Posted on December 6, 2020 at 8:00 AM by Sadye Scott-Hainchek

Here are the literary birthdays to celebrate over the week of December 6, 2020.

Peter Handke (December 6, 1942): Handke used to be best known for the novel The Hornets, the play Offending the Audience, and the screenplay for the movie Wings of Desire; after he won the 2019 Nobel Prize in Literature, though, conversation about him focused on controversial remarks he made about the Balkan conflicts.

Willa Cather (December 7, 1873): Cather is best known today for O Pioneers! and My Ántonia, but she also received the Pulitzer Prize for One of Ours.

John Milton (December 9, 1608): Milton, famous for the epic poem Paradise Lost, is considered by many to be the second-most significant English author.

Emily Dickinson (December 10, 1830): Dickinson is among the greatest American poets, known for such poems as “Because I could not stop for Death,”  “‘Hope’ is the thing with feathers,” “I felt a Funeral, in my Brain,” and “A Bird, came down the Walk.”

Aleksandr Solzhenitsyn (December 11, 1918): Solzhenitsyn is famous for his novels One Day in the Life of Ivan Denisovich and Gulag Archipelago, the publication of which resulted in the loss of his Russian citizenship.

Gustave Flaubert (December 12, 1821): Flaubert’s debut novel — Madame Bovary — is by far his most famous work, though he’s credited with leading the realist school of French literature.

Birthdays sourced from Calendar of Literary Facts; biographical information sourced from Encyclopedia Britannica and Poetry Foundation. Did we miss someone? Email and let us know!

Categories: Today in Books

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