FEBRUARY LITERARY BIRTHDAYS
(Complete list of February authors here.)Featured Authors
Henry Wadsworth Longfellow (27 Feb. 1807 - March 1882)
Longfellow was born in Portland, attended Bowdoin College (1822-1825) with Nathaniel Hawthorne, and soon after became professor of modern languages there from 1829-1835. He went on to teach at Harvard from 1836-1854. For more biography, check Eclectic Esoterica's Longfellow page, which also has full-text of 21 of Longfellow's poems, including 'The Children's Hour,' 'Evangeline,' 'Paul Revere's Ride,' and 'The Village Blacksmith.' The Encyclopedia of Cajun Culture provides more information on 'Evangeline' and about the place called Acadia. The Center for Maine History has info about the 1785 Wadsworth-Longfellow home. Bowdoin College offers an online collection guide to Longfellow's personal papers. The first comprehensive biography of Longfellow to be published in almost 50 years was written by Charles Calhoun in 2004, titled Longfellow: A Rediscovered Life.
Longfellow's works (poems and books) include:
- Outre-Mer: A Pilgrimage Beyond the Sea (1835; essays)
- Voices of the Night (1839; poems)
- Ballads and Other Poems (1842; includes 'The Wreck of the Hesperus' and 'The Village Blacksmith')
- Evangeline (1847)
- The Song of Hiawatha (1855)
- The Courtship of Miles Standish (1858)
- Paul Revere's Ride (1860)
- The Children's Hour (1860)
- The Belfry of Bruges and Other Poems
- The Seaside and the Fireside
- Tales of a Wayside Inn (1863/1872/1873)
- Norse ballads, compiled from several of the books listed above.
Charles [John Huffman] Dickens, English novelist (7 Feb. 1812 - 9 June 1870)
Dickens was the second of eight children in a family always in debt, so he knew firsthand the misery of child labor (factory work), hunger, and debtors' prison. His childhood poverty and adversity shaped his later passion for social reform and his compassion for the lower classes, especially for children, which is obvious in the novels, short stories, and articles he wrote.
Many of Dickens' novels are available on line, including Nicholas Nickleby (1839), Martin Chuzzlewit (1844), Dombey and Son (1848), A Tale of Two Cities (1859), Great Expectations (1861), and The Pickwick Papers (1837; this novel and Sketches by Boz, 1836, catapulted Dickens to instant fame) through Bibliomania and A Christmas Carol (1843), and David Copperfield (1850) through other sites. Other novels are Oliver Twist (1838), The Old Curiosity Shop (1841), Barnaby Rudge (1841), American Notes (1842), The Chimes (1844), The Cricket on the Hearth (1845), Bleak House (1853), Hard Times (1854), Little Dorrit (1857), Our Mutual Friend (1865), Edwin Drood (1870; unfinished).
There's a big, well-updated Dickens site with info on the Dickens Society, the Dickens Project, Dickens' works, e-texts, bibliography, and chronology, and links to other Dickens pages. David Perdue's Dickens Page is also attractive and useful, with a bio, info on Dickens' London, list of works and illustrations, a timeline, Dickens in America, etc. Charles Dickens-Gad's Hill Place offers a daily dose of Dickens, a searchable quotes database, essays and articles on Dickens and his work, etc.
Sinclair Lewis, novelist and social critic, winner of 1930 Nobel (7 Feb. 1885 - 10 Jan. 1951)
Sinclair Lewis, born in Sauk Center, Minn., was the first American to win the Nobel Prize for Literature in 1930. After receiving his A.B. from Yale University in 1907, he was for a time a member of Upton Sinclair's Helicon Hall, a socialist, Utopian society in New Jersey. When the Panama Canal was being built, he went to find work there but was unsuccessful and returned to the midwest as a reporter and editor.
Lewis went east again in 1910, married in 1914 (divorced 1925, remarried 1928), and began writing novels full time in 1916. Our Mr. Wrenn (1914), The Trail of the Hawk (1915), The Job (1917), The Innocents (1917), Free Air (1919) were all written before Main Street, Lewis's break-through book, was published in 1920. Babbit followed in 1922 (written in Italy and England) and Arrowsmith in 1925; Lewis refused the Pulitzer Prize of $1000 for Arrowsmith in 1926 as a protest against the restrictive terms of the award.
