Today In Literature

[Scheherazade]

On this day in 1928 Sylvia Beach hosted a dinner party in order that F. Scott Fitzgerald, who "worshipped James Joyce, but was afraid to approach him," might do so. In her Shakespeare and Company memoir Beach delicately avoids describing what happened, although she perhaps suggests an explanation: "Poor Scott was earning so much from his books that he and Zelda had to drink a great deal of champagne in Montmartre in an effort to get rid of it." According to Herbert Gorman, another guest and Joyce's first biographer, Fitzgerald sank down on one knee before Joyce, kissed his hand, and declared: "How does it feel to be a great genius, Sir? I am so excited at seeing you, Sir, that I could weep." As the evening progressed, Fitzgerald "enlarged upon Nora Joyce's beauty, and, finally, darted through an open window to the stone balcony outside, jumped on to the eighteen-inch-wide parapet and threatened to fling himself to the cobbled thoroughfare below unless Nora declared that she loved him."

MORE (http://www.todayinliterature.com/today.asp?Search_Date=6/27/2006)

[cruciverbalist]

June 28

Henry James on War and Empire

On this day in 1915 Henry James wrote to the British Prime Minister, Herbert Asquith, to inform him of a "desire to offer myself for naturalisation in this country." James was 72 years old, and 40 years a resident in England; this grand gesture in the early days of WWI was his way of "throwing into the scale of [England's] fortune my all but imponderable moral weight -- 'a poor thing but mine own.''"
More (http://www.todayinliterature.com/today.asp?Search_Date=6/28/2006)

[cruciverbalist]

June 29

As The Globe Burns

On this day in 1613 The Globe playhouse, of which Shakespeare was part-owner, burned down, the fire ignited by cannon sparks during a performance of Shakespeare's Henry the Eighth. Today's Globe was reconstructed 200 yards from the 1613 Globe, and is as close in design and materials as scholars and building codes could manage — though some want it re-reconstructed based on new research.
More (http://www.todayinliterature.com/today.asp?Search_Date=6/29/2006)

[cruciverbalist]

July 3

The Kafkas in Prague

On this day in 1883, Franz Kafka was born in Prague. Few writers have been so closely linked to their home and city, or made so much from it, as Kafka. But for the months spent in sanitariums and a half-year with a girlfriend, and despite the psychological torture it inflicted, he lived at home with his parents all his life.
More (http://www.todayinliterature.com/today.asp?Search_Date=7/3/2006)

[cruciverbalist]

July 5

"Let not my body be hacked...."

On this day in 1824, Byron's body arrived in London, returned home for burial from Missolonghi, Greece. Though his last days were confused and feverish. Byron was clear on several points: "Let not my body be hacked, or be sent to England. . . . Lay me in the first corner without pomp or nonsense." Neither hacking, nor shipping, nor pomp and nonsense proved escapable.
More (http://todayinliterature.com/today.asp?Search_Date=7/5/2006)

[Whifflingpin]

July 8th

Born, in 1621, Jean de la Fontaine - French poet and author of fables.

Died, in 1797, Edmund Burke - statesman and orator and author of, inter alia, "Reflections on the Revolution in France."

.

[Shakira]

Pablo Neruda's Chile

On this day in 1904, Pablo Neruda was born in Parral, Chile, as Neftali Ricardo Reyes Basoalto. The headmistress of his hometown high school was Gabriela Mistral, Chile's other Nobel winner; when he was sixteen years old, Neruda knocked on her door, handed over his poems, and returned three hours later to receive her judgment that he was "indeed a true poet."

[cruciverbalist]

Wordsworth at Tintern Abbey

On this day in 1798 William Wordsworth finished writing "Lines Composed a Few Miles Above Tintern Abbey," the poem being worked out in his head during a four-day walking tour of the Wye region, using his usual singsong, "booing and hawing" method. Delivered to the printers the next day, the poem would become the second most famous one in Lyrical Ballads, next to Coleridge's "The Rime of the Ancient Mariner."
Full Story (http://todayinliterature.com/today.asp?Search_Date=7/13/2006)

[Whifflingpin]

July 18th

Today in 1374, at Arqua near Padua, died Petrarch, poet.

[Scheherazade]

On this day in 1817, Jane Austen died, at the age of forty-one. She had been increasingly ill over the previous year and a half, probably from a hormonal disorder like Addison's Disease. Austen's devoted older sister, Cassandra, inherited all the author's papers, and she immediately began to edit and polish. Austen's gravestone referred to "the benevolence of her heart" and "the sweetness of her temper" -- though it did not identify her as being the author of her anonymously-published novels -- and Cassandra began to expurgate the letters accordingly.

MORE (http://www.todayinliterature.com/stories.asp?Event_Date=7/18/1817)


July 20th

On this day in 1869 Mark Twain's The Innocents Abroad was published. This was his second book -- after The Celebrated Jumping Frog of Calaveras County, and Other Sketches in 1865 -- and the most popular one in his lifetime. It was a distillation of the newspaper articles Twain had written during his trip to Europe and the Holy Land in 1867. Though promoted as "the Most Unique and Spicy Volume in Existence" by the men who knocked on doors for Twain's subscription-only publisher, Twain said he regarded his remix as God regarded the world: "The fact is, there is a trifle too much water in both." Nonetheless, Twain springboarded to fame on the lecture circuit, where for "$100 a pop" he would add as much spice as he dared to the talk he had "smouched" from the book he had distilled from the articles:

MORE (http://www.todayinliterature.com/stories.asp?Event_Date=7/20/1869)

[Jay]

July 21
On this day in 1796 Robert Burns died in Dumfries, Scotland, at the age of thirty-seven. This was a decade, almost to the day, of the publication of Poems, Chiefly in the Scottish Dialect (Kilmarnock edition), the collection which caused Burns to be as "ploughman poet" in Scotland and then around the world; some friends and early biographers blamed the fame for the death.
more (http://todayinliterature.com/stories.asp?Event_Date=7/21/1796)

July 23
On this day in 1846, Henry David Thoreau was jailed for not paying his poll tax. Thoreau was almost exactly half-way through his Walden stay, and had come to Concord to pick up a shoe at the cobblers; this came to the attention of Sam Staples, tax collector and warden of the county jail, who was under orders from the town fathers to confront and, if necessary, confine this most contrary of its sons.
more (http://todayinliterature.com/stories.asp?Event_Date=7/23/1846)

[Jay]

On this day in 1725 John Newton, the seaman-turned-preacher who wrote the hymn "Amazing Grace," was born. Newton's autobiography (An Authentic Narrative of some Interesting and Remarkable Particulars in the Life of John Newton, 1764) reveals an amazing life, and makes clear how repeatedly lost and found a wretch he was.
more (http://todayinliterature.com/today.asp?Search_Date=7/24/2006)

[Logos]

Poet Samuel Taylor Coleridge died on 25 July, 1834

http://www.online-literature.com/coleridge/

http://www.online-literature.com/authorpics/coleridge.jpg

[cruciverbalist]

Van Gogh's Last Paintings and Letters

On this day in 1890 Vincent Van Gogh shot himself in a wheat field outside Auvers-sur-Oise, in France; he died two days later, at the age of thirty-seven. His last letters are fascinating reading, and full of mixed signals about his mood; one final note to his brother, found on his body, says, "Well, my own work, I am risking my life for it and my reason has half foundered because of it. . . ."
http://www.artofeurope.com/van_gogh/van5.jpg

Full Story (http://www.todayinliterature.com/today.asp?Search_Date=7/27/2006)

[Jay]

On this day in 1655 Hercule Savinien Cyrano de Bergerac died at the age of thirty-six. He was the model for the hero in Edmond Rostand's 1897 hit play, and a writer himself -- several plays, and two science-fantasy novels. The real de Bergerac wasn't the swordsman of legend, but he had a big nose, and a belief that "A large nose is the mark of a witty, courteous, affable, generous, and liberal man."
more (http://todayinliterature.com/stories.asp?Event_Date=7/28/1655)

[RJbibliophil]

June 29


Alexis de Tocqueville, French politician and writer of the classic "Democracy in America" was born in 1805

[Jay]

On this day in 1818, Emily Brontë was born in Thornton, Yorkshire. Most accounts portray Emily as the brightest, most intense, and most difficult of the three sisters -- "not a person of demonstrative character," wrote Charlotte, "nor one, on the recesses of whose mind and feelings, even those nearest and dearest to her could, without impunity, intrude unlicensed."
more (http://todayinliterature.com/today.asp?Search_Date=7/30/2006)

[Whifflingpin]

July 30 1771 - died Thomas Gray, author of "An Elegy wrote in a Country Churchyard"

[cruciverbalist]

William Caxton, Wasted Knights

On this day in 1485, William Caxton printed Sir Thomas Malory's Morte Darthur. England's first printer was more than a printer: in his preface to The Order of Chivalry, a practical book on knight-errantry to go with Malory's Romance, Caxton complains that the knights of his day are altogether too un-Arthurian, spending far too much time at brothels, dice and "taking ease."
Full Story (http://www.todayinliterature.com/today.asp?Search_Date=7/31/2006)

[Jay]

August 01

On this day in 1915 Robert Frost's "The Road Not Taken" was first published in the Atlantic Monthly. This was just as Frost had returned to America from England, to farm and become famous: "There is room for only one person at the top of the steeple," he would say, "and I always meant that person to be me." Later misfortunes would make him feel punished and sorry for his choice.
more (http://todayinliterature.com/stories.asp?Event_Date=8/1/1915)

August 02

On this day in 1740 James Thomson's masque, Alfred the Great was first produced, in an open-air performance before the Prince and Princess of Wales. Amid the lessons on Alfred's greatness and the prophetic visions of future glory were seven songs; one of them, "Rule, Britannia!," was immediately popular, and is still the unofficial national anthem.
more (http://todayinliterature.com/stories.asp?Event_Date=8/2/1740)

[cruciverbalist]

Emma Lazarus, Sylvia Plath, Men

On this day in 1884 the cornerstone was laid for the Statue of Liberty. Among the thousands who helped Joseph Pulitzer raise the money for construction were Whitman and Twain -- each donated manuscripts for auction -- but Emma Lazarus's poem, "The New Colossus," raised more than these literary giants. Decades later, Sylvia Plath would join the giant-killing with her "Colossus."
Full Story (http://www.todayinliterature.com/today.asp?Search_Date=8/5/2006)

[andruwjin]

on this day in 2006 . i got up early than usual .n' i decided to write something to make this day unusual . hehe .

