DECEMBER LITERARY BIRTHDAYS
(Complete list of December authors here.)Featured Authors
Hector Hugh Munro (Saki), Scottish/Burmese journalist, short story writer, 18 Dec. 1870 - 14 Dec. 1916
Short-story writer Saki took his pen-name from Omar Khayyam's Rubaiyat. He was born in Burma to Scottish parents and lived afterwards in Switzerland, London, Warsaw, and other countries, writing columns for many British newspapers. He was killed by a sniper's bullet in France during WWI. The Guardian offers brief biographical data on Saki; more biographical info is available through Petri Liukkonen's Authors' Calendar website; Bibliomania provides full-text for a number of Saki short stories.
Edwin Arlington Robinson, native Maine poet, 22 Dec. 1869 - 6 April 1935
Born in Alna and raised in Gardiner, Maine, Robinson became popular after Teddy Roosevelt wrote a favorable review of his second book of poems (The Children of the Night, 1897) in 1905. Although Robinson lived in New York City and in Peterborough, NH most of his adult life, many of his poems -- including 'Miniver Cheevy,' 'Richard Cory,' and 'Tilbury Town' -- draw on his experiences and the people he knew in Gardiner (which he renames Tilbury Town).
Other works include The Torrent and the Night Before (1896), Captain Craig and Other Poems (1902), The Town Down the River (1910), The Man Against the Sky, Collected Poems (1921; won Pulitzer Prize), Tristram (1927; won Pulitzer Prize), and The Man Who Died Twice (1927; won Pulitzer Prize).
Both the Poetry Foundation and the Academy of American Poets websites have info on Robinson's life, career, and poetry. A Virtual Tour of Robinson's Gardiner, Maine website includes a Gardiner map as well as an essay about Robinson in the context of Gardiner, background on Robinson, selected works, and a bibliography.
Other December Birthdays
- Dec 1
- Mihály Vörösmarty (1800; d.1855), poet and dramatist who helped make the literature of Hungary truly Hungarian during the era (1825–49) of social reforms
- Rex [Todhunter] Stout (1886; d.1975), writer of detective fiction from Indiana, creator of Nero Wolfe and his assistant Archie Goodwin, winner of the Mystery Writers of America's Grand Master Award in 1959
- Charles [Grandison] Finney, U.S. journalist and fantasy novelist (1905; d.1984) whose first novel, The Circus of Dr. Lao, won one of the inaugural National Book Awards: the Most Original Book of 1935
- Brooklyn native, director and prolific screenwriter Woody Allen, aka Allen Stewart Konigsberg (1935)
- American illustrator and writer of children's picture books Jan Brett (1949), born and still living in Massachusetts, best known for The Mitten: A Ukrainian Folktale (1989), The Hat (1997), Gingerbread Baby (1997), and The Three Snow Bears (2007)
- Dec 2
- New Zealand-born political activist Rewi Alley, who lived and wrote in China for over 60 years (1897; d.1987)
- New York-born Jewish American Joseph P. Lash (1909; d.1987) a radical political activist, journalist, and author who won both the Pulitzer Prize for Biography and the National Book Award in Biography for Eleanor and Franklin (1971)
- Adolph Green (1914; 2002), American lyricist and playwright who, with long-time collaborator Betty Comden, wrote the screenplays and songs for some beloved movie musicals, including The Barkleys of Broadway (1949), Singin' in the Rain (1952), Auntie Mame (1958), and Bells Are Ringing (1960)
- English science fiction author Brian Lumley (1937)
- Minnesota-born Elizabeth Berg (1948), novelist and author of many novels, including The Pull of the Moon (1996) and What We Keep (1998)
- NY-born humourous novelist and short story writer T[homas] C[oraghessan] Boyle (1948) whose third novel, World's End, won the 1988 PEN/Faulkner award
- Algerian-born French historian Benjamin Stora (1950), author of more than 20 books, including a biography on Messali Hadj (reedited, 2004), a biographic dictionary on Algerian militants (1985), and Gangrene and Oblivion, the Memory of the Algerian War (1991), and widely considered one of the world's leading authorities on Algerian history
- California native, novelist Ann Patchett (1963), whose novel Bel Canto (2001) won both the PEN/Faulkner Award and the Orange Prize for Fiction
- Dec 3
- Ludvig Holberg, Baron of Holberg (1684; d.1754), Norwegian writer, essayist, philosopher, historian, and playwright, considered the founder of modern Danish and Norwegian literature
