It’s the birthday of Mark Twain (1835-1910), often called the father of American literature and sometimes credited as the author of the first great American novel (The Adventures of Huckleberry Finn, 1885). (NB: The term “great American novel” was coined by a novelist named John William DeForest in 1868, which predates Huck Finn. DeForest believed [...]
It’s the birthday of the man whose most beloved book opens, “Once there were four children whose names were Peter, Susan, Edmund and Lucy. This story is about something that happened to them when they were sent away from London during the war because of the air-raids.” Thus begins The Lion, The Witch, and the [...]
Susan’s Almanac Project for November 28, 2018 It’s the birthday of poet, artist, and engraver William Blake (1757-1827), one of the most original of the Romantic Poets and someone who saw 100% more angels than most people do. Blake was born (and later died) in London to James and Catherine Blake. He was one of [...]
Susan’s Almanac Project for November 27, 2018 It’s the birthday of noted children’s book author and illustrator Kevin Henkes (b. 1960), whose books have won numerous awards, including a Caldecott Medal for Kitten’s First Full Moon (2004). Henkes was born in Racine, Wisconsin, the fourth of five children, an experience he credits with teaching him [...]
It’s the birthday of author and Christian thinker Marilynne Robinson (b. 1943), one of the U.S.’s great novelists and intellectuals, best known for two very different novels, Housekeeping (1980) and Gilead (2004), the latter of which won the Pulitzer Prize and the National Book Critics Circle Award. Robinson (originally Summers) was born in Sandpoint, Idaho, [...]
It’s the birthday of one of the great Victorian novelists, George Eliot (a.k.a. Mary Ann Cross Evans, 1819-1880), known for brilliant novels such as Silas Marner (1861) and Middlemarch (1871-72), but whose birthday this year falls on Thanksgiving and therefore will not receive the attention that is her due. But for goodness’ sake, if you [...]
It’s the birthday of South African author and Nobel Laureate Nadine Gordimer (1923-2014, #nicelonglife), who never set out to be a political writer but whose novels helped expose the horrors of apartheid. Gordimer was born in the mining town of Springs in northeastern South Africa, near Johannesburg and Pretoria. Her parents were both Jewish immigrants [...]
It’s the birthday of poet and critic Allen Tate (1899-1979), whose poetry was somewhat formal, intellectual, and rooted in the South, and who looked exactly like someone your parents would have bought life insurance from. Tate was born in Winchester, Kentucky, and attended Vanderbilt University in Nashville. While there, he joined a group of poets [...]
It’s the birthday of Nigerian author Chinua Achebe (1930-2013, #nicelonglifebutmaybenotlongenough), who began writing about Africa after becoming disillusioned in college about the novels that white authors were writing about Africa. His best-known novel is Things Fall Apart (1958), about the devastating effects of British colonialism on tribal Africa. The novel has been translated into 45 [...]
It’s the birthday of British-born ethnically-Hungarian author Tibor Fischer (b. 1959), whose debut novel, Under the Frog (1992), made a Big Huge Literary Splash and was short-listed for the Booker Prize, after the novel had been rejected by 56 publishers who are even now probably still kicking themselves. (Let’s all pause to enjoy imagining that.) [...]
It’s the birthday of the woman who wrote: On the outskirts of a tiny little town was a neglected garden. In the garden stood an old house, and in that house lived Pippi Longstocking. She was nine years old, and she lived there all alone. She had no mother or father, which was [...]
It’s the birthday of Scottish author Robert Louis Stevenson (1850-1894, #diedtooyoung), best known for his novel Treasure Island (1881) and novella The Strange Case of Dr. Jekyll and Mr. Hyde (1886), and for being one of the authors featured in the Authors Card Game that some of us grew up playing in the 70s. Stevenson [...]