25Shakespeare
24
23
22Homer
21Dante
20
19CervantesMontaigne
18Joyce Wordsworth Chaucer Dostoevsky Nietzsche Herodotus Thucydides
17YeatsOvid
16ER EddisonKafkaBeckett
15AustenTolstoy
14WH Hodgson JR Tolkien Conrad Orwell Nabokov Hughes
13W MorrisDickensE Dickinson
12JK Jerome
11G Wolfe J Vance C Maturin J Hogg R Stone J Jones
10CA SmithPG Wodehouse
9F LeiberDunsanyR Chandler
8RE Howard HP Lovecraft HG Wells
7AC Doyle
6
5
4
3
2J GrishamG Martin
1All women writers*Writers of self help or business leadership books
0All RPG writers, bloggers and forum bores**
*except Austen & Dickinson
**with no exceptions
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There is much to discuss here, for example Harold Lamb is fascinating and hoists RE Howard up by association. Make the argument! Fritz Leiber's extraordinary 'Adept's Gambit' is worthy of a 13-14 rank surely?
There must be fluidity in the rankings. One of my favourite attempts to rank rock music is George Starostin's. Bands are ranked from 1-5 and albums from 1-10 and he makes a sum of these.
My understanding is that OSR gamers are poorly read when compared with the average population, even in the field of fantasy, this I have learned from reading blogs and the OSR forums. Prove me wrong, show some kind of knowledge! I expect you haven't read anyone above rank 14 cover to cover, and probably only Tolkien above rank 9. That should give you pause to be silent, to stop posting your thoughts until you have read more widely, no?
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