[Jay]

On this day in 1786, twenty-seven-year-old Robert Burns served the last of three public penances for "ante-nuptial fornication" with his eventual wife, Jean Armour. The "fornication police," as Burns called them, allowed the poet to stand in his usual pew, rather than make him sit on the penitential stool -- or, again in Burns parlance, "the Creepie Chair."
more (http://todayinliterature.com/today.asp?Search_Date=8/6/2006)

[cruciverbalist]

Ulysses in America

On this day in 1934, the U.S. Court of Appeals upheld an earlier ruling allowing James Joyce's Ulysses into America. This enabled Random House to issue the first U.S. edition, over a decade after Sylvia Beach's original Paris edition; according to Random House editor Bennett Cerf, the case hinged entirely and hilariously upon one of these smuggled Beach editions.
Full Story (http://www.todayinliterature.com/today.asp?Search_Date=8/7/2006)

[Jay]

On this day in 1965, Shirley Jackson died of heart failure, at the age of forty-eight. For twenty years and from various angles Jackson had built a reputation for quietly ripping the lid off life in Pleasantville; by the end, a tangle of physical and mental ailments made her feel unable to venture out into her own town of Bennington, Vermont.
more (http://todayinliterature.com/today.asp?Search_Date=8/8/2006)

[Jay]

On this day in 1922 Philip Larkin was born. Larkin's mordant tone and accessible verse became so popular in mid-twentieth-century Britain that he was offered the Poet Laureateship shortly before his death in 1985-a position which he characteristically declined. Over the next decade, after his Collected Poems, his Selected Letters and a biography by Andrew Motion (the current Poet Laureate) appeared, some found "the sewer under the national monument Larkin became."
more (http://todayinliterature.com/today.asp?Search_Date=8/9/2006)

[Whifflingpin]

August 9th

On this day in 1631, was born John Dryden, the poet.

On this day in 1593 was born Izaac Walton, author of the Compleat Angler.

[Jay]

On this day in 1637, Edward King, college friend of John Milton, was drowned at sea; three months later, Milton published his commemorative poem, "Lycidas." This is one of the major contributions to the elegiac tradition, giving not only inspiration to Shelley ("Adonais") and Tennyson ("In Memoriam") but a title to Thomas Wolfe's Look Homeward Angel.
more (http://todayinliterature.com/today.asp?Search_Date=8/10/2006)

[Jay]

On this day in 1937, expatriate Edith Wharton died in France, in the quiet, Old World style she liked to live and describe; also on this day in 1937, and in New World contrast, ex-expatriate Ernest Hemingway bared his hairy chest to Max Eastman's unhairy one, demanded "What do you mean accusing me of impotence?" and then wrestled Eastman to the floor.
more (http://todayinliterature.com/today.asp?Search_Date=8/11/2006)

[Jay]

On this day in 1827 William Blake died at the age of sixty-nine. Blake's last years passed more or less as his others: in such poverty and obscurity that his burial in Bunhill Fields was largely unnoticed and on borrowed money -- nineteen shillings for an unmarked grave, the body nine feet down, stacked on top of three others, and eventually followed by four more.
more (http://todayinliterature.com/today.asp?Search_Date=8/12/2006)

[Jay]

On this day in 1923, Ernest Hemingway published his first book, Three Stories and Ten Poems. This was an edition of 300 copies, put out by friend and fellow expatriate, the writer-publisher Robert McAlmon. Both had arrived in Paris in 1921, Hemingway an unpublished 22-year-old with a handful of letters of introduction provided by Sherwood Anderson, and with his own clear imperative: "All you have to do is write one true sentence."
more (http://todayinliterature.com/today.asp?Search_Date=8/13/2006)

[Jay]

On this day in 1834, nineteen-year-old Richard Dana boarded the merchant brig, Pilgrim for the Boston-California return voyage that would become Two Years Before the Mast. His 1840 book, written with a desire to tell in "a voice from the forecastle" of the ordinary seaman's life, was an immediate international hit.
more (http://todayinliterature.com/today.asp?Search_Date=8/14/2006)

[Whifflingpin]

August 20th

On this day in 1591 was born Robert Herrick, poet.

[Jay]

On this day in 1305 Scotland's William Wallace was executed -- to be accurate: hanged, disemboweled, beheaded and quartered. The William Wallace legend and the popularity of the Braveheart movie owe much to a 15th century epic poem by Blind Harry the Minstrel. Robert Burns added to Wallace literature too, though his "Scots Wha Hae" went forth behind cover.
more (http://todayinliterature.com/stories.asp?Event_Date=8/23/1305)

[Whifflingpin]

August 23rd

On this day in 1628, the Duke of Buckingham was assassinated in Portsmouth, providing Alexandre Dumas with a chapter or so in Three Musketeers. I think I'll just nip down to the hostelry opposite to the house where the event took place, and drink a toast to Felton, the assassin.

.

[Whifflingpin]

August 26th

Cannot let this day go past without noting the death in Madrid in 1635 of Lope Felix de la Vega, one of the world's most famous and prolific playwrights.

[Bleave]

Hello I am new to the forum.

[Schokokeks]

Hello I am new to the forum.

Coucou, Bleave ! :wave:

How about telling us more about yourself in the Introductions Forum ? We're looking forward to getting to know and seeing you posting around ! :nod:

[Scheherazade]

On this day in 1885 D. H. Lawrence was born in Eastwood, outside Nottingham, the fourth of five children. Lawrence's autobiographical novel, Sons and Lovers (1913) made famous the tortured conditions of his upbringing: his uneducated father's pit-and-pub life, his mother's contempt for this and her self-sacrifice to escape, Lawrence's own conflicted feelings about all of it.

MORE (http://www.todayinliterature.com/today.asp?Search_Date=9/11/2006)

[Scheherazade]

On this day in 1954 William Golding's first novel, The Lord of the Flies, was published. It was rejected by twenty-one publishers and poorly-reviewed, but by the 60s it was a cult novel and a career-maker. If it confirms Golding's view that "man produces evil as a bee produces honey," it is not the whole story: "I am a universal pessimist but a cosmic optimist," he said in his Nobel Acceptance Speech.

MORE (http://www.todayinliterature.com/today.asp?Search_Date=9/17/2006)

[Jay]

On this day in 1592 Robert Greene's A Groats-Worth of Wit bought with a Million of Repentance, in which appears the first printed reference to Shakespeare, was entered in the Stationers' Register. Greene's caution to his fellow playwrights that Shakespeare is "an upstart Crow, beautified with our feathers," is interpreted as jealousy of a rising star, even a charge of plagiarism.
more (http://todayinliterature.com/today.asp?Search_Date=9/20/2006)

[THX-1138]

Sep 23

John Keats, Autumn
On this day in 1819, twenty-five-year-old John Keats wrote to his friend, Charles Brown, to say that he was giving up poetry for journalism. This is also the first day of autumn; four days earlier in 1819 Keats had written "To Autumn," now one of his most popular poems, and one which many critics regard as "flawless in structure, texture, tone, and rhythm."

[Jay]

On this day in 1991 Theodor Seuss Geisel died, at the age of eighty-seven. Geisel turned to children's books in his late twenties, when his job creating ads for "Flit" insect repellent -- his "Quick, Henry, the Flit!" became a household slogan across America -- left him well-off and bored. The next fifty years brought forty-eight books, three Oscars, two Emmys and a Pulitzer.
more (http://todayinliterature.com/today.asp?Search_Date=9/24/2006)

[Whifflingpin]

October 7th

On this day in 1849 died Edgar Allan Poe.

[Scheherazade]

On this day in 1930 Harold Pinter was born. The famous Pinter pause may have been learned as an only child in Hackney: at the age of eight or nine Pinter and a group of imaginary friends would gather in his back garden, where they "talked aloud and held conversations beyond the lilac tree." He also says he was deeply affected by being a child-evacuee during WWII: "'There was no fixed sense of being ... of being ... at all.'"

MORE (http://www.todayinliterature.com/stories.asp?Event_Date=10/10/1930)

[ennison]

Vonnegut? Brain dead. Vacuum-packed. Switched-off tube.The Reich reaped what it sowed.

[Scheherazade]

On this day in 1896 Anton Chekhov's The Seagull opened in St. Petersburg. This is the first-written of Chekhov's four masterpieces -- Uncle Vanya, Three Sisters and The Cherry Orchard are the others -- and though now regarded as one of the most influential plays in modern drama, its opening night was an infamous flop. During the writing, Chekhov admitted that he was "flagrantly disregarding the basic tenets of the stage," not only for having so much talk and so little action, but for having "started it forte and ended it pianissimo." During rehearsal he had implored the actors and the director to give up the usual bombastic style and give his understatements a chance: "The point is, my friends, there's no use being theatrical. None whatever. The whole thing is very simple. The characters are simple, ordinary people." Convinced of disaster, he nearly withdrew his permission for the production, and then nearly did not attend the opening himself; by Act Two he was hiding backstage from the booing and jeering; at two a.m. he was still walking the streets alone. When he finally returned home, he declared to a friend, "Not if I live to be seven hundred will I write another play."

MORE (http://www.todayinliterature.com/stories.asp?Event_Date=10/18/1896)

[Scheherazade]

On this day in 1940 Ernest Hemingway's For Whom the Bell Tolls was published. It had been over a decade since A Farewell to Arms, and though there had been a handful of books during that time, the critics had not thought much of them. About this one, many agreed with Edmund Wilson: "Hemingway the artist is with us again; and it is like having an old friend back."

MORE (http://www.todayinliterature.com/stories.asp?Event_Date=10/21/1940)

[cuppajoe_9]

Vonnegut? Brain dead. Vacuum-packed. Switched-off tube.The Reich reaped what it sowed.And we can just forget about the wholesale salughter of innocent Germans and American POWs, can we?

[ennison]

Fraid so unless you want to indulge in hand-wringing over spilt milk. Feel free.

[Whifflingpin]

October 25th - St Crispin's Day -

1415 - battle of Azincourt, subject of at least one ballad that remained popular for centuries, and inspiration of some of Shakespeare's greatest lines.

1400 - died Geoffrey Chaucer, famed for having been fined for beating a Franciscan friar in Fleet Street, for having written a treatise on the use of the astrolabe, and maybe for having penned a few poetic tales and other verses.

[Scheherazade]

On this day in 1950 George Bernard Shaw died at the age of ninety-four. To the very end, he maintained his often irascible, always redoubtable spirit. One visitor who attempted to cushion Shaw's decline by telling him to "think of the enjoyment you've given" was referred to his famous literary prostitute: "You might say the same of any Mrs Warren." To the doctor who said he might live to a 100 if he would submit to more treatment, Shaw replied by going home.