- Polish-English (born Berdychiv, Ukraine) writer Joseph Conrad (1857; birthdate also given as Dec. 6; d.1924), née Jósef Teodor Konrad Korzeniowski, considered an early modernist writer, famous for the novella Heart of Darkness (1902), the short story The Secret Sharer (1912), and the novel Lord Jim (1900), among others
- F. Sionil José (née Francisco Sionil José 1924), Filipino novelist, writer, journalist, one of the most widely read Filipino writers in the English language, whose novels and short stories depict the social underpinnings of class struggles and colonialism in Filipino society
- novelist, memoirist, and cellist Mark Salzman (1959), born Greenwich, Connecticut, whose works include a 1986 memoir of teaching English in China, Iron & Silk, and the novel Lying Awake (2000)
- Dec 4
- Scottish essayist and historian Thomas Carlyle (1795; d.1881), a leading figure in the Victorian age, an avid conversationalist who with his equally witty and socially adept wife Jane hosted frequent salons of other thinkers, writers, and public figures of the day
- English writer Samuel Butler (1835; d.1902), who wrote Erewhon (1872), a novel of philosophical speculation, and The Way of All Flesh (1903)
- Bohemian-German poet (born Prague) Rainer Maria Rilke (1875; d.1926), also famous for his Letters to a Young Poet
- Sir Herbert Edward Read (1893; d.1968), English poet, art historian and critic, prolific essayist, philosophical anarchist and outspoken pacifist during World War II, curator of the Victoria & Albert Museum (1922-1939)
- 'Father of Film Noir' Cornell [George Hopley-]Woolrich (1903; 1968), whose novella It Had to Be Murder was adapted to become Alfred Hitchcock’s film Rear Window, and whose novel The Bride Wore Black became a Francois Truffaut film of the same name
- Dec 5
- Christina Rossetti, British poet of the Victoria age (1830; d.1894), also famous for writing lyrics for two Christmas carols: "In the Bleak Midwinter" and "Love Came Down at Christmas"
- Nunnally Johnson (1897; d.1977), American screenwriter, producer, and director, whose screen credits include The Grapes of Wrath (1940), How to Marry a Millionaire (1953), and The Three Faces of Eve (1957), and more
- prolific Mississippi-born (Syracuse, NY-raised) African American novelist, journalist, and biographer John A[lfred] Williams (1925; d.2015), best known for his 1967 novel The Man Who Cried I Am
- U.S. essayist and fiction writer Joan Didion (1934; d.2021), known for a collection of essays, Slouching Towards Bethlehem (1968), and for The Year of Magical Thinking (2005), a meditation on grief and memory that was a bestseller and won the National Book Award
- New York author (born Kansas City, Missouri), satirist, columnist for The New Yorker and The Nation Calvin Trillin (1935)
- NY-born editor of Esquire and author of Midnight in the Garden of Good and Evil (1994), John Berendt (1939)
- Dec 6
- Boston-born editor, poet, and critic William Stanley Braithwaite (1878; d.1962)
- 'Trees' poet [Alfred] Joyce Kilmer (1886; d.1918), at one time considered the leading American Roman Catholic poet and lecturer of his generation
- London poet and writer Osbert Sitwell (1892; d.1969), sibling of Edith Sitwell andSacheverell Sitwell
- Broadway lyricist Ira Gershwin (1896; d.1983)
- German (Austrian-born) avant-garde novelist and playwright Peter Handke (1942), who wrote the screenplay for Wings of Desire
- Dec 7
- Dutch historian Johan Huizinga (1872; d.1945), one of the founders of modern cultural history, who wrote The Waning of the Middle Ages (1919, also translated as The Autumn of the Middle Ages), about the upper classes of Burgundy in the 14th and 15th centuries, and Homo Ludens (1938), a study of the element of play in culture, among others
- 1923 Pulitzer Prize winner Willa [Sibert] Cather (1873, born Wilella Cather; d.1947), born near Winchester, Virginia, and raised in Nebraska, author of O Pioneers! (1913) and My Antonia (1918), among others
- Mainer Kenneth Lewis Roberts (1885; d.1957) who wrote about the American Revolutionary era, including his most famous novel, Northwest Passage (1937)
- Japanese feminist, pacifist, and poet Yosano Akiko (1878; d.1942), born Sh¨ H¨, one of the most noted and controversial post-classical woman poets of Japan.
