Artists & Writers

Novelists, poets, painters, and performers whose work defined America's artistic voice and recorded its self-image.

Dorothea Lange

Documentary Photographer Who Gave the Depression a Human Face, 1895–1965

Emma Lazarus

The poet whose words gave the Statue of Liberty its voice

Harriet Beecher Stowe

Author of Uncle Tom's Cabin and the novelist who sharpened the nation's conscience on slavery

Helen Keller

Deaf-blind author and activist whose radicalism the 20th century spent decades trying to forget

Ida Tarbell

Investigative Journalist Who Broke Standard Oil, 1857–1944

Langston Hughes

Poet, Playwright, and Voice of the Harlem Renaissance

Mark Twain

The Mississippi River humorist who became America's sharpest social critic

Ralph Waldo Emerson

Father of American Transcendentalism and prophet of self-reliance

Upton Sinclair

Muckraking Author of The Jungle Who Accidentally Reformed the Food Supply, 1878–1968

Walt Whitman

The poet who gave America a democratic literature and witnessed its bloodiest war