Oct. 24: In 1958, Raymond Chandler begins work on his last book, a Philip Marlow mystery, completing four chapters of The Poodle Springs Story before his death a year later. Robert B. Parker would later finish the book in commemoration of the centenary of Chandler’s birth in 1988. The photo for this post was taken in Savannah, GA. I was walking down a sidewalk and saw this and tried to find out who put up the letterings in the window but couldn’t find anyone in the empty building. If anyone knows this story, let me know. I’m very curious.
Oct. 25: Novelist Anne Tyler who won a Pulitzer in 1989 for her book Breathing Lessons and sets her novels mainly in Baltimore, Maryland where she lives, was born on this day in 1941 in Minneapolis.
Oct. 26: At age 17, Hans Christian Andersen enrols in grammar school to complete his education after leaving school to become an apprentice with a weaver and later a tailor. He decided to go back to school, where he towered over his 11-year-old classmates, when he discovered his love of writing following a brief career as a soprano singer in Copenhagen. After his voice changed, Andersen was told he would be a good writer and decided to go back to school, an experience he called dark and bitter.
Oct. 27: On this day in 1914, Dylan Thomas born in Swansea, Wales in a neighbourhood then and now considered an upper middle class area called The Uplands.
Oct. 28: E.E. Cummings gives the first of six talks on this day in 1952 at Harvard after his alma mater gave him the honorary post as guest professor. The lectures are titled: i: sixnonlectures
Oct. 29: Boris Pasternak, under pressure from the Soviet government and the Soviet press, wires his “voluntary refusal” to the Swedish Royal Academy declining his Nobel Prize for Literature for his works such as Dr. Zhivago on this day in 1958.
Oct. 30: Sense and Sensibility: A Novel By a Lady, later revealed to be Jane Austen, is published on this day in 1811 by Thomas Egerton.
Oct. 31: Historians Will and Ariel Durant, he is older than her by 12 years, 27 to her 15, are married at New York’s City Hall on this day in 1913.
Nov. 1: On a hunting trip with John Dos Passos, Ernest Hemingway breaks his arm when he crashes his car on this day in 1930.
Nov. 2: So determined was George Bernard Shaw to change the English language by going to a 42 characters alphabet based on sound that he left money in a trust to research the proposal. He died on this day in 1950 at the age of 94.
