Today In Literature

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."

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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."

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."
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July 18th

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

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.

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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:

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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.
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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.
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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.
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Poet Samuel Taylor Coleridge died on 25 July, 1834

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

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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

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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."
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June 29


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

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

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."
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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.
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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.
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