The Most Influential People Across History
Find the most influential people in 24 academic disciplines and numerous subdisciplines
Find famous and important people related to your research. This is an excellent tool for research papers, topic papers, and building a bibliography. Using our influence-based algorithm, our rankings synthesize data from Wikipedia, Wikidata, Semantic Scholar, and CrossRef.
Students and researchers now have a fast and reliable way to find influential thinkers from 24 disciplines and 300 sub-disciplines (and growing). If you want to find history’s most influential philsosophers, or the world’s most influential mathematicians currently, now you can.
We also provide custom rankings of people by discipline as well as interviews with influential academics who are currently active.
To use this tool, select the discipline (and optional subdiscipline) relevant to your research, and specify influential academics by history, world, or US. Even results that are counterintuitive are often enlightening (our algorithm always picks up a signal).
Methodology: How and Why We Rank by Influence …
See additional learning tools, study tips, features on campus life and much more at our Student Resources Headquarters.
List of the most influential people in Literature,
#9801
Karl Wilhelm Ludwig Heyse
1797 - 1855 (58 years)
Karl Wilhelm Ludwig Heyse was a German philologist, son of Johann Christian August Heyse, father of the novelist Paul Johann Ludwig von Heyse, born at Oldenburg. He received his early education at gymnasiums in Oldenburg and Nordhausen, and from 1812 to 1815, studied at a private institute in Vevey, Switzerland. After briefly serving as a tutor to the youngest son of Wilhelm von Humboldt, he enrolled in classes at the University of Berlin . Here, he studied philology under Philipp August Böckh. From 1819 to 1827, he was a private tutor to the family of banker Abraham Mendelssohn Bartholdy .
Go to Profile#9802
Samuel Smiles
1812 - 1904 (92 years)
Samuel Smiles was a British author and government reformer. Although he campaigned on a Chartist platform, he promoted the idea that more progress would come from new attitudes than from new laws. His primary work, Self-Help , promoted thrift and claimed that poverty was caused largely by irresponsible habits, while also attacking materialism and laissez-faire government. It has been called "the bible of mid-Victorian liberalism" and had lasting effects on British political thought.
Go to Profile#9803
Jean-Baptiste Tavernier
1605 - 1689 (84 years)
Jean-Baptiste Tavernier was a 17th-century French gem merchant and traveler. Tavernier, a private individual and merchant traveling at his own expense, covered, by his own account, 60,000 leagues in making six voyages to Persia and India between the years 1630 and 1668. In 1675, Tavernier, at the behest of his patron Louis XIV, published Les Six Voyages de Jean-Baptiste Tavernier .
Go to Profile#9804
G. Wilson Knight
1897 - 1985 (88 years)
George Richard Wilson Knight was an English literary critic and academic, known particularly for his interpretation of mythic content in literature, and The Wheel of Fire, a collection of essays on Shakespeare's plays. He was also an actor and theatrical director, and considered an outstanding lecturer.
Go to Profile#9805
Matthew Prior
1664 - 1721 (57 years)
Matthew Prior was an English poet and diplomat. He is also known as a contributor to The Examiner. Early life Prior was probably born in Middlesex. He was the son of a Nonconformist joiner at Wimborne Minster, East Dorset. His father moved to London, and sent him to Westminster School, under Dr Richard Busby. After his father's death, he left school, and was cared for by his uncle, a vintner in Channel Row. Here, Lord Dorset found him reading Horace, and set him to translate an ode. He did so well that the Earl offered to contribute to the continuation of his education at Westminster.
Go to Profile#9806
Apostolo Zeno
1668 - 1750 (82 years)
Apostolo Zeno was a Venetian poet, librettist, journalist, and man of letters. Early life Apostolo Zeno was born in Venice to a colonial branch of the Zeno family, an ancient Venetian patrician family. His family had been transplanted from Venice to the Kingdom of Candia in the 13th century in order to maintain Venetian order and suppress any rebellious subjects. Following the assault on the island by the Ottoman Empire, the remaining members of his family returned to Venice. Upon return they were not readmitted to the patrician class, but were only able to obtain status as ordinary citizens....
Go to Profile#9807
Eduard Schwartz
1858 - 1940 (82 years)
Eduard Schwartz was a German classical philologist. Born in Kiel, he studied under Hermann Sauppe in Göttingen, under Hermann Usener and Franz Bücheler in Bonn, under Theodor Mommsen in Berlin and under Ulrich von Wilamowitz-Moellendorff in Greifswald. In 1880 he obtained his doctorate from the University of Bonn.
