Bookish birthdays for the week of April 5, 2026

Here are the literary birthdays to celebrate over the week of April 5, 2026.

Algernon Charles Swinburne (April 5, 1837): Swinburne, in addition to being a celebrated poet, was a well-respected literary critic and a playwright.

William Wordsworth (April 7, 1770): Wordsworth wrote the majority of the poems in Lyrical Ballads, which helped launch the English Romantic movement.

Barbara Kingsolver (April 8, 1955): Among Kingsolver’s many acclaimed novels is The Lacuna, a mixture of history and fiction that won the 2010 Orange Prize for Fiction.

Charles Baudelaire (April 9, 1821): Baudelaire’s The Flowers of Evil (Les Fleurs du mal in French) is among the most important poetry collections published in Europe in the nineteenth century.

Paul Theroux (April 10, 1941): Theroux is beloved for his travel books, such as The Great Railway Bazaar (his breakthrough work), and his novels, including The Happy Isles of Oceania.