Famous Writers And Artists Who Were Terrible Humans, Ranked

cosmicboxer
Updated May 23, 2024 123.0K views 18 items
Ranked By
10.4K votes
2.2K voters
Voting Rules

Vote up the talented creatives that just suck as humans

What makes a great artist or writer? Is it solely their great work that we should acknowledge? What if they were actually bad people - should that affect our criticism of their work and contributions to art or literature? Many people argue that we need the separate the bad person from the great artist, as the two are in distinct categories. But sometimes the bad nature of a person seeps into their work, influencing the overall narrative to reflect them.

Take H.P. Lovecraft for example: his virulent racism was seeped into his work and made it a challenging read for many people who were offended by his slurs and attacks on other races. Is it right to support these artists by buying their work and giving them money for their prejudice? What if some people use that money to directly spread this bigotry, in a Chik-fil-A type of scenario. Regardless of your view point on the subject, we can all agree that finding out your favorite author was a bigot is less than exciting.

Unfortunately though, like everyone else, they are people too, with flaws of their own. Sometimes those flaws are inexcusable, or even run contradictory to the very morals their works preach. The artists and writers below all led less than perfect lives and find themselves among the many artists and writers who were bad people throughout history.
  • Anne Perry
    1
    1,107 VOTES

    Anne Perry

     

    Who she is: A crime novelist who participated in the murder of a friend's mother. 

    The story: Anne Perry is one of the bestselling crime novelists in the world, most notably famous for her Thomas Pitt and William Monk novels. What makes Perry quite unusual is that, unlike other writers who were bad people, her crime was committed at a young age.

    When she was a teenager, Perry, known as Juliet Hulme at the time, and Pauline Parker were best friends to an obsessive degree, creating fantasy worlds together and keeping in close contact. At the time, Hulme's mother was going through the process of divorcing her husband and moving to South Africa with relatives. Not wanting to separate from each other, Perry and Parker decided to murder Parker's mother, HonorahParker, whom they perceived as a threat to their plan to move together. While walking together on a path, they distracted her with a dropped jewel, then beat Honoroah with a brick, ultimately killing her. They both serviced five years in prison, and never spoke to each other after that. Hulme then changed her name to Anne Perry and became a crime novelist.

    The story was made into the film Heavenly Creatures (directed by Peter Jackson) and detailed in a biography, Anne Perry and the Murder of the Century.

    • Age: 85
    • Birthplace: London, United Kingdom
    1,107 votes
    More Anne PerryRight Arrow
  • William Golding
    2
    826 VOTES

    William Golding

     

    Who he was: Author of Lord of the Flies and attempted rapist.

    The story: William Golding is best known for writing Lord of the Flies, a groundbreaking novel about children fighting to the death on an island, which won him the Nobel Prize in 1954. But few people know about the darkness so integral to his work

    The unpublished memoir Men and Women (which Golding wrote for his wife) details his attempted rape of a 15-year-old girl named Dora. For years this information was locked away, until John Carey, a professor at Oxford, gained access to private unpublished journals from Golding's collections. Golding was an adult at the time, away on holiday at Oxford. The memoir quotes Golding's journals, indicating that his lusting began with his observation of her being, "already sexy as an ape." After being sure that she "wanted heavy sex," Golding tried to advance on her. Being fought off, the two didn't meet again until two years later. As if nothing had ever happened they proceeded to have sex in a field, and Golding got off scot-free, going on to publish his most notable work.

    • Age: Dec. at 81 (1911-1993)
    • Birthplace: St Columb Minor, United Kingdom
    826 votes
    More William GoldingRight Arrow
  • William S. Burroughs
    3
    716 VOTES

    William S. Burroughs

     

    Who he was: Beat Generation writer who killed his wife.

    The story: Emerging in the aftermath of World War II, the Beat Generation was made up of writers who sought to reject narrative conventions, question government authority, materialism, sex, and the human experience. The most famous of these artists were Allen Ginsberg ("Howl"), Jack Kerouac (On the Road), and William S. Burroughs. All three met in New York in 1943 and influenced each other, kickstarting a new style of thinking in literature. Burroughs experimented with autobiographical interpretations of a post-World War II era, drawing from the cracks and crevices of his heroin-addled life. However, the biggest tragedy he faced didn't come in the form of a needle, but a rifle. 

