Posts

-
Image
TODAY IN LITERARY HISTORY April 24 1905 Birth of Robert Penn Warren, Novelist, America’s First Poet Laureate. He is the sole individual to have earned Pulitzer Prizes in both fiction and poetry. His novel All the King's Men (1946) garnered him the 1947 Pulitzer Prize for Fiction, while he received the Pulitzer Prize for Poetry in both 1958 and 1979. Warren's work spans both poetry and prose, and his ability to excel in both fields sets him apart. His poetry, characterized by its intellectual depth and emotional resonance, earned him two Pulitzer Prizes for Poetry (1958, 1979). As a novelist, his most famous work, All the King's Men (1946), won the Pulitzer Prize for Fiction in 1947 and is considered one of the greatest American novels. The novel’s exploration of political corruption and moral ambiguity remains a key text in American literary studies. Warren was one of the founding figures of New Criticism, a dominant literary movement in the mid-20th century. This approach ...
Post a Comment
Read more
-
Image
 TODAY IN LITERARY HISTORY: April 19 Welsh writer Richard Hughes (1900 – 1976) was born Richard Hughes was brought up in the West Indies in Jamaica and only wrote only four novels, the most famous of which is The Innocent Voyage (1929), or A High Wind in Jamaica, as Hughes renamed it soon after its initial publication.   Set in the 19th century, it explores the events which follow the accidental capture of a group of English children by pirates: the children are revealed as considerably more amoral than the pirates (it was in this novel that Hughes first described the cocktail Hangman's Blood, recipe below). During 1938, he wrote an allegorical novel In Hazard based on the true story of the S.S. Phemius that was caught in the 1932 Cuba hurricane for 4 days during its maximum intensity. He also wrote volumes of children's stories, including The Spider's Palace, plays and poetry.   A High Wind in Jamaica was made into a film of the same name in 1965. The book was initially ...
Post a Comment
Read more
-
Image
 TODAY IN LITERARY HISTORY: April 17 Birth of Danish author Isak Dinesen. (1885 – 1962) Isak Dinesen, whose finely crafted stories, set in the past and pervaded with an aura of supernaturalism, incorporate the themes of eros and dreams was the pseudonym of Karen Blixen. Dinesen married her cousin, Baron Bror Blixen-Finecke, in 1914 and went with him to Africa. There they owned and directed a coffee plantation in Kenya and became big-game hunters. After her divorce in 1921 she continued to operate the plantation for 10 years until mismanagement, drought, and the falling price of coffee forced her return to Denmark.    The book is a poetic reminiscence of her triumphs and her sorrows on the loss of her farm, the death of her companion, the English hunter Denys Finch Hatton, and the disappearance of the simple African way of life she admired. In 1944 she produced her only novel The Angelic Avengers under the pseudonym Pierre Andrézel. It is a melodramatic tale of innocents w...
Post a Comment
Read more
-
Image
 TODAY IN LITERARY HISTORY: Birth of HENRY JAMES American-born British writer.  He is regarded as one of the key figures of 19th-century literary realism He is best known for a number of novels showing Americans encountering Europe and Europeans. His method of writing from a character's point of view allowed him to explore issues related to consciousness and perception, and his style in later works has been compared to impressionist painting. His imaginative use of point of view, interior monologue and unreliable narrators brought a new depth to narrative fiction.   James was famous for his dexterous, somewhat long-winded phrases, both in his writings and in ‘real life.’ A famous anecdote survives which describes how James goes about asking directions from a passer-by while motoring through England with his good friend, Edith Wharton:  ‘”My friend, to put it to you in two words, this lady and I have just arrived here from Slough; that is to say, to be more strict...
Post a Comment
Read more
-
Image
 TODAY IN LITERARY HISTORY: April 10 Happy Birthday Travel Writer and Novelist Paul Theroux “Building Great Collections One Fine Book at a Time” Check us out at www.BlindHorseBooks.com
Post a Comment
Read more
-
Image
 TODAY IN LITERARY HISTORY Happy Birthday Caldecott Award Illustrator Trina Schart Hyman   “Building Great Collections One Fine Book at a Time” Check us out at www.BlindHorseBooks.com
Post a Comment
Read more