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  TODAY’S LITERARY BIRTHDAY: Evelyn Waugh (1903–1966) English novelist, biographer, and travel writer best known for Decline and Fall (1928) and Brideshead Revisited (1945), Evelyn Waugh remains one of the great prose stylists of the 20th century and the leading satirist of his age. Waugh’s early novels of the 1920s and 1930s—Vile Bodies, Black Mischief, A Handful of Dust, and Scoop—combine dazzling wit with biting social critique. Through conservative eyes, he observed the decay of traditional English society and expressed his disillusionment with savage humor and brilliant economy of language. As modernity advanced, his tone grew darker—his later works mourned the decline of the stable, class-bound England he once lampooned. Yet his style remained unmistakable: sharp, controlled, and beautifully cruel. Did You Know? • His first wife was also named Evelyn—they were known socially as ‘He-Evelyn’ and ‘She-Evelyn.’ • When his first novel was rejected, Waugh attempted to drown himse...
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 TODAY IN LITERARY HISTORY: October 17 Birthday of Pulitzer Prize-winning playwright Arthur Miller. After World War II, American theater began to change dramatically—and much of that shift came from playwright Arthur Miller. Having lived through the Depression and the war, Miller gave voice to the unease many Americans felt in the late 1940s and ’50s. His plays—All My Sons, Death of a Salesman, The Crucible, and A View from the Bridge—offered a tough look at morality, ambition, and what it meant to succeed in postwar America. Miller became as famous offstage as on. He won the Pulitzer Prize for Drama, faced the House Un-American Activities Committee, and married movie icon Marilyn Monroe. They first met in 1951, married in 1956 after Miller left his first wife, and collaborated on The Misfits (1961), which he wrote for her. Sadly, the marriage fell apart during filming; Monroe died the following year. The Misfits was unlucky for others, too—Clark Gable suffered a fatal heart attack...
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  William Tyndale was born about 1490, at North Nibley, Gloucestershire, and was educated at Magdalen Hall, Oxford.  He planned to begin his studies in theology, when he discovered that the study of scripture was not included in the Oxford syllabus. He became convinced that the church was covering up the truth, and that people had the right to know what was contained in scripture, and that it should be translated into English. Tyndale was burned at the stake at Vilvoorde, Belgium, on 6th October 1536. At the time of his death, several thousand copies of his New Testament had been printed, but only one intact copy survives at the British Library, London. In 1525, he published an English version of the New Testament at Cologne, but the church establishment had it suppressed. An edition printed at Worms had more success and hundreds of copies were smuggled into England and Scotland.  His translation introduced numerous new words and expressions into the English language. Exa...
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  Ever wonder what happens when a novelist juggles multiple alter egos, languages, and a sharp sense of humor? That was Brian O'Nolan, the Irish writer we remember today on his birthday. O'Nolan is a cornerstone of postmodern literature. Writing under the pen name Flann O'Brien, he gave us English-language novels like At Swim-Two-Birds and The Third Policeman, both celebrated for their bizarre humor and playful, mind-bending narratives. Under the name Myles na gCopaleen, he penned satirical columns for The Irish Times and even an Irish-language novel, An Béal Bocht. Influenced by James Joyce, O'Nolan nonetheless poked fun at the literary giant’s cult-like reputation, famously declaring, "I declare to God if I hear that name Joyce one more time I will surely froth at the gob." Fun fact: his work inspired the likes of Salman Rushdie and continues to enchant readers who love metafiction with a mischievous twist. Building Your Great Collection, One Fine Book at a ...
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    TODAY IN LITERARY HISTORY:  Birth of Cervantes [1547]  best known for his book, Don Quixote de la Mancha. Think of Miguel de Cervantes Saavedra as the Spanish language’s north star—the writer so towering that people still call Spanish la lengua de Cervantes (“the language of Cervantes”). He’s widely regarded as the greatest writer in Spanish and one of the world’s pre-eminent novelists. His masterpiece, Don Quixote, often hailed as the first modern novel, isn’t just a classic of Western literature; it helped set the template for the novel as we know it—character-driven, self-aware, and playful about the line between reality and imagination. Cervantes lived from 1547 to 1616, right through the climax and the unraveling of Spain’s Golden Age. He absorbed the era’s big tensions—imperial pride, religious conflict, economic strain—and filtered them into humane, often comic art. He believed in noble ideals even as he watched them collide with messy reality, which is ex...
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  TODAY IN LITERARY HISTORY:  June 26 Birthday of LYND WARD Building Your Great Collection, One Fine Book at a Time. BlindHorseBooks.com
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TODAY IN LITERARY HISTORY: Birthday of Dorothy Sayers Detective Fiction   “Building Great Collections One Fine Book at a Time” Check us out at www.BlindHorseBooks.com   
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