Author Birthdays – Page 5 – Interesting Literature

November 23 in Literary History: John Milton Publishes Areopagitica

The most significant events in the history of books on the 23rd of November

534 BC: Thespis of Icaria – from whom we get the word ‘thespian’ – becomes the first recorded actor to portray a character on the stage. According to legend, Thespis was the first person to appear on stage and perform a role, rather than speak as himself, which had been the norm until then (where storytellers would perform as themselves, rather than in character). The ’23 November’ date is more traditional than factual, of course…

1644: John Milton publishes one of the most famous – and eloquent – defences of free expression ever written, the Areopagitica. A polemical tract in prose, published during the English Civil War, Areopagitica is an attack on censorship and an argument in favour of the freedom of the press – as relevant now as it has ever been.

November 22 in Literary History: C. S. Lewis Dies

The most significant events in the history of books on the 22nd of November

1819: George Eliot is born. She was born Mary Ann Evans (sometimes known as Marian) and adopted the name George Eliot in 1856, when she launched her career in fiction. Eliot was the author of seven full-length novels, including Middlemarch and The Mill on the Floss, and was also the first person to refer to modern tennis and to ‘pop’ music.

1869: André Gide is born. This French author, recipient of the Nobel Prize for Literature in 1947, once observed: ‘With each book you write you should lose the admirers you gained with the previous one.’

November 21 in Literary History: Fanny Hill Published

The most significant events in the history of books on the 21st of November

1694: Voltaire is born François-Marie Arouet in Paris. This towering figure of the French Enlightenment wrote satirical novels (Candide), philosophical works (Dictionnaire philosophique), and even an early example of the detective novel (Zadig). This last work takes the figure of Zadig (an ancient Babylonian philosopher) as its central character, and incorporates the classic fairy tale ‘The Three Princes of Serendip‘.

November 20 in Literary History: Leo Tolstoy Dies

The most significant events in the history of books on the 20th of November

1752: Thomas Chatterton is born. This proto-Romantic poet was dead before his eighteenth birthday, by his own hand. Chatterton has a serious claim to being the most precocious English poet who has ever lived. In his early teens, he fell in love with all things medieval, and invented the figure of the fifteenth-century monk Thomas Rowley, who would become the teenage boy’s alter ego. Thereafter, Chatterton would write the majority of his poems as Rowley, and even succeeded in passing them off as genuine medieval poems … for a while, at least.

November 19 in Literary History: Thomas Shadwell Dies

The most significant events in the history of books on the 19th of November

1692: Thomas Shadwell dies. He had been appointed Poet Laureate of the United Kingdom in 1689, after the Glorious Revolution had put William and Mary on the English throne. The Catholic Dryden found himself out of favour with the new monarchical double act, and he became – as well as the first official UK Poet Laureate – also the first Poet Laureate to be sacked. Dryden would outline his successor by eight years.