MORE (http://www.todayinliterature.com/today.asp?Search_Date=11/2/2006)

[Scheherazade]

On this day in 1871 Walt Whitman declined an offer of marriage from Mrs. Anne Gilchrist, a literary critic who had heard "the voice of my mate" in Leaves of Grass. Whitman's usual response to such offers was philosophical-"It's better than getting medals from a king or pensions from Congress"-but the middle-aged Mrs. Gilchrist still felt "young enough to bear thee children, my darling," and had threatened to move to America.

MORE (http://www.todayinliterature.com/today.asp?Search_Date=11/3/2006)

[Whifflingpin]

November 10th

Anyone born today would share a birthday with Mohammed (570), Martin Luther (1483), Oliver Goldsmith (1728), and Friedrich Schiller 1759.

In the field of letters, Chambers' Book of Days on this day commemorates Ralph Allen, who between 1720 and 1764 made vast improvements in the English postal service (and a fortune for himself,) and was the friend of Fielding and Pope, and generous patron to many needy writers of the day.

[Whifflingpin]

November 14th

1770 James Bruce reaches source of the Blue Nile in Ethiopia. His book "Travels to Discover the Source of the Nile...," published twenty years later, was an immediate best-seller.

[asorens]

I wasn't able to locate the article about Vonnegut at the link you provided, however I am interested in what it said. I just finished reading Slaughterhouse Five for a class, and am really interested in what you thought of the novel. I think Vonnegut has an incredibly unique writing style and is able to satirize the ideals of war and violence through the main character Billy's experience of the Dresden bombing. Does anyone have any comments about Slaughterhouse Five or the actual Dresden bombing? I would love to hear them!

[Scheherazade]

I wasn't able to locate the article about Vonnegut at the link you provided, however I am interested in what it said.I think they remove the articles after a few days, I am afraid.



On this day in 1851, Herman Melville's Moby-Dick was published. The British edition, entitled The Whale, had appeared the previous month, but through a sequence of error, poor judgment and bad timing, it had a rearranged and incomplete ending. This set off another sequence of error, poor judgment and bad timing, this time involving not the publishers but the critics, who looked upon the botched ending as the last straw in a book already too unusual and obscure. The upshot was that Melville's masterpiece, the book he was counting on to rescue his reputation and his finances, was so belittled and slandered in the crucial first weeks following publication in America that it never had a chance.

http://www.todayinliterature.com/stories.asp?Event_Date=11/14/1851

[Norman]

War-comes with pain!

[Whifflingpin]

28th November

1659 - Washington Irving died.

[Virgil]

28th November

1659 - Washington Irving died.

Wait. That can't be right. Washington Irving lived in the late 18th to early 19th centuries.

[Logos]

Indeed, Washington Irving, the guy who wrote The Legend of Sleepy Hollow lived from 1783 to 1859 :)

[Whifflingpin]

Glad someone was awake!

[kathycf]

November 28

On this day in 1582 William Shakespeare and Anne Hathaway married, or perhaps just paid for a bond giving them the right to do so. The facts are scanty, but we know that the groom was eighteen years old, the bride was twenty-six, and their first child, Susanna, was baptized six months later. There seems no way of knowing, but more than one biographer thinks that all this adds up to Shakespeare in Trouble rather than Shakespeare in Love.

[Jay]

On this day in 1821 Percy Shelley's "Adonais," his elegy to John Keats, was published in England. A cornerstone of both Romantic poetry and the myth of the Romantic, the poem paints Keats as Adonis in pursuit of Beauty and Truth, brought down by those less noble and talented. This was a fate Shelley (left) predicted for himself, and he died before Keats's gravestone had been erected.

more (http://todayinliterature.com/today.asp?Search_Date=12/1/2006)

[Jay]

On this day in 1867 Charles Dickens gave the first reading of his American tour. All but a few evenings over the five months were a sell-out, with some sleeping out overnight to beat a ticket line almost a half-mile long. Among the few who were not impressed were Emerson, Twain, and the little girl on the train who told Dickens she liked his books, though "I do skip some of the very dull parts, once in a while; not the short dull parts, but the long ones."

more (http://todayinliterature.com/today.asp?Search_Date=12/2/2006)

[Jay]

December 03

On this day in 1894 Robert Louis Stevenson died, and on this day in 1896 Hilaire Belloc's A Bad Child's Book of Beasts (2nd edition) was published. Stevenson's A Child's Garden of Verses was one of his most popular books, and Belloc's Beasts sold out within days of publication; both books are part of the "Golden Age of Children's Literature," a half-century span which includes Carroll, Kipling, Barrie, Graham and others.
more (http://todayinliterature.com/stories.asp?Event_Date=12/3/1894)

December 04

On this day in 1903 the crime writer Cornell Woolrich was born. Woolrich wrote two dozen novels and over two hundred stories, most of them so dark that he has been called "the Poe of the 20th century." Looking at the many movies made from his work -- most famously, Hitchcock's Rear Window and Truffaut's The Bride Wore Black -- many have also dubbed him the "Father of Film Noir." Woolrich's private life was almost as bleak and black.
more (http://todayinliterature.com/stories.asp?Event_Date=12/4/1903)

[Jay]

On this day in 1830 Christina Rossetti was born. Although she was only peripherally involved with her brother's Pre-Raphaelites, and claimed to be "content in my shady crevice," Rossetti was not quite the "recluse, saint and renunciatory spinster" commonly portrayed. To those familiar only with her devotional or children's verse, her classic "Goblin Market" will raise eyebrows.

more (http://todayinliterature.com/today.asp?Search_Date=12/5/2006)

[Whifflingpin]

December 12th

1731 - Dr Erasmus Darwin, poet & physiologist, born

1757 - Colley Cibber, dramatist, died

[Jay]

December 12

On this day in 1976 Saul Bellow made his Nobel Prize acceptance speech. He won the award for a body of work filled with, "exuberant ideas, flashing irony, hilarious comedy and burning compassion," and his response to it seemed to suit: "After years of the most arduous mental labor, I stand before you in the costume of a headwaiter" and "All I started out to do was show up my brothers. I didn't have to go this far."
more (http://todayinliterature.com/stories.asp?Event_Date=12/12/1976)

December 13

On this day in 1784 Samuel Johnson died. Johnson's last years have been told According to Queeney (Beryl Bainbridge, 2001) and many others, but his large personality seems to escape any one perspective. According to Harold Bloom, Johnson may be beyond reach in all ways: "There is no bad faith in or about Dr. Johnson, who was as good as he was great, yet also refreshingly, wildly strange to the highest degree."
more (http://todayinliterature.com/stories.asp?Event_Date=12/13/1784)

December 14

On this day in 1640 Aphra Behn was baptized. The details of her birth and much of her "shady and amorous" life are unclear, but her place in literary history is certain: first epistolary novel, first philosophical novel, and a fifteen-play career which made her the first woman to earn her living by writing. "All women together ought to let flowers fall upon the tomb of Aphra Behn," wrote Virginia Woolf, "for it was she who earned them the right to speak their minds."
more (http://todayinliterature.com/stories.asp?Event_Date=12/14/1640)

[Jay]

On this day in 1922 T. S. Eliot's The Waste Land (originally titled "He Do the Police in Different Voices") was published. Like many friends and acquaintances, Virginia Woolf thought Eliot an odd case, but her diary notes how compelling she found his after-dinner reading of his poem: "He sang it & chanted it & rhymed it. It has great beauty and force of phrase; symmetry; & tensity. What connects it together, I'm not so sure..."

more (http://todayinliterature.com/today.asp?Search_Date=12/15/2006)

[Jay]

On this day in 1901 Beatrix Potter published The Tale of Peter Rabbit. Having been turned down by a half-dozen publishers, Potter financed this first edition herself -- 250 copies with her own black and white illustrations, given away or sold at a half-penny each because, as she put it, "little rabbits cannot afford to spend 6 shillings."

more (http://todayinliterature.com/today.asp?Search_Date=12/16/2006)

[ennison]

'Goblin Market' is brilliant. What can I say? Read it.

[Poetess]

December 18


On this day in 1946 Damon Runyon's ashes were scattered over Broadway by his son, in a plane flown by Eddie Rickenbacker. Runyon was born in Manhattan, Kansas; he arrived at the bigger apple at the age of thirty, to be a sportswriter and to try out at Mindy's and the Stork Club and any betting window available his crap-shoot worldview: "All of life is six to five against." Broadway became his special beat, and in story collections like Guys and Dolls he developed the colorful characters -- Harry the Horse, the Lemon Drop Kid, Last Card Louie -- and the gangster patois that would swept America throughout the thirties and forties.

Stories like "Social Error" even poked fun at the "underworld complex" that was making him so famous. Socialite Miss Harriet Mackyle is a Doll-wannabe, the kind who "thinks it smart to tell her swell friends she dances with a safe blower." Guy-wannabes like Basil Valentine get "all pleasured up by this attention ... because Miss Harriet Mackyle may not look a million, but she has a couple, and you can see enough of her in her evening clothes to know that nothing about her is phony." Nothing that Basil will ever see, anyway. When Handsome Jack takes out his equalizer and accidentally plugs Miss Harriet's favorite parrot, and Basil puts up two grand to make like he's shot Handsome Jack in order to impress Miss Harriet, and Red Henry for revenge on Jack works a quick change to replace the blanks for real slugs, and Midgie Muldoon jumps in front of her Jack just as Basil raises his rod and turns it on . . . well, Miss Harriet and Basil can't wait to escape to Italy and get married, just as they deserve.

The ending to the real life was not so happy, romantically or otherwise. Runyon's wife of fourteen years had left him -- she formerly a Spanish dancer at the Silver Slipper, first met at a Mexican racetrack when she was a kid running messages for Pancho Villa, Runyon a reporter running Villa to ground. Throat cancer, probably caused by a lifetime of Turkish Ovals, made things worse, and forced all communication to be via notepad. This could produce some pretty funny barroom one-liners -- Walter Winchell: "Damon, this is a kid from San Francisco who imitates me better than anybody in the business." Runyon, on his notepad: "Faint Praise." -- but it could also produce this letter to Damon Runyon Jr., which expresses more 'stacked deck' than 'six-to-five against':

I notice you do a lot of thinking about yourself and your problems. Sometimes when you are in a mood for thought give one to your old man who in two years was stricken by the most terrible malady known to mankind and left voiceless with a death sentence hanging over his head, who had a big career stopped cold, and had his domestic life shattered by divorce and his savings largely dissipated through the combination of evil circumstances.... Try that on your zither some day, my boy, especially when those low moods you mention strike you.
Runyon's very last note to Damon Jr. was the regards-to-Broadway request about his ashes.