Lewis published Mantrap in 1926, Elmer Gantry in 1927, The Man who Knew Coolidge in 1928, and Dodsworth in 1929; this last was a satire on Americans abroad, written while Lewis travelled in England.
When Lewis accepted the Nobel Prize for Literature in 1930, he 'lived up to his reputation as a non-conformist and firebrand by his vehement speech in which he attacked the professors and men of letters who would subject American literature to conventional standards of taste and morals.' (Living Authors, [New York: The H.W. Wilson Co., 1932], pp. 224-226). A Sinclair Lewis Page offers biography, timeline, bibliography, and information on the Sinclair Lewis Society.
W[ystan] H[ugh] Auden, U.S. poet, winner of 1948 Pulitzer (21 Feb. 1907 - 28 Sept. 1973)
The English-born but Americanised (1946) Auden (who considered himself not an American but a New Yorker) was an anti-war socialist whose poems are concerned with the dissolution of civilisation and culture. Besides living in England and America, he also lived in Germany (before the Nazis), Austria, and Italy. He won the 1948 Pulitzer Prize for The Age of Anxiety (1947), the 1954 Bollinger Poetry Prize, and the 1967 National Medal for Literature.
Auden's 'Three Short Poems' and 'In Praise of Limestone' are available on line, as are 11 more through the Academy of American Poets, which also has biographical information on Auden. More brief biographical information on Auden is provided here; the W.H. Auden Society website has news, links to poems, a list of critical works, archives of the Society's newsletter, and more.
Since 11 Sept. 2001, Auden's poem 'September 1, 1939' has been widely quoted. An essay titled 'Auden on Bin Laden' by Slate magazine's by Eric McHenry comments on this association.
Other February Birthdays
- Feb. 1
- Hugo von Hofmannsthal (1874; d.1929), Austrian poet, dramatist, and essayist, whose plays, including Elektra (1903) and Der Rosenkavalier (1911), are best known as texts for Richard Strauss operas
- Denise Robbins (sometimes 'Robins')(1897; d.1985), London romantic novelist
- African-American poet and translator, born Missouri, [James Mercer] Langston Hughes, leading figure of the Harlem Renaissance (1902; d.1967; helpful Hughes' Teacher Resource File)
- S[idney] J[oseph] Perelman (1904; d.1979), humour essayist and screenplay writer
- Scottish novelist Muriel Spark (1918; d.2006)
- Rhode Island-born poet and 1983 Pulitzer prize winner Galway Kinnell (1927; poem 'The Correspondence School Instructor...')
- North Carolina-born novelist [Edward] Reynolds Price (1933), who wrote Kate Vaiden
- Feb. 2
- popular English novelist Hannah More (1745; d.1833)
- Hamid Abdulhak (1852; d.1937), Turkish romantic poet and playwright
- Kentucky-born poet, dramatist, and short story writer Joseph Seamon Cotter, Sr. (1861; d. 1949), best known for Caleb, the Degenerate (1901), one of the earliest dramas by an African-American writer
- Christian Gauss (1878; d.1951), educator, writer, Princeton dean
- Irish novelist, poet, and stream-of-consciousness pioneer James [Augustine] Joyce (1882; d.1941), author of A Portrait of the Artist as a Young Man (1914), Ulysses (1922) -- which was banned in the U.S until a court decision in its favour in 1933, and Finnegan's Wake (1939)
- Russian-born novelist Ayn Rand (1905; d.1982)
- Lithuanian poet, editor, and critic Bernardas Brazdžionis , also listed as born 14 Feb and 11 Jan (1907; d.2002; 5 Brazdžionis poems)
- poet and Deliverance novelist James Dickey (1923; 1997 Dickey obituary)
- New Jersey native, poet and children's author Judith Viorst (1931)
- Feb. 3
- New Hampshire-born editor, founder of the New York Tribune, Horace Greeley (1811; d.1872)
- English economist and journalist Walter Bagehot (1826; d.1877), whose father-in-law was the founder of the Economist, which Bagehot edited from 1860 until his death
- Sidney Lanier (1842; d.1881), Georgia-born musician, poet, and critic
