The most significant events in the history of books on the 15th of December 1683: Izaak Walton dies. He was a biographer who wrote about the lives of a number of key seventeenth-century poets, including the Metaphysical Poets John Donne and George Herbert. However, it is for his 1653 book The […]
The most significant events in the history of books on the 14th of December 1640: Aphra Behn is (possibly) born. Few details about Behn’s early life are known for sure, but it’s possible that she was the ‘Eaffrey Johnson’ who was born in Harbledown in Kent, on December 14 1640. […]
The most significant events in the history of books on the 13th of December 1784: Samuel Johnson dies. Among the books he planned to write, but died before he got a chance to undertake them, Dr Johnson listed a cookbook set out ‘upon philosophical principles’ and a history of his melancholy. […]
The most significant events in the history of books on the 12th of December 1731: Erasmus Darwin is born. This natural philosopher, scientist, and poet was the grandfather of Charles Darwin. One of his poems, The Botanic Garden, anticipates the Big Bang theory when it describes an explosion, a ‘mass’ […]
The most significant events in the history of books on the 25th of November 1562: Lope de Vega is born. A towering figure of Spanish Renaissance literature, he was a hugely prolific poet and playwright. Cervantes, author of Don Quixote, called Vega, his contemporary, a ‘monster of nature’, which sounds much like […]