Tag Archives: Milestones

The Transcendental Louisa May Alcott Died 125 Years Ago Today

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Louisa May Alcott died on 6 March 1888. Here she is, at the quarter-century mark, looking utterly captivating.

Louisa May Alcott

Louisa May Alcott

QUOTE: “Do the things you know, and you shall learn the truth you need to know.”

SOME WORKS: Hospital Sketches; Little Women; Little Men; Eight Cousins; Under the Lilacs.

A KEEPSAKE:

Louisa May Alcott Quote Typography Print at Jane and Company Design

Louisa May Alcott Quote Typography Print at Jane and Company Design. $20.00

The Dead Writers Round-Up: March 4th-8th

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  • William Carlos Williams died on 3/4/1963. “It is difficult to get the news from poems, yet men die miserably every day for lack of what is found there.” (Poems; Spring and All; Journey to Love; Paterson)
  • Frank Norris was born on 3/5/1870. “I never truckled; I never took off the hat to Fashion and held it out for pennies. By God, I told them the truth.” (McTeague; The Octopus: A Story of California; The Pit)
  • Elizabeth Barrett Browning was born on 3/6/1806. “Who so loves believes the impossible.” (Casa Guidi Windows; Aurora Leigh; Last Poems)
  • Artemus Ward died on 3/6/1867. “It ain’t so much the things we don’t know that get us in trouble. It’s the things we know that ain’t so.” (Artemus Ward His Panorama; Artemus Ward in London)
  • Pearl S. Buck died on 3/6/1973. “Hunger makes a thief of any man.” (The Good Earth; Peony; The Big Wave)
  • Stevie Smith died on 3/7/1971. “All poetry has to do is to make a strong communication. All the poet has to do is listen. The poet is not an important fellow. There will also be another poet.” (Novel on Yellow Paper; This Englishwoman; Not Waving But Drowning; Scorpion and Other Poems)
  • Kenneth Grahame was born on 3/8/1859. “After all, the best part of a holiday is perhaps not so much to be resting yourself, as to see all the other fellows busy working.” (The Golden Age; Dream Days; The Wind in the Willows)
  • Sherwood Anderson died on 3/8/1941. “I am a lover and have not found my thing to love.” (Many Marriages; Winesburg, Ohio; The Triumph of the Egg: A Book of Impressions From American Life in Tales and Poems)
William Carlos Williams’ Passport Photo, 1921
Frank Norris
Elizabeth Barrett Browning
Artemus Ward
Kenneth Grahame, circa 1910

 

A Young, Hopeful D.H. Lawrence Looked to the Future…

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…and died on this day, 2 March, 1930.

DH Lawrence, 1906

D.H. Lawrence, 1906.

QUOTE: “I cannot cure myself of that most woeful of youth’s follies-thinking that those who care about us will care for the things that mean much to us.”

SOME WORKS: Sons and Lovers; The Rainbow; Women in Love; Aaron’s Rod; The Plumed Serpent; Lady Chatterley’s Lover; The Rocking-Horse Winner.

A KEEPSAKE:

Essay on D.H. Lawrence by Kenneth Young at Dunedin Street

Essay on D.H. Lawrence by Kenneth Young at Dunedin Street. $6.78

Henry James, Once a Dapper Young Man, Died 97 Years Ago Today

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Henry James died on 28 February 1916. He wasn’t always a humourless looking middle-aged man. Briefly, a long time ago, he was a humourless looking yet dapper young man.

Young Henry James

Young Henry James

QUOTE: “It is art that makes life, makes interest, makes importance and I know of no substitute whatever for the force and beauty of its process.”

SOME WORKS: Roderick Hudson; Washington Square; The Portrait of a Lady; The Bostonians; What Maisie Knew; The Wings of the Dove; The Golden Bowl; Daisy Miller; The Aspern Papers; The Turn of the Screw.

A KEEPSAKE:

Daisy Miller by Henry James at Free Parking

Daisy Miller by Henry James at Free Parking. $10.00

The Dead Writers Roundup: February 22nd-25th

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  • James Russell Lowell was born on 2/22/1819. “Books are the bees which carry the quickening pollen from one to another mind.” (A Fable for Critics; Conversations on the Old Poets)
  • Jules Renard was born on 2/22/1864. “Failure is not our only punishment for laziness; there is also the success of others.” (Crime de village; Poil de carotte)
  • Edward Gorey was born on 2/22/1925. “To take my work seriously would be the height of folly.” (The Doubtful Guest; The Gashlycrumb Tinies; The Gilded Bat; The Broken Spoke; The Loathsome Couple)
  • Elizabeth Bowen died on 2/22/1973. “When you love someone, all your saved-up wishes start coming out.” (The Last September; The House in Paris; The Heat of the Day; Eva Trout; Look At All Those Roses)
  • Samuel Pepys was born on 2/23/1633. “Strange to see how a good dinner and feasting reconciles everybody.” (The Diary of Samuel Pepys) Continue reading →

Happy Birthday Edna St. Vincent Millay, You Timeless Beauty

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Edna St. Vincent Millay was born on 22 February 1892, with looks as timeless as the poems she grew up to write.

Edna St. Vincent Millay

Edna St. Vincent Millay

QUOTE: “Life must go on; I forget just why.”

SOME WORKS: Renascence, and Other Poems; A Few Figs from Thistles: Poems and Four Sonnets; The Ballad of the Harp-Weaver; Fatal Interview; The Murder of Lidice.

