March 22: Calling the Prince Regent a “fat Adonis of 40” will get you in trouble. Poet Leigh Hunt helped his brother John start a political journal called The Examiner and the two published a derogatory article about the prince on this day in 1812. They are sued for libel, found guilty and sentenced to two years’ imprisonment plus a 500 pound fine.

March 23: Jack London writes letters on this day in 1913 to Winston Churchill, George Bernard Shaw and H.G. Wells on this day asking them what they’re paid for their “stuff.” Their responses are unknown.

March 24: In 1882, Henry Wadsworth Longfellow,  at age 77, dies suddenly. He becomes the first American to be honoured with a memorial in Poet’s Corner, Westminster Abbey.

March 25: Flannery O’Connor, author of Wise Blood, is born on this day in 1925 in Savannah, GA.

March 26: On this day in 1920, This Side of Paradise appears and sells 20,000 copies in its first week enabling F. Scott Fitzgerald to finally have enough money to marry Zelda Sayre. At 23, Fitzgerald is the youngest novelist ever published by Scribner’s.

March 27: On this day in 1931, British novelist Arnold Bennett, author of the Clayhanger Trilogy, dies of typhoid at his home on Baker Street in London after drinking water in a Paris hotel to prove to his companions that its safe.