Literary obituaries: November 19, 2024

Here are the literary deaths that either occurred recently or popped into the news recently:

Sandra M. Gilbert, a poet, scholar, and literary critic, died November 10 at age eighty-seven.

Gilbert came to prominence as the co-author of The Madwoman in the Attic: The Woman Writer and the Nineteenth-Century Literary Imagination and continued to advance feminist literature in addition to writing a memoir about grief and collections of poetry.

Shuntaro Tanikawa, a pioneer of modern Japanese poetry, died November 13 at age ninety-two.

Tanikawa's conversational poems broke with previous traditions; he was also noted for his extensive translation work, from the Peanuts comic strip to Mother Goose and Maurice Sendak.

Arthur Frommer, creator of the eponymous guidebooks, died November 18 at age ninety-five.

Frommer's Europe on 5 Dollars a Day: A Guide to Inexpensive Travel came out in 1957; in the words of his New York Times obituary, it "introduced millions to an experience once considered the exclusive domain of the wealthy" and launched an empire of guidebooks, package tours, hotels, and other travel services.