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  Edward Kennedy "Duke" Ellington (April 29, 1899 – 1974) was an American composer, pianist, and bandleader of a jazz orchestra, which he led from 1923 until his death in a career spanning over fifty years. Born in Washington, D.C., Ellington was based in New York City from the mid-1920s onward, and gained a national profile through his orchestra's appearances at the Cotton Club in Harlem. In the 1930s, his orchestra toured in Europe. Though widely considered to have been a pivotal figure in the history of jazz, Ellington embraced the phrase "beyond category" as a liberating principle, and referred to his music as part of the more general category of American Music, rather than to a musical genre such as jazz. Some of the musicians who were members of Ellington's orchestra, such as saxophonist Johnny Hodges, are considered to be among the best players in jazz. Ellington melded them into the best-known orchestral unit in the history of jazz. Some members stay

  You probably know this but just in case….. Harper Lee based the character of Dill on the boy who lived next door to her as a child. That boy was Truman Capote. But did you know…… To Kill a Mockingbird was written when one of Lee’s friends bought her some time off work. In 1956, Harper Lee’s friend Michael Brown and a number of other friends clubbed together and gave her a year’s wages for Christmas: ‘You have one year off from your job to write whatever you please. Merry Christmas.’ She used the year off work to write To Kill a Mockingbird. Or how about this….. David and Victoria Beckham named their fourth child Harper Seven; the Harper is a homage to Harper Lee. David Beckham has revealed that To Kill a Mockingbird is Victoria Beckham’s favorite book.  Building Great Collections, One Fine Book at a Time Visit us at BlindHorseBooks.com #HarperLee #ToKillAMockingbird #TodayInLiteraryHistory  

 Cecil Day-Lewis (1904 – 1972) was an Anglo-Irish poet and the Poet Laureate of the United Kingdom from 1968 until his death in 1972.  He also wrote mystery stories under the pseudonym of Nicholas Blake. He was the father of actor Daniel Day-Lewis and documentary filmmaker and television chef Tamasin Day-Lewis. In his autobiography The Buried Day (1960), he wrote "As a writer I do not use the hyphen in my surname – a piece of inverted snobbery which has produced rather mixed results". Cecil Day-Lewis has two contrasting claims on our attention. The first is as an archetypal poet of the 1930s, the first-born, last-named member of the Auden/Spender/Day-Lewis triad, and the only one of those three friends whose commitment to Marxism extended to joining and working for the Communist Party.  His second claim to recognition, at least for literary historians, is as the poet laureate of England from 1968 until his death in 1972. For critics and biographers, he poses the intriguing pr

  Daniel Defoe (c.1660 – 1731), was an English trader, writer, journalist, pamphleteer, and spy, most famous for his novel Robinson Crusoe. Defoe is noted for being one of the earliest proponents of the novel, as he helped to popularize the form in Britain with others such as Samuel Richardson, and is among the founders of the English novel. He was a prolific and versatile writer, producing more than five hundred books, pamphlets, and journals on various topics, including politics, crime, religion, marriage, psychology, and the supernatural. He was also a pioneer of economic journalism.   Robinson Crusoe, first published on 25 April 1719, is a novel by Daniel Defoe. The first edition credited the work's protagonist Robinson Crusoe as its author, leading many readers to believe he was a real person and the book a travelogue of true incidents. It was published under this full title: The Life and Strange Surprizing Adventures of Robinson Crusoe, Of York, Mariner: Who

  He received the 1947 Pulitzer Prize for the Novel for his novel All the King's Men (1946) and the Pulitzer Prize for Poetry in 1958 and 1979. An American poet, novelist, and literary critic and was one of the founders of New Criticism. He was also a charter member of the Fellowship of Southern Writers. He founded the influential literary journal The Southern Review in 1935.   While still an undergraduate at Vanderbilt University, Warren became associated with the group of poets there known as the Fugitives, and somewhat later, during the early 1930s, Warren and some of the same writers formed a group known as the Southern Agrarians. During this time young Warren defended racial segregation, In "The Briar Patch" in line with the traditionalist conservative political leanings of the Agrarian group. However, Warren recanted these views in an article on the Civil Rights Movement, "Divided South Searches Its Soul", which appeared in the July 9, 195