Best-selling crime novelist Mickey Spillane was born on March 9, 1918. Born Frank Morrison Spillane in Brooklyn, New York, he was the only child of his Irish bartender father, John Joseph Spillane and Scottish mother Catherine Anne. Spillane was brought up in the tough neighborhood of Elizabeth, New Jersey. Under the tutelage of his mother, he grew up “less tough,” reading Melville and Dumas before he was even eleven years old.
When it comes to poetry of the heart, Elizabeth Barrett Browning’s work has been read, enjoyed, and quoted among lovers and students since the 19th century. Today she is most famous for the poems she composed for her husband, fellow poet Robert Browning. While these poems certainly deserve their praise, Browning’s success actually began long before meeting her husband, and her collective work spans much farther than just her love poems.
Imagine skimming through a new novel at the bookstore, when suddenly your name jumps unexpectedly off the page. With a little more digging, you realize that the character carrying your identity is not saving the day or getting the girl. He’s not even a plucky sidekick – he’s the villain.
Great American poet, Henry Wadsworth Longfellow was born on February 27, 1807 in Portland, Maine. He was the second child of Stephen and Zilpah Longfellow, and not long after his birth, six children followed. He was always a creative young boy, enthusiastic about learning, and was enrolled into a private school, Portland Academy at age five. Just like other children his age, his studies primarily focused on literature and language; however, he enjoyed this so much that he engaged in intricate writing projects with his friends outside of school as well.
John Steinbeck has become a central figure in the American literary canon. A winner of the National Book Award, Pulitzer Prize, and Nobel Prize, Steinbeck certainly has the accolades to justify that position. But Steinbeck's detractors--including members of the Swedish Academy--doubted the legendary author's merits, and Steinbeck himself didn't believe he was worthy of the Nobel.
It is a world of sheer magic where fairies caper, pirates menace, and mermaids beguile. For visiting children, the danger of adulthood is cast away and replaced with adventures and marvels. Since its invention over a century ago, Neverland, created by Sir James Matthew Barrie in Peter Pan, has captured the imagination of children and adults alike. Although Neverland and its occupants seem entirely fanciful, Barrie was inspired by a number of true people and events.
Today we celebrate bestselling novelist John Winslow Irving. Irving is author of fourteen books and winner of the 1999 Academy Award for Best Adapted Screenplay. He is best known for writing The World According to Garp (1978), The Cider House Rules (1985), and A Prayer for Owen Meany (1989).
It is a curious incongruity that Mark Twain’s Adventures of Huckleberry Finn - widely considered one of the great American novels - was first published in Great Britain. Released stateside in February 1885, the book has remained in constant state of controversy ever since. The subject of that controversy, however, has vacillated considerably according to the mores of the time.
Twain initially intended the book as a sequel to The Adventures of Tom Sawyer. Its first working title was Huckleberry Finn’s Autobiography;
Wilhelm Grimm, the younger of the famous Grimm Brothers, was born on February 24, 1786 in Hanau, Germany. From his earliest days until his death he and his elder brother Jacob Grimm would remain the dearest of friends. They were in fact only two of the nine children that Phillip and Dorthea Grimm had between the years of 1783 and 1795, but they grew up sharing a bed and shared all their belongings throughout their lives.
This week we celebrate Edward St. John Gorey, born February 22, 1925. “He was a cartoonist in the widest definition and a major illustrator in the smallest,” said friend Alexander Theroux. “Edward was one of the few people I ever knew who did exactly what he wanted.” Gorey published over 100 books and illustrated dozens for other writers, including Charles Dickens, T. S. Eliot, Edward Lear, Muriel Spark, John Updike, and H. G. Wells. He was a regular contributor to The New York Review of Books, and illustrated every anniversary cover between 1978 and 1998. Editor Barbara Epstein described his drawings as “beautiful, ravishing.”