Go to Profile#9808
Richard Porson
1759 - 1808 (49 years)
Richard Porson was an English classical scholar. He was the discoverer of Porson's Law. The Greek typeface Porson was based on his handwriting. Early life Richard Porson was born at East Ruston, near North Walsham, Norfolk, the eldest son of Huggin Porson, parish clerk. His mother was the daughter of a shoemaker from the neighbouring village of Bacton. He was sent first to the Bacton village school, kept by John Woodrow, and then to that of Happisburgh, kept by Mr Summers, where his extraordinary powers of memory and aptitude for arithmetic were discovered. His literary skill was partly due t...
Go to Profile#9809
Charles Cotton
1630 - 1687 (57 years)
Charles Cotton was an English poet and writer, best known for translating the work of Michel de Montaigne from French, for his contributions to The Compleat Angler, and for the influential The Compleat Gamester attributed to him.
Go to Profile#9810
Diego de Torres Villarroel
1693 - 1770 (77 years)
Diego de Torres Villarroel was a Spanish writer, poet, dramatist, doctor, mathematician, priest and professor of the University of Salamanca. His most famous work is his autobiography, Vida, ascendencia, nacimiento, crianza y aventuras del Doctor Don Diego de Torres Villarroel .
Go to Profile#9811
Thomas Kingo
1634 - 1703 (69 years)
Thomas Hansen Kingo was a Danish bishop, poet and hymnwriter born in Slangerup, near Copenhagen. His work marked the high point of Danish baroque poetry. Early life and education His parents were Hans Thomsen Kingo and Karen Sørensdatter. His father was born in Crail, Scotland, and moved to Helsingør, Denmark, as a two-year old; he became a weaver of modest means. The name Kingo is a shortening of the Scottish name Kinghorn. Although his parents were not wealthy, he was sent to Frederiksborg Latin School at the age of 16 in 1650. He studied theology at the University of Copenhagen, enrolling ...
Go to Profile#9812
William Craigie
1867 - 1957 (90 years)
Sir William Alexander Craigie was a philologist and a lexicographer. A graduate of the University of St Andrews, he was the third editor of the Oxford English Dictionary and co-editor of the 1933 supplement. From 1916 to 1925 he was also Rawlinson and Bosworth Professor of Anglo-Saxon in the University of Oxford. Among the students he tutored was the one who would succeed him in the Anglo-Saxon chair, J. R. R. Tolkien. He married Jessie Kinmond Hutchen of Dundee daughter of William.
Go to Profile#9813
Pierre Louis Maupertuis
1698 - 1759 (61 years)
Pierre Louis Moreau de Maupertuis was a French mathematician, philosopher and man of letters. He became the Director of the Académie des Sciences, and the first President of the Prussian Academy of Science, at the invitation of Frederick the Great.
Go to Profile#9814
Lew Wallace
1827 - 1905 (78 years)
Lewis Wallace was an American lawyer, Union general in the American Civil War, governor of New Mexico Territory, politician, diplomat, artist, and author from Indiana. Among his novels and biographies, Wallace is best known for his historical adventure story, Ben-Hur: A Tale of the Christ , a bestselling novel that has been called "the most influential Christian book of the nineteenth century."
Go to Profile#9815
Arthur Murphy
1727 - 1805 (78 years)
Arthur Murphy , also known by the pseudonym Charles Ranger, was an Irish writer. Biography Murphy was born at Cloonyquin, County Roscommon, Ireland, the son of Richard Murphy and Jane French. He studied at the Jesuit-run College of Saint-Omer, France, and was a gifted student of the Latin and Greek classics.
Go to Profile#9816
William Watson Goodwin
1831 - 1912 (81 years)
William Watson Goodwin was an American classical scholar, for many years Eliot professor of Greek at Harvard University. Biography He was born in Concord, Massachusetts, the son of Hersey Bradford Goodwin and Lucrettia Watson.
