The Splendiferously Bearded Writers Social Club: Wilkie Collins

  • Name: Wilkie Collins
  • D/O/B: 8 January 1824
  • Member Since: 1871
  • Status: Charter Member
  • Important Role: Director and star of the club’s amateur theatricals
  • Hobbies: Socializing with Charles Dickens; acting; painting
Wilkie Collins by Frederick Waddy, 1872

Wilkie Collins by Frederick Waddy, 1872.

The Dead Writers Round-Up: 23rd-25th September

  • Mary Church Terrell was born on 9/23/1863. “And so, lifting as we climb, onward and upward we go, struggling and striving, and hoping that the buds and blossoms of our desires will burst into glorious fruition ere long.” (A Colored Woman in a White World; various articles)
  • Walter Lippmann was born on 9/23/1889. “Where all think alike, no one thinks very much.” (Public Opinion; The Phantom Public)
  • Elinor Glyn died on 9/23/1943. “Romance is the glamour which turns the dust of everyday life into a golden haze.” (Three Weeks; Beyond the Rocks; “It” and Other Stories)

  • Nigel Nicolson died on 9/23/2004. “We are all inclined to judge ourselves by our ideals; others by their acts.” (Portrait of a Marriage; Fanny Burney: The Mother of English Fiction)
  • Horace Walpole was born on 9/24/1717. “The world is a tragedy to those who feel, but a comedy to those who think.” (Some Anecdotes of Painting in England; The Castle of Otranto)
  • Sir Alan P. Herbert was born on 9/24/1890. “The conception of two people living together for twenty-five years without having a cross word suggests a lack of spirit only to be admired in sheep.” (Holy Deadlock; Uncommon Law)
  • F. Scott Fitzgerald was born on 9/24/1896. “The loneliest moment in someone’s life is when they are watching their whole world fall apart, and all they can do is stare blankly.” (This Side of Paradise; The Great Gatsby; Tender is the Night)
  • Dr. Seuss died on 9/24/1991. “A person’s a person, no matter how small.” (Horton Hears a Who!; Green Eggs and Ham)
  • Françoise Sagan died on 9/24/2004. “Money may not buy happiness, but I’d rather cry in a Jaguar than on a bus.” (Bonjour tristesse; La chamade)
  • William Faulkner was born on 9/25/1897. “The past is never dead. It’s not even past.” (The Sound and the Fury; As I Lay Dying; Intruder in the Dust)
  • Ring Lardner died on 9/25/1933. “How can you write if you can’t cry?” (You Know Me Al; Haircut)
  • Erich Maria Remarque died on 9/25/1970. “It’s only terrible to have nothing to wait for.” (All Quiet on the Western Front; Three Comrades; Arch of Triumph)

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Upton Sinclair: 20 September 1878

Pulitzer Prize winning author Upton Sinclair was born on 20 September 1878. As many of you know, I love this photo of him as a young man:

Upton Sinclair

Upton Sinclair

You can download a copy of his most important work, The Jungle, at Project Gutenberg.

Cover of The Jungle by Upton Sinclair, 1906

Cover of The Jungle by Upton Sinclair, 1906.