Bookish birthdays for the week of June 27, 2021

Here are the literary birthdays to celebrate over the week of June 27, 2021. 

Paul Laurence Dunbar (June 27, 1872): Dunbar, a poet (Lyrics of Lowly Life) and novelist (The Sport of the Gods), was one of the first black writers in the U.S. to gain national prominence.

Jean-Jacques Rousseau (June 28, 1712): Rousseau’s philosophical works — including A Discourse on the Sciences and the Arts, A Discourse on the Origin of Inequality, and The Social Contract — and his novels inspired the leaders of the French Revolution and the Romantic generation.

Antoine de Saint-Exupery (June 29, 1900): Saint-Exupery is, of course, beloved for The Little Prince — one of the bestselling books of all time — but his novel Night Flight and memoir, Wind, Sand and Stars, both received literary awards.

George Sand (July 1, 1804): Sand’s novel Indiana — about a woman who abandons a conventional but unhappy marriage for love — brought her immediate fame, while her so-called “rustic” novels like The Devil’s Pool, set in the countryside where she grew up, cemented her legacy.

Hermann Hesse (July 2, 1877): Hesse, who won the Nobel Prize for Literature, is best known in English for the poetic novel Siddhartha.

Tom Stoppard (July 2, 1937): Stoppard has won the Tony Award for several plays, including Rosencrantz and Guildenstern Are Dead, The Real Thing, Travesties, and the trilogy The Coast of Utopia.

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