[Jay]

On this day in 1848 Emily Bronte died at the age of thirty. Of all the death and drama in the Bronte household over the surrounding eight months -- events which now stand as famous and poignant as any in the Bronte novels -- none seems to impress or import more than Emily's. Her "powerful and peculiar" character, said Charlotte, inspired "an anguish of wonder and love."

more (http://todayinliterature.com/today.asp?Search_Date=12/19/2006)

[Jay]

On this day in 1929 D. H. Lawrence's Lady Chatterley's Lover was banned in the United States. This was only one of a string of bannings from the book's first publication the year before until the landmark obscenity trials in 1959 (U.S.) and 1960 (Britain), but for Lawrence personally it may have been the most devastating. For Philip Larkin, on the other hand, life began "Between the end of the Chatterley ban / And the Beatles' first LP..."

more (http://todayinliterature.com/today.asp?Search_Date=12/20/2006)

[Jay]

On this day in 1879 Henrik Ibsen's A Doll's House opened in Copenhagen. One critic compared the play to the dropping of "a bomb into contemporary life," and "a death sentence on accepted social ethics"; another described Nora's exit from her house and her gender-roles at the end of Act V as "a door slam heard 'round the world."

more (http://todayinliterature.com/today.asp?Search_Date=12/21/2006)

[Jay]

On this day in 1937 Don Marquis died. Although also a playwright and a novelist, Marquis is most famous for the "Archy and Mehitabel" poetry he wrote for his newspaper column -- Archy being the soul of a "vers libre bard" in the body of a cockroach, Mehitabel being an alley cat on her ninth life and "bound / for a journey down the sound / in the midst of a refuse mound / but wotthehell wotthehell."

more (http://todayinliterature.com/stories.asp?Event_Date=12/29/1937)

[Jay]

January 4

On this day in 1960 Albert Camus was killed in a car crash outside Paris, at the age of forty-seven. The incomplete manuscript of The First Man, the autobiographical novel that Camus was working on at his death, was found in the mud at the accident site and published by his daughter in 1995. Camus hoped that it would be his masterpiece and some critics think it is, even unfinished.
more (http://todayinliterature.com/stories.asp?Event_Date=1/4/1960)

January 5

On this day in 1825, twenty-three-year-old Alexandre Dumas (Sr.) embarked on his self-proclaimed "career as a romantic" by fighting his first duel, and having his pants fall down. Dumas's memoirs are about as reliable as his mountain of historical fiction and drama, but they tell the pants story in glorious, comedy-of-errors, Three Musketeers detail.
more (http://todayinliterature.com/stories.asp?Event_Date=1/5/1825)

January 6

On this day in 1840 Fanny Burney died. Burney's four novels have earned her favorable comparisons to other giants of the genre-Austen, Richardson, Dickens-and Virginia Woolf's declaration that she is "the mother of English fiction." If a best-seller and a celebrity in her own day, it is as a diarist that Burney is now best known-one who was eye-witness to The Madness of King George, and who enlivened the later years of Samuel Johnson.
more (http://todayinliterature.com/stories.asp?Event_Date=1/6/1840)

[Jay]

On this day in 1972 the American poet John Berryman committed suicide at the age of fifty-seven. His 77 Dream Songs won the 1964 Pulitzer, and the writing of some 300 more over the subsequent years earned Berryman international fame, but his personal problems kept pace; by the end, his hopes for religion, writing, teaching, marriage and change all seemed out of reach.

more (http://todayinliterature.com/today.asp?Search_Date=1/7/2007)

[Jay]

January 08

On this day in 1824 the mystery novelist Wilkie Collins was born. Collins's "gaslight thrillers" were as popular among Victorian readers as the books of his friend, Charles Dickens; two of them, The Woman in White (1860) and The Moonstone (1868) have not only stayed in print but grown in reputation. Crime historians say much is owed to characters such as Sergeant Cuff, and to his stylish back-of-my-hand.
more (http://todayinliterature.com/stories.asp?Event_Date=1/8/1824)

January 09

On this day in 1923 Katherine Mansfield died of tuberculosis at the age of thirty-four. Near the end Mansfield scoffed at "my little stories like birds bred in cages," and admitted to having had a lifelong "chaos within." Her biographers have agreed with the chaos, and the literary historians are unequivocal about the accomplishment: "A symbol of liberation, innovation and unconventionality. Her life was new, her manners and dress was new, her art was new."
more (http://todayinliterature.com/stories.asp?Event_Date=1/9/2005)

[Ron Price]

Amy Lowell deserves more of a place here, so I am adding this prose-poem I wrote yesterday.
_______________
THE DOME

While 'Abdu'l-Baha was on his western tour, Amy Lowell(1874-1925) was promoting poetry in the USA. Her first book of published poetry appeared during 'Abdu'l-Baha's trip in 1912. Poetry had become the consuming passion of Amy Lowell’s life. When she was not writing poetry, she was promoting it—both her own and that of her contemporaries whose projects complemented hers. In magazine reviews, short articles, two prose volumes of poetry criticism, and most especially on the lecture circuit, Lowell preached the gospel of the new poetry. Almost from the street corner, she cried aloud, ‘Poetry, Poetry, this way to Poetry.’ When she died in 1925 interest in her poetry died with her because her poems needed her flamboyant personality and vigor, her demonstrative theatricality to give them life. She aggressively marketed herself and her poetry as high culture. She was the Liberace of modern poetry. She made of poetry, itself an intimidating art form for most people, accessible, popularized. She repackaged it for a middle-class audience. In recent years there has been a recrudescence of interest in her work.-Ron Price with thanks to Melissa Bradshaw, "Outselling the Modernisms of Men: Amy Lowell and the Art of Self-Commodification," Victorian Poetry, Vol. 38, No.1, 2000.

You converted them left and right
by the relief of hearing verse they
could enjoy without getting into
any special-suspect state of mind.

You surprised audiences by being
clear, sincere, direct, intelligible.
Your extravagant persona, theatrical,
fit for stages all over the country was
not your poet stereotype. The poet,
you argued, should have a passionate
desire for truth and a dispassionate
attitude toward whatever his search
for truth may bring him. He records
you said. He does not moralize. He is
the champion of our everyday speech.1

And you socked-it to 'em when that
tremendous figure, that mysterious
and magnetic personality, that unique
branch grown from that sacred root
with His styles and titles--you knew
Him not. That Dome of Many Coloured
Glass2 had just begun to colour the world.

1 Melissa Bradshaw, "Outselling the Modernisms of Men: Amy Lowell and the Art of Self-Commodification, Victorian Poetry, Vol. 38, No.1, 2000; 2 The name of her 1912 book. For me this Dome serves as an allusion to the new Administrative Order that had just begun to take form in the last two decades of Lowell's life.

Ron Price
11 January 2007

[Whifflingpin]

1st February

Today in 1851 died Mary Wollstencraft Shelley

[bazarov]

26th February 1802, Victor Hugo was borned

[THX-1138]

Weighing Whitman
On this day in 1892 Walt Whitman died. The high and controversial emotions which surrounded Whitman in life attended his death: in the same issue that carried his obituary, the New York Times declared that he could not be called "a great poet unless we deny poetry to be an art," while one funeral speech declared that "He walked among men, among writers, among verbal varnishers and veneerers, among literary milliners and tailors, with the unconscious majesty of an antique god."


may i add if am not mistaken that Robert Frost and Tennessee Williams were born on this day .

[Niamh]

this day in 1909 J.M.Synge died of hodgekins disease.

*edit* oh no i mixed up the date. He died on the 24th of march 1909, not the 26th.

[THX-1138]

April 18, 1394
________________
Chaucer's Pilgrims
by Steve King


On this day (or possibly the next) in 1394, Geoffrey Chaucer's twenty-nine pilgrims met at the Tabard Inn in Southwark to prepare for their departure to Canterbury. Chaucer's poem condenses the four to five day trip into one, and scholars have used various textual references and astrological calculations to establish that day as the day before Easter, thus allowing the pilgrims to arrive at Canterbury Easter morning, after a fifty-five-mile hike through a pleasant English springtime:

When April with his showers sweet with fruit
The drought of March has pierced unto the root
And bathed each vein with liquor that has power
To generate therein and sire with flower;
When Zephyr also has, with his sweet breath,
Quickened again, in every holt and heath,
The tender shoots and buds, and the young sun
Into the Ram one half his course has run,
And many little birds make melody
That sleep through all the night with open eye
(So Nature pricks them on to ramp and rage)-
Then do folk long to go on pilgrimage,
And palmers to go seeking out strange strands,
To distant shrines well known in sundry lands.
And specially from every shire's end
Of England they to Canterbury wend. . . .

(trans. J.U. Nicolson)
Weather and good company aside, the game established at the Tabard the night before is a competition for the tale "of best sentence and moost solaas," the prize being "a soper at oure aller cost." Chaucer leaves no doubt that some of his pilgrims would rank the prospect of a free meal more highly than the feast promised at the Cathedral: a view of not only the St. Thomas a Becket relics, but the whole arms of eleven saints, the bed of the Blessed Virgin, fragments of the rock at Calvary and of rock from the Holy Sepulchre, Aaron's Rod, a piece of the clay from which Adam was made, and more. As Chaucer does not get all his tales told, or his pilgrims to their destination, neither earthly nor spiritual nourishment is realized.

In the eyes of one enterprising 15th century writer, the incompleteness of Chaucer's journey presented the opportunity for a sequel. "The Tale of Beryn" purports to be told by the Merchant as Chaucer's pilgrims make their way back to the Tabard. In the Prologue to this tale we learn that while the others were busy with their own amusements during the one night layover in Canterbury -- Knight and Squire to see the battlements, Prioress and Wife of Bath a tour of the gardens, etc. -- the Pardoner attempted to romance and rob a barmaid. Perhaps appropriately for a dealer in sham relics, he not only fails but is beaten up, and spends the night in a dog's kennel.

http://todayinliterature.com/today.asp?Search_Date=4/18/2007

[THX-1138]

The Birth of O. Henry
On this day in 1898 William S. Porter -- the drug store clerk, cowboy, fugitive, bank teller, cartoonist and future "O. Henry" -- began a five-year prison sentence for embezzlement. Porter had published several stories prior to his prison term, but the fourteen written behind bars represented a new style and quality, and began his rise to fame.

http://todayinliterature.com/today.asp?Search_Date=4/25/2007

[likeminded]

i always thought the multivitamin detail in "slaughterhouse" was just an absurdist touch. in all those obits i recently checked out it was really true about being under the slaughterhouse making the multivitamins for his captors. the thought still hasn't really left my mind. i'm a big fan of vonnegut, did you see the interview on "real time" he did not long before his death? he seemed a little cynical, like anyone, better when typing than when talking

[chasestalling]

1810 -- Lord Byron swims the Hellespont, emulating the legendary Greek Leander. Crossing wuth Lt. Ekenhead of the Royal Navy, Byron does the four miles in an hour and ten minutes.

