Bookish birthdays for the week of November 24, 2024

Here are the literary birthdays to celebrate over the week of November 17, 2024.

William F. Buckley Jr. (November 24, 1925): Buckley founded the conservative magazine National Review, but he also wrote nonfiction such as God and Man at Yale and a series of spy novels.

Arundati Roy (November 24, 1961): Roy won the Booker Prize for The God of Small Things, which has been translated into more than forty languages, and was longlisted for the same award for The Ministry of Utmost Happiness. 

Marilynne Robinson (November 26, 1943): Robinson’s Gilead series — comprising Gilead, Home, Lila, and Jack — has netted her several top literary awards including the Pulitzer Prize, the Orange Prize, and the National Book Critics Circle Award.

John Bunyan (November 28, 1628): Bunyan’s most famous work, The Pilgrim’s Progress, was an instant hit and was found in nearly every home for centuries after it was published.

William Blake (November 28, 1757): Blake illustrated his poetry collections, including Songs of Innocence and Songs of Experience; his most recognizable works today are “The Lamb,” “The Tyger,” and “London.” 

Rita Mae Brown (November 28, 1944): Though Brown is widely known for her Sneaky Pie Brown mystery series, she launched her career with a coming-of-age novel about lesbian love called Rubyfruit Jungle. 

Louisa May Alcott (November 29, 1832): Alcott’s fame in her lifetime was almost exclusively due to Little Women and its sequels, but in recent years, her fiction for adults — including A Modern Mephistopheles and Work: A Story of Experience — has gained attention as well.

C.S. Lewis (November 29, 1898): Lewis wrote about forty different books, including the classic fantasy series The Chronicles of Narnia but also a number of theological and scholarly works.

Madeleine L’Engle (November 29, 1918): L’Engle wrote over sixty novels for adults and young readers alike, with her best-know being the Newbery Medal-winning A Wrinkle in Time and its follow-ups.

Philip Sidney (November 30, 1554): Sidney’s Astrophel and Stella is among the finest Elizabethan sonnet cycles; his The Defence of Poesie, the best work of Elizabethan literary criticism.

Jonathan Swift (November 30, 1667): Swift remains among the leading English satirists for such works as the pamphlet “A Modest Proposal” and the novel Gulliver’s Travels.

Mark Twain (November 30, 1835): The Adventures of Tom Sawyer (which has never been out of print), The Adventures of Huckleberry Finn, and The Innocents Abroad were all hits in Twain’s lifetime, while other works like A Connecticut Yankee in King Arthur’s Court and The Celebrated Jumping Frog of Calaveras County and Other Sketches took longer to catch on.

L.M. Montgomery (November 30, 1874): Montgomery put aside the manuscript for Anne of Green Gables for a few years, after a series of rejections, but with the right publisher, it became an immediate bestseller and launched her career as a novelist.

Tayari Jones (November 30, 1970): Jones is the bestselling author of several novels, including the award-winning and celebrity-acclaimed An American Marriage.