The bulk of the names of famous writers come from the 19th and 20th centuries, and about a third of the prose writers from this number are Russian. Almost all the great writers of the 19th century, European and Russian, considered it their sacred duty to expose the injustice of the social system and stand up for the disadvantaged. Gogol, Turgenev, Pisemsky, Leskov, Dostoevsky, Leo Tolstoy, Dickens, Zola created a whole library about the suffering and sorrows of the people. It was in fiction at the end of the 19th century that the first doubts arose that man and society could be corrected and made happy with the help of almighty science. And literature also created something that lies beyond the capabilities of science - it introduced readers to the beautiful and sublime, taught them to feel and appreciate the possibilities of their native speech. The 20th century also produced many masterpieces glorifying love and nobility, loyalty and courage, calling for goodness and justice. The short biographies of one hundred great prose writers presented in this book and the characteristics of their work speak for themselves, reproducing the history of human thoughts and feelings, which today retain their originality and significance.