Author Birthdays – Page 6 – Interesting Literature

November 18 in Literary History: George Bernard Shaw Turns Down Nobel Prize Money

The most significant events in the history of books on the 18th of November

1307: According to Tschudi, it is on this day that William Tell shot the arrow off his son’s head in Swiss legend.

1836: W. S. Gilbert is born. Gilbert is best known for his songwriting partnership with composer Arthur Sullivan, which would result in the Savoy Operas such as HMS Pinafore and The Pirates of Penzance. Gilbert died in May 1911, after diving into a lake to save a drowning girl and suffering a heart attack.

November 17 in Literary History: Sylvia Beach Opens Shakespeare and Company

The most significant events in the history of books on the 17th of November

1603: Sir Walter Raleigh goes on trial for treason. Although found guilty, he would be imprisoned in the Tower of London for much of the next fifteen years (T. E. Hulme wrote a little poem about it); his neck would eventually meet the cold blade of the exeuctioner’s axe on 29 October 1618.

1866: Voltairine de Cleyre, American anarchist writer and feminist, is born. She spoke out against the ways in which religion impinged upon the individual freedoms of women in the United States, and wrote and published widely on the issue, among many others.

November 16 in Literary History: Dostoevsky Sentenced to Death

The most significant events in the history of books on the 16th of November

1849: Fyodor Dostoevsky is sentenced to death for anti-government activities. At the last moment, the death sentence was commuted to four years’ hard labour and exile at a prison camp at Omsk, Siberia, followed by enforced military service. He will go on to become one of the leading Russian novelists of the nineteenth century, along with Leo Tolstoy.

November 15 in Literary History: J. G. Ballard is Born

The most significant events in the history of books on the 15th of November

1869: Charlotte Mew is born. This English poet spanned both the Victorian and modernist periods in English poetry; it is fitting, then, that among her admirers were both Thomas Hardy and Virginia Woolf. Among her most famous poems are ‘In Nunhead Cemetery‘ and ‘The Farmer’s Bride‘.

November 14 in Literary History: Treasure Island is Published

The most significant events in the history of books on the 14th of November

1851: Herman Melville’s novel Moby-Dick is published in the United States, nearly a month after it had gone on sale in the UK. The novel sold badly (it now sells more copies in a year than it sold during Melville’s whole lifetime) and, after several more attempts at writing, Melville gave up fiction in his later years. The novel is now regarded as an American classic.