- Anglo-Irish writer Joyce Lunel Cary (1888; d.1957)
- M.I.T. linguist, leftist, historian, and social critic Noam Chomsky (1928), author of more than 100 books on topics including linguistics, war, politics, and mass media
- prolific feminist African-American playwright, poet, and newspaper columnist Pearl [Michelle] Cleage (1948) aka Pearl Cleage Lomax, whose novel What Looks Like Crazy on an Ordinary Day was a 1998 Oprah Book Club selection
- Dec 8
- Roman poet Horace (65 BC; d.8 BC), born Quintus Horatius Flaccus
- 1903 Nobel Prize winner, Norwegian dramatist, poet, novelist, and politician Bjørnstjerne Martinius Bjørnson (1832; d.1910), considered (with Henrik Ibsen, Alexander Kielland, and Jonas Lie) one of the 'four great ones' of 19th-century Norwegian literature
- British writer of travel books, zoological treatises, novels, and an autobiography, [George] Norman Douglas (1868; d.1952)
- Irish novelist and poet Padraic Colum, born Patrick Collumb (1881; d.1972), who lived after 1933 in and near New York City, teaching at Columbia University
- Pittsburgh native and novelist Hervey Allen (1889; d.1949), author of Anthony Adverse
- Ohio humorist and cartoonist James Thurber (1894; d.1961), whose characters included Walter Mitty, his snarling wife, and silently observing animals; he's widely considered the greatest American humorist since Mark Twain
- Welsh/British novelist Richard Llewellyn, born Richard David Vivian Llewellyn Lloyd (1906; d.1983), who wrote How Green Was My Valley (1939), about a close-knit Welsh mining community, which became an Oscar-winning film
- NYC-born poet, short story writer, and critic Delmore Schwartz (1913; d.1966)
- NY-born novelist Mary Gordon (1949), who wrote Final Payments (1978) and The Company of Women (1981)
- Dec 9
- Poet John Milton (1608; d.1674), who wrote, among other works, the epic poems Paradise Lost (1667) and Paradise Regained (1671) and the tragic poem Samson Agonistes (1671)
- creator of the Uncle Remus stories, Joel Chandler Harris (1848; d.1908), born in Georgia
- Babar creator Jean de Brunhoff (1899; d.1937)
- Colorado-born screenwriter and novelist Dalton Trumbo (1905; d.1976), whose anti-war novel Johnny Got His Gun (1939) won the National Book Award, and who scripted films including Roman Holiday, Papillon, and Exodus
- Ohio native, African American poet and critic Samuel W[ashington] Allen aka Paul Vesey (1917; d.2015), who considered the black church a major influence on his poetry
- Maryland-born African American poet, novelist, non-fiction writer, activist, and co-founder of the Philadelphia Writers' Workshop, Sarah E. Wright (1928; d.2009), whose 1969 novel This Child's Gonna Live, set in a Maryland fishing village in the 1930s, was highly acclaimed
- Dec 10
- Scottish fantasy author George MacDonald (1824; d.1905), who wrote The Light Princess (1864)
- 'the Belle of Amherst' (Massachusetts), poet Emily [Elizabeth] Dickinson (1830; d.1886)
- German/Jewish poet, dramatist, and 1966 Nobelist Leonie "Nelly" Sachs (1891; d.1970), who spent the rest of her life in Sweden after escaping from Germany in 1940 and became a spokesperson for her fellow Jews of experiences in the Nazi death camps
- William Plomer, South African-British novelist, poet, and literary editor (1903; d.1973)
- British children's writer Mary Norton (1903; d.1992), who penned the Borrowers stories
- English author Rumer Godden (1907; d.1998) who wrote fiction, non-fiction, and children's books; her 1939 novel Black Narcissus, about British Anglican nuns in India, was made into a 1947 film of the same name
- Washington state native, poet Carolyn Kizer (1925; d.2014)
- California-born mystery writer and creator of a mystery series featuring J.W. Jackson and set in Martha's Vineyard, Philip R. Craig (1933; d.2007)
- Dec 11
- Parisian romantic poet and playwright [Louis Charles] Alfred de Musset (1810; d. 1857; see Musset's grave!)
