I think by lifting the formative list to canonical heights we drop a lot of personal choices and end up with a list that contains not many surprises (in my case none).

I think that is what Mav wanted - it makes it easier to consolidate the different lists into one.

Lewis Carrol
Harper Lee
Jane Austen
Somerset Maugham
Emily Bronte
Dickinson
Yeats
Wilde
Shakespeare

(Chronological order)