[Charles Darnay]

June 16.

It is on this day in 1904 that "Ulysses" takes place. I think I shall celebrate by finally buying/starting it!

[Mortis Anarchy]

i always thought the multivitamin detail in "slaughterhouse" was just an absurdist touch. in all those obits i recently checked out it was really true about being under the slaughterhouse making the multivitamins for his captors. the thought still hasn't really left my mind. i'm a big fan of vonnegut, did you see the interview on "real time" he did not long before his death? he seemed a little cynical, like anyone, better when typing than when talking


He was very cynical...especially towards the end of his life. I think he was just tired of seeing the world the way it was. It is hard seeing something that you love so much be hurt and especially since he felt that the world could change, if people tried. He was amazing...so funny!

I will miss you dear Vonnegut.:bawling:

[Enchanted]

June 16, 2007

Author Salman Rushdie receives British knighthood

[Midas]

On this day, yes THIS one (no matter which day you are reading this) I am certain, many potential, Byrons, Hardys, Newtons, Turners, will first see the light of day. Some will grow and be with us but a short while, others will permit their talent to wither on the vine, some will die fighting someone else's 'noble cause' in a foreign field, a few will flourish, fulfil their potential, and take their place with the great and 'live' long after their earthly bodies have crumbled to dust.

And there will be those who represent the other side of the coin and to which I will not give undue honour to their forebears, or their contemporaries who are still with us, by listing names, and possibly spark emotionally inspired controversy that will digress the theme.

Nothing really changes, yet we are surrounded by constant, endless change.It's an eternal paradox.

When we read the writers of the past, we find that the main worries and concerns which plagued life then, are with us today.

As long as this earth turns and sustains human life, I am certain there will be the drama, comedy, tragedy, happiness and all the mix of ingredients to keep any budding Shakespeares occupied until the final chapter dictates - enough, and the curtains close for Earth's final performance.

As the French put it so succinctly - C'est la vie.

[Midnight Runner]

Erich Maria Remarque was born today! Author of All Quiet on the Western Front, one of the greatest anti-war novels ever written.

[Midas]

I am amazed when I see the book shops in the shopping malls, high streets, airports and rail stations, and the online book stores, all advertising and displaying the vast amount, and variety, of books - classics and the works of the plethora of new authors, that today, in spite of the many attractions, and demands for our time, indicate that reading is alive and well.

When travelling by rail, underground, or air, I see people with heads buried in a book.

I know that now, we can access some books by downloading on the internet - especially the classics. But, I don't believe anything will ever replace the feel of a book

I don't know about other countries, but in the UK so called 'charity' shops abound. Here people take their unwanted as a means of donating to charity.

Here you will find a great variety of books many in almost 'the day they were published' condition for a fraction of the original price.

I am convinced that tomorrow, as today, no matter how Television progresses. or what other innovations come to the market, there will be a place, and demand, for 'a book' and a comfortable sofa to curl up on, bed to snuggle in, river bank, or beach to lie on, or.....yes I have seen it often on the London 'tube' at peak hour, something to hold on to with one hand while standing, holding the book in another as the train sways along under the busy streets above.

Long live 'the book'.

[jlb4tlb]

Nov 1

1604, Othello by Shakespeare is presented for the first time.

1611, The Tempest by Shakespeare is presented for the first time.

1871, American writer Stephen Crane is born.

1903, German Writer Theodor Mommsen Dies

1923, American Writer Gorden R. Dickson is born.

1972, American Poet Ezra Pound dies

2006, American Writer William Styron dies

[jlb4tlb]

Nov. 2

1960 - Penguin Books is found not guilty of obscenity in the Lady Chatterley's Lover case

1911 -Born, Odysseus Elytis, Greek writer, Nobel laureate

1950 -Died, George Bernard Shaw, Irish writer, Nobel Prize laureate

1951 -Born ,Thomas Mallon, American novelist and critic

1961 -Died, James Thurber, American humorist

[bouquin]

5 January

1932 - born : Umberto Eco

[bouquin]

1883 - born : Aleksei Nikolaevich Tolstoi

1951 - died : Sinclair Lewis

[bouquin]

1622 : Born - Molière, French playwright

[bouquin]

1933 - Born : Susan Sontag, American writer

[Hira]

Rudyard Kipling (http://www.todayinliterature.com/today.asp) died - 18th Jan 1936

[Gracewings]

"Gie her a Haggis!"

On this day in 1759 Robert Burns was born in Alloway, Scotland, and on this night lovers of Burns or Scotland or conviviality will gather around the world to celebrate the fact. Burns was elevated to national hero in his lifetime and cult figure soon afterwards, the first Burns Night celebration occurring almost immediately upon his death. If the haggis has changed, the Night has not. . . . Read more here... ("www.todayinliterature.com/today.asp?Search_Date=1/25/2008"=www.todayinliterature.com/today.asp?Search_Date=1/25/2008)

[moose gurl]

May 5:
Karl Marx's birthday
Cinco de Mayo

[bej6s]

June 2nd:

Thomas Hardy, born 1840
Barbara Pym, born 1913
Carol Shields, born 1935

[bej6s]

June 5th:

Richard Scarry, born 1919
Matthew Lesko, born 1943
Stephen Crane, died 1900
O. Henry, died 1910

[jonathan467]

June 9th:

Bertha von Suttner, born 1843

[Aiculík]

June 10th, 2008 - death of Chingiz Aitmatov

Chingiz Aitmatov was Kyrgyz writer. He belonged to the post-war generation of Soviet authors and his works were translated into more than 150 languages.

His best known works are:
Jamilia
The Day Lasts More Than a Hundred Years
The Scaffold (I'm not sure if this one was translated into English)

[Erichtho]

June 10th, 2008 - death of Chingiz Aitmatov

Chingiz Aitmatov was Kyrgyz writer. He belonged to the post-war generation of Soviet authors and his works were translated into more than 150 languages.

His best known works are:
Jamilia
The Day Lasts More Than a Hundred Years
The Scaffold (I'm not sure if this one was translated into English)

I was so sad when I heard that yesterday. I remember having read in the newspaper some weeks ago that he was hospitalised, but I didn't pay much attention to it then. Last year I saw him on a reading for his Когда падают горы (Вечная невеста) - (When the Mountains fall (The eternal Bride), probably not translated to English yet), and he seemed younger than he was and spoke of new projects... :(
My favourite works by him are Jamilia and Farewell, Gülsary!.

[Equality72521]

Today is the day on which James Joyce had his first date with Nora Barnacle, who would later become his wife. June 16th is also the day on which the infamous novel, Ulysses, is set.

[ex ponto]

Born: Jean Calvin (1509 - 1564)
Marcel Proust (1871 - 1922)

[lugdunum]

July 13th is an important date for (French) women. It has nothing to do with literature but I thought it was an interesting fact.

On July 13th a new law entered into force in France:
women were (finally) allowed to work without prior authorization from their husbands and open their own bank account that is have money of their own. :)

What strikes me about this fact is the year in which this happened.

Any guess?

... 1965? Isn't that really late? I mean for a country like France (country of human rights etc.). Does this strike anybody else?

Anyway, i thought I'd share this date with you.

[JoanS]

today i have written a poem which ll make me famous in 200 years...

[Scheherazade]

today i have written a poem which ll make me famous in 200 years...You lucky clogs!

[Guinivere]

On this day in 1655 Hercule Savinien Cyrano de Bergerac died at the age of thirty-six. Bergerac is rumoured to have had a rather large nose. Quote, "A large nose is the mark of a witty, courteous, affable, generous, and liberal man." :D

And something else, not really related to literature. On this day in 1586 the first potato arrived in Britain. :)

[LC_Lancer]

1958 Doctor Zhivago by Boris Pasternak published today.
1957 One of the first novels of the Beat movement of the 1950s, On the Road, by Jack Kerouac, is published on this day.

[LC_Lancer]

Short story writer and novelist Ann Beattie is born on this day in Washington, D.C. in 1974.
After finishing college at American University in 1969 and graduate school at the University of Connecticut, Beattie quickly established herself as an important short story writer. Her first stories appeared in the early 1970s in the New Yorker. Her first collection of short stories, Distortions, and her first novel, Chilly Scenes of Winter, were both published in 1976. Her stories and novels explored characters whose values, formed in the 1960s, were at odds with the lives they led in the 1970s and 1980s. Her minimalist style was widely imitated.
Beattie married Newsweek writer and singer David Gates and had a son. The couple later divorced. She also taught at University of Virginia in Charlottesville, then at Harvard. In 1985, she married painter Lincoln Percy and settled in Charlottesville. Her other novels include Falling in Place (1980), Picturing Will (1989), My Life, Starring Dara Falcon (1997) and The Doctor's House (2002).
Story collections include The Burning House (1982), Where You'll Find Me (1986), Park City (1999), Perfect Recall (2000) and Follies: New Stories (2005).

http://www.history.com/this-day-in-history.do?action=Article&id=4085

1952 Ernest Hemingway's "Old Man & the Sea" published

[LC_Lancer]

I know this is not literary, but I think it is important.
September 10, 1897

First DWI arrest is made
Even without Breathalyzers and line tests, George Smith's swerving was enough to alarm British police and make him the first person arrested for drunken driving. Unfortunately, Smith's arrest did nothing to discourage the many other drunk drivers who have taken to the road since. Although drunk driving is illegal in most countries, punished by heavy fines and mandatory jail sentences, it continues to be one of the leading causes of automobile accidents throughout the world. Alcohol-related automobile accidents are responsible for approximately one-third of the traffic fatalities in the United States--16,000 deaths each year, and also account for over half a million injuries and $1 billion of property damage annually.
http://www.history.com/this-day-in-history.do?action=Article&id=7655

1934 Charles Kuralt was born in Wilmington NC. He is the author of On the Road , A Life on the Road , North Carolina is my home, and To of the World .

[LC_Lancer]

Children's author Roald Dahl is born on this day in 1916, Roald Dahl, author of Charlie and the Chocolate Factory (1964) and James and the Giant Peach (1961), is born in South Wales.


