Separating the objective from the subjective on lists like this is always a chore...I've been on the Top 100 music lists discussion boards at VH1 for quite some time, and I've learned that 1. you always leave somebody out; 2. you can never quite detach yourself from your passion no matter how fair-minded you're striving to be; and 3. there is NEVER a general consensus! All that being said, here are my author picks:

Walt Whitman and Eugene O'Neill (well, of course!...who else?)
H.G. Wells
Ray Bradbury
Edgar Allan Poe
Joseph Conrad
Ralph Waldo Emerson
Robert Frost
Dylan Thomas
tie: Alistair MacLean - James Thurber - Ogden Nash

(Major runners-up: Jack London, Kurt Vonnegut, Jr., John Steinbeck, William Shakespeare, Robert A. Heinlein)...Herman Hesse, Franz Kafka, Anton Chekhov and others were translated into English and so miss the criterion.

(honorable mentions a must!: Pearl S. Buck, Nathaniel Hawthorne, Tennessee Williams, William Blake, Woody Allen, E.B. White (for "Charlotte's Web"), William Butler Yeats, John Millington Synge, Sean O'Casey, Mark Twain, Ernie Pyle, John Keats, and Delmore Schwartz)

And I would be remiss if I didn't mention the lyrics of many singer/songwriter/poets including Harry Chapin, Paul Simon, Cat Stevens, James Taylor, Joni Mitchell, John Prine, Jonathan Edwards, Bernie Taupin (w Elton John), Carole King, Dan Fogelberg, Bruce Springsteen, Van Morrison, Tom Waits, Guy Clark, two guys named Lennon and McCartney, and, of course, Bob Dylan)

And, now, I'l release this, stand back and take a look, remember important names I've missed, hone it down to a truer Top Ten, and then post a revision...it's a never-ending process...