It’s the birthday of three American authors who have each sold bazillions of books: Tom Clancy (1947 – 2013), whose military/espionage thrillers have sold over 100 million copies; Scott Turow (b. 1949), whose courtroom thrillers have sold over 30 million copies; and Beverly Cleary (b. 1916), whose children’s books about Henry Huggins, Ramona Quimby, and [...]
It’s the birthday of the brilliant and erratic 18th century poet Christopher Smart, whose reputation sank in his own lifetime when he spent years locked up for madness. (He got a lot of writing done during those years. Who’s crazy now?) Many of us today associate him most strongly with the section of his poem, [...]
It’s the birthday of Joseph Pulitzer, the Hungarian-born newspaperman whose influence largely made American newspapers what they are today. He was also the first to establish a university-level school of journalism and founded the Nobel Prize. (Okay, no. But apparently a lot of people think this. There is a statement at the Pulitzer web site [...]
It’s the birthday of Charles Baudelaire, possibly the most important and influential European poet of the 19th century, although not, to be strictly honest, someone you would ever have turned to for sound financial advice. But when he wasn’t busy running his inheritance into the ground in record time, Baudelaire was writing prophetic art criticism, [...]
It’s the birthday of children’s book author Graeme Base (b. 1958), creator of some of the most gorgeously illustrated children’s books on the planet. Born in Amersham, England, but raised in Australia from the age of eight, Base is best known for Animalia (1986), an alliterative alphabet book in which every page is absolutely stuffed [...]
It’s the birthday of Richard Eberhart, born in Austin, Minnesota, in 1904, the most prominent poet you’ve never heard of. (You’ve heard of him? Good for you. Pat on the back.) Eberhart wrote lyric poetry with the sensibilities of a Romantic but in a modern style (short lines, irregular rhythms, and maybe he rhymes and [...]
It’s the birthday of Maya Angelou, born Marguerite Annie Johnson in 1928, poet, novelist, playwright, performer, and author of seven volumes of autobiography, including her first, I Know Why the Caged Bird Sings (1969), which was a finalist for the National Book Award. This first volume describes her childhood in Stamps, Arkansas. Angelou’s parents divorced [...]
It’s the birthday of poet and priest George Herbert (1593-1633), known as one of the great metaphysical poets. (Metaphysical poetry: highly intellectualized poetry marked by the use of strange imagery, complexity of thought, and big buttery handfuls of paradox. A shout out to Samuel Johnson for coining the term as a way of describing a [...]
It’s the birthday of Danish author Hans Christian Andersen (b. 1805), who wrote plays, poems, novels, autobiographies, and more, but is most famous for his literary fairy tales, which have been translated into more than 150 languages. (Be honest: can you even *name* 150 languages?) Some of his most famous fairy tales include “The Princess [...]