Dahl wrote his first book, The Gremlins, for Walt Disney, in 1943, and the story was later made into a Disney film. He wrote several popular adult books, including Someone Like You (1953) and Kiss Kiss (1959), and began writing stories for his own four children in 1960. James and the Giant Peach and Charlie and the Chocolate Factory became bestsellers. He also wrote the screenplay for Charlie (with a title change-the movie was called Willy Wonka and the Chocolate Factory), Chitty Chitty Bang Bang (1968), and a James Bond film, You Only Live Twice (1967).
http://www.history.com/this-day-in-history.do?action=Article&id=4090

He also wrote Matilda (1988) and The Witches (1983) favorites of my two boys.

Also born today:


Sherwood Anderson in 1876. He wrote his first novel, Windy McPherson's Son , was published in 1916. His second major work, Marching Men, was published in 1916. However, he is most famous for his collection of interrelated short stories, which he began writing in 1919, known as Winesburg, Ohio. In 1920, he published Poor White, a rather successful novel. He wrote other novels and short stories.

[LC_Lancer]

September 23, 1862
Leo Tolstoy marries Sophie Andreyevna Behrs
On this day, Count Leo Tolstoy married Sophie Andreyevna Behrs. The 34-year-old Tolstoy was nearly twice the age of his teenage bride.
After losing his parents as a child, Tolstoy inherited a large estate and was raised by relatives. He began studies at Kazan University at age 16 but was disappointed in the quality of education and returned to his estate in 1847 without a degree. He proceeded to live a wild and dissolute life in Moscow and St. Petersburg for the next four years. In 1851, he joined the army and fought in the Crimean war. He wrote about his wartime experiences in the successful Sebastapol Sketches, published in 1855. He also wrote several other autobiographical works while in the army.
In 1857, Tolstoy visited Europe and became interested in education. He started a school for peasant children on his estate and studied progressive educational techniques. The year after his marriage, he published his first successful novel, The Cossacks. Tolstoy and his wife proceeded to have 13 children over the next 17 years.
Tolstoy was constantly engaged in a spiritual struggle between his responsibilities as a wealthy landlord and his desire to renounce his property altogether. Some of his inner turmoil appeared in his great masterpieces War and Peace (1865-1869) and Anna Karenina (1875-1877). Later in his life, he tried to give away the rights to his works, but his wife gained control of the copyrights for all his work published before 1880. Tolstoy became increasingly radical, embraced anarchism, and was excommunicated from the Russian Orthodox Church. In 1910, he fled his home secretly with his youngest daughter but caught pneumonia and died at a remote railway station a few days later.
http://www.history.com/this-day-in-history.do?action=Article&id=4100

Born September 23, 1901
Jaroslav Seifert
Jaroslav Seifert (1901-1986), Nobel-Prize-winning Czech poet, whose works, characterized by simplicity and sensuality, were repeatedly censored by the Czech state for Seifert's refusal to embrace political orthodoxy.
Seifert was born to a working-class family in Prague, Czechoslovakia (now Czech Republic). His formal education ended when he graduated from elementary school, but he nevertheless developed an expansive knowledge of his country's history and culture, which he demonstrated in his first volume of poetry, Mesto v slzách (The City in Tears, 1921).
Beginning in 1920, Seifert traveled throughout Europe as a journalist, familiarizing himself with leading literary trends. In much of Seifert's early poetry he expressed his support and hope for Communism in the Soviet Union. Although he initially regarded his poetry as a means of social reform, he was later influenced by the modernist literary movements Dada and Futurism, which held that art should be guided by the artist's sensual, not intellectual, impulses.
By the mid-1920s, Seifert had cofounded the Devestil Art Association, a society of Prague's avant-garde literary figures. In 1929, after he was expelled from the Communist Party for refusing to oppose the elected Czechoslovakian government, Seifert joined the Social Democrats, a party supported by the working class. Beginning with his volume Postovní holub (translated as The Carrier Pigeon, 1929), he focused his poetry on the significance of everyday events, rejecting poetic devices such as metaphors in favor of natural images.
During World War II (1939-1945), Seifert partially regained the favor of the Communist Party by his impassioned opposition to the Nazi occupation of Prague (see National Socialism), expressed in his Vejír Bozeny Nemcové (Bozena Nemcová's Fan, 1939). By 1950, however, he was once again ostracized by the party, charged with subjectivism for having written in praise of a friend, poet Frantisek Halaz. From 1968 to 1970 Seifert headed the Union of Czech Writers, and in 1970 he defied a state-imposed ban on publishing abroad. Seifert's last collection of poems, Morový sloup (The Plague Column, 1977), which warned about neo-Stalinism (see Stalin, Joseph), was first published in Cologne (then in West Germany) as a result of state censorship in Czechoslovakia. His memoir, Vsecky krásy sveta (All the Beauties of the World, 1982), was published in 1981. Seifert won the Nobel Prize for Literature in 1984.
________________________________________
"Jaroslav Seifert," Microsoft® Encarta® Online Encyclopedia 2008
http://encarta.msn.com © 1997-2008 Microsoft Corporation. All Rights Reserved.
http://encarta.msn.com/encnet/refpages/refarticle.aspx?refid=761581217

[LC_Lancer]

October 6

Jane Eyre is published
In 1847, Jane Eyre is published by Smith, Elder and Co. Charlotte BrontË, the book's author, used the pseudonym Currer Bell. The book, about the struggles of an orphan girl who grows up to become a governess, was an immediate popular success. http://www.history.com/this-day-in-history.do?action=Article&id=4113

In 1520, German reformer Martin Luther, 36, published Prelude on the Babylonian Captivity of the Church his famous writing which attacked the entire sacramental system of the Catholic Church.

[LC_Lancer]

:(
The death of Edgar Allan Poe on October 7, 1849 has remained mysterious: the circumstances leading up to it are uncertain and the cause of death is disputed. On October 3, Poe was found delirious on the streets of Baltimore, Maryland, "in great distress, and ... in need of immediate assistance", according to the man who found him, Joseph W. Walker.He was taken to the Washington College Hospital, where he died at 5 a.m. on Sunday, October 7. Poe was never coherent enough to explain how he came to be in this condition.
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Death_of_Edgar_Allan_Poe
He died at age 40. I turn 40 in about eight weeks. Gulp!!!! :(

+++

On a lighter note
Ginsberg reads "Howl" for the first time
On this day in 1955, poet Alan Ginsberg reads his poem "Howl" at a poetry reading at Six Gallery in San Francisco. The poem was an immediate success that rocked the Beat literary world and set the tone for confessional poetry of the 1960s and later.

http://www.history.com/this-day-in-history.do?action=Article&id=4114

+++

Born in October 7
James Whitcomb Riley (1849-1916), American poet, born in Greenfield, Indiana. At the age of 16 he left school and joined a group of itinerant sign painters. Subsequently he acted in a patent-medicine show and worked for a newspaper. From 1877 to 1885 he was a regular contributor of verse to the Indianapolis Journal under the pen name of Benj. F. Johnson, of Boone. Some of the poems were collected in The Old Swimmin' Hole and 'Leven More Poems (1883), a volume that achieved great popularity. His best-known poems include “Little Orphant Annie,””The Raggedy Man,” and “When the Frost Is on the Punkin.” Riley's popularity derived mainly from his quaint use of Hoosier dialect, his cheerful and whimsical sense of humor, and his intimate understanding of life in the rural Midwest. His other works include Rhymes of Childhood (1890) and Poems Here at Home (1893).
http://encarta.msn.com/encnet/refpages/refarticle.aspx?refid=761574318

[Psycheinaboat]

I am glad you guys still do "Today in Lit." I was never able to subscribe.

[LC_Lancer]

In 1970, Soviet author Alexander Solzhenitsyn was named winner of the Nobel Prize for literature.



In 1833, Edmund Steadman born. American poet who wrote “How Old Brown took Harpers Ferry” in 1859 and “Pan in Wall Street” in 1867.
Here is a link to a Google book about Edmund Steadman. http://books.google.com/books?id=xucRAAAAYAAJ&pg=PA3&lpg=PA3&dq=%22How+Old+Brown%22&source=web&ots=n8DmHLyAOs&sig=In-XORsi_I4elTM5CUZ-LmR0c_A&hl=en&sa=X&oi=book_result&resnum=10&ct=result#PPP1,M1



In 1920, Frank Herbert was born in Tacoma, Washington to Frank Patrick Herbert Sr. and Eileen McCarthy Herbert. He graduated from high school in 1938, and in 1939 he lied about his age in order to get his first newspaper job at the Glendale Star.


Fiction
Dune novels
1. Dune: Serial publication: Analog, December 1963 – February 1964 (Part I, as "Dune World"), and January – May 1965 (Parts II and III, as "The Prophet of Dune"). First edition: Philadelphia: Chilton Books, 1965.
2. Dune Messiah: Serial publication: Galaxy, July – November 1969. First edition: New York: G.P. Putnam's Sons, 1970.
3. Children of Dune: Serial publication: Analog, January – April 1976, "Children of Dune". First edition: New York: G.P. Putnam's Sons, 1976.
4. God Emperor of Dune, New York: G.P. Putnam's Sons, 1981.
5. Heretics of Dune, New York: G.P. Putnam's Sons, 1984.
6. Chapterhouse: Dune, New York: G.P. Putnam's Sons, 1985.


