It’s the birthday of José Echegaray y Eizaguirre (1832-1916), who was the major Spanish dramatist of his day. He was a math professor and government worker (finally becoming minister of finance) and had his first play produced at 42. After that he was hugely prolific and fantastically popular, won the Nobel Prize for lit in 1904, and now, today, is pretty much forgotten.

Life can be very hard.

It’s also the birthday of British author Richard Hughes (1900-1976), who wrote only three or four novels, including A High Wind in Jamaica (1929), originally titled The Innocent Voyage, considered “a minor classic of 20th-century English literature” (britannica.com). He also wrote poems, stories, and the first radio play, Danger (1924). Hughes appears to be less forgotten than José Echegaray y Eizaguirre because he shows up on Goodreads, with High Wind receiving 4 stars from 7,665 ratings, and the edition featured rates an intro by Francine Prose, so there’s that. High Wind actually looks fascinating: after a hurricane devastates their estate in Jamaica, a British couple send their handful of children back to England—but their ship is beset by pirates. The pirate ship accidentally ends up with the children and then doesn’t know how to get rid of them; the children adjust quickly but things get dark, then darker, even shockingly so, and the pirates end up with the worst of it. The novel was made into a movie in 1965. https://www.amazon.com/High-Wind-Jamaica-Richard-Hughes/dp/0940322153

Hughes was BFFs with Dylan Thomas and died near Harlech, Gwynedd, Wales, of leukemia, survived by his wife, five children, and 11 grandchildren.

Have a cool grey peaceful Friday, just right for the final day of spring break, and stay scrupulously honest to the data.