Engraving of a bust of Lucretius.

Lucretius

(c. 95 BC - c. 50 BC)

Italian poet Dante Alighieri.

Dante Alighieri

(1265 - 1321)

Spanish conquistador Hernán Cortés.

Hernán Cortés

(1485 - 1547)

Engraving of Roman author and administrator Pliny the Younger.

Pliny the Younger

(61 - 112)

Painted portrait of German naturalist and explorer Alexander von Humboldt.

Alexander von Humboldt

(1769 - 1859)

British author Aldous Huxley.

Aldous Huxley

(1894 - 1963)

Paracelsus

(1493 - 1541)

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

W.B. Yeats

(1865 - 1939)

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

Theodore Roosevelt

(1858 - 1919)

Smiling man with thin hair sticking out at a podium

James D. Watson

Andrew Jackson

(1767 - 1845)

John D. Rockefeller Jr.

(1874 - 1960)

English poet and satirist Alexander Pope.

Alexander Pope

(1688 - 1744)

Paul Gauguin

(1848 - 1903)

Photograph of American writer and naturalist Henry Beston.

Henry Beston

(1888 - 1968)

American poet, journalist, and essayist Walt Whitman.

Walt Whitman

(1819 - 1892)

Image of English naturalist Charles Darwin.

Charles Darwin

(1809 - 1882)

Sculpture bust of Greek historian Herodotus.

Herodotus

(c. 484 BC - c. 425 BC)

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

Marcus Tullius Cicero

(106 BC - 43 BC)

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

Friedrich Nietzsche

(1844 - 1900)

Painting of Greek philosopher Heraclitus weeping over a globe.

Heraclitus

(c. 540 BC - c. 480 BC)

Engraving of William Shakespeare from the first folio edition.

William Shakespeare

(1564 - 1616)

Photograph of American biologist Edward O. Wilson.

Edward O. Wilson

Chris Rose

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

Michel de Montaigne

(1533 - 1592)

Pretty-shield

(1856 - 1944)

Vitruvius

(c. 80 BC - 15 BC)

French man of letters Denis Diderot.

Denis Diderot

(1713 - 1784)

Color photograph of American writer Annie Dillard.

Annie Dillard

Bill McKibben

Frederick Turner

Frederick Jackson Turner

(1861 - 1932)

Alain de Lille

(c. 1128 - 1202)

Curtis White

Man with a gray goatee wearing a checked shirt standing outdoors

Eric Schlosser

Theocritus

(c. 300 BC - c. 260 BC)

American poet Anne Bradstreet.

Anne Bradstreet

(c. 1612 - 1672)

Lewis Thomas

(1913 - 1993)

Photograph of American novelist Jack London.

Jack London

(1876 - 1916)

Jamaica Kincaid

William Blake

(1757 - 1827)

Engraving of Pliny the Elder.

Pliny the Elder

(23 - 79)

Robinson Jeffers

(1887 - 1962)

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

J. Hector St. John de Crèvecoeur

(1735 - 1813)

Depiction of Plymouth colony governor William Bradford.

William Bradford

(1590 - 1657)

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

John Berger

(1926 - 2017)

German writer and statesman Johann Wolfgang von Goethe.

Johann Wolfgang von Goethe

(1749 - 1832)

Ovid

(43 BC - c. 17)

Jules Verne

Jules Verne

(1828 - 1905)

Black and white image of American writer Herman Melville.

Herman Melville

(1819 - 1891)

Photograph of British writer and journalist Simon Winchester.

Simon Winchester

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

Nathaniel Hawthorne

(1804 - 1864)

Henry David Thoreau

Henry David Thoreau

(1817 - 1862)

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

H.G. Wells

(1866 - 1946)

Photograph of Rachel Carson

Rachel Carson

(1907 - 1964)

Novelist and psychiatrist Daniel Mason.

Daniel Mason

Italian artist, engineer, and scientist Leonardo da Vinci.

Leonardo da Vinci

(1452 - 1519)

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

Jean-Jacques Rousseau

(1712 - 1778)

Portrait of third president of the United States Thomas Jefferson.

Thomas Jefferson

(1743 - 1826)

Photograph of Native American author and educator Luther Standing Bear.

Luther Standing Bear

(1868 - 1939)

British author Mary Shelley.

Mary Wollstonecraft Shelley

(1797 - 1851)

Photograph of American environmentalist Aldo Leopold.

Aldo Leopold

(1887 - 1948)

Carl Sagan

(1934 - 1996)

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

Homer

(c. 800 BC - 725 BC)

Photograph of American poet Countee Cullen.

Countee Cullen

(1903 - 1946)

John Muir

(1838 - 1914)

American physicist Richard Feynman.

Richard Feynman

(1918 - 1988)

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

Georges-Louis Leclerc, count de Buffon

(1707 - 1788)

Immanuel Kant

(1724 - 1804)

Portrait of English physicist and mathematician Isaac Newton.

Isaac Newton

(1643 - 1727)

English poet Edmund Spenser.

Edmund Spenser

(1552 - 1599)

Lewis Lapham at his desk

Lewis H. Lapham

(1935 - 2024)

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

Emily Dickinson

(1830 - 1886)

Wang Wei

(701 - 761)

Painting of William Wordsworth.

William Wordsworth

(1770 - 1850)

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

Sigmund Freud

(1856 - 1949)

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

John Winthrop

(1588 - 1649)

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

Joseph Conrad

(1857 - 1924)

Photograph of journalist, author, and professor Michael Pollan.

Michael Pollan

Jane Jacobs

(1916 - 2006)

Portrait bust of Roman poet Virgil.

Virgil

(70 BC - 19 BC)

American author Evan S. Connell.

Evan S. Connell

(1924 - 2013)

Novalis

(1772 - 1801)

Edward Abbey

(1927 - 1989)

David Quammen

Giovanni Pico Della Mirandola

(1463 - 1494)

Image of Japanese haiku poet Matsuo Bashō.

Matsuo Basho

(1644 - 1694)

Nicholas Barbon

(c. 1640 - 1698)

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

Ralph Waldo Emerson

(1803 - 1882)

Loren Eiseley

(1907 - 1977)

Image of medieval traveler Sir John Mandeville.

John Mandeville

(c. 1300 - 1371)

American landscape architect Frederick Law Olmsted.

Frederick Law Olmsted

(1822 - 1903)

Portrait of Francis Bacon in sixteenth-century armor.

Francis Bacon

(1561 - 1626)

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

E.B. White

(1899 - 1985)

Painted portrait of English poet John Milton.

John Milton

(1608 - 1674)

Jonathan Swift

Jonathan Swift

(1667 - 1745)

Steven Stoll

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

Adolf Hitler

(1889 - 1945)

English economist and demographer Thomas Malthus.

Thomas Malthus

(1766 - 1834)

D. Graham Burnett

Charles Bowden

(1945 - 2014)

Edward Hoagland

Color photograph of writer and editor Garret Keizer.

Garret Keizer

American diplomat, scholar, and conservationist George Perkins Marsh.

George Perkins Marsh

(1801 - 1882)

Black and white photograph of American novelist John Steinbeck.

John Steinbeck

(1902 - 1968)

Al Gore