Writers and Poets
- Gaius Valerius Catullus (ca. 84 BC – ca. 54 BC), Roman poet
- Maksim Bahdanovič
- Honoré de Balzac
- Manuel Bandeira, Brazilian poet, had TB in 1904 and expressed the effects of the disease in his life in many of his poems.
- Gustavo Adolfo Bécquer
- Vissarion Belinsky, Russian literary critic
- Edward Bellamy (1850–1898), fiction writer remembered for his book Looking Backward, died from tuberculosis.
- Jonas Biliūnas
- Rachel Bluwstein
- Anne and Emily Brontë and other members of the Brontë family of writers, poets and painters were struck by TB. Anne, their brother Branwell, and Emily all died of it within 2 years of each other. Charlotte Brontë's death in 1855 was stated at the time as having been due to TB, but there is some controversy over this today.
- Clarissa Brooks, poet, died of tuberculosis in 1927.
- Charles Brockden Brown
- Charles Farrar Browne
- Elizabeth Barrett Browning, poet, died of tuberculosis in 1861.
- Jean de Brunhoff
- Charles Bukowski (1920–1994), American author and poet, contracted TB in 1988; he recovered, losing 60 lbs.
- Robert Burns
- Albert Camus, French writer, playwright, activist, and absurdist philosopher, suffered from TB. He was forced to drop out of school (University of Algiers) due to severe attacks of tuberculosis. However, his death was caused by a car accident.
- Anton Chekhov (1860–1904), Russian short-story writer, playwright and physician; died from tuberculosis.
- Tristan Corbière
- Stephen Crane
- Gilles Deleuze (1925–1995)
- René Daumal
- Nikolay Dobrolyubov
- Paul Laurence Dunbar
- Paul Éluard
- Friedrich Robert Faehlmann
- Maxim Gorky
- Dashiell Hammett (1894–1961), American author and creator of the "hard boiled" detective novel (notably, Sam Spade in The Maltese Falcon), contracted tuberculosis during World War I
- Saima Harmaja, Finnish poet and writer
- Jaroslav Hašek
- Robert A. Heinlein, American author
- Miguel Hernandez
- Washington Irving
- Panait Istrati
- Helen Hunt Jackson
- Alfred Jarry
- Samuel Johnson
- Franz Kafka (1883–1924), German-language novelist best known for his novel The Trial, died from tuberculosis.
- Uuno Kailas, Finnish composer
- Andreas Karkavitsas, Greek writer
- John Keats (1795–1821), English Romantic poet; he and his brother Tom were taken by tuberculosis
- Dragotin Kette
- Charles Kingsley
- Kostas Krystallis, Greek poet
- Vincas Kudirka (1858–1899), Lithuanian poet and physician; died from tuberculosis
- Jules Laforgue (1860–1887), French-Uruguayan poet.
- Sidney Lanier
- D. H. Lawrence
- Betty MacDonald
- Jari Mäenpää, Finnish musician
- Katherine Mansfield
- William Somerset Maugham
- Guy de Maupassant
- Sara Haardt Mencken
- Molière
- Josip Murn Aleksandrov
- Novalis, German author and philosopher
- Eugene O'Neill
- George Orwell (1903–1950), British author of Nineteen Eighty-Four, Animal Farm and Homage to Catalonia, first suffered TB in the early 30s and died from it in 1950, at the age of 46. Nineteen Eighty-Four was written during his final illness.
- Walker Percy
- Kristjan Jaak Peterson (1801–1822), Estonian poet, the founder of modern Estonian poetry; died from tuberculosis, lived only 21 years old.
- Andrei Platonov
- Alexander Pope
- Eleanor Anne Porden
- Katherine Anne Porter
- Llewelyn Powys
- Winthrop Mackworth Praed
- Sholem Rabinovich
- Branko Radičević
- John Reed
- Edmond Rostand
- Jean-Jacques Rousseau
- John Ruskin
- Albert Samain
- Kaarlo Sarkia (1902–1945), Finnish poet
- Friedrich Schiller
- Sir Walter Scott
- Masaoka Shiki (1867–1902), Japanese poet famous for revitalizing the haiku, died after a long struggle with tuberculosis.
- Emily Shore, diarist
- Juliusz Słowacki
- Hristo Smirnenski
- Tobias Smollett
- Laurence Sterne
- Robert Louis Stevenson (1850–1894), Neo-romantic Scottish essayist, novelist and poet, is thought to have suffered from tuberculosis during much of his life. He spent the winter of 1887–1888 recuperating from a presumed bout of tuberculosis at Dr. E.L. Trudeau's Adirondack Cottage Sanitarium in Saranac Lake, New York.
- Alan Sillitoe
- Edith Södergran (1892–1923) Finnish poet
- Ishikawa Takuboku
- Anton Hansen Tammsaare (1878–1940), Estonian writer; suffered from tuberculosis after 1911.
- Dylan Thomas
- Francis Thompson
- Henry David Thoreau
- Voltaire
- Lesya Ukrainka
- Chick Webb
- Jessamyn West, American author, contracted TB in 1932 and recovered.
- Thomas Wolfe (1900–1938), American author, died of tuberculosis of the brain. His 1929 novel, Look Homeward, Angel, makes several references to the problem of consumption, though Wolfe's condition appeared rather suddenly in 1937.
- Jiří Wolker
- Sukanta Bhattacharya, Bengali poet
Read more about this topic: List Of Tuberculosis Cases
Famous quotes containing the words writers and/or poets:
“... writers do not find subjects: subjects find them. There is not so much a search as a state of open susceptibility.”
—Elizabeth Bowen (1899–1973)
“There had been a time on earth when poets had been young and dead and famous—and were men. But now the poet as the tragic child of grandeur and destiny had changed. The child of genius was a woman, now, and the man was gone.”
—Thomas Wolfe (1900–1938)