Portrait bust of presumed author of the Iliad and the Odyssey Homer.

Homer

(c. 800 BC - 725 BC)

Painted portrait of English poet John Milton.

John Milton

(1608 - 1674)

Black and white photograph of Emily Dickinson sitting next to a desk.

Emily Dickinson

(1830 - 1886)

Alain de Lille

(c. 1128 - 1202)

Portrait of Swiss-born philosopher, writer, and political theorist Jean-Jacques Rousseau.

Jean-Jacques Rousseau

(1712 - 1778)

Oil painting portrair Michel de Montaigne in red robes and white collar

Michel de Montaigne

(1533 - 1592)

Image of Japanese haiku poet Matsuo Bashō.

Matsuo Basho

(1644 - 1694)

John D. Rockefeller Jr.

(1874 - 1960)

Black and white photograph of E. B. White sitting at his typewriter with his dachshund.

E.B. White

(1899 - 1985)

Engraving of William Shakespeare from the first folio edition.

William Shakespeare

(1564 - 1616)

Roman statesman, lawyer, scholar, and writer Marcus Tullius Cicero.

Marcus Tullius Cicero

(106 BC - 43 BC)

British author Aldous Huxley.

Aldous Huxley

(1894 - 1963)

Nicholas Barbon

(c. 1640 - 1698)

Spanish conquistador Hernán Cortés.

Hernán Cortés

(1485 - 1547)

Image of English naturalist Charles Darwin.

Charles Darwin

(1809 - 1882)

Painting of a bearded man with dark eyes wearing a white ruff

John Winthrop

(1588 - 1649)

Painted portrait of German naturalist and explorer Alexander von Humboldt.

Alexander von Humboldt

(1769 - 1859)

John Muir

(1838 - 1914)

Photograph of English art critic, novelist, and painter John Berger.

John Berger

(1926 - 2017)

Lewis Thomas

(1913 - 1993)

Black and white photograph of Friedrich Nietzsche with a huge mustache.

Friedrich Nietzsche

(1844 - 1900)

Depiction of Plymouth colony governor William Bradford.

William Bradford

(1590 - 1657)

Pretty-shield

(1856 - 1944)

Andrew Jackson

(1767 - 1845)

Immanuel Kant

(1724 - 1804)

Black and white photograph of Austrian neurologist Sigmund Freud with cigar.

Sigmund Freud

(1856 - 1949)

Carl Sagan

(1934 - 1996)

Italian poet Dante Alighieri.

Dante Alighieri

(1265 - 1321)

Bill McKibben

Ovid

(43 BC - c. 17)

Black and white photograph of Polish-born English writer Joseph Conrad.

Joseph Conrad

(1857 - 1924)

Man with a gray goatee wearing a checked shirt standing outdoors

Eric Schlosser

American poet, journalist, and essayist Walt Whitman.

Walt Whitman

(1819 - 1892)

Portrait of English physicist and mathematician Isaac Newton.

Isaac Newton

(1643 - 1727)

Black and white photograph of former chancellor and Führer of Germany Adolf Hitler.

Adolf Hitler

(1889 - 1945)

Engraving of Pliny the Elder.

Pliny the Elder

(23 - 79)

Photograph of American poet Countee Cullen.

Countee Cullen

(1903 - 1946)

American author Evan S. Connell.

Evan S. Connell

(1924 - 2013)

Photograph of American writer and naturalist Henry Beston.

Henry Beston

(1888 - 1968)

Black and white image of American writer Herman Melville.

Herman Melville

(1819 - 1891)

Photograph of American novelist Jack London.

Jack London

(1876 - 1916)

William Blake

(1757 - 1827)

Color photograph of American writer Annie Dillard.

Annie Dillard

At the age of seventeen, Hawthorne mused to his mother about the possibility of “relying for support upon my pen.”

Nathaniel Hawthorne

(1804 - 1864)

Jules Verne

Jules Verne

(1828 - 1905)

Frederick Turner

Henry David Thoreau

Henry David Thoreau

(1817 - 1862)

Photograph of American biologist Edward O. Wilson.

Edward O. Wilson

Jane Jacobs

(1916 - 2006)

Paracelsus

(1493 - 1541)

Curtis White

Wang Wei

(701 - 761)

Vitruvius

(c. 80 BC - 15 BC)

French-American author J. Hector St. John de Crèvecoeur.

