Writer-painter August Strindberg died on 14 May 1912. Here he is, looking suitably bohemian…
August Strindberg, self-portrait. Circa 1891.
QUOTE: “I dream, therefore I exist.”
SOME WORKS: Master Olof; The Free Thinker; The Outlaw; The Father; The Dance of Death; A Dream Play; The Great Highway; The Son of a Servant.
A KEEPSAKE:
August Strindberg Pinback Button by BuyTheLightoftheMoon. $1.50
Ruth Prawer Jhabvala Dead [courtesy of HuffPost Books]
Roger Ebert Dead [courtesy HuffPost Entertainment]
The determined-looking Henrik Ibsen, one of my favourite playwrights, was born on 20 March 1828.
Henrik Ibsen, circa 1870
QUOTE: “It is the very mark of the spirit of rebellion to crave for happiness in this life.”
SOME WORKS: Peer Gynt; A Doll’s House; Ghosts; The Wild Duck; The Lady from the Sea; Hedda Gabler.
A KEEPSAKE:
Henrik Ibsen quote mug by Marthe Pinaire. $12.00
Never forget: Zelda had a gift for words, too. Muses aren’t always mute.
Zelda Fitzgerald Quote Poster
“The slivers of artistic vision which she was able to develop reveal a singular sensibility, her raw ability yielding under a surprisingly effective command. Zelda Fitzgerald is, possibly, best known as the ultimate liver of life, a rare talent at which she excelled with panache, humour, and fortitude. She was also a creator of things beautiful, witty, complex, and sensual. How much was left unrealized, we will never know: that answer died with her in a sanitarium fire, on 10 March 1948.
The greatest work of art that it is in our limited power to create is that which we salvage, fashion, and edit from the raw material of our lives. Zelda Fitzgerald, in potential and adversity, made much of what she was given, as a human being and as an artist.”-from Zelda: The Other Fitzgerald, by Alicia Austen
This mesmerizing gent is writer and publisher Robert McAlmon, who was born on 9 March 1895.
Robert McAlmon, one of my great inspirations, looking spiffy.
QUOTE: “He (Owen Johnson) didn’t have to argue with me about the beginning of the jazz and the flapper age. It began actively for me when I was fourteen. As a child I had noted it without curiosity in my elders. That means the jazz age proper and the flappers were going strong before 1910, some years before Scott Fitzgerald was beyond his own childhood. It was in its heyday when Irene and Vernon Castle were famous as ballroom dancers, and none of us as children considered ourselves grown up unless we could bonton, pigeon-trot, barn-dance, Spanish tango, or turkey-walk our two hundred miles a week of so-called dancing. In those days the hobble skirt and the sheath gown were creating a sensation, and I remember seeing the smart young ladies from the university doing a step or two on the street corners as they waited for the streetcar to come along.”
SOME WORKS: Village: As it Happened Through a Fifteen Year Period; A Companion Volume; The Portrait of a Generation; North America, Continent of Conjecture; Being Geniuses Together: An Autobiography.
FUN FACT: In 1923, Robert McAlmon started the Contact Publishing Company. It is in this capacity, more than any other, that he ranks as one of my great professional inspirations.
Vita Sackville-West was born on 9 March 1892.
Birthday girl Vita Sackville-West in 1916.
QUOTE: “I worshipped dead men for their strength, forgetting I was strong.”
SOME WORKS: Sissinghurst; Solitude; The Edwardians; All Passion Spent; The Dark Island; No Signposts in the Sea.
A KEEPSAKE:
The Edwardians by Vita-Sackville West at Eager for Word. $12.34.
A Small Press Life: Books. Art. Writing. Life. Tea. 