what’s to go in it?

If you had to reduce a required reading list of literature to exactly 10 authors whose work was in English (any world variety), whom would you choose?

This question was sparked by Avy’s comments about a global conversation, with some thoughts rattling round my brainpan that I would be interested to compare with others’.

My list might be this, for example:
Geoffrey Chaucer
John Donne
William Shakespeare
Sam Coleridge
Oscar Wilde
Thomas Hardy
TS Eliot
George Orwell
Arthur Miller
Dylan Thomas

Some of the above names have to have an almost totemic function – perhaps you might prefer Jane Austen in the discursive novel slot in which I have put Thomas Hardy?

This is not my ‘list of favourites’ – it hurts to miss out all kinds of names, from Keats to Frost, from O. Henry to John Steinbeck, from Swift and Fielding to Austen and Brontë. Rather, it’s a list of those crucial authors without whose work I could not have my current understanding of the language I know and love.

Please take at least a few minutes’ reflection time if you want to join this game, because I am asking a very specific question:

Which 10 authors should be representative of the canon of English literature, consistent with your formative experience?