Go to Profile#9817
Aaron Hill
1685 - 1750 (65 years)
Aaron Hill was an English dramatist and miscellany writer. Biography The son of a country gentleman of Wiltshire, Hill was educated at Westminster School, and afterwards travelled in the East. He was the author of 17 plays, some of them, such as his versions of Voltaire's Zaire and Mérope, being adaptations. He also wrote poetry, which is of variable quality. Having written some satiric lines on Alexander Pope, he received in return a mention in The Dunciad, which led to a controversy between the two writers. Afterwards a reconciliation took place. He was a friend and correspondent of Samuel Richardson, whose Pamela he highly praised.
Go to Profile#9818
Sally Benson
1897 - 1972 (75 years)
Sally Benson was an American writer of short stories and screenwriter. She is best known for her humorous tales of modern youth collected in Junior Miss and her semi-autobiographical stories collected in Meet Me in St. Louis.
Go to Profile#9819
Erico Verissimo
1905 - 1975 (70 years)
Érico Lopes Verissimo was an important Brazilian writer, born in the State of Rio Grande do Sul. Biography Érico Verissimo was the son of Sebastião Verissimo da Fonseca and Abegahy Lopes Verissimo. His father, heir of a rich family in Cruz Alta, met financial ruin during his son's youth and, as a result, Erico didn't complete secondary school because of the need to work.
Go to Profile#9820
Otto Manninen
1872 - 1950 (78 years)
Otto Manninen was a Finnish writer, poet, and a celebrated translator of world classics into Finnish language. Along with Eino Leino in the early 20th century, he is considered as a pioneer of Finnish poetry. Manninen translated the works of Homer, Sophocles, Euripides, Heine, Ibsen, Petőfi and Runeberg into Finnish.
Go to Profile#9821
Melchiorre Cesarotti
1730 - 1808 (78 years)
Melchiorre Cesarotti was an Italian poet, translator and theorist. Biography He was born at Padua, of a noble but impoverished family. He studied in the Seminary of Padua, where he obtained, immediately after the end of his studies, the chair of Rhetoric. At the University of Padua his literary progress gained him the professorship of Greek and Hebrew in 1768, and then of Rhetorics and Literature in 1797. As a supporter of the Enlightenment ideas, he wrote in favor of the French on their invasion of Italy in 1797; he received a pension, and was made knight of the iron crown by Napoleon I, t...
Go to Profile#9822
Myles Dillon
1900 - 1972 (72 years)
Myles Patrick Dillon was an Irish scholar whose primary interests were comparative philology, Celtic studies, and Sanskrit. Life Myles Dillon was born in Dublin; he was one of six children of John Dillon and his wife Elizabeth Mathew; James Dillon, the leader of Fine Gael, was his younger brother.
Go to Profile#9823
J. B. Bury
1861 - 1927 (66 years)
John Bagnell Bury was an Anglo-Irish historian, classical scholar, Medieval Roman historian and philologist. He objected to the label "Byzantinist" explicitly in the preface to the 1889 edition of his Later Roman Empire. He was Erasmus Smith's Professor of Modern History at Trinity College Dublin , before being Regius Professor of Modern History at the University of Cambridge and a Professorial Fellow of King's College, Cambridge from 1902 until his death.
Go to Profile#9824
Șerban Cioculescu
1902 - 1988 (86 years)
Șerban Cioculescu was a Romanian literary critic, literary historian and columnist, who held teaching positions in Romanian literature at the University of Iași and the University of Bucharest, as well as membership of the Romanian Academy and chairmanship of its Library. Often described as one of the most representative Romanian critics of the interwar period, he took part in the cultural debates of the age, and, as a left-wing sympathizer who supported secularism, was involved in extended polemics with the traditionalist, far right and nationalist press venues. From early on in his career, ...
Go to Profile#9825
Veronica Forrest-Thomson
1947 - 1975 (28 years)
Veronica Elizabeth Marian Forrest-Thomson was a poet and a critical theorist brought up in Scotland. Her 1978 study Poetic Artifice: A Theory of Twentieth-Century Poetry was reissued in 2016. Life and education Veronica was born in Malaya to a rubber planter, John Forrest Thomson and his wife Jean, but grew up in Glasgow, Scotland. She opted to hyphenate the surname, having originally been published under the name Veronica Forrest.
Go to Profile#9826
Josephine Johnson
1910 - 1990 (80 years)
Josephine Winslow Johnson was an American novelist, poet, and essayist. She won the Pulitzer Prize for Fiction in 1935 at age 24 for her first novel, Now in November. To this day she's the youngest person to win the Pulitzer for Fiction. Shortly thereafter, she published Winter Orchard, a collection of short stories that had previously appeared in The Atlantic Monthly, Vanity Fair, The St. Louis Review, and Hound & Horn. Of these stories, "Dark" won an O. Henry Award in 1934, and "John the Six" won an O. Henry Award third prize the following year. Johnson continued writing short stories and won three more O.
