Black Lamb

A Week in Literary History

November 5th, 2002

English art critic and Booker Prize winning novelist John Berger (Pig Earth, 1979) is born in Stoke Newington, London, in 1926.

John Berger, b. November 5, 1926

A painter, Berger became well known in England in the early Fifties as a Marxist art critic before broadening his horizons by writing novels, one of which, G., won the coveted Booker Prize. His Into Their Labours trilogy of the Eighties is a remarkable achievement. A singular, arresting, and prolific contemporary voice.

Suggested Reading Novels A Painter of Our Time, 1958. The Foot of Clive, 1962. G., 1972. The Into Their Labours trilogy: Pig Earth, 1979; Once in Europa, 1987; Lilac and Flag, 1990. To the Wedding, 1995. From A to X, 2008. Non-fiction The Success and Failure of Picasso, 1965. Ways of Seeing, 1972. About Looking, 1980. The Sense of Sight: Writings, 1985. Selected Essays, 2001. Hold Everything Dear, 2007.

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A Week in Literary History

November 1st, 2002

American author Stephen Crane (The Red Badge of Courage, 1895) is born in 1871 in Newark, N.J.

Stephen Crane, b. November 1, 1871 d. 1900

Crane was the most successful and talked-about writer in the English language before he was twenty-five years old, thanks to the best-selling status of Maggie and The Red Badge of Courage. But a self-destructive urge wrecked his health and he was dead at twenty-eight, his best work already several years behind him. His status as one of the founders of realism in fiction stands, however, as does the poetic beauty of Red Badge, an unprecedented novel that changed forever the way war was written and thought about.

Suggested Reading Novels and novellas Maggie: A Girl of the Streets, 1893. The Red Badge of Courage: An Episode of the American Civil War, 1895. The Monster, 1898. Short stories The Little Regiment and Other Episodes of the American Civil War, 1896. The Open Boat and Other Tales of Adventure, 1898. Whilomville Stories, 1900. Wounds in the Rain: War Stories, 1900. Poetry The Black Riders, 1895. War Is Kind, 1899.

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A Week in Literary History

October 30th, 2002

Irish playwright Richard Brinsley Sheridan (The Rivals, 1775), is born in 1751 in Dublin.

Richard Brinsley Sheridan, b. October 30, 1751, d. 1816

In addition to writing plays, Sheridan was the long-term owner of London’s Theatre Royal in Drury Lane and served for thirty-two years in the House of Commons. He was thought so highly of by his contemporaries that at his death he was buried in Westminster Abbey’s Poets’ Corner. Two of his plays, The School for Scandal and his first, The Rivals, have been continuously performed since the eighteenth century, and the character Mrs Malaprop in The Rivals has taken her place as one of the unforgettable personages of the stage.

Suggested Reading Drama The Rivals, 1775. The School for Scandal, 1777. The Critic, 1779.

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Last Week in Literary History

October 30th, 2002

In 1885, American poet Ezra Pound (The Cantos, 1917-69) is born in Hailey, Idaho.

Ezra Pound, b. October 30, 1885, d. 1972

It’s not unfair to say that Pound is remembered for encouraging the literary contributions of his friends rather than for his own literary output. His poems are not much read now, but he made possible many a poem and book by his devotion to writing and help to fellow writers. Gertrude Stein famously said of him, “He was a village explainer, excellent if you were a village, but if you were not, not,” perhaps foreseeing Pound’s later turn to outspoken fascism and anti-Semitism.

Suggested Reading Poetry Hugh Selwyn Mauberley. The Cantos, 1917-1969.

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A Week in Literary History

October 29th, 2002

English novelist Henry Green (Loving, 1945) is born Henry Vincent Yorke near Tewkesbury, Gloucestershire.

Henry Green, b. October 29, 1905, d. 1973

No less a writer than Graham Greene called Henry Vincent Yorke, who published his novels as Henry Green, the finest English novelist of his generation. Green’s gentle but stylistically innovative books were issued to little fanfare during his lifetime, but they have found a new readership in recent years and are all again in print. Loving is the most famous, but equally fascinating and satisfying are Living, Party Going, and Concluding.

Suggested Reading Novels Blindness, 1926. Living, 1929. Party Going, 1939. Caught, 1943. Loving, 1945. Back, 1946. Concluding, 1948. Nothing, 1950. Doting, 1952. Memoir Pack My Bag, 1940.