    In 1951, while on vacation in Mexico, Burroughs was drunk at a party with his wife (fellow Beat writer, Joan Vollmer), when they decided the play a shooting game. Burroughs pulled out a handgun and tried to hit a glass cup on his wife’s head, but shot too low and killed her instantly. Incredulously, he only spent 13 days in jail and was charged with manslaughter.

    • Age: Dec. at 83 (1914-1997)
    • Birthplace: St. Louis, Missouri
    716 votes
    More William S. BurroughsRight Arrow
  • Enid Blyton
    4
    539 VOTES

    Enid Blyton

     

    Who she was: Children's book author and terrible mother.

    The story: Enid Blyton the writer is adored worldwide and known for her wonderfully evocative and imaginative children’s books such as The Magic Faraway Tree and The Enchanted Wood. So you’d think Enid Blyton the person and mother would be pretty good with children, right? You'd be wrong. It turns out she was actually a pretty terrible mother, neglecting her own daughters and using them as props to show off to her advantage. 

    In 1989, her daughter Imogen wrote a memoir called A Child at Green Hodges, which detailed all of her horrible childhood memories, citing that her mother never visited the nursery where she and her sister were kept, and spent most of her time in her own devised worlds. She attributes this indifference to Blyton's own terrible relationship with her mother and father, who went through a divorce.

    The story was later adapted into a TV movie starring Helena Bonham Carter, called Blyton.

    • Age: Dec. at 71 (1897-1968)
    • Birthplace: East Dulwich, London, United Kingdom
    539 votes
    More Enid BlytonRight Arrow
  • Patricia Highsmith
    5
    539 VOTES

    Patricia Highsmith

     

    Who she was: Crime novelist and racist.

    The story: Patricia Highsmith captivated the world with her psychological thriller novels that bridged the twisting dissections of the minds of her mentally disturbed characters and an audience hungry for more. But she was also very much human, besot with some of the worst qualities a person could have. In fairness, she also had a horrible childhood. Her mother had tried to abort her by drinking turpentine while she was pregnant, forever creating a rift between the two.

    The author was an alcoholic and had troubling intimacy issues, preferring the company of animals to that of people. When she did hang out with others, it was often to their own displeasure. "She was a mean, hard, cruel, unlovable, unloving person," Otto Penzler, an acquaintance, once said of her.

    And then there was her racism. Gathered from her deeply personal journals, she said that the Holocaust was a semicaust, because it had only succeeded halfway in eliminating Jews. She also hid no disdain for pretty much every race that wasn't white, frequently mocking them in her writings.

    • Age: Dec. at 74 (1921-1995)
    • Birthplace: Fort Worth, Texas
    539 votes
    More Patricia HighsmithRight Arrow
  • Norman Mailer
    6
    465 VOTES

    Norman Mailer

     

    Who he was: Pioneer of creative nonfiction who almost killed his wife.

    The story: Widely regarded as one of the great American writers of the 20th century, Mailer was as violent as he was brilliant. In 1960, while drunk at a party with his wife, Adele, she began to berate him. He reacted by pulling out his penknife, stabbing her, and giving her two wounds in the chest. She was rushed to the hospital and nearly died. Mailer was sent to jail.

    Later on, many writers and some of Mailer's friends defended the stabbing, saying that Adele started it, while others, such as James Baldwin, went so far as to call it an awakening of his talent. The act didn't stop there, and went on to color Mailer's life. In 1969 he ran for the mayor of New York City, but was unsuccessful, as his own personal history had made him an unpopular candidate. Later in life, Mailer himself said he was regretful of his bad action to his wife, "It is the one act I can look back on and regret for the rest of my life."

    • Age: Dec. at 84 (1923-2007)
    • Birthplace: Long Branch, New Jersey
    465 votes
    More Norman MailerRight Arrow
  • Ezra Pound
    7
    438 VOTES

    Ezra Pound

    Who he was: Modernist poet and anti-Semite.