- prolific Egyptian novelist, playwright, and short-story writer Naguib Mahfouz (1911, d.2006), who explored themes of existentialism and who won the 1988 Nobel Prize for Literature
- Russian writer, outspoken critic of the Soviet Union and Communism, and 1970 Literature Nobelist Aleksandr Solzhenitsyn (1918; d.2008)
- short story writer, poet, teacher, pacifist, social activist Grace Paley (1922; d.2007), who taught creative writing at Sarah Lawrence College for over 30 years
- NYC-born poet and translator Jerome Rothenberg (1931)
- Michigan-born poet and novelist Jim Harrison (1937; d.2016), who wrote the three-volume Legends of the Fall
- another Michigan native, novelist and outdoors essayist Thomas McGuane (1939); in fact McGuane and Jim Harrison (see just above) were classmates at Michigan State University
- Dec 12
- French novelist Gustave Flaubert (1821; d.1880), whose first novel, Madame Bovary (1857), is considered his greatest
- English playwright John Osborne (1929; d.1994), whose most famous play is Look Back in Anger (1956)
- Dec 13
- German poet, essayist, and travel writer Heinrich Heine (1797; d.1856), best known for his ironic lyrics and ballads, many of which are set to music
- Pennsylvania playwright Marc Connelly (1890; d.1980), key member of the Algonquin Round Table, recipient of the 1930 Pulitzer Prize for Drama for The Green Pastures
- U.S. poet and novelist Kenneth Patchen (1911; d.1972)
- California-born detective novelist Ross MacDonald, aka Kenneth Millar (1915; d.1983); his series features PI Lew Archer
- Ohio-born poet James Wright (1927; d.1980)
- Dec 14
- French poet Paul Éluard (1895; d.1952), pseudonym of Eugène Grindel, one of the founders of Surrealism, who rejected later Surrealism and joined the French Communist Party
- Danish novelist, poet, essayist, shirt story writer, memoirist Tove (Irma Margit) Ditlevsen (1917; d.1976 suicide by overdose), one of the most widely read women writers in Denmark when she died, whose autobiography was The Copenhagen Trilogy (1967-1971)
- U.S. short story writer Shirley Jackson (1919; d.1965), who wrote the famous short story 'The Lottery'
- Chicago native and poet Carolyn M[arie] Rodgers (1945; d.2010), leading member of the black arts movement
- California-born outspoken African-American journalist and critic Stanley Crouch (1945)
- Chicago-born short story writer, journalist, and creative writing teacher Amy Hempel (1951)
- Dec 15
- Novelist Betty Smith (1896; d.1972) who wrote A Tree Grows in Brooklyn
- U.S. poet Muriel Rukeyser (1913; d.1980)
- controversial Irish poet, novelist, memoirist, playwright [Josephine] Edna O'Brien (1930)
- Detroit native, African American novelist, career criminal and addict who wrote his first two novels in prison Donald Goines (1936; some sources 1937; d.1974) aka Al C. Clark, known for grim books about drug users and prostitutes
- Dec 16
- English novelist Jane Austen (1775; d.1817), whose novels include Sense and Sensibility (1811), Pride and Prejudice (1813), Mansfield Park (1814), Emma (1816), Persuasion (1818)
- Spanish-American poet and philosopher George Santayana (born Jorge Agustín Nicolás de Santayana in 1863; d.1952)
- witty British playwright, screenwriter, and director, and 1942 Academy Award winner Sir Noël Peirce Coward (1899; d.1973)
- Sir V[ictor] S[awdon] Pritchett, prolific British author and literary critic (1900; d.1997) particularly known for his short stories
- futurist and one of the grand masters of science fiction, UK-born and longtime Sri Lankan resident Arthur C. Clarke (1917; d.2008), who co-created with director Stanley Kubrick the classic science fiction film "2001: A Space Odyssey," and who famously said that "Any sufficiently advanced technology is indistinguishable from magic"
