Posted on December 13, 2019 at 4:00 PM by Sadye Scott-Hainchek
Tired of hearing about special days that are bright and cheery? Then you may be glad to see our post about Friday the 13th and its literary intersections.
Fun fact: A novel helped cement the superstition into pop culture.
While Friday and thirteen were both long considered unlucky, the combination of the two wasn’t noted as particularly unfortunate until the mid- to late 19th century, when we first start seeing documented references to it.
Then, in 1907, Thomas W. Lawson published a novel titled Friday, the Thirteenth, in which a stockbroker attempts to bring down the market on the titular date.
If you’d like to read the book, a hit in its time, it’s available through Project Gutenberg.
Another, more contemporary, piece of reading material about this particular day comes from Stephen King.
(Okay, so it dates back to 1984 … we said more contemporary, not contemporary.)
The horror novelist wrote an essay for the New York Times about his triskaidekaphobia, or fear of the number thirteen, and his justification for dreading when that number connects with Fridays.
Superstitious or not, though, readers will agree that the day turned out to be lucky for fans of novelist/playwright Samuel Beckett, travel writer Nadine Hays Pisani, and statistician/writer Nate Silver, all of whom were born on a Friday the 13th.