Astrid Lindgren (November 14, 1907 - January 28, 2002) was a friendly housewife who wrote children’s tales such as Pippi Longstocking, while also speaking out about animal welfare, children’s rights, racism, and taxation. From her humble beginnings in the Alps of Sweden, she is now the eighteent most-translated author in history, has sold 145 million copies of her work, and is the namesake of the most lucrative award offered in children’s literature worldwide.
Today we celebrate the troubled life and complex literary contributions of French journalist, playwright, and philosopher Albert Camus (7 November 1913 - 4 January 1960). He died during a car crash when he was just 46, but managed in his short career to define a major philosophical movement, become a household name, and earn the Nobel Prize.
If necessity is the mother of invention and diligence the mother of good luck, then the father of Pinocchio was a benefactor of both. Carlo Collodi was a fiery Florentine political activist who wrote The Story of a Puppet begrudgingly as a magazine series. In its original form, La Storia di un Burattino (1881) is a fast-paced, real-world, often cruel tale of the peril and spite of young Pinocchio. Collodi is said to have disliked children and had none of his own; the Pinocchio he originally wrote and the Disney film we are most familiar with are strikingly different.
Joseph Rudyard Kipling (30 Dec 1865 - 18 Jan 1936) died in England at the age of 70, the most famous and highly paid writer of his time. Born to Victorian parents who named him after Staffordshire's Rudyard Lake, Kipling split his boyhood between the markets of Bombay India and an abusive English foster home. His life of travel and tragedy led to two near nervous breakdowns, but made his creative work accessible to both the aristocracy and the everyman.
Excitement has been building about this year's Nobel Prize in Literature! The winner is traditionally announced the second week of October. The Nobel Prize is certainly the most prestigious award in literature, and it's been conferred on the world's best authors since 1901.
