• Louisa May Alcott was born on 11/29/1832. “It takes two flints to make a fire.” (Little Women; Little Men; Jo’s Boys)
• C.S. Lewis was born on 11/29/1898. “Failures are finger posts on the road to achievement.” (Beyond Personality; Studies in Words; The Chronicles of Narnia)
• Madeleine L’Engle was born on 11/29/1918. “Inspiration usually comes during work, rather than before it.” (A Wrinkle in Time; A Swiftly Tilting Planet)
• Jonathan Swift was born on 11/30/1667. “May you live all the days of your life.” (Gulliver’s Travels; A Journal to Stella)
• Mark Twain was born on 11/30/1835. “Courage is resistance to fear, mastery of fear, not absence of fear.” (The Adventures of Tom Sawyer; The Prince and the Pauper; Adventures of Huckleberry Finn; A Connecticut Yankee in King Arthur’s Court)
• Lucy Maud Montgomery was born on 11/30/1874. “There are so many unpleasant things in the world already that there is no use in imagining any more.” (Anne of Green Gables; Anne of Avonlea)
• Oscar Wilde died on 11/30/1900. “A gentleman is one who never hurts anyone’s feelings unintentionally.” (The Picture of Dorian Gray; Lady Windermere’s Fan; The Ballad of Reading Gaol)
• Sir Compton Mackenzie died on 11/30/1972. “The only mystery about the cat is why it ever decided to become a domestic animal.” (Whisky Galore; The Monarch of the Glen)

Louisa May Alcott

Jonathan Swift

Mark Twain

Lucy Maud Montgomery, circa 1920-1930

Oscar Wilde by Napoleon Sarony

[All photographs are in the Public Domain and are courtesy of Wikimedia Commons]