The most significant events in the history of books on the 18th of December
1870: Saki is born Hector Hugh Munro. He enlisted after the outbreak of WWI, though he probably could have avoided service altogether. He became a successful writer of very short stories such as ‘The Lumber Room’ and ‘Tobermory’ (about a talking cat) under the pen-name of Saki, which was taken from either the name of a cupbearer in the Rubáiyát of Omar Khayyám or a type of South American monkey.
The most significant events in the history of books on the 8th of December
1626: John Davies dies. A minor poet who was championed in the twentieth century by T. S. Eliot, Davies was an accomplished calligrapher as well as a poet and courtier. This led Jonathan Bate, in his biography of Shakespeare, Soul of the Age, to propose the theory that Davies was the ‘rival poet’ in Shakespeare’s Sonnets.
The most significant events in the history of books on the 6th of December
1478: Baldassare Castiglione is born. This Italian soldier and diplomat is best remembered for The Book of the Courtier (1528), a book written over many years in the form of a philosophical dialogue. It sums up Renaissance Europe: when an English translation appeared in 1561 it helped to define the idea of the English gentleman.
1658: Baltasar Gracián dies. A Spanish writer and philosopher, his wisest witticism, for our money, is the following: ‘A synonym is a word you use when you can’t spell the other one.’
The most significant events in the history of books on the 1st of December
1723: Susanna Centlivre dies. She was a popular playwright during the early eighteenth century, working closely with the Theatre Royal, Drury Lane. Her belated Restoration comedy, The Basset Table (1705), is probably her most famous play, although A Bold Stroke for a Wife (1718) has remained well-known too.
The most significant events in the history of books on the 24th of November
1394: Charles of Orléans, Duke of Orléans and accomplished poet, is born. He wrote poems in both French and English, largely as a result of the 24 years he spent imprisoned in English castles, following his capture at the Battle of Agincourt in 1415. It was an exciting time in English poetry, with Geoffrey Chaucer, William Langland, John Gower, and the author of Pearl and Sir Gawain and the Green Knight having helped to create a canon of great English poetry in the late fourteenth century. The first English king to use English at his royal court was Henry IV, who usurped the throne in 1399, when Charles of Orléans was five.