• John Greenleaf Whittier was born on 12/17/1807. “For all sad words of tongue and pen, The saddest are these, It might have been.” (Snow-bound)
• Ford Madox Ford was born on 12/17/1873. “Only two classes of books are of universal appeal. The very best and the very worst.” (The Good Soldier; The Parade’s End tetralogy; The Fifth Queen trilogy)
• Dorothy L. Sayers died on 12/17/1957. “The only sin passion can commit is to be joyless.” (Lord Peter Wimsey novels and short stories)
• Marguerite Yourcenar died on 12/17/1987. “When two texts, or two assertions, perhaps two ideas, are in contradiction, be ready to reconcile them rather than cancel one by the other; regard them as two different facets, or two successive stages, of the same reality, a reality convincingly human just because it is complex.” (Alexis; Memoirs of Hadrian)
• Saki (Hector Hugh Munro) was born on 12/18/1870. “He’s simply got the instinct for being unhappy highly developed.” (The Westminster Alice; When William Came)
• Louis Untermeyer died on 12/18/1977. “She has something to say about what life is like-which is all we ask of poetry.” (Long Feud: Selected Poems; Bygones; The Pursuit of Poetry; Moses)
• Emily Brontë died on 12/19/1848. “Honest people don’t hide their deeds.” (Wuthering Heights)
• Jean Genet was born on 12/19/1910. “To achieve harmony in bad taste is the height of elegance.” (The Thief’s Journal; Our Lady of the Flowers; The Balcony)
• James Hilton died on 12/20/1954. “Surely there comes a time when counting the cost and paying the price aren’t things to think about anymore. All that matters is value-the ultimate value of what one does.” (Knight Without Armour; Lost Horizon; Goodbye, Mr. Chips; Random Harvest)
• John Steinbeck died on 12/20/1968. “A journey is like marriage. The certain way to be wrong is to think you control it.” (The Red Pony; Tortilla Flat; Of Mice and Men; The Grapes of Wrath; Cannery Row; The Pearl; East of Eden)
• Denise Levertov died on 12/20/1997. “Images/split the truth/in fractions.” (The Double Image; Breathing the Water; A Door in the Hive)

John Greenleaf Whittier

Ford Madox Ford

Saki (Hector Hugh Munro)

Emily Brontë by Branwell Brontë

Jean Genet Signature

John Steinbeck Signature

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

• Colley Cibber died on 12/11/1757. “You know, one had as good be out of the world, as out of the fashion.” (An Apology for the Life of Colley Cibber)
• Gustave Flaubert was born on 12/12/1821. “Everything one invents is true, you may be perfectly sure of that. Poetry is as precise as geometry.” (Madame Bovary)
• Robert Browning died on 12/12/1889. “Take away love and our earth is a tomb.” (Paracelsus; Sordello; Love Among the Ruins)
• Samuel Johnson died on 12/13/1784. “Of the blessings set before you make your choice, and be content.” (A Dictionary of the English Language; A Journey to the Western Islands of Scotland; London)
• Heinrich Heine was born on 12/13/1797. “Wherever they burn books they will also, in the end, burn human beings.” (The North Sea; The Salon)
• Shirley Jackson was born on 12/14/1916 (or 1919). “I delight in what I fear.” (The Haunting of Hill House)
• Maxwell Anderson was born on 12/15/1888. “This liberty will look easy by and by when nobody dies to get it.” (What Price Glory; Saturday’s Children; Both Your Houses; Winterset; Knickerbocker Holiday; Key Largo; Anne of the Thousand Days)
• Betty Smith was born on 12/15/1896. “I wrote about people who liked fake fireplaces in their parlor, who thought a brass horse with a clock imbedded in its flank was wonderful.” (A Tree Grows in Brooklyn)
• Jane Austen was born on 12/16/1775. “There are people, who the more you do for them, the less they will do for themselves.” (Sense and Sensibility; Pride and Prejudice; Mansfield Park; Emma; Northanger Abbey; Persuasion)
• George Santayana was born on 12/16/1863. “An artist is a dreamer consenting to dream of the actual world.” (The Sense of Beauty; The Life of Reason; The Realms of Being)
• Sir Noël Coward was born on 12/16/1899. “I love criticism just so long as it’s unqualified praise.” (Hay Fever; Private Lives; Cavalcade; Design for Living; Tonight at 8:30; Blithe Spirit)
• W. Somerset Maugham died on 12/16/1965. “Only a mediocre person is always at his best.” (Of Human Bondage; The Moon and Sixpence; The Painted Veil; Cakes and Ale; The Razor’s Edge)

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