    The story: Ezra Pound belonged to the group of poets called the Imagists, which focused on deconstructing a particular image to reveal its true nature and essence. While his poetry remains highly influential, arguably his greatest achievement was in financing some of the greatest writers of the 20th century, such as T.S. Eliot, Ernest Hemingway, James Joyce, and Robert Frost. Pound maintained a reputation for his own skills as a poet, his most famous poem being "In a Station of the Metro," which bears his trademarks of conciseness and image isolation. But where Pound was sparse, yet dense, in his ability to say so much with so little, his racist outbursts were the exact opposite: loaded, long, and shockingly forthright. 
     
    In 1940, Pound did a series of radio broadcasts blaming the Jews for being financiers of the war, “About Jew-ruined England. About the wreckage of France, wrecked under yid control. Lousy with kikes.” If that wasn’t enough, his own work even shared his racist views. His Italian Cantos were basically Fascist propaganda and anti-semitic diatribes, so much so that the poet’s work is banned from the Cathedral of St. John in New York.

    • Age: Dec. at 87 (1885-1972)
    • Birthplace: Hailey, Idaho
    438 votes
    More Ezra PoundRight Arrow
  • Virginia Woolf
    8
    480 VOTES

    Virginia Woolf

     

    Who she was: Modernist writer, classist, and anti-Semite.

    The story: Virginia Woolf is considered one of the greatest authors of the 20th century. A major figure of the Modernist period, she wrote a multitude of novels and essays dealing with various matters.

    So how does someone so socially aware fall into the conventional thinking pitfalls of anti-semitism, as expressed so ardently by Woolf herself in a diary entry, saying she didn't like her mother-in-law's Jewish voice or Jewish laugh? Partly, the time period in which Woolf lived can be blamed for her prejudice. But what is most interesting is that her husband, Leonard Woolf, was Jewish and she seemed to hold opposing views, praising her husband's Jewish vitality, all the while exhibiting negative reinforced stereotypes of Jews, calling him a “penniless Jew” on the same hand.

    • Age: Dec. at 59 (1882-1941)
    • Birthplace: London, United Kingdom
    480 votes
    More Virginia WoolfRight Arrow
  • Orson Scott Card
    9
    526 VOTES

    Orson Scott Card

     

    Who he is: Author of the Ender’s Game book series and homophobe.

    The story: Ender's Game, a story about a boy genius military tactician who saves the last vestiges of humanity from an alien attack, is a science fiction classic. Its author, Orson Scott Card, is one of the most successful science fiction writers in modern times. He’s won every major fantasy award and has impacted the genre immensely. He is also homophobic.

    Card has written countless pieces on what he calls “the gay agenda” and even argues that sodomy laws should still be in effect. Card was raised a staunch Mormon and gets his views from his conservative religious upbringing. It doesn’t help that these extremist views sometimes bleed into his fiction writing, as is the case with Ender in Exile, which features snippets of blatant homophobia.

    To top it all off, back in 2013, Card wrote a column comparing Obama to Hitler, basically calling the US President a dictator who rose to power with his "urban gangs."

    • Age: 72
    • Birthplace: Richland, Washington
    526 votes
    More Orson Scott CardRight Arrow
  • Charles Dickens
    10
    536 VOTES

    Charles Dickens

    Who he was: Victorian author and terrible husband.

    The story:  Although he never got past primary school, leaving when his father was imprisoned for debt, Charles Dickens wrote some of the most enduring and endearing fiction of all time, packed to the brim with social commentary that still has bite to this day. But Dickens's own eye into internal strife could not see very well into the murky turmoil of his own marriage.

    He married Catherine Hogarth in 1838 and had 10 children with her. This apparently wasn't good enough for him and he went on to have an affair with an 18-year-old actress, Ellen Ternan. His wife became aware of this when a gift for Ternan was mis-delivered to the married couple's house instead. A few days later they divorced. He then went on to publicly shame her in writing, calling her mentally disturbed and malicious.
    • Age: Dec. at 58 (1812-1870)
    • Birthplace: Portsmouth, United Kingdom
    536 votes
    More Charles DickensRight Arrow
  • V.S. Naipaul
    11
    352 VOTES

    V.S. Naipaul

     

    Who he is: Nobel laureate in literature and misogynist.