- Chicago-born highly influential science fiction writer Philip K[indred] Dick (1928; d.1982)
- Dec 17
- Swiss physician, chemist, alchemist, one of the fathers of modern medicine, and prolific writer (though few of his texts exist now) Philippus Aureolus Paracelsus (born Theophrastus Bombastus von Hohenheim in 1493, some sources say on 10 or 11 Nov; d.1541), whose works on alchemy influenced psychoanalyst Carl Jung; Paracelsus wrote the surgical text Grosse Wundartzney (1536) and an occult work, Philosophia Occulta (1591), among others
- U.S. (New England) poet, Quaker, and abolitionist John Greenleaf Whittier (1807; d.1892)
- French novelist Jules de Goncourt (1830; d.1870)
- very prolific English novelist, critic, biographer, and editor Ford Madox Ford (1873; d.1939), born Ford Hermann Hueffer, whose harrowing experiences in World War I influenced many of his novels
- American author (born in Georgia, lived in Maine for a while) Erskine Caldwell (1903; d.1987) who wrote gritty realistic novels and short stories about Georgian poor white and black families, including two written while in Maine, The Tobacco Road (1932) and God's Little Acre (1933)
- South African novelist, autobiographer, and literary critic Ezekiel Mphahlele (1919; d.2008) aka Es'kia Mphahlele and Bruno Eseki, whose novels include The Wanderers (1971) and Chirundu (1981)
- Trinidadian-born playwright Mustapha Matura (1939; d.2019, nee Noel Matura) who lived in London most of his life, writing 20 or so plays, including the satire "Play Mas" (1974)
- Baltimore-born sci-fi/fantasy writer Jack Chalker (1944; d.2005)
- Dec 18
- Besides Saki, above,
- English playwright Christopher Fry (1907; d.2005)
- U.S. sci-fi writer Alfred Bester (1913; d.1987)
- Georgia native, African-American actor, dramatist, screenwriter, and novelist Ossie Davis (born Raiford Chatman Davis 1917; d.2005), who wrote the play Purlie Victorious (1961) and its musical adaptation Purlie (1970), about a Southern black preacher who hopes to establish a racially integrated church; he was married to the American actress and civil rights activist Ruby Dee
- U.S. fantasy writer Sterling Lanier (1927; d.2007)
- English fantasy author Michael Moorcock (1939)
- Dec 19
- Italo Svevo (pseud. of Ettore Schmitz; 1861; d.1928), Italian novelist best known for The Confessions of Zeno (1923)
- American writer and anthropologist, focusing on Native American culture Oliver [Hazard Perry] La Farge II (1901; d.1963), whose novel Laughing Boy (1929) won the 1930 Pulitzer Prize
- French novelist, dramatist, convicted felon, one of the leading figures in the avant-garde theater Jean Genet (1910; d.1986)
- Irish-born, prolific Californian children's book author Eve Bunting (born Anne Evelyn Bolton, 1928)
- Dec 20
- Welsh writer T[heodore] F[rancis] Powys (1875; d.1953)
- novelist Hortense Calisher (1911; d.2009)
- Dec 21
- British Tory statesman and pioneer of the political novel Sir Benjamin 'Dizzy' Disraeli, 1st Earl of Beaconsfield (1804; d.1881)
- French poet Gustave Kahn (1859; d.1936)
- U.S. writer of dog (collie) novels Albert P[ayson] Terhune (1872; d.1942)
- novelist Dame Rebecca West (1892; d.1983)
- English novelist Anthony Powell (1905; d.2000)
- German writer and 1972 Nobel Prize winner Heinrich Böll (1917; d.1985)
- Dec 22
- Besides E.A. Robinson, above,
- French dramatist Jean Racine(1639; d.1699), baptised Jean-Baptiste Racine, one of the three great playwrights of 17th-century France along with Molière and Corneille
- English poet and parodist Charles Stuart Calverley (1831; d.1884), considered one of the most brilliant men of his time
- U.S. poet and translator Kenneth Rexroth (1905)
- Jerry Pinkney (1939; d.2021), American children's book illustrator and author, winner of the Randolph Caldecott Medal
