Yip Harburg said, "Perhaps my first great literary idol was W. S. Gilbert.

When he was 14 Oscar Wilde had become his literary idol.

But it was his novels that became classics of the American counterculture, making him a literary idol, particularly to students in the 1960s and 70s.

The first painting donated in 1856 to the new National Portrait Gallery here was of William Shakespeare, already well enshrined as the nation's literary idol.

Traveling abroad with college friends, he finds that Europe is a film they star in, at large in a crowd of literary idols of the past.

Kelland was the "literary idol" of the teenaged John O'Hara.

He also met one of his literary idols, Walt Whitman.

We revere him as a literary idol, and I wanted to hear him talk about books.

Given another go at promoting "Six Degrees," Ms. Hurt said, "It has something for everyone - a literary idol and a pop idol."

In 1987, Carver wrote "Errand," a story about the death of Chekhov, his literary idol.