Bookish birthdays for the week of December 20, 2020

Here are the literary birthdays to celebrate over the week of December 20, 2020:

Sandra Cisneros (December 20, 1954): Cisneros received a National Medal of the Arts for her lifetime of work, including poetry, short stories, and a novel; she is most famous for her bestseller The House on Mango Street, which has been translated into over twenty languages.

Jean Racine (December 22, 1639): Best known for his plays like Phèdre, Racine is considered the first modern poet and also the first French author to live off his writing.

Matthew Arnold (December 24, 1822): Arnold gained prominence in his lifetime for his literary criticism; his poetry, which preceded his critical work, has earned him posthumous honor for such works as “Dover Beach.”

Mary Higgins Clark (December 24, 1929): Clark’s first suspense novel, Where Are The Children?, set her on the path to becoming the Queen of Suspense — she now has nearly forty bestsellers under her belt and a mystery award named after her.

Stephenie Meyer (December 24, 1973): Meyer, whose Twilight series has sold over 100 million copies globally, became the first author to sweep the first four slots on USA TODAY’s bestseller list.

Isaac Newton (December 25, 1642): Newton’s Mathematical Principles of Natural Philosophy, often referred to as simply the Principia (from its Latin title), revealed his laws of motion and is one of the most important modern scientific works.

Thomas Gray (December 26, 1716): Gray wrote “An Elegy Written in a Country Church Yard,” one of the most famous English lyric poems.

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