Bookish birthdays for the week of October 19, 2025

Here are the literary birthdays to celebrate over the week of October 19, 2025.

John Le Carré (October 19, 1931): Le Carré’s nearly-sixty-year writing career has yielded a number of beloved novels, including The Spy Who Came In from the Cold, Tinker, Tailor, Soldier, Spy, and The Constant Gardener.

Philip Pullman (October 19, 1946): Pullman has received numerous awards for the His Dark Materials fantasy series and was named to The Times’s list of the fifty greatest British authors since 1945. 

Samuel Taylor Coleridge (October 21, 1772): Famous for his poems “Kubla Khan” and “The Rime of the Ancient Mariner,” Coleridge’s Biographia Literaria is also his era’s most significant work of general literary criticism.

Ursula K. Le Guin (October 21, 1929): Le Guin was a pioneer in sci-fi and fantasy, winning the Hugo, Nebula, Locus, and World Fantasy awards multiple times; her best-known novels include the Earthsea series and The Left Hand of Darkness.

Doris Lessing (October 22, 1919): Lessing, best known for The Golden Notebook and her Children of Violence series, won the Nobel Prize for Literature in 2007.

Michael Crichton (October 23, 1942): Crichton has sold over 200 million books, propelled by such hits as The Andromeda Strain and Jurassic Park (yes, the basis for the movie).

Anne Tyler (October 25, 1941): Tyler’s most popular novels include Dinner at the Homesick Restaurant, The Accidental Tourist, and Breathing Lessons, for which she won a Pulitzer Prize.

Zadie Smith (October 25, 1975): White Teeth and On Beauty are two of Smith’s most acclaimed and recognizable novels.