Bookish birthdays for the week of August 28, 2022

Here are the literary birthdays to celebrate over the week of August 28, 2022.

Johann Wolfgang von Goethe (August 28, 1749): Von Goethe, best known for Faust and The Sorrows of Young Werther, is considered the greatest German literary figure of the modern era; Faust, in fact, is among Europe’s greatest long poems.

Leo Tolstoy (August 28, 1828): Tolstoy is popularly known and praised for War and Peace and Anna Karenina, though his much shorter The Death of Ivan Ilyich is also considered one of the best novellas.

Mary Shelley (August 30, 1797): While she’s most famous for the oh-so-influential Frankenstein, Shelley wrote several other works, including The Last Man (said to be her best), and edited the poetry of her husband, Percy Bysshe Shelley.

Edgar Rice Burroughs (September 1, 1875): Burroughs is best known for the Hollywood adaptations of his twenty-five Tarzan books, though his first hit story, “Under the Moons of Mars,” has also hit the screen in the form of the movie John Carter.

Eleanor Hibbert (September 1, 1906): Hibbert published more than two hundred romance novels under several pseudonyms, most prolifically Jean Plaidy (over ninety historical tales) and Victoria Holt (over thirty books).

Cleveland Amory (September 2, 1917): In addition to being a bestselling author (thanks to his trilogy about his cat Polar Bear, beginning with The Cat Who Came For Christmas), Amory was an animal-rights activist who founded an animal-protection agency in New York state and helped establish an animal sanctuary in Texas.

Alison Lurie (September 3, 1926): Among Lurie’s best-known works, which also became movies, are The War Between the Tates and the Pulitzer Prize-winning Foreign Affairs.

Malcolm Gladwell (September 3, 1963): Gladwell has written five New York Times bestsellers: The Tipping Point, Blink, Outliers, What the Dog Saw, and David and Goliath.