- Pittsburgh native, longtime Paris resident, avant-garde writer Gertrude Stein (1874; d.1946)
- Clarence Mulford, Illinois western writer, wrote Hopalong Cassidy novels (1883; d.1956)
- NYC-born writer James A. Michener (1907; d.1997)
- French essayist, philosopher, and fighter for the Resistance Simone Weil (1909; d.1943)
- Feb. 4
- French writer Pierre De Marivaux (1688; d.1763)
- English dramatist George Lillo (1693)
- French poet and screenwriter Jacques Prévert (1900; d.1977)
- MacKinlay Kantor (1904), Iowa-born writer of Andersonville, 1956 Pulitzer prize winner
- [Mattheus] Uys Krige (1910; d.1987), South African playwright and novelist [site in French]
- Betty Friedan (1921; d.2006), Illinois-born feminist writer
- novelist and Brown University professor Robert Coover (1948)
- Feb. 5
- French letter-writer Marie Sevigne (1626; d.1696)
- Finnish poet Johan Ludvig Runeberg (1804; d.1877)
- French novelist Joris Karl Huysmans (1848; d.1907), born Charles Marie Georges Huysmans, who wrote A Rebours (1884); transl. as Against the Grain)
- William S. Burroughs, St. Louis-born experimental novelist (1914; d.1997)
- novelist, writer on religion and sociology, and Catholic priest Andrew Greeley (1928), born illinois
- Elizabeth Swados, U.S. novelist, children's book writer, composer and playwright(1951)
- Feb. 6
- Christopher Marlowe, English poet and dramatist (1564; d.1593)
- Italian poet, playwright, journalist, author Ugo Foscolo (1778; d.1827)
- Hungarian romantic poet Karoly Kisfaludy (1788; d.1830)
- Missouri native, African American poet, journalist, and dramatist Melvin B[eaunorus] Tolson (1898; d.1966), one-time Poet Laureate of Liberia
- British-born American lawyer, author, and defender of those blacklisted, Louis Nizer (1902; d. 1994; summary of his book The Implosion Conspiracy)
- Feb. 7
- Besides Dickens and Sinclair Lewis, above,
- Danish romantic poet Frederik Paludan-Muller (1809; d.1876)
- Scottish lexicographer, creator of the Oxford English Dictionary, Sir James [Augustus Henry] Murray (1837; d.1915)
- Wisconsin-born children's writer Laura Ingalls Wilder, creator of the 'Little House on the Prairie' series (1867; d.1957)
- teleplay writer (Outer Limits, Perry Mason) and director Milton Krims (1904; d.1988)
- New Jersey-born author Gay Talese (1932)
- Feb. 8
- English scholar Robert Burton, aka Democritus Junior, Anglican clergyman and writer (1577; d.1640), who wrote The Anatomy of Melancholy (1621)
- English poet and satirist Samuel Butler (1612; d.1680), who wrote the highly autobiographical and satiric novel The Way of All Flesh, published 1903)
- writer and art critic John Ruskin (1819; d.1900)
- French science fiction pioneer Jules Verne (1828; d.1905; Around the World in 80 Days)
- Massachusetts-born poet Elizabeth Bishop (1911; d.1979), who won a Pulitzer in 1956
- St. Louis, Missouri-born Kate Chopin, writer of The Awakening (1850; d.1904)
- Mississippi-based novelist John Grisham (1955)
- Feb. 9
- Finnish-Swedish poet, journalist, educator, and bishop Frans Michael Franzén (1772; d.1847)
- George Ade, U.S. journalist, playwright, and humorist (1866; d.1944)
- Amy Lowell, Massachusetts-born imagist poet and critic (1874; d.1925)
- Irish author Brendan Behan (1923; d.1964)
- Georgia-born novelist and essayist Alice Walker (1944), who won the Pulitzer Prize for The Color Purple (1982)
- Feb. 10
- Sir John Suckling, English poet and dramatist (1609; d.1642; 12 of Suckling's poems)
- Restoration writer dramatist and poet William Congreve (1670; d. 1729; teaching notes on The Way of the World)
- English poet, essayist, critic, and man of letters Charles Lamb aka Elia (1775; d. 1834), who wrote The Adventures of Ulysses, 1808) and the popular children's book Tales from Shakespeare (1807)
- Kansas editor and 1942 Pulitzer Prize winner William Allen White (1868; d.1944)
- Russian novelist and poet Boris Pasternak (1890; d.1960)
