Prospective authors, take note: The list of literary legends who didn’t attend college for one reason or another includes Ernest Hemingway, Mark Twain, Walt Whitman, Edith Wharton, Truman Capote, Ray Bradbury, Raymond Carver, Raymond Chandler, Dorothy Parker, Maya Angelou, William Saroyan, John Cheever, Sherwood Anderson, and Louis L’Amour. And the likes of Edgar Allen Poe, Jack London, J.D. Salinger, and Henry Miller made only fleeting attempts at the university experience.
But before you decide to give the heave-ho to higher education, you might be interested to learn that these folks went to Harvard: Henry David Thoreau, Ralph Waldo Emerson, T.S. Eliot, Robert Frost, John Updike, Horatio Alger, Gertrude Stein, Norman Mailer, William S. Burroughs, John Dos Passos, George Plimpton, Michael Crichton, Peter Benchley, and Eric Segal.
Every year, the U.S. News & World Report puts out a ranking of American colleges and universities—based on all sorts of criteria. But I wondered: How would we rank the way they’ve churned out celebrated writers?
So I came up with a list of 128 American authors, poets, and playwrights—from Pulitzer winners to super-bestsellers, from 19th century transcendentalists to 21st century “Oprah” faves. Did I miss some good ones? Undoubtedly. But the list is as varied as this dozen: Nathaniel Hawthorne, Stephen Crane, Langston Hughes, Toni Morrison, S.E. Hinton, James Michener, John Irving, Thomas Pynchon, Dave Eggers, Garrison Keillor, Daniel Steel, and R.L. Stine. Or if you prefer, the list included the authors of everything from Slaughterhouse-Five to Seabiscuit to Superfudge.
I slotted them by undergraduate degrees (including those who made a decent stab at getting a degree if not quite finishing the deal—guys like Frost at Harvard, John Steinbeck at Stanford, and Cormac McCarthy at Tennessee). Then I ranked the schools—first by quantity, then by legacy (or, to be honest, personal preference). Essentially, there’s a massive tie for 20th place, but I kept ranking them to the end.
The results suggest two obvious conclusions. One is that Harvard and Columbia have damn impressive literary pedigrees. The other is that the rest of America’s greatest writers drew on a remarkably diverse education. Here’s the list:
1. Harvard University
Henry David Thoreau, Ralph Waldo Emerson, T.S. Eliot, Robert Frost, John Updike, Horatio Alger, Gertrude Stein, Norman Mailer, William S. Burroughs, John Dos Passos, George Plimpton, Michael Crichton, Peter Benchley, Eric Segal
2. Columbia University
Langston Hughes, Zora Neale Hurston, Joseph Heller, Allen Ginsberg, Jack Kerouac, Herman Wouk, Carson McCullers, Paul Auster, Isaac Asimov, William Goldman
3. Princeton University
F. Scott Fitzgerald, Philip Roth, John McPhee, Jodi Picoult
4. Yale University
Robert Penn Warren, Eugene O’Neill, Thornton Wilder, Sinclair Lewis
5. University of Cal-Berkeley
Philip K. Dick, Terry McMillan, Beverly Cleary, Irving Stone
6. Cornell University
E.B. White, Kurt Vonnegut, Thomas Pynchon
7. Northwestern University
Saul Bellow, Sidney Sheldon, George R.R. Martin
8. City College of New York
Upton Sinclair, Bernard Malamud, Mario Puzo
9. Smith College
Sylvia Plath, Margaret Mitchell, Ann M. Martin
10. Rutgers University
Robert Pinsky, Junot Diaz, Janet Evanovich
11. Bowdoin College
Henry Wadsworth Longfellow, Nathaniel Hawthorne
12. Washington and Lee University
Tom Wolfe, Tom Robbins
13. Swarthmore College
James Michener, Jonathan Franzen
14. Sarah Lawrence College
Alice Walker, Ann Patchett
15. Duke University
William Styron, Anne Tyler
16. New York University
Judy Blume, Danielle Steel
17. Amherst College
Dan Brown, Scott Turow
18. Wesleyan University
Robert Ludlum, Robin Cook
19. University of Kansas
Sara Paretsky, Rex Stout
20. Huntingdon College
Harper Lee
21. Dartmouth College
Theodore Geisel
22. Stanford University
John Steinbeck
23. University of Mississippi
William Faulkner
24. University of New Hampshire
John Irving
25. University of Maine
Stephen King
26. Georgia College and State University
Flannery O’Connor
27. Mississippi University for Women
Eudora Welty
28. University of Utah
Wallace Stegner
29. University of Pittsburgh
Michael Chabon
30. Hampshire College
Jon Krakauer
31. University of Missouri
William Least Heat-Moon
32. University of Nebraska
Willa Cather
33. U.S. Naval Academy
Robert Heinlein
34. University of Arizona
Richard Russo
35. DePauw University
Barbara Kingsolver
36. Tulane University
John Kennedy Toole
37. University of New Mexico
Edward Abbey
38. University of Michigan
Arthur Miller
39. University of Tennessee
Cormac McCarthy
40. University of Texas
Rick Riordan
41. University of Tulsa
S.E. Hinton
42. Tuskegee University
Ralph Ellison
43. Howard University
Toni Morrison
44. University of Illinois
Dave Eggers
45. Mississippi State University
John Grisham
46. University of Minnesota-Twin Cities
Garrison Keillor
47. Haverford College
Dave Barry
48. University of Iowa
Tennessee Williams
49. University of Oregon
Ken Kesey
50. Fordham University
Don DeLillo
51. Michigan State University
Richard Ford
52. Syracuse University
Joyce Carol Oates
53. University of Vermont
Annie Proulx
54. Randolph-Macon Women’s College
Pearl Buck
55. The Citadel
Pat Conroy
56. San Jose State University
Amy Tan
57. University of Detroit Mercy
Elmore Leonard
58. Bradley University
Charles Bukowski
59. University of Notre Dame
Nicholas Sparks
60. Kenyon College
E.L. Doctorow
61. Loyola University-Maryland
Tom Clancy
62. Vassar College
Jane Smiley
63. Manhattan College
James Patterson
64. Ohio State University
RL Stine
65. Davidson College
Patricia Cornwell
66. University of Connecticut
Wally Lamb
67. Kenyon College
Laura Hillenbrand
68. University of Alabama
Winston Groom
69. Hofstra University
Nelson Demille
70. University of Pennsylvania
Zane Grey
71. UCLA
Jonathan Kellerman
72. Claverack College
Stephen Crane
73. Shippensburg University
Dean Koontz
74. Indiana University
Suzanne Collins
75. University of Louisville
Sue Grafton
76. Brandeis University
Mitch Albom
77. University of North Texas
Anne Rice
78. Brigham Young University
Stephenie Meyer
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