Newswire
Posted on April 21, 2024 at 8:00 AM by Sadye Scott-Hainchek
Here are the literary birthdays to celebrate over the week of April 21, 2024.
Charlotte Brontë (April 21, 1816): Brontë’s classic novel, Jane Eyre, was quickly accepted by a publisher and actually an immediate success.
Immanuel Kant (April 22, 1724): Kant spent ten years reflecting on what would become his most famous work, Critique of Pure Reason, and still was nervous about publishing it.
Vladimir Nabokov (April 22, 1899): Nabokov had published several collections of poetry and novels, in both Russian and English, before Lolita — which became his first work to bring in more than a few hundred dollars and the one for which he’s best known.
William Shakespeare (April 23, 1564): Though we know Shakespeare as one of the most — if not the most — influential English writers, the first reference to him from the literary world is sarcastically scathing.
Anthony Trollope (April 24, 1815): Trollope’s popularity, beginning with the Chronicles of Barsetshire novels, led many to underestimate the quality of his writing.
Robert Penn Warren (April 24, 1905): Warren, most widely known for the novel All The King’s Men, also became the first poet laureate of the United States in 1986.
Sue Grafton (April 24, 1940): Grafton’s A Is for Alibi (and the series it launched) helped overturn gender stereotypes in mystery fiction, with its independent, self-reliant, tough heroine Kinsey Millhone.
Daniel Defoe (April 26, 1660): Defoe wrote his most famous work, Robinson Crusoe, at age fifty-nine, not only making a late-career switch from nonfiction but also earning him the title of father of the English novel.
David Hume (April 26, 1711): Book I of Hume’s A Treatise of Human Nature is his most-read writing among philosophers — yet in later years, he rejected the work.
Anita Loos (April 26, 1889): Loos was a prolific and successful screenwriter whose most popular contribution is actually a novel — Gentlemen Prefer Blondes, which has since been adapted into a play, two musicals, and two films, for a total of eighty-five editions.
Mary Wollstonecraft (April 27, 1759): Wollstonecraft’s A Vindication of the Rights of Woman is one of the trailblazing works of feminism, but she may be slightly more recognizable to a general audience as the mother of Mary Shelley.
Categories: Today in Books