A KEEPSAKE:

Edna St. Vincent Millay Quote Canvas Shopper Bag by Cloudshaped

Edna St. Vincent Millay Quote Canvas Shopper Bag by Cloudshaped. $25.81

 

 

 

 

The Dead Writers Round-Up: February 17th-21st

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  • Jean-Baptiste Molière died on 2/17/1673. “Things are only worth what one makes them worth.” (The School for Wives; Tartuffe; The Misanthrope; Amphitryon)
  • Heinrich Heine died on 2/17/1856. “Wherever they burn books they will also, in the end, burn human beings.” (The North Sea: Cycle I and II; The Town of Lucca; The Salon I)
  • Dorothy Canfield Fisher was born on 2/17/1879. “Those who love deeply never grow old; they may die of old age, but they die young.” (The Bent Twig; Her Son’s Wife; Seasoned Timber)
  • Audre Lord was born on 2/18/1934. “If I didn’t define myself for myself, I would be crunched into other people’s fantasies for me and eaten alive.” (The First Cities; Coal; The Cancer Journals)
  • André Breton was born on 2/19/1896. “Words make love with one another.” (Surrealist Manifesto; A Corpse; Nadja; The Automatic Message)
  • Carson McCullers was born on 2/19/1917. “I live with the people I create and it has always made my essential loneliness less keen.” (The Heart is a Lonely Hunter; Reflections in a Golden Eye; The Member of the Wedding)
  • André Gide died on 2/19/1951. “To know how to free oneself is nothing; the arduous thing is to know what to do with one’s freedom.” (The Fruits of the Earth; The Immoralist; Strait is the Gait; Corydon)
  • Knut Hamsun died on 2/19/1952. “I can’t even make up a rhyme about an umbrella, let alone death and life and eternal peace.” (Hunger; Mysteries; Pan; In Wonderland; On Overgrown Paths) Continue reading →

The Dead Writers Round-Up: February 10th

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  • Sir John Suckling was born on 2/10/1609. “Out upon it I have lov’d/Three whole days together;/And am like to love three more,/If it prove fair weather.” (Ballad Upon a Wedding; Aglaura)
  • Baron de Montesquieu died on 2/10/1755. “Liberty is the right to do what the law permits.” (Persian Letters; The Temple of Gnide)
  • Charles Lamb was born on 2/10/1775. “I love to lose myself in other men’s minds…Books think for me.” (Blank Verse; Tales from Shakespeare; The Adventures of Ulysses; Essays of Elia)
  • Boris Pasternak was born on 2/10/1890. “Man is born to live, not to prepare for life.” (My Sister, Life; Themes and Variations; Safe Conduct; Doctor Zhivago)
  • Bertolt Brecht was born on 2/10/1898. “Because things are the way they are, things will not stay the way they are.” (Happy End; Saint Joan of the Stockyards; Don Juan; Trumpets and Drums; The Modern Theatre is the Epic Theatre)
  • Laura Ingalls Wilder died on 2/10/1957. “It is the sweet, simple things of life which are the real ones after all.” (Little House in the Big Woods; Little House on the Prairie; On the Banks of Plum Creek)
  • Alex Haley died on 2/10/1992. “In my writing, as much as I could, I tried to find the good, and praise it.” (The Autobiography of Malcolm X; Roots: The Saga of an American Family)
  • Arthur Miller died on 2/10/2005. “A playwright lives in an occupied country. And if you can’t live that way you don’t stay.” (All My Sons; Death of a Salesman; The Crucible; A View from the Bridge; After the Fall; Mr. Peter’s Connections; Resurrection Blues)
Sir John Suckling
Charles de Secondat, Baron de Montesquieu
Charles Lamb, 1798
Laura Ingalls Wilder
Alex Haley in the U.S. Coast Guard

 

The Dead Writers Round-Up: 8th-9th February

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  • Jules Verne was born on 2/8/1828. “Reality provides us with facts so romantic that imagination itself could add nothing to them.” (A Journey to the Center of the Earth; From the Earth to the Moon; Twenty Thousand Leagues Under the Sea; Around the World in Eighty Days)
  • Kate Chopin was born on 2/8/1850. “A person can’t have everything in this world; and it was a little unreasonable of her to expect it.” (Bayou Folk; A Night in Acadie; The Awakening)
  • Elizabeth Bishop was born on 2/8/1911. “If after I read a poem the world looks like that poem for 24 hours or so I’m sure it’s a good one-and the same goes for paintings.” (North & South; Poems: North & South. A Cold Spring; The Complete Poems)
  • Iris Murdoch died on 2/8/1999. “We can only learn to love by loving.” (Under the Net; The Bell; The Sea, The Sea; The Green Knight)
  • Amy Lowell was born on 2/9/1874. “Happiness, to some, elation; Is, to others, mere stagnation.” (A Dome of Many-Coloured Glass; Sword Blades and Poppy Seed; Legends; A Critical Fable) Continue reading →

Happy Birthday James Joyce, You Stylish Gent

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James Joyce was born on 2 February 1882. Although he was born too early to grace the pages of GQ…

James Joyce, circa 1918

James Joyce, circa 1918

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

…he went on to have quite the literary career. You may have heard of him?

QUOTE: “A man’s errors are his portals of discovery.”

SOME WORKS: Chamber Music; Dubliners; A Portrait of the Artist as a Young Man; Ulysses; Finnegan’s Wake.

A KEEPSAKE:

Handmade Vintage Cameo Pendant Necklace of James Joyce by Blings To Pay The Bills

Handmade Vintage Cameo Pendant Necklace of James Joyce by Blings To Pay The Bills. $22.48 USD