Short fiction
• "Survival of the Cunning," Esquire, March 1945.
• "Yellow Fire," Alaska Life (Alaska Territorial Magazine), June 1947.
• "Looking for Something?" Startling Stories, April 1952.
• "Operation Syndrome," Astounding, June 1954. also in T.E. Dikty's Best Science Fiction Stories and Novels, 1955 series
• "The Gone Dogs," Amazing, November 1954.
• "Packrat Planet," Astounding, December 1954.
• "Rat Race," Astounding, July 1955.
• "Occupation Force," Fantastic, August 1955.
• "The Nothing," Fantastic Universe, January 1956.
• "Cease Fire," Astounding, January 1956.
• "Old Rambling House," Galaxy, April 1958.
• "You Take the High Road," Astounding, May 1958.
• "A Matter of Traces," Fantastic Universe, November 1958.
• "Missing Link," Astounding, February 1959. also in Author's Choice, ed. Harry Harrison, New York: Berkeley, 1968.
• "Operation Haystack," Astounding, May 1959.
• "The Priests of Psi," Fantastic, February 1960.
• "Egg and Ashes," Worlds of If, November 1960.
• "A-W-F Unlimited," Galaxy, June 1961.
• "Try to Remember," Amazing, October 1961.
• "Mating Call," Galaxy, October 1961.
• "Mindfield," Amazing, March 1962.
• "The Mary Celeste Move," Analog, October 1964.
• "The Tactful Saboteur," Galaxy, October 1964.
• "Greenslaves," Amazing, March 1965.
• "Committee of the Whole," Galaxy, April 1965.
• "The GM Effect," Analog, June 1965.
• "Do I Wake or Dream?" Galaxy, August 1965.
• "The Primitives," Galaxy, April 1966.
• "Escape Felicity," Analog, June 1966.
• "By the Book," Analog, August 1966.
• "The Featherbedders," Analog, August 1967.
• "The Mind Bomb" (aka "The Being Machine"), Worlds of If, October 1969.
• "Seed Stock," Analog, April 1970.
• "Murder Will In," The Magazine of Fantasy and Science Fiction, May 1970.
• "Project 40" (three installments), Galaxy, November 1972 – March 1973. also in Five Fates, New York: Doubleday, 1970.
• "Encounter in a Lonely Place," The Book of Frank Herbert, New York: DAW Books, 1973.
• "Gambling Device," The Book of Frank Herbert New York, DAW Books, 1973.
• "Passage for Piano," The Book of Frank Herbert New York, DAW Books, 1973.
• "The Death of a City," Future City, ed. Roger Elwood. Trident Press: New York, 1973.
• "Come to the Party" with F. M. Busby, Analog, December 1978.
• "Songs of a Sentient Flute," Analog, February 1979.
• "Frogs and Scientists," Destinies, Ace Books, August-September 1979.
• "Feathered Pigs," Destinies, Ace Books, October-December 1979.
• "The Road to Dune," Eye, New York: Berkeley 1985.



Nonfiction
• New World or No World (editor), New York: Ace Books, 1970 (paper).
• Threshold: The Blue Angels Experience, New York: Ballantine, 1973 (paper). Companion to documentary of same name about Blue Angels flight team.
• Without Me, You're Nothing (with Max Barnard), New York: Pocket Books, 1981 (hardcover).

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Frank_Herbert

[LC_Lancer]

Poe's funeral was a simple one, held at 4 p.m. on Monday, October 8, 1849.

Few people attended the ceremony. Poe's uncle, Henry Herring, provided a simple mahogany coffin, and a cousin, Neilson Poe, supplied the hearse. Moran's wife made his shroud. The funeral was presided over by the Reverend W. T. D. Clemm, cousin of Poe's wife, Virginia. Also in attendance were Dr. Snodgrass, Baltimore lawyer and former University of Virginia classmate Z. Collins Lee, Poe's first cousin Elizabeth Herring and her husband, and former schoolmaster Joseph Clarke. The entire ceremony lasted only three minutes in the cold, damp weather. Reverend Clemm decided not to bother with a sermon because the crowd was too small. Sexton George W. Spence wrote of the weather: "It was a dark and gloomy day, not raining but just kind of raw and threatening." Poe was buried in a cheap coffin that lacked handles, a nameplate, cloth lining, or a cushion for his head.

Poe is buried on the grounds of Westminster Hall and Burying Ground, now part of the University of Maryland School of Law in Baltimore. Even after his death, however, he created controversy and mystery.

Poe was originally buried without a headstone towards the rear corner of the churchyard near his grandfather, David Poe, Sr. A headstone of white Italian marble, paid for by Poe's cousin Neilson Poe, was destroyed before it reached the grave when a train derailed and plowed through the monument yard where it was being kept. Instead, it was marked with a sand-stone block that read "No. 80". In 1873, Southern poet Paul Hamilton Hayne visited Poe's grave and published a newspaper article describing its poor condition and suggesting a more appropriate monument. Sara Sigourney Rice, a teacher in Baltimore's public schools, took advantage of renewed interest in Poe's grave site and personally solicited for funds. She even had some of her elocution students give public performances to raise money. Many in Baltimore and throughout the United States contributed; the final $650 came from Philadelphia publisher and philanthropist George William Childs. The new monument was designed by architect George A. Frederick and built by Colonel Hugh Sisson, and included a medallion of Poe by an artist named Valck. All three men were from Baltimore. The total cost of the monument, with the medallion, amounted to slightly more than $1,500.

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Death_of_Edgar_Allan_Poe

[LC_Lancer]

1890 Start of Sherlock Holmes adventure "The Red-Headed League" in the Strand Magazine

1930 Laura Ingalls became the first woman to fly across the United States as she completed a nine-stop journey from Roosevelt Field in New York to Glendale, Calif

1946 The Eugene O'Neill drama "The Iceman Cometh" opened on Broadway.

[LC_Lancer]

October 16,

In 1854, Oscar Wilde is born on this day in Dublin, Ireland. He (Fingal O'Flahertie Wills) grew up in Ireland and went to England to attend Oxford, where he graduated with honors in 1878. A popular society figure known for his wit and flamboyant style, he published his own book of poems in 1881. He spent a year lecturing on poetry in the United States, where his dapper wardrobe and excessive devotion to art drew ridicule from some quarters.
After returning to Britain, Wilde married and had two children, for whom he wrote delightful fairy tales, which were published in 1888. Meanwhile, he wrote reviews and edited Women's World. In 1890, his only novel, The Picture of Dorian Gray, was published serially, appearing in book form the following year. He wrote his first play, The Duchess of Padua, in 1891 and wrote five more in the next four years. His plays, including The Importance of Being Earnest (1895), were successful and made him a popular and well-known writer.
In 1895, the Marquess of Queensberry denounced Wilde as a homosexual, accusing him of having an affair with the marquess's son. Wilde sued for libel, but lost his case when evidence strongly supported the marquess's observations. Unfortunately, homosexuality was classified as a crime in England at the time. Wilde was arrested, found guilty, and sentenced to two years of hard labor.
Wilde was released from prison in 1897 and fled to Paris, where his many loyal friends visited him. He started writing again, producing The Ballad of Reading Gaol, based on his experiences in prison. He died of acute meningitis in 1900.
http://www.history.com/this-day-in-history.do?action=Article&id=4123

Also on Oct. 16:
In 1888, Eugene Gladstone O'Neill, who was regarded as the foremost American playwright of his time, was born in New York City.
He won Nobel Prize for Literature in 1936 for Desire Under the Elms


1997 Author James Michener died at age 90.

1758 Noah Webster lexicographer (Webster's Dictionary) born.

1927 Gunter Grass Germany, novelist/poet (The Tin Drum) born.

1944 - The Robe, by Lloyd Douglas, was published this day. Nine years later the novel was made into a movie and captured three Oscars. It is seen annually (around the Easter holiday) on TV.

One other birthday to note: In 1928, the frosted electric light bulb was patented. No, it wasn’t the work of Thomas Edison, Westinghouse, General Electric, or any of his army, either. It was one Marvin Pipkin who lit up at receiving this patent.

[LC_Lancer]

Today, Emily Elizabeth Dickinson was born.


And so was I.

[Infinitefox]

really good thread.

[NickAdams]

John Updike, author, Is dead at 76.

[JBI]

John Updike, author, Is dead at 76.

I didn't see that coming - horribly tragic - he will be greatly missed.

[Equality72521]

1911: Elizabeth Bishop is born

[Equality72521]

1931: Dorothy Parker resigns as drama critic for The New Yorker

[Equality72521]

1899: Yeats' The Countess Cathleen opens at the Irish Literary Theatre

[blazeofglory]

Literature today is defined in terms of great freedom. If you write a story or novel you do not need to have a plot and you can start it abruptly. It is so easy. If you are shrewd you can do copy and paste too and that is how some writers rose to great hearts and earned many acclamations.

[Howardmarvels]

i cannot believe how long it has been.

[lyricalfaerie]

November 30, 1835: Mark Twain was born Samuel Langhorne Clemens in Florida, Mo.

November 30, 1900: Oscar Wilde died at age 46.

[LC_Lancer]

All of these people were born on December 9:

1608 - John Milton, London, poet/puritan (Paradise Lost)

1891 - Maksim Bahdanovič, Belarusian poet (d. 1917)

1905 - Dalton Trumbo, US, writer/film director (Johnny Got His Gun)

1915 - Herbert Huncke, writer

1916 - Wolfgang Hildesheimer, German/Swiss architect/writer (Mozart biog)

1918 - Jerome Beatty Jr., American author

1926 - Jan Křesadlo, Czech writer (d. 1995)

1944 - Ki Longfellow, American novelist

[LC_Lancer]

All of these people died on December 9:

1636 - Giovanni B Aleotti, Ital writer/theater architect, dies at about 90

1636 - Fabian Birkowski, Polish writer (b. 1566)

1692 - William Mountfort, English actor and dramatist

1854 - Almeida Garrett, Portuguese writer (b. 1799)

1935 - Walter Liggett, American crusading newspaper editor and muckraker (b. 1886)

1964 - Edith L Sitwell, English poet/author (Wheels), dies at 77

1977 - Clarice Lispector, writer, dies

1982 - Fritz Usinger, German writer (Song against Death), dies at 87

2002 - Stan Rice, American painter, educator, and poet (b. 1942)

2005 - Robert Sheckley, American author (b. 1928)

[LC_Lancer]

:bday_2:

1538 - Giovanni Battista Guarini, Italian writer (Faithfull Shepherd)

1787 - Thomas Hopkins Gallaudet, Phila, pioneer of educating the deaf

1805 - William Lloyd Garrison, abolitionist publisher (The Liberator)

1821 - Nekrassow, writer

1821 - Nikolai A Nekrasov, Russian poet (Russkije Zjenjshiny)

1824 - George MacDonald, Scotland, sci-fi author (Princess & Curdie)

1830 - Emily Dickinson, Amherst Mass, poet (Collected Poems)

1851 - Melville Louis K. Dewey, created Dewey Decimal System for libraries

1870 - Pierre Louijs, France, novelist/poet (Aphrodite, Woman & Puppet)

1870 - Rudolf W Canne, Fries playwright (Der de Wier Us)

1872 - Ludwig Klages, German philosopher (study of graves)

1882 - Otto Neurath, Aust/Brit philosopher (Foundation of Social Sciences)

1891 - Leonie "Nelly" Sachs, German/Swedish poet (O the Chimneys-Nobel 1966)

1891 - Nelly Sachs, writer

1894 - Gertrud Kolmar, writer

1897 - Karl H Waggerl, Austria writer (Power of Love)

1898 - Yuri N Libedinski, Ukrainian writer (Birth of Hero) [NS]

1903 - William Plomer, Transvaal, author (Paper Houses, I Speak of Africa)

