Perhaps the individual writers are not as important as the quantity and variety of works one has read.

I look at all your lists and realize that even if many of the authors are considered masters, or “must reads,” I have read very little by most of them. I <know of> Austen, Keats, Byron and Hemingway but have never read any of their works. The same goes for most of the authors listed, yet, I have a better than average grasp of the English language and my writing skills are quite good.

I do not attribute my knowledge to reading a prescribed set of authors but to my voracious appetite at reading anything I got my hands on.

Why is reading William Shakespeare more important than reading Asimov; or Reader’s Digest for that matter?