Author Birthdays – Page 7 – Interesting Literature

November 13 in Literary History: Robert Louis Stevenson Born

The most significant events in the history of books on the 13th of November

1850: Robert Louis Stevenson is born. However, as we’ve revealed elsewhere he legally renounced all rights to the 13th of November as his birthday, in a characteristic act of kindness (for more of which, see below). Stevenson is probably best known for the Gothic horror classic Jekyll and Hyde and the adventure story Treasure Island, though he also wrote verse for children (A Child’s Garden of Verses), ghost stories (‘Markheim’, ‘The Body Snatcher’), and travel writing (Travels with a Donkey).

November 12 in Literary History: Elizabeth Gaskell Dies

The most significant events in the history of books on the 12th of November

1615: Richard Baxter is born. This English Puritan theologian and poet was a noted hymn-writer – he wrote the words for the hymn ‘Ye Holy Angels Bright’ among others, and is mentioned by George Eliot in The Mill on the Floss.

1865: Elizabeth Gaskell dies. As well as her classic realist novel about nineteenth-century factory life, North and South (which features in our pick of the best Victorian novels), Gaskell also wrote a short story called ‘The Half-Brothers’ (1859) which features a collie dog named Lassie.

November 11 in Literary History: The Two Towers is Published

The most significant events in the history of books on the 11th of November

1821: Fyodor Dostoevsky is born. In 1849, he was sentenced to death by firing squad. At the very last minute the sentence was commuted to four years’ hard labour. At the time he was still an aspiring novelist, having written several minor works such as a novella titled The Double (1846). He would go on to write such classic novels as Crime and Punishment and The Brothers Karamazov.

November 10 in Literary History: Lady Chatterley Becomes a Bestseller

The most significant events in the history of books on the 10th of November

1619: René Descartes has the dreams that inspire his Meditations on First Philosophy.

1624: Henry Wriothesley (believed to have been pronounced ‘rizzly’), 3^rd Earl of Southampton, dies. He is the dedicatee of Shakespeare’s Venus and Adonis and The Rape of Lucrece and probable ‘Fair Youth’ of the Bard’s Sonnets.

November 9 in Literary History: Stieg Larsson Dies

The most significant events in the history of books on the 9th of November

1818: Ivan Turgenev is born. When the Russian novelist (author of Fathers and Sons) died, his brain was weighted and it was found that he had the heaviest brain on record.

1832: Émile Gaboriau is born. Gaboriau was a pioneer of detective fiction and the creator of Lecoq, one of the earliest detectives in all fiction (though Edgar Allan Poe’s Dupin preceded him and was certainly an influence on Gaboriau). Lecoq is dismissed as ‘a miserable bungler’ by Sherlock Holmes in Conan Doyle’s first novel featuring the famous detective, A Study in Scarlet.