    The story: V.S Naipaul is considered one of the greatest writers of English alive today. In 2001 he won the Nobel Prize in literature and has since been cemented into the canon of literary greats, known for his groundbreaking novels such as A House for Mr. Biswas and A Bend in the River, which chronicles his life growing up in Trinidad.

    In an interview at the Royal Geographic Society in 2011, he said, “I read a piece of writing and within a paragraph or two I know whether it is by a woman or not. I think [it is] unequal to me... and inevitably for a woman, she is not a complete master of a house, so that comes over in her writing too." As well, the author called out Jane Austen, saying her work was sentimental.

    • Age: 91
    • Birthplace: Chaguanas, Trinidad and Tobago
    352 votes
    More V.S. NaipaulRight Arrow
  • Michelangelo
    12
    396 VOTES

    Michelangelo

     

    Who he was: Italian renaissance painter and arrogant jerk.

    The story: If Leonardo da Vinci set the mold for the ideal Renaissance man, Michelangelo perfected it. During his lifetime, the artist made innumerable contributions to nearly every form of the visual arts, such as painting, sculpting, and architecture. But what's even stranger about him is that his most famous work, the Sistine Chapel Ceiling, was in a medium he hated: painting. Michelangelo much preferred to sculpt, considering all other media inferior and lacking in depth and vitality.

    His contentiousness didn't stop at his art, bleeding into his personal life as well. Characterized as “stingy and friendless” by his brother, he had a high opinion of himself, as well as intense jealousy, which manifested in a long-running feud with fellow artist Leonardo da Vinci. In the 1560s both artists, Michelangelo and da Vinci, were commissioned to repainted the ruined Council Hall of the Palazzo Vecchio. The problem was that they were both commissioned to paint on the same wall. According to documents, Michelangelo harassed da Vinci so much that the artist was eventually driven back to France, just to avoid the wrath of his jealousy, never finishing the painting in question.

    • Age: Dec. at 88 (1475-1564)
    • Birthplace: Milan, D
    396 votes
    More MichelangeloRight Arrow
  • Caravaggio
    13
    337 VOTES

    Caravaggio

    Who he was: Renaissance painter and pimp murderer.

    The story: Caravaggio was was one of the greatest and most influential of the Italian Renaissance painters of the 17th century, known for his masterpieces such as the painting "Bacchus" and "The Calling of St. Matthew." He pioneered a technique called chiaroscuro, which is the deft interplay of light and shadow in art, mimicked by future artists, including filmmakers, and revolutionizing the way we capture lighting in almost every visual art. Being a celebrity in the art world is sure to give anyone a huge ego, which often got him into trouble - like the time he murdered a pimp.

    In 1606, Caravaggio defended his honor by killing Ranuccio Tomassoni, the pimp of Fillide Melandroni, a prostitute with whom Caravaggio was in love. In 17th century Italian tradition, whenever a man's woman is insulted, he cuts off the offender's genitalia in a duel, a tradition Caravaggio aggressively upheld. Originally, scholars thought Caravaggio had attacked Tomassoni because of a tennis game, and another theory held that he was homosexual (because of his magnitude of nude male drawings), but both theories were discredited upon new findings, casting Caravaggio in a new light.

    • Age: Dec. at 38 (1571-1610)
    • Birthplace: Milan, Italy
    337 votes
    More CaravaggioRight Arrow
  • Dr. Seuss
    14
    458 VOTES

    Dr. Seuss

     

    Who he was: Cartoonist and racist.

    The story: Dr. Seuss is arguably the most famous children's book author of all time, but he did not receive immediate success, being rejected by 46 publishers. Then, one night as he was walking home to burn his story, he met up with an old friend from Dartmouth, who published the story and set off  Dr.Seuss's career.

    Shortly after, World War II started, Dr. Seuss took up arms in fighting the good fight as a political cartoonist, as well as taking up racism. Negative stereotypes about the Japanese existed before the bombing of Pearl Harbor, but intensified afterwards. It also didn't help that propaganda, much like what Dr. Seuss drew, also confirmed everyone's worst fears.

    Later on, Dr. Seuss himself said he regretted the drawings and went on to writing books that fought the very prejudice he was indoctrinated in, such as The Sneetches, about racism, and Yertle the Turtle, about Nazi Germany.