Go to Profile#9827
Mary Augusta Scott
1851 - 1918 (67 years)
Mary Augusta Scott was a scholar and professor of English at Smith College. She was one of the first women to receive a PhD from Yale University, in 1894. Biography Scott was born in Dayton, Ohio, and received her master's degree at Vassar College. She studied at Newnham College, University of Cambridge, Johns Hopkins University, and Yale University; she earned her Ph.D. from Yale in 1894.
Go to Profile#9828
John Davenport
1908 - 1966 (58 years)
John Lancelot Agard Bramhall Davenport was an English critic and book reviewer who wrote for, amongst other publications, The Observer and The Spectator. He was a mentor to the critic Nora Sayre. Life The son of Robert Davenport , a self-described "dramatic author", writer and illustrator of children's stories, and writer of lyrics for popular songs and the actress Muriel George , Davenport was primarily raised at Barons Court by his grandmother, and subsequently educated at St Paul's and Corpus Christi College, Cambridge, at which latter he opted to study rather than taking up a history scholarship he had won to Hertford College, Oxford.
Go to Profile#9829
Robert Finch
1900 - 1995 (95 years)
Robert Duer Claydon Finch was a Canadian poet and academic. He twice won Canada's top literary honor, the Governor General's Award, for his poetry. Life Born in Freeport, Long Island, New York, Finch was educated at the University of Toronto and the Sorbonne. He was a professor of French at the University of Toronto for four decades , and an expert on French poetry.
Go to Profile#9830
Jacqueline Susann
1918 - 1974 (56 years)
Jacqueline Susann was an American novelist and actress. Her iconic novel, Valley of the Dolls , is one of the best-selling books in publishing history. With her two subsequent works, The Love Machine and Once Is Not Enough , Susann became the first author to have three novels top The New York Times Best Seller list consecutively.
Go to Profile#9831
Karl Friedrich Heinrich
1774 - 1838 (64 years)
Karl Friedrich Heinrich was a German classical philologist. He studied under Christian Friedrich Wilhelm Jacobs and Johann Kaspar Friedrich Manso at the gymnasium in Gotha. From 1791 he studied theology at the University of Göttingen, where under the influence of Christian Gottlob Heyne, he changed his focus to philology. In 1804 he became a professor of Greek literature at the University of Kiel, then in 1818 relocated to the University of Bonn as a professor of classical philology. At Bonn, he served as director of the philological seminar.
Go to Profile#9832
Marvin Mudrick
1921 - 1986 (65 years)
Marvin Mudrick taught at UC Santa Barbara from 1949 until his death in October 1986. He created the university's College of Creative Studies in 1967 and was its provost until forced out by Chancellor Robert Huttenback in 1984. He wrote 100 essays on books for The Hudson Review and published five collections of his essays on books and writers. He also wrote for The New York Review of Books and Harper's.
Go to Profile#9833
John Richardson
1796 - 1852 (56 years)
John Richardson was a Canadian officer in the British Army who became the first Canadian-born novelist to achieve international recognition. Life Richardson was born at Fort George or in Queenston on the Niagara River in 1796. His mother Madelaine was the daughter of the fur trader John Askin and an Odawa woman Monette. His father, Dr. Robert Richardson, was a surgeon with the Queen's Rangers. As a young boy, Richardson lived for a time with his grandparents in Detroit and later with his parents at Fort Malden, Amherstburg. His step-mother, Marie Archange Barthe, told him of stories about ea...
Go to Profile#9834
Medea Norsa
1877 - 1952 (75 years)
Medea Vittoria Irma Norsa was an Italian papyrologist and philologist. She headed the Istituto Papirologico Girolamo Vitelli in Florence from 1935 to 1949. Early life and education Norsa was born to Michele Norsa and Silvia Vittoria Krosna in Trieste on 26 August 1877, the oldest of four children. She was christened Medea Vittoria Irma on 16 September 1877. After Silvia's death in 1886, her father married Caterina Giovanna Furlani in 1894 and had three more children.
