Author Birthdays – Page 9 – Interesting Literature

November 3 in Literary History: French Playwright is Guillotined

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

A significant day in the history of Charles Dickens’s career, as he completes another successful book on this day, November the 3rd, in 1844…

1793: Olympe de Gouges is guillotined in France. A female French playwright, Gouges was also a political campaigner (a feminist and an abolitionist) who fell foul of the Revolutionary government during the Reign of Terror and was executed. Among her political writings, Declarations of the Rights of Woman and the Female Citizen (1791) remains the most widely known.

November 2 in Literary History: Lady Chatterley is Acquitted

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

A momentous day indeed for literary history: on November 2nd 1960, a trial takes place that will reflect a changing attitude to the notion of ‘obscenity’ in books…

1950: George Bernard Shaw dies. The author of over fifty plays – perhaps most famously, Pygmalion, which gave us Professor Henry Higgins and Eliza Doolittle – Shaw also devised his own phonetic alphabet and was a co-founder of the London School of Economics, or LSE. Here are 10 of George Bernard Shaw’s best and wittiest quotations.

November 1 in Literary History: W. H. Smith Opens Its First Railway Bookstall

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

A momentous day in literary history, November the 1st saw the first performance of a classic Shakespeare tragedy, Jane Austen’s most famous novel rejected, and a well-known bookshop make history…

1604: William Shakespeare‘s Othello is performed for the first time, at Whitehall Palace in London.

1611: William Shakespeare’s The Tempest, probably his last single-authored play, also has its premiere on this day, seven years after Othello. It’s also performed at Whitehall Palace.

1790: Edmund Burke publishes his Reflections on the Revolution in France. He predicts that the Revolution will descend into chaos and little good will come of it. Thomas Paine, who would himself be a victim of the Reign of Terror (and would narrowly escape execution), will write his Rights of Man in response to Burke’s arguments.

October 31 in Literary History: John Keats Born

The most significant events in the history of books on the 31st of October

A significant day in the calendar, October the 31st, aka Halloween, has also given us some important events in the literary-historical calendar, including the birth of a diarist, a Romantic poet, and a leading mystery novelist…

1620: John Evelyn is born. Although his work as a diarist is often eclipsed by his more famous contemporary, Samuel Pepys, it was the publication of Evelyn’s diary in the early nineteenth century which led to Pepys’ diary being deciphered and then published, in 1825.

October 30 in Literary History: Ezra Pound Born

The most significant events in the history of books on the 30th of October

On this day, October the 30th, literary history witnessed a momentous radio performance from Orson Welles, and the birth of one of the leading figures in modernist poetry…

1751: Richard Brinsley Sheridan is born. An Irish playwright and one of the owners of the Theatre Royal, Drury Lane, he would become a hugely popular dramatist before he even turned 30 years of age, with such plays as The Rivals (1775, staged when Sheridan was just 23) and The School for Scandal (1777). He is buried in Poets’ Corner.