    • Age: Dec. at 87 (1904-1991)
    • Birthplace: Springfield, Massachusetts
    458 votes
    More Dr. SeussRight Arrow
  • Flannery O'Connor
    15
    326 VOTES

    Flannery O'Connor

    Who she was: Southern gothic writer and racist.

    The story: Flannery O’Connor differs from other writers who were also guilty of racism. While her counterparts were indeed products of their time, O'Connery’s work was above it, criticizing racism as well as the South for its role in systematic discrimination. She wrote with a conviction and complexity that belied simplicity in being readable to everyone, painting a haunting portrait of Southern life. Even more impressive, she managed to do all of her writing while living with the debilitating disease lupus.

    Surprisingly, she wasn’t much better than the same people she criticized. In a biography by Brad Gooch called A Life of Flannery O’ Connor, he reveals that she often made tasteless racist jokes and belittled a friend who was a Civil Rights Activist.

    • Age: Dec. at 39 (1925-1964)
    • Birthplace: Savannah, Georgia
    326 votes
  • T.S. Eliot
    16
    327 VOTES

    T.S. Eliot

     

    Who he was: Modernist poet and anti-Semite.

    The story: Few writers have combined scientific advances and creative writing in a way that advances our understanding of both. T.S. Eliot was one such writer. But something darker, and more twisted, lay hidden in his early works.

    A close-reading of his poem “Gerontion” reveals all sorts of subtle anti-semitic remarks, like the slumlord stereotype of Jews in these lines, “My house is a decayed house, / And the jew squats on the window sill, the owner.” Claiming that T.S. Eliot might have been anti-semitic is almost paramount to academic treason. Even today, many people are quick to defend the poet and say that any hints of anti-Jewish sentiments are the product of a misreading, as Anthony Julius, author of T.S. Eliot, Anti-Semitism and Literary Form,  points out in his book.

    • Age: Dec. at 76 (1888-1965)
    • Birthplace: St. Louis, Missouri
    327 votes
    More T. S. EliotRight Arrow
  • Frank Miller
    17
    402 VOTES

    Frank Miller

    Who he is: Comic book artist and misogynist.

    The story: Frank Miller is considered one of the greatest comic book artists of all time. His works have transitioned a medium once considered childish into a full fledged art form, with such titles as Sin City and The Dark Knight Returns, captivating millions of readers. Unfortunately, controversy has also followed Miller throughout his career and he has been called out over his portrayal of his unsavory portrayal of women.

    In The Dark Knight Returns as well as Batman: Year One, Catwoman goes from a savvy thief to a prostitute who gets beaten up by men. In Sin City, nearly all of the female characters were written to be sexual objects for men, and his portrayal of Wonder Woman is nothing pretty either.
     
    But what is probably the most blatant of all his prejudiced works, is his graphic novel Holy Terror. It features a white superhero who takes down Muslim terrorists in New York, which was largely received as an anti-Islam propaganda piece.

    • Age: 67
    • Birthplace: Olney, Maryland
    402 votes
    More Frank MillerRight Arrow
  • H. P. Lovecraft
    18
    328 VOTES

    H. P. Lovecraft

    Who he was: Horror writer and racist.

    The story: How indebted is the horror genre to stories such as The Call of Cthulhu and The Mountains of Madness? Pretty much any story dealing with the unknown has ripped off Lovecraft to some extent. If you've ever played the Fallout video game series or watched an Alien movie, you know they pay massive tribute to the undisputed king of the macabre and the greatest horror writer of all time. His influence stretches widely, from Stephen King to Ridley Scott.

    Lovecraft began writing at an early age, preferring to be alone with his own thoughts rather than communicate with his schoolmates. Considered an anxious and sickly boy, he spent more time reading and writing than in school, ultimately having a nervous breakdown and never finishing. Many years afterwards he became inward and reclusive, writing the horror stories that would personify the fear he harbored so intensely.

    Part of what makes his writing of the unknown so convincing, is that he struggled with the unknown in his own life. He had an intense dislike of anyone not Anglo-Saxon and frequently used racial slurs and stereotypes in his writing, making it hard to enjoy much of his work.
    • Age: Dec. at 46 (1890-1937)
    • Birthplace: Providence, Rhode Island
    328 votes
    More H. P. LovecraftRight Arrow