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Archive for the 'A Week in Literary History' CategoryA Week in Literary HistoryNovember 18th, 2002 Librettist W.S. (William Schwenk) Gilbert (of Gilbert & Sullivan) is born in London, 1836. W.S. Gilbert, b. November 18, 1836, d. 1911
Suggested Reading Libretti The G&S oeuvre.
Posted by: The Editors A Week in Literary HistoryNovember 15th, 2002 American poet Marianne Moore (Poems, 1921) is born in 1887 in Kirkwood, Miss. Marianne Moore, b. November 15, 1887, d. 1972
Suggested Reading Poetry Poems, 1921. The Pangolin and Other Verse, 1936. Collected Poems, 1951. The Complete Poems, 1967, 1981. Other Idiosyncrasy and Technique, 1959. Dress and Kindred Subjects, 1965. Homage to Henry James, 1971.
Posted by: The Editors A Week in Literary HistoryNovember 13th, 2002 Scottish author Robert Louis Stevenson (The Strange Case of Dr. Jekyll and Mr. Hyde, 1886) is born in Edinburgh in 1850.
Stevenson led an adventurous life and managed to work most of his major adventures and concerns into his fiction. For a while after his death, he was relegated to the minor ranks, but his reputation has steadily revived, and his popularity has never waned. He is a fluent, lively, and ambitious writer, and his works have been translated far more widely than his contemporaries Poe, Dickens, and Wilde. Suggested Reading Novels & Novellas Treasure Island, 1883. The Strange Case of Dr Jekyll and Mr Hyde, 1886. Kidnapped, 1886. The Master of Ballantrae, 1889. Short stories New Arabian Nights, 1877. Island Nights' Entertainments, 1893. Poetry A Child's Garden of Verses, 1885. Ballads, 1891. Songs of Travel and Other Verses, 1896. Other Virginibus Puerisque, and Other Papers, 1881. Familiar Studies of Men and Books, 1882. Memories and Portraits, 1887.
Posted by: The Editors A Week in Literary HistoryNovember 11th, 2002 In 1922, American novelist Kurt Vonnegut (Slaughterhouse Five, or The Children’s Brigade, 1969) is born in Indianapolis, Ind.
Vonnegut became a voice, perhaps the voice, of the generation after his in the Sixties with his openly political and satirical novels. In his book on the Allied bombing of Dresden in World War II, he emerged as a humanist and an advocate for peace in a very confused period. His humor and compassion should make his books last well beyond their topical contexts. Suggested Reading Novels The Sirens of Titan, 1959. Mother Night, 1961. Cat’s Cradle, 1963. God Bless You, Mr. Rosewater, 1965. Slaughterhouse-Five, 1969. Jailbird, 1979. Short stories Welcome to the Monkey House, 1968. Palm Sunday, 1981.
Posted by: The Editors A Week in Literary HistoryNovember 11th, 2002 Russian novelist Fyodor Dostoevsky (Crime and Punishment, 1886) is born in Moscow in 1821.
Dostoevsky has his detractors, most notably Vladimir Nabokov, who had no taste for his countryman’s religious enthusiasms and thought his novels sentimental. But Dostoevsky wrote on a huge scale; his excesses are part of the deal and his preoccupation with psychology is unparalleled. His characters — quarreling, agonizing, rushing about, philosophizing, and always talking talking talking — are fascinating. Their craziness — even their author’s — is the stuff of humanity, presented by a giant of literature. Suggested Reading Novels Notes from the House of the Dead, 1861-62. Notes from Underground, 1864. The Gambler, 1866. Crime and Punishment, 1866. The Idiot, 1868. The Possessed, 1871-72. The Brothers Karamazov, 1879-80.
Posted by: The Editors A Week in Literary HistoryNovember 10th, 2002 Irish novelist and playwright Oliver Goldsmith (She Stoops to Conquer, 1773) is born in 1730 in Ballymahon, County Longford.
Goldsmith was famous during his lifetime for his loud clothes, uncouth manners, and ignorant conversation, but Samuel Johnson cautioned, “Let not his frailties be remembered; he was a very great man.” Today we remember Goldsmith for one memorable novel, one very funny play, and one poem, but his journalistic writings are also worth searching out. Suggested Reading Novel The Vicar of Wakefield, 1766. Drama She Stoops to Conquer, 1773. Poetry The Deserted Village, 1770. Non-fiction An Enquiry into the Present State of Polite Learning in Europe, 1759.
Posted by: The Editors A Week in Literary HistoryNovember 9th, 2002 Russian novelist Ivan Turgenev (Fathers and Sons, 1862) is born in Orel in 1818.
Turgenev was the first of the great Russian novelists to be widely read in Europe. In Fathers and Sons he introduced the vexing question of nihilism, borrowed from the West, into the Russian consciousness. His elegant style became a model not so much for other Russian writers but for generations of foreigners. By the end of his life, he had become a famous figure in his homeland: his funeral was attended by delegations from 180 organizations and was an occasion of national mourning. Suggested Reading Novels Fathers and Sons, 1862. Smoke, 1867. Spring Torrents, 1871. Virgin Soil, 1877. Stories A Sportsman’s Sketches, 1852.
Posted by: The Editors A Week in Literary HistoryNovember 7th, 2002 French novelist Albert Camus (The Stranger, 1942) is born in Mondovi, Algeria in 1913. Albert Camus, b. November 7, 1913, d. 1960
Suggested Reading Novels The Stranger, 1942. The Plague, 1947. The Fall, 1956. Short stories Exile and the Kingdom, 1957. Non-fiction The Myth of Sisyphus, 1942. The Rebel, 1951.
Posted by: The Editors A Week in Literary HistoryNovember 6th, 2002 In 1892, editor Harold Ross (The New Yorker, 1925-51) is born in Aspen, Colo. Harold Ross, b. November 6, 1892, d. 1951
Suggested Reading Biography The Years with Ross, by James Thurber, 1957.
Posted by: The Editors A Week in Literary HistoryNovember 5th, 2002 American novelist and memoirist Geoffrey Wolff (The Duke of Deception, 1979) is born in 1937 in Hollywood. Geoffrey Wolff, b. November 5, 1936
Suggested Reading Novels Bad Debts, 1969. The Sightseer, 1974. Inklings, 1978. Providence: A Novel, 1986. The Final Club, 1990. The Age of Consent, 1995. Biography Black Sun: The Brief Transit and Violent Eclipse of Harry Crosby, 1976. The Art of Burning Bridges: A Life of John O’Hara, 2003. Memoirs The Duke of Deception: Memories of My Father, 1979. A Day at the Beach: Recollections, 1992. Travel The Edge of Maine, 2005.
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