J. Hector St. John de Crèvecoeur

(1735 - 1813)

Charles Bowden

(1945 - 2014)

Sculpture bust of Greek historian Herodotus.

Herodotus

(c. 484 BC - c. 425 BC)

Portrait bust of Roman poet Virgil.

Virgil

(70 BC - 19 BC)

Edward Hoagland

German writer and statesman Johann Wolfgang von Goethe.

Johann Wolfgang von Goethe

(1749 - 1832)

Photograph of Native American author and educator Luther Standing Bear.

Luther Standing Bear

(1868 - 1939)

David Quammen

Robinson Jeffers

(1887 - 1962)

French man of letters Denis Diderot.

Denis Diderot

(1713 - 1784)

Italian artist, engineer, and scientist Leonardo da Vinci.

Leonardo da Vinci

(1452 - 1519)

Black and white photograph of former President of the United States Theodore Roosevelt.

Theodore Roosevelt

(1858 - 1919)

Paul Gauguin

(1848 - 1903)

Portrait of third president of the United States Thomas Jefferson.

Thomas Jefferson

(1743 - 1826)

Steven Stoll

American diplomat, scholar, and conservationist George Perkins Marsh.

George Perkins Marsh

(1801 - 1882)

Al Gore

Chris Rose

American physicist Richard Feynman.

Richard Feynman

(1918 - 1988)

Image of medieval traveler Sir John Mandeville.

John Mandeville

(c. 1300 - 1371)

Jamaica Kincaid

Black and white photograph of American writer and exponent of Transcendentalism Ralph Waldo Emerson.

Ralph Waldo Emerson

(1803 - 1882)

Photograph of British writer and journalist Simon Winchester.

Simon Winchester

Edward Abbey

(1927 - 1989)

English poet Edmund Spenser.

Edmund Spenser

(1552 - 1599)

English economist and demographer Thomas Malthus.

Thomas Malthus

(1766 - 1834)

Photograph of journalist, author, and professor Michael Pollan.

Michael Pollan

Photograph of American environmentalist Aldo Leopold.

Aldo Leopold

(1887 - 1948)

Photograph of Rachel Carson

Rachel Carson

(1907 - 1964)

Loren Eiseley

(1907 - 1977)

Lewis Lapham at his desk

Lewis H. Lapham

(1935 - 2024)

English poet and satirist Alexander Pope.

Alexander Pope

(1688 - 1744)

Portrait of Francis Bacon in sixteenth-century armor.

Francis Bacon

(1561 - 1626)

Black and white photograph of Irish poet and writer W. B. Yeats.

W.B. Yeats

(1865 - 1939)

British author Mary Shelley.

Mary Wollstonecraft Shelley

(1797 - 1851)

American landscape architect Frederick Law Olmsted.

Frederick Law Olmsted

(1822 - 1903)

Black and white photograph of American novelist John Steinbeck.

John Steinbeck

(1902 - 1968)

Painting of Greek philosopher Heraclitus weeping over a globe.

Heraclitus

(c. 540 BC - c. 480 BC)

American poet Anne Bradstreet.

Anne Bradstreet

(c. 1612 - 1672)

Novalis

(1772 - 1801)

Smiling man with thin hair sticking out at a podium

James D. Watson

Color photograph of writer and editor Garret Keizer.

Garret Keizer

Novelist and psychiatrist Daniel Mason.

Daniel Mason

Jonathan Swift

Jonathan Swift

(1667 - 1745)

Giovanni Pico Della Mirandola

(1463 - 1494)

D. Graham Burnett

Black and white photograph of a young H.G. Wells with a mustache.

H.G. Wells

(1866 - 1946)

Engraving of a bust of Lucretius.

Lucretius

(c. 95 BC - c. 50 BC)

Theocritus

(c. 300 BC - c. 260 BC)

Frederick Jackson Turner

(1861 - 1932)

Painted portrait of French naturalist Georges-Louis Leclerc, count de Buffon.

Georges-Louis Leclerc, count de Buffon

(1707 - 1788)

Painting of William Wordsworth.

William Wordsworth

(1770 - 1850)

Engraving of Roman author and administrator Pliny the Younger.

Pliny the Younger

(61 - 112)