Here is a selected list of notable English, Irish and Scottish Catholic writers from the Reformation to the present day. Some of these writers were born into Catholicism and remained Catholic throughout their lives and careers; others converted to Catholicism later in life, while others still rejected Catholicism. In the case of the latter, where they have been included, Catholicism played a significant role in their work (hence their inclusion on this list).
If you would like to propose a writer for inclusion on (or omission from) this list, please contact us here.
Thomas More (1478-1535)
John Heywood (1497-1580)
Edmund Plowden (1518-1585)
Ninian Winzet (1518-1592)
John Lesley (1527-1596)
William Allen (1532-1594)
Jane Lumley (1537-1578)
Edmund Campion (1540-1581)
Richard Verstegan (1550-1640)
Henry Granet (1555-1606)
Robert Southwell (1561-1595)
Antony Copley (1567-1609)
John Donne (1572-1631)
Ben Johnson (1572-1637)
Henry Adamson (1581-1637)
James Shirley (1596-1666)
Jane Owen (birthdate unknown; died 1625-1634)
Gertrude More (1606-1633)
Richard Crashaw (1613-1649)
Cornelius MacCurtain (1658-1737)
Thomas Innes (1662-1774)
Alexander Pope (1688-1744)
Thomas Moore (1779-1852)
John Dalberg Acton (1834-1902)
Gerard Manley Hopkins (1844-1889)
George Moore (1852-1933)
Oscar Wilde (1854-1900)
Arthur Conan Doyle (1859-1930)
Allan MacDonald (1859-1905)
Richard Dehan (Nom de plume of Clotilde Graves, 1863-1962)
Wyndham Lewis (1882-1957)
GK Chesteron (1874-1936)
Radclyffe Hall (1880-1943)
Ronald Firbank (1886-1926)
Siegfried Sassoon (1886-1967)
Hope Mirlees (1887-1978)
Edith Sitwell (1887-1964)
Ronald Knox (1888-1957)
C. K. Scott Moncrieff (1889-1930)
Antonia White (1889-1980)
Bruce Marshall (1899-1987)
J R R Tolkien (1892-1973)
Frank O’Connor (1903-1966)
Evelyn Waugh (1903-1966)
Graham Greene (1904-1991)
Patrick Kavanagh (1904-1967)
Brian Coffey (1905-1995)
Rumor Godden (1907-1988)
Flann O’Brien (1911-1966)
Antony Burgess (1917-1993)
Muriel Spark (1918-2006)
Meriol Trevor (1919-2000)
George Mackay Brown (1921-1996)
Brendan Behan (1923-1964)
Elizabeth Jennings (1926-2001)
Brian Friel (1929-2015)
Edna O’Brien (1930- )
Antonia Fraser (1932- )
John McGahern (1934-2006)
David Lodge (1935- )
Seamus Heaney (1939-2013)
Colm Toibin (1955- )
Sebastian Barry (1955 – )
Michael Symmons Roberts (1963- )
Andrew O’Hagan (1968- )
New Approaches to Catholicism and Literature in 21st Century Scotland 