savant writer, known for Born on a Blue Day, reciting pi to 22,514 decimal places, synaesthesia, and books on neurodivergence.

Đào Duy Anh

Đào Duy Anh (1904–1988) was a Vietnamese polymath scholar, historian, lexicographer, and geographer who compiled the first Hán-Việt dictionary in 1932 and wrote the first history of Vietnamese culture.

Dava Sobel

Dava Sobel (born 1947) is an American science writer, former New York Times science reporter, and author of Longitude, Galileo's Daughter, The Glass Universe, and The Elements of Marie Curie.

Dave Pelzer

Dave Pelzer (David James Pelzer, born 1960) is the American author of the 1995 abuse memoir A Child Called "It" and its sequels, a bestselling self-help writer, motivational speaker, and Jefferson Award recipient whose account has been disputed by one brother and supported by another.

Davi Arrigucci Jr.

Davi Arrigucci Jr. (Davi Arrigucci Júnior), born 1943, is a Brazilian literary critic, essayist, and retired professor of literary theory at the University of São Paulo.