1907 - Michael Blankfort, US, writer/producer/director

1907 - Rumer Godden, England, author (Thursday's Children)

1920 - Clarice Lispector, Ukrainian-Brazilian writer (d. 1977)

1923 - Jorge Semprun, French writer (2nd mort de R Mercader, Z)

1925 - Carolyn Ashley Kizer, US writer (Yin, Pulitzer 1985)

1946 - Thomas Lux, American poet

1947 - Douglas Kenney, American humorist (d. 1980)

1955 - Jacquelyn Mitchard, American novelist

1972 - Brian Molko, Belgian-born singer and songwriter (Placebo)

[LC_Lancer]

1638 - Ivan [Dzivo F] Gundulic, Dalmatian writer (Osman), dies at 49

1749 - Gabrielle Chôtelet, [La belle Emilie], writer (Voltaire), dies at 42

1889 - Anzengruber, writer, dies

1889 - Ludwig Anzengruber, Austrian playwright, dies at 50

1931 - Max Elskamp, Belgian author/poet (Six Chansons), dies at 69

1936 - Luigi Pirandello, Italian writer (Enrico IV, Nobel 1934), dies at 69

1946 - Damon Runyon, US journalist/writer (Guys & Dolls), dies at 66

1951 - Algernon Blackwood, English writer (b. 1869)

1968 - Thomas Merton, French/US priest/writer (7 Story Mountain), dies at 53

1972 - Mark A Van Doren, US literary (Our Lady Peace), dies at 78

1995 - Gillian Rose, philosopher/writer, dies at 48

1995 - John Francis Boyd, journalist, dies at 85

1995 - Mary Madge Lascelles, literary critic/poet, dies at 95

[LC_Lancer]

Born on this day:
1717 - Elizabeth Carter, English writer (d. 1806)

I know he is not an author, but I have listened to his music many hours while I read. 1770 - Ludwig van Beethoven, Bonn Germany, composer (5th Symphony, Ode to Joy)

1775 - Jane Austin, England, novelist (Pride & Prejudice)1787 - Mary Russell Mitford, English writer (d. 1855)
1862 - Eugene Demolder, Belgian writer (Sous la robe)
1863 - George Santayana, Spain, philosopher/poet/humanist (Last Puritan)
1899 - Noel Coward, England, playwright (In Which We Serve-1942 Acad Award)
1900 - Victor S Pritchett, literary critic/author (Myth Makers)
1903 - Rafael Alberti, Spanish poet (El hombre deshabitado)

1917 - Arthur C[harles] Clarke, sci-fi author (2001, 2010, Childhood's End)

1923 - Tip [Silvio A] Marugg, Antillian writer (Weekend pilgrimage)
1927 - G Randall P D Garrett, US, sci-fi writer (Takeoff (too)!)
1927 - Peter [Malcolm] Dickinson, Zambia, sci-fi author (Heartsease)

1928 - Philip K[indred] Dick, US, sci-fi author (Hugo-1963, Blade Runner)

[heroman]

omigod !

that's incredible

[turgenev2010]

some strange topic

[LC_Lancer]

1809
On this day, Samuel Taylor Coleridge, who helped establish the Romantic school of poetry, begins to publish his own periodical, The Friend. The essays that Coleridge published in The Friend are later collected into a book


1938 U.S.A. Superman Appears For The First Time
Superman created by American writer Jerry Siegel and Canadian artist Joe Shuster made his first appearance in D.C. Comics’ Action Comics Series issue #1 which sold for 10 cents.

1968
Helen Keller, blind and deaf author-lecturer, died.

[LC_Lancer]

Famous Birthdays on 1st June
1679 - Johan Runius, Swedish poet (Dudaim)
1765 - Christiane Vulpius, wife of Johann W von Goethe
1790 - Ferdinand Raimund, Austrian playwright (d. 1836)
1858 - William W Campbell, Canadian poet (Beyond the Hills of Dream)
1862 - Antonio JdC Feijo, Portuguese diplomat/poet (Bailatas)
1878 - John Masefield, England, 15th poet laureate (Salt-Water Ballads)
1881 - Charles Kay Ogden, English writer and linguist (d. 1957)
1882 - John Drinkwater, English poet/playwright (Abraham Lincoln)
1901 - John W Van Duren, playwright (I Remember Mama)
1901 - John Van Druten, English screen writer (d. 1957)
1932 - Philo [Rolf] Bregstein, Dutch writer (Dingen die niet Voorbijgaan)
1934 - Willy Roggeman, Flemish writer (Goldfish, Nardis)
1937 - Colleen McCullough, writer (Tim, Indecent Obsession)
1942 - Tom Mankiewicz, LA Calif, screenwriter (Diamonds are Forever)
1955 - Ralph Morse, British actor, singer and writer of historical dramas




Famous Deaths on 1st June
1713 - Johan Runius, Swedish poet (Dudaim), dies at 34
1876 - Christo Botew, writer, dies
1927 - J. B. Bury, Irish historian (b. 1861)
1951 - Rafael Altamira Crevea, Spanish lawyer/historian, dies at 85
1952 - John Dewey, US philosopher (Common Faith), dies at 92
1954 - Martin Andersen Nexø, Danish writer (b. 1869)
1959 - Sax Rohmer, English author (b. 1883)
1968 - [Johan] Erik Lindegren, Swedish poet/interpreter, dies at 57
1970 - G Ungaretti, writer, dies at 82
1982 - Hendrik Algra, Newspaper publisher/Dutch MP (ARP), dies
1983 - Anna Seghers, writer, dies at 82
1990 - Eric Barker, actor/writer (Carry on Sergeant, Roommates), dies
1996 - Stephen Jones, art historian, dies at 41
2001 - Hank Ketcham, American cartoonist (b. 1920)

[LC_Lancer]

I missed yesterday but JOHN NORMAN's birthday was June 3.
Happy Birthday, John!!!! Thank you for a great story, wonderful characters, and an unforgetable culture.

[LC_Lancer]

Born today:
1937 – Robert Fulghum, American author
1941 – Kenneth G. Ross, Australian playwright and screenwriter
1951 – Wendy Pini, American comic book writer and artist
1955 – Val McDermid, Scottish writer
1955 – Paul Stewart, English writer

Famous Deaths
1875 – Eduard Mörike, German poet (b. 1804)
1964 – Samuil Marshak, Russian poet (b. 1887)
1989 – Dik Browne, American cartoonist (b. 1917)

[LC_Lancer]

John Bunyan, Vanity Fair
On this day in 1675 John Bunyan went to prison for the third time, convicted of preaching his Baptist faith without a license. In over twelve years of confinement Bunyan wrote numerous books and pamphlets, including Part I of A Pilgrim's Progress. It sold 100,000 copies in his lifetime, and is still reported to be the most sold book in the world, next to the Bible.

Famous Births
1765 - Charles Dibdin, England, composer/author (Sea Songs)/actor (baptized)
1766 - Emanuel ADMJ, French historian (Napoleon)
1782 - Johann Wyss, Swiss folklorist/writer (Swiss Family Robinson)
1841 - Kristian Mandrup Elster, Norwegian author (And fremmed Fugl)
1844 - Josip Jurcic, Slovenian writer (10th Brother)
1856 - Toru Dutt, English and French poet and author (d. 1877)
1870 - Thomas Sturge Moore, English poet (d. 1944)
1873 - Guy Wetmore Carryl, American humorist and poet (d. 1904)
1879 - Bernhard Kellermann, writer
1880 - Channing Pollock, American playwright and critic (d. 1946)
1881 - Thomas Sigismund Stribling, American writer (d. 1965)
1899 - Emilio Prados, Spanish poet and editor (d. 1962)
1900 - Herbert Biberman, American screenwriter (d. 1971)
1901 - Jean Joseph Rabearivelo, Malagasy/French poet (d. 1937)
1906 - Meindert DeJong American author (d. 1991)
1908 - Boris N Poveloi, [Kampov], Russian journalist/writer [NS=Mar 17]
1913 - Taos Amrouche, Algerian writer and singer (d. 1976)
1916 - Giorgio Bassani, Italian writer (Botteghe Oscure)
1916 - Hans Eysenck, psychologist
1923 - Patrick Moore, England, astronomer/writer (A-Z of Astronomy)
1951 - Edelgard Bulmahn, German politician
1954 - Mark Chorvinsky, American author and editor (d. 2005)
1966 - Dav Pilkey, American author
1967 - Andrew Osmond, English writer
1980 - Arash Markazi, American sportswriter
1983 - Max Vergara Poeti, Colombian writer

Famous Deaths
1852 - Nikolai Gogol, Russian writer and playwright, dies at 43
1872 - Johannes Carsten Hauch, Danish poet (b. 1790)
1888 - Amos Bronson Alcott, US theory/poet (Table Talk), dies at 88
1903 - Joseph H Shorthouse, English writer (John Inglesant), dies at 68
1940 - Hamlin Garland, American novelist (b. 1860)
1943 - Pieter C Boutens, Dutch poet (Beatrijs), dies at 73
1948 - Antonin Artaud, French poet/actor (Napoleon), dies at 51
1958 - Albert Kuyle, [Lou Kuitenbrouwer], writer (Jesus' Carpet), dies at 54
1967 - Vladan Desnica, Croatian and Serbian writer (b. 1905)
1977 - Andrés Caicedo, Colombian writer (b. 1951)
1984 - Ernest Buckler, Canadian novelist (b. 1908)
1986 - Henri Knap, Dutch journalist/writer, dies at 75
1992 - Arthur Babbitt, animator (Mr Magoo, Goofy), die at 84 of heart failure
1996 - Barbara Lewis, British obituarist, dies at 55
1996 - Minnie Pearl, country comedienne (Grand Ole Opry), dies at 84
1999 - Karel van het Reve, Dutch writer (b. 1921)
2003 - Sébastien Japrisot, French author, screenwriter and film director (b. 1931)
2005 - Carlos Sherman, Uruguayan-born writer (b. 1934)
2008 - Gary Gygax, Fantasy author and role-playing games creator. (b. 1938)
2009 - Patricia De Martelaere, Flemish writer (b. 1957)

[LC_Lancer]

On October 7, 1849, at age 40, Edgar AllenPoe died in Baltimore; the cause of his death is unknown and has been variously attributed to alcohol. Poe was never coherent long enough to explain how he came to be in his dire condition, and, oddly, was wearing clothes that were not his own.

[tonywalt]

Matt Damon, born October 8, 1970 Actor. He authored the movie
script “Good Will Hunting” with Ben Affleck.