Author Birthdays

The most significant events in the history of books on the 4th of October

What events of particular historical significance occurred on October 4? The day was a good one for literary history and the world of books: Wordsworth got married, and a couple of popular writers whose work would inspire major successes in other fields were born…

1802: William Wordsworth marries his childhood friend Mary Hutchinson; the couple would live for many years with William’s sister Dorothy. William and Mary would have five children, though three of them, sadly, would die before their parents.

1880: Damon Runyon, author of Guys and Dolls, is born. Well, we say ‘author of Guys and Dolls‘, but the two stories which served as the source material for the popular musical were actually titled ‘The Idyll of Miss Sarah Brown’ and ‘Blood Pressure’. The musical premiered in 1950, four years after Runyon’s death. Runyon wrote many tales of gangster life in 1920s America, and one of the characters to feature in his stories goes by the sobriquet ‘The Seldom Seen Kid’. The rock band Elbow would use this name as the title of their fourth album in 2008. Runyon is also often credited with coining the phrase ‘Hooray Henry’ (Runyon provides the dictionary with the earliest use of the phrase, albeit in the form ‘Hoorah Henry’ from 1936).

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The most significant events in the history of books on the 3rd of October

What events of historical note occurred today, October 3, in the worlds of literary history and the history of books? On the 3rd of October, an Elizabethan poet was born, and an important Victorian designer and writer died…

1554: Fulke Greville, Lord Brooke (or 1st Baron Brooke), is born. This English poet and statesman was a friend of Sir Philip Sidney, born the same year as Greville. Sidney would die in his early thirties, in 1586, while on a military campaign in the Netherlands. Greville would be Sidney’s biographer following his friend’s death. Greville’s own death, in 1628, has to be among the more dramatic author deaths in the annals of literary history.

1849: Edgar Allan Poe is found delirious on the streets of Baltimore, wearing somebody else’s clothes, by one Joseph J. Walker. Four days later he would be dead, at just forty years of age. He had helped to invent the detective story, and to define the genre of science fiction, among many other achievements. (Our selection of Poe’s greatest short stories gives a sense of his sheer variety.) ‘Those who dream by day’, he once observed, ‘are cognizant of many things which escape those who dream only by night.’

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The most significant events in the history of books on the 2nd of October

What significant events in history occurred on October 2nd? In the world of literature and books, the 2nd of October saw the birth of a major British novelist and a major American poet, and the premiere of a classic US TV series…

1879: Poet Wallace Stevens is born. An important voice in twentieth-century American poetry, Stevenson would proclaim that ‘the poet is the priest of the invisible.’ One of his most celebrated, but enigmatic, poems is ‘The Emperor of Ice-Cream’, which can be read here.

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The most significant events in the history of books on the 1st of October

What significant events in history occurred on October 1st? In the world of literature and books, the 1st of October saw the birth of an early Gothic novelist and the death of a classic American children’s author…

1760: William Beckford, author of Vathek, is born. Beckford wrote the bestselling Gothic novel Vathek in French in 1782, and left an the English translation up to someone else (it would be translated by a vicar four years later). Beckford, from a wealthy family of sugar plantation owners, was tutored in music by none other than Mozart. His family estate was at Fonthill, where Beckford had the famous Fonthill Abbey built.

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