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A Week in Literary History

October 28th, 2002

In 1903, English novelist Evelyn Waugh (A Handful of Dust, 1934) is born in Hampstead.

Arthur St. John (Evelyn) Waugh, b. October 28, 1903, d. 1966

Waugh first achieved fame as a deliciously wicked satirical novelist, but he also wrote beautifully in his more serious works, such as Brideshead and his Sword of Honour trilogy. Also not to be missed are his seven travel books, now all again in print.

Suggested Reading Novels Decline and Fall, 1928. Vile Bodies, 1930. Black Mischief, 1932. A Handful of Dust, 1934. Scoop, 1938. Put Out More Flags, 1952. The Sword of Honour World War II trilogy: Men at Arms, 1952, Officers and Gentlemen, 1955, and Unconditional Surrender, 1961. Brideshead Revisited, 1945. The Loved One, 1948. The Ordeal of Gilbert Pinfold, 1957. Stories Mr. Loveday’s Outing and Other Sad Stories, 1936. Love Among the Ruins, 1953. Tactical Exercise, 1954. Travel Labels, A Mediterranean Journal, 1930. Remote People, 1932. Ninety-Two Days, The Account of a Tropical Journey Through British Guiana and Part of Brazil, 1934. Waugh in Abyssinia, 1936. Robbery Under Law: The Mexican Object-Lesson, 1939. The Holy Places, 1953. A Tourist in Africa, 1960. Biography Rossetti: His Life and Works, 1928. Edmund Campion, 1935. The Life of the Right Reverend Ronald Knox, 1959. Autobiography and Other A Little Learning, 1964. The Diaries of Evelyn Waugh, 1976. A Little Order, 1977. The Letters of Evelyn Waugh, 1980. The Essays, Articles and Reviews of Evelyn Waugh, 1980.

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A Week in Literary History

October 27th, 2002

American poet Sylvia Plath (Ariel, 1965) is born in Boston in 1932.

Sylvia Plath, b. October 27, 1932, d. 1963

We’ll never know what Sylvia Plath might have accomplished had she been able to put aside her demons. She was writing the best poetry of her life just before she died, and her novel The Bell Jar is a small classic.

Suggested Reading Poetry The Colossus and Other Poems, 1960. Ariel, 1965. Plath:Poems, 1998. Prose The Bell Jar, 1963. The Journals of Sylvia Plath, 1982.

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A Week in Literary History

October 27th, 2002

In 1795, English poet John Keats (Endymion, 1818) is born in Finsbury Pavement.

John Keats, b. October 31, 1795, d. 1821

Keats died so young that he was able to produce only a small amount of poetry, none of it appreciated much in his lifetime. In fact it is said the savage reviews of Endymion precipitated his death. The poems he did write, however, have taken their place among the finest in the English language.

Suggested Reading Poetry Poems, 1816. Endymion, 1818.

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A Week in Literary History

October 17th, 2002

In 1903, American novelist Nathanael West (Miss Lonelyhearts, 1933) is born in New York City.

Nathanael West, b. October 17, 1903, d. 1940

Nathanael West’s premature death in an automobile accident cut short a career that might have given us more novels as strong as The Day of the Locust, his last one, and might not. West’s vision was a dark one, and it had undoubtedly been darkened further by his work in Hollywood, grinding out scripts for B-movies. His two good books — and Miss Lonelyhearts and Day are extremely good — end in apocalypse; it’s difficult to imagine how he would have gone on or what more he had to say. But we’ll never know.

Suggested Reading Novels The Dream Life of Balso Snell, 1931. Miss Lonelyhearts, 1933. A Cool Million, 1934. The Day of the Locust. 1939.

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At Week in Literary History

October 16th, 2002

American lexicographer Noah Webster (American Dictionary of the English Language, 1828) is born in 1758 in West Hartford, Ct.

Noah Webster, b. October 16, 1758, d. 1843

Do you wonder why Americans spell “colour” “color”? Blame this, and many other spelling eccentricities, on Mr. Webster, the first to publish a dictionary of the English language as used in the United States (and eventually Canada), completed over an 18-year period. Famous in his lifetime as a writer of spelling guides, he was also immensely respected as a scholar and man of letters.

Suggested Reading Any Webster’s dictionary.

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