Go to Profile#9835
Herman J. Mankiewicz
1897 - 1953 (56 years)
Herman Jacob Mankiewicz was an American screenwriter who, with Orson Welles, wrote the screenplay for Citizen Kane . Both Mankiewicz and Welles would go on to receive the Academy Award for Best Original Screenplay for the film. He was previously a Berlin correspondent for Women’s Wear Daily, assistant theater editor at The New York Times, and the first regular drama critic at The New Yorker. Alexander Woollcott said that Mankiewicz was the "funniest man in New York".
Go to Profile#9836
Arthur Johnston
1579 - 1641 (62 years)
Arthur Johnston was a Scottish poet and physician. He was born in Caskieben near Inverurie in Aberdeenshire. His father, Sir George Johnston, was an Aberdeenshire laird, and his mother Christian Forbes was the daughter of Lord Forbes.
Go to Profile#9837
Ivan Chemnitzer
1745 - 1784 (39 years)
Ivan Ivanovitch Chemnitzer or Khemnitzer was a Russian fabulist, born at Yenotayevsk, Astrakhan Governorate, the son of a German physician of Chemnitz, who had served in the Russian army under Peter the Great. He participated in the campaigns of the Seven Years' War and afterward devoted himself to mining engineering and subsequently visited Germany, Holland, and France. Upon his return he accepted a position as Consul to Smyrna, where an attack of melancholia hastened his death.
Go to Profile#9838
Dorothy Fields
1905 - 1974 (69 years)
Dorothy Fields was an American librettist and lyricist. She wrote over 400 songs for Broadway musicalss and films. Her best-known pieces include "The Way You Look Tonight" , "A Fine Romance" , "On the Sunny Side of the Street" , "Don't Blame Me" , "Pick Yourself Up" , "I'm in the Mood for Love" , "You Couldn't Be Cuter" and "Big Spender" . Throughout her career, she collaborated with various influential figures in the American musical theater, including Jerome Kern, Cy Coleman, Irving Berlin, and Jimmy McHugh. Along with Ann Ronell, Dana Suesse, Bernice Petkere, and Kay Swift, she was one o...
Go to Profile#9839
Friedrich August Grotefend
1798 - 1836 (38 years)
Friedrich August Grotefend was a German philologist. Grotefend was a relative of Georg Friedrich Grotefend, who deciphered the cuneiform writing. Biography Grotefend studied theology and philology at the University of Göttingen, and afterwards was a teacher at the Pädagogium in Ilefeld . In 1831 he was appointed director of the gymnasium in Göttingen. In 1835 he received an associate professorship at the University of Göttingen, however he died soon afterwards on 28 February 1836.
Go to Profile#9840
Catherine Winkworth
1827 - 1878 (51 years)
Catherine Winkworth was an English hymnwriter and educator. She translated the German chorale tradition of church hymns for English speakers, for which she is recognized in the calendar of the Evangelical Lutheran Church in America. She also worked for wider educational opportunities for girls, and translated biographies of two founders of religious sisterhoods. When 16, Winkworth appears to have coined a once well-known political pun, peccavi, "I have Sindh", relating to the British occupation of Sindh in colonial India.
Go to Profile#9841
Su Shi
1037 - 1101 (64 years)
Su Shi , courtesy name Zizhan , art name Dongpo , was a Chinese calligrapher, essayist, gastronomer, pharmacologist, poet, politician, and travel writer who lived during the Song dynasty. A major personality of the Song era, at times holding high-level political positions, Su was also an important figure in Song Dynasty politics, aligning himself with Sima Guang and others, against the New Policy party led by Wang Anshi, gaining some level of popular support through his actions, and also sometimes experiencing politically motivated reversals to his government career.
Go to Profile#9842
Marc Blitzstein
1905 - 1964 (59 years)
Marcus Samuel Blitzstein , was an American composer, lyricist, and librettist. He won national attention in 1937 when his pro-union musical The Cradle Will Rock, directed by Orson Welles, was shut down by the Works Progress Administration. He is known for The Cradle Will Rock and for his off-Broadway translation/adaptation of The Threepenny Opera by Bertolt Brecht and Kurt Weill. His works also include the opera Regina, an adaptation of Lillian Hellman's play The Little Foxes; the Broadway musical Juno, based on Seán O'Casey's play Juno and the Paycock; and No for an Answer. He completed trans...