- German playwright and poet Berthold Brecht (1898; d.1956), born Eugen Berthold Friedrich Brecht, whose major plays include Mother Courage and Her Children (1941) and Galileo (1938)
- author Roxanne Pulitzer (1951)
- Feb. 11
- Lydia Maria Child (1802; d.1880), U.S. author and abolitionist (story 'Stand From Under')
- English poet and novelist Roy [Broadbent] Fuller (1912; d.1991)
- Chicago-born novelist Sidney Sheldon (1917; d.2007), winner of 1947 Academy Award and a 1959 Tony Award
- Feb. 12
- Thomas Campion (1567; d.1620), English composer, poet, and physician (6 Campion poems)
- American preacher and writer Cotton Mather (1663; d.1728)
- English naturalist and writer, author of On the Origin of Species by Means of Natural Selection (1859), Charles [Robert] Darwin (1809; d.1882)
- English poet and novelist George Meredith (1828; d.1909 Meredith poems)
- children's author Judy Blume (1938)
- Feb. 13
- Kanzo Uchimura (1861; d.1930), Japanese religious writer
- Ricardo Güiraldes (1886; d.1927), Argentinian novelist and poet
- Belgian mystery writer, creator of Inspector Maigret Georges Simenon (1903, birthdate somewhat in question; d.1989)
- Feb. 14
- Argentinian writer Domingo Faustino Sarmiento (1811; d.1888)
- English journalist and writer Frank Harris (1856)
- Israel Zangwill, English Jewish author (1864; d.1926)
- Indiana-born editor, drama critic, and author George Jean Nathan (1882; d.1958), who co-founded the American Mercury magazine in 1924 with H.L. Mencken
- Russian-born Canadian poet A. M[oses] Klein (1909)
- Washington, D.C.-born journalist and author Carl Bernstein (1944), who with Bob Woodward won a Pulitzer Prize in 1973 for his Watergate coverage and wrote the best-selling All the President's Men (1974)
- Feb. 15
- English mystery author, creator of Dr. Fu Manchu Sax Rohmer born Arthur Henry Sarsfield Ward (1886; d.1959)
- New Jersey-born writer on thermonuclear war, Herman Kahn (1922; d.1983)
- Brooklyn feminist author Susan Brownmiller (1935; review of Seeing Vietnam)
- author of Goedel, Escher, and Bach, Douglas R. Hofstadter (1945)
- Feb. 16
- [Johann Jakob] Wilhelm Heinse, German novelist and art critic (1746; d.1803) [site in German]
- Boston-born historian, writer, and grandson of John Quincy Adams, Henry Brooks Adams (1838; d.1918), who wrote The Education of Henry Adams
- French writer Octave Mirbeau (1848; d.1917, also on 16 Feb. 8 works by Mirbeau)
- New Jersey native, critic, biographer, and literary historian, author of the five-volume literary history Makers and Finders, Van Wyck Brooks (1886; d.1963), who won a Pulitzer Prize in 1937
- Australian short story writer Hal Porter (1911)
- English historian and writer G[eorge] M[acaulay] Trevelyan (1876; d.1962)
- Mississippi-born novelist and sportswriter Richard Ford (1944), who won a Pulitzer Prize for Independence Day (1995)
- Feb. 17
- Spanish romantic poet and journalist Gustavo Adolfo Bécquer (1836; d.1870 Becquer's 'Rhyme LXXXI-Eternal Love')
- Irish-American editor and publisher Samuel Sidney McClure (1857; d.1949), who organized the first syndicated newspaper in the U.S. (the 'McClure Syndicate,' 1884)
- Australian WWI correspondent and light-verse poet Andrew Barton Paterson aka 'The Banjo' (1864; d.1941), who adapted 'Waltzing Matilda,'" Australia?s national song
- U.S. novelist Dorothy Canfield Fisher (1879; d.1958)
- Margaret Truman (1924), Missouri-born mystery writer and Harry Truman's daughter
- Jewish Bronx-born novelist Chaim Potok (1929)
- British mystery writer Ruth Rendell (1930), aka Barbara Vine
- Feb. 18
- Ukraine-born Yiddish author Sholem Aleichem (1859), author of the short stories on which the libretto for Fiddler on the Roof was based
- Greek novelist, journalist, and politician Nikos Kazantzakis (1883; d.1957), best known internationally for novels Zorba the Greek (1943) and The Last Temptation of Christ (1951)
- author and presidential candidate Wendell Willkie (1892; d.1944)
