Happy New Year and Today in Literary History
On this day in 1909, Marcel Proust dips a crust of toast in his tea and the experience prompts him to think of madeleines.
This Week in Literary History: January 1st to 10th
1879: E.M. Forster, author of A Passage to India, born in London
Today in Literary History
Journalist Pete Hamill, son of a one-legged alcoholic father, takes his last drink on this day in 1972.
Today in Literary History
On this day, Second Lieutenant Wilfred Owen, a poet who undertook the task of speaking for the soldiers at the front lines, leaves England for the Western Front.
Today in Literary History
Portrait of the Artist as a Young Man by James Joyce is published on this day in 1916 in New York. The semi-autobiographical novel had already appeared over a two-year period earlier after being serialized as The Egoist.
Today in Literary History
H.L. Mencken, the influential journalist and essayist, published a hoax article on this day in 1917 in the New York Evening Mail about the introduction of the bathtub.
Stockholm, Sweden and the Nobel Prize for Literature
STOCKHOLM. SWEDEN — Every Thursday, the members of the Swedish Academy gather at Europe’s oldest restaurant, the Den Gyldene Freden in Stockholm.
Travels in Switzerland
CRISTALLINA PEAK, SWITZERLAND — Our mountain guide Donatella nods approvingly at the treads on my sturdy hiking boots. It’s the wonky ankle inside the boot that gives her pause. The night before our hike up the Cristallina Peak near the Italian side of the Swiss Alps, Donatella has ordered an inspection of our gear. Already two women from Israel have failed Donatella’s test. Relieved, they’ve made plans instead to tour […]
Travels with Christina Rossetti to Ticino, Switzerland
TICINO, SWITZERLAND — Poet Christina Rossetti, born on this day in 1830, was a Victorian poet and along with Elizabeth Barrett Browning, one of the great women poets in nineteenth century England. The sister of Dante Gabriel, Rossetti was torn between obligations and expectations of the Victorian age. She turned away two suitors. One named Charles Cayley, a scholar, may have proposed to her in 1864 when she was 34 years old. […]
Don Quixote
Don Quixote, his servant Sancho Panza, and horse Rocancinante, travelled in search of adventure.