Go to Profile#9843
Harry Bloom
1913 - 1981 (68 years)
Harry Saul Bloom was a South African journalist, novelist, activist and lecturer. Early life and career Solomon Harris Bloom was born into a Jewish South African family. He was educated at the University of the Witwatersrand, obtaining his law degree in 1937. He subsequently became an advocate in Johannesburg. In 1940, he married Beryl Cynthia Gordon, after knowing her three weeks, and they moved to London, living in Old Compton Street during the Blitz. Writing under the pseudonyms Walter and Beryl Storm , they worked as war correspondents during the Second World War, and covered the Nurember...
Go to Profile#9844
George Derwent Thomson
1903 - 1987 (84 years)
George Derwent Thomson was an English classical scholar, Marxist philosopher, and scholar of the Irish language. Classical scholar Thomson studied Classics at King's College, Cambridge, where he attained First Class Honours in the Classical Tripos and subsequently won a scholarship to Trinity College, Dublin. At TCD he worked on his first book, Greek Lyric Metre, and began visiting Na Blascaodaí in the early nineteen-twenties. He became lecturer and then Professor of Greek at University College Galway.
Go to Profile#9845
Friedrich Müller
1834 - 1898 (64 years)
Friedrich Müller was an Austrian linguist and ethnologist who originated the term Hamito-Semitic languages for what are now called the Afro-Asiatic languages. Biography He studied at the University of Göttingen. His studies were completed at the University of Vienna , where he was librarian from 1858 to 1866, and then became extraordinary and then ordinary professor of comparative philology and Sanskrit. He was a member of the Austrian Academy of Sciences, and was one of the highest authorities on comparative philology and ethnology and the relations of the two sciences, being so regarded in...
Go to Profile#9846
John Hudson
1662 - 1719 (57 years)
John Hudson , English classical scholar, was born at Wythop, near Cockermouth in Cumberland. He was educated at The Queen's College, Oxford, and spent the rest of his life at the University: appointed as a Fellow of University College, Oxford in 1686, Bodley's librarian in 1701, and in 1711 principal of St Mary Hall, Oxford. His political views stood in the way of his preferment in the church and university.
Go to Profile#9847
Nikolai Stankevich
1813 - 1840 (27 years)
Nikolai Vladimirovich Stankevich was a Russian public figure, philosopher, and poet. Biography Nikolay Stankevich was born in Uderevka, Voronezh Governorate, and in 1834 graduated from the Moscow State University, where he was influenced by Professor Mikhail Kachenovsky and followers of the so-called "skeptical school" in historiography. By late 1831, Stankevich had organized a literary and philosophical society called the Circle of Stankevich. He had been under police surveillance since 1833 due to his connections with a group of oppositionary university students led by Ya.I. Kostenetsky. I...
Go to Profile#9848
Gottlieb Christoph Harless
1738 - 1815 (77 years)
Gottlieb Christoph Harless was a German classical scholar and bibliographer. Biography He was born at Culmbach in Bavaria. He studied at the universities of Halle, Erlangen and Jena. In 1765 he was appointed professor of oriental languages and eloquence at the Gymnasium Casimirianum in Coburg, in 1770 professor of poetry and eloquence at Erlangen, and in 1776 librarian of the university. He held his professorship for forty-five years until his death.
Go to Profile#9849
Friedrich von der Leyen
1873 - 1966 (93 years)
Friedrich Gustav von der Leyen was a German philologist who specialized in Germanic studies. Biography Friedrich Gustav von der Leyen was born in Bremen, Germany on 19 August 1873, and belonged to the House of Leyen. He was the son of the railroad lawyer and honorary professor Dr. jur. Alfred Friedrich von der Leyen and his wife Luise Isabella Kapp . Luise was the daughter of Friedrich Kapp and sister of Wolfgang Kapp. Friedrich had four siblings, among them Generalleutnant of the Wehrmacht Ludwig Friedrich von der Leyen .
Go to Profile#9850
William Miller
1810 - 1872 (62 years)
William Miller was a Scottish poet best known for the nursery rhyme Wee Willie Winkie. Miller, known as "The Laureate of the Nursery", was born in Glasgow and lived in Dennistoun, Scotland. He suffered from ill health and was unable to become a surgeon and instead took up woodturning and cabinet making. At the same time he began writing poetry and children's rhymes, mainly in the Scots language. His poetry was published in various works including the Whistle-binkie books.
Go to Profile