It’s the birthday of T.S. Eliot (1888-1965), whose works such as “The Waste Land” and Four Quartets established him as the greatest poet of the 20th century, though emphatically not, it must be admitted, the most cheerful. Thomas Stearns Eliot was born in St. Louis, Missouri, the sixth child of parents who were actually transplanted [...]
It’s the birthday of Virginia Woolf (1882-1941), of whom I am in fact just the least bit afraid due to wigging out after reading Mrs. Dalloway (1925) while experiencing culture shock abroad. (Great novel. Maybe don’t read it while you’re feeling iffy.) Woolf is known for fluid, nonlinear experiments with narration (think stream of consciousness) [...]
It’s the birthday of novelist and literary critic Ford Madox Ford (1873-1939), who was one of the greatest influences on literature in the first half or so of the 20th century. Best known for his masterpiece The Good Solider (1915), Ford’s work brought together the likes of Henry James, James Joyce, Joseph Conrad, Ezra Pound, [...]