Bookish birthdays for the week of June 25, 2023

Here are the literary birthdays to celebrate over the week of June 25, 2023. 

George Orwell (June 25, 1903): Orwell struggled to find a publisher for Animal Farm, though it quickly became a critical and financial success, but his legacy lives on most noticeably in now-common phrases borrowed from 1984.

Pearl S. Buck (June 26, 1892): Within just a few years of publishing her first novel, Buck had won the Pulitzer Prize (for The Good Earth, the first in an acclaimed series) and the Nobel Prize for Literature.

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.