- American writer/journalist Peter Manso (1940; d.2021) known for sprawling biographies of Norman Mailer and Marlon Brando and Reasonable Doubt, about a murder on Cape Cod
- Dec 23
- Martin Opitz, German poet (1597; d.1639)
- French writer Charles-Augustin de Sainte-Beuve (1804; d.1869)
- Scottish author Samuel Smiles (1812; d.1904; authored Jasmin)
- Chicago poet and first editor of the journal Poetry, Harriet Monroe (1860; d.1936)
- Sicilian writer Giuseppe Tomasi di Lampedusa (1896; d.1957)
- U.S. poet, translator, and 'Iron John' Robert Bly (1926; d.2021)
- children's author Avi (1937)
- Dec 24
- English poet and curate George Crabbe (1754; d.1832), remembered for his portrayal of rural life
- English poet and critic Matthew Arnold (1822; d.1888), a major Victorian writer, well known for his poems "Dover Beach," "The Scholar-Gipsy," and "Thyrsis"
- Spanish poet and journalist (born Andalusia) and 1956 Nobel Prize winner Juan Ramón Jiménez (1881; d.1958), who left Spain at the start of the Spanish Civil War to live in the U.S., Cuba, and Puerto Rico
- U.S. fantasy writer Fritz Leiber (1910; d.1992)
- NY-born mystery writer, "best-selling Queen of suspense" Mary Higgins Clark (1927; d.2020)
- Dec 25
- English poet William Collins (1721; d.1759), regarded as one of the most skilled 18th-century lyric poets
- Pittsburgh native (West Virginia-raised) African-American experimental novelist and scriptwriter William Demby (1922; d.2013)
- NY writer and 'Twilight Zone' creator Rod Serling (1924; d.1975)
- U.S. mystic and writer Carlos Castaneda (1925; d.1998)
- Dec 26
- English poet and scholar of history and languages, Thomas Gray (1716; d.1771), famous for the poem "Elegy Written in a Country Churchyard"
- American novelist Henry Miller (1891; d.1980), who wrote Tropic of Cancer (1934) and Tropic of Capricorn (1939)
- Washington D.C.-born poet, short story writer, dramatist, and essayist Jean Toomer (1894; d.1967) born Nathan Eugene Toomer, a child of mixed-race parents who considered himself simply 'American,' probably best known for his 1923 book Cane
- Dec 27
- Ohio writer and conservationist Louis Bromfield (1896; d.1956), who won the 1926 Pulitzer Prize for the novel Early Autumn (1926)
- English writer Wilfrid Sheed (1930; d.2011), a "wittily satirical man of letters who drew upon his Anglo-American background to write bittersweet essays, criticism, memoirs and fiction about cultural life on both sides of the Atlantic"
- Dec 28
- Spanish writer Pio Baroja y Nessi (1872; d.1956)
- NYC-born author and philosopher Mortimer J. Adler (1902; d.2001), who helped devise the Great Books program, a course of study in classic Western literary and philosophical texts
- Argentinian writer, author of Kiss of the Spider Woman, Manuel Puig (1932; d.1990)
- Arkansas native Charles McColl Portis (1933; d. 2020), best known his 1968 novel True Grit
- Scottish author Alasdair Gray (1934; d.2020), who wrote strange fiction often interlaced with his own etched illustrations; his first novel, published at age 46 and hailed as a masterpiece, was Lanark: A Life in Four Books (1981)
- Dec 29
- Robert Ruark, U.S. writer of hunting and outdoors stories (1915; d.1965)
- Dec 30
- English author (born Bombay, India) and 1907 Nobelist [Joseph] Rudyard Kipling (1865; d.1936), author of The Jungle Book (1894), Kim, and Just-So Stories (1902), among others
- Paul Bowles, New York-born novelist, short story writer, and travel writer who spent many years in Morocco (1910; d.1999)
- children's author Mercer Mayer (1943)
- Dec 31
- Kansas native, African-American poet and journalist Frank Marshall Davis (1905; d. 1987), whose poetry protested the racial inequality of the 1930s and 40s
- Georgia-born (Chicago-raised) experimental fiction writer and poet Clarence Major (1936)
- British non-fiction writer Roy Sydney Porter (1946; d.2002)