- Iowa-born novelist, critic, and 1971 Pulitzer Prize winner Wallace Stegner (1909; d.1993; text of his famous Wilderness Letter), called 'the dean of Western writers'
- Arkansas-born editor and writer Helen Gurley Brown (1922), who wrote Sex and the Single Girl and edited Cosmopolitan magazine
- Ohio-born African American novelist Toni Morrison (1931), born Chloe Anthony Wofford, who won the Nobel Prize for Literature in 1993 and the Pulitzer in 1987 (1998 Morrison interview in Salon)
- NYC native, African American poet, essayist, novelist, and autobiographer Audre [Geraldine] Lorde (1934; d.1992), aka Rey Domini, a prominent feminist and gay rights advocate
- Feb. 19
- actor, producer, and writer David Garrick (1717)
- Swiss writer and pacifist Élie Ducommun (1833; d.1906; 1902 Nobel peace prize winner)
- Colombian poet and novelist Jose Eustasio Rivera (1889)
- French surrealist founder and theorist, writer André Breton (1896; d.1966), co-founder with Marcel Duchamp, Max Ernst, and David Hare the American surrealist magazine VVV
- Minnesota-born novelist Kay Boyle (1902; d.1992)
- Georgia-born novelist Carson McCullers (1917, nee Lula Carson Smith; d.1967)
- New Jersey native Stephen Dobyns, poet and novelist (1941)
- California-born American-Chinese novelist Amy Tan (1952), whose first book was The Joy Luck Club
- Feb. 20
- Dutch mystic poet Pieter Cornelis Boutens (1870; d.1943)
- Japanese novelist Shiga Naoya (1883; d.1971)
- English biographer, actor, director, and playwright [Edward] Hesketh [Gibbons] Pearson (1887; d.1964)
- French novelist Georges Bernanos (1888; d.1948)
- journalist and playwright Russel Crouse (1893; d.1966), longtime play writing and producing partner of Howard Lindsay, with whom he won the 1946 Pulitzer Prize in drama for State of the Union
- South African novelist Alex La Guma (1925; d.1985)
- Feb. 21
-
Besides W. H. Auden, above,
- Spanish poet and dramatist Jose Zorrilla y Moral (1817; d.1893); publisher Charles Scribner (1821)
- novelist and diarist Anaïs Nin (1903; d.1977)
- Erma Bombeck (1927; d.1996), Ohio-born humorist and syndicated columnist
- Texas politician and autobiographer Barbara [Charline] Jordan (1936; d.1996)
- Feb. 22
- poet, critic, and abolitionist James Russell Lowell (1819; Abraham Lincoln)
- French writer Jules Renard (1864; d.1910)
- Australian poet John Shaw Neilson (1872; d.1942)
- Australian journalist, artist, and author the children's classic The Magic Pudding, Norman Lindsay (1879; d.1969)
- Maine poet and Pulitzer prize winner Edna St. Vincent Millay (1892; d.1950)
- Greek poet and 1963 Nobelist Giorgios Seferis (1900; d.1971)
- Irish short story writer Sean O'Faolain (1900; d.1991; aka John Francis Whelan)
- Canadian author Morley Callaghan (1903; photo of Callaghan)
- NYC-born short story writer and novelist Jane [Auer] Bowles (1917; d.1974)
- Chicago-born author and artist of the macabre Edward St. John Gorey (1925; d.2000)
- Tennessee native (New York-raised) novelist, essayist, poet, and editor Ishmael [Scott] Reed (1938), known for his satiric commentaries and parodies
- Feb. 23
- English diarist Samuel Pepys (1633; d.1703)
- Massachusetts-born Ghanaian writer W[illiam] E[dward] B[urghardt] Du Bois (1868; d. 1963; The Souls of Black Folk)
- German children's author Erich Kästner (1899; d.1974)
- Chicago-born historian and radio journalist, author of The Rise and Fall of the Third Reich, William L. Shirer (1904; d.1993)
- Arkansas native, African American poet, essayist, critic, and publisher Haki R. Madhubuti (1942) born Don Luther Lee, a leading voice in the black arts movement
- Feb. 24
- Librarian, literary historian, and with his brother, Jacob Grimm, Grimm's Fairy Tales collaborator, Wilhelm Carl Grimm (1786; d.1859)
- George Moore (1852; d.1933), Irish novelist
- Polish novelist Juliusz Kaden-Bandrowski (1885; d.1944)
- Maine educator and author Mary Ellen Chase (1887; d.1973)
- Wisconsin writer August William Derleth (1909; d. 1971)
- Feb. 25
