This Week in Literary History: January 24-31

January 24: Edith Wharton is born to an old, distinguished New York family on this day in 1862.

 

This Week in Literary History: January 16-22

January 16: “There are strange things done in the midnight sun” begins The Cremation of Sam McGee, a poem every Canadian student knows by heart.

 

This Week in Literary History January 11 to January 15

January 11: Thomas Hardy, one of England’s greatest novelists, dies on this day at age 82 in 1928 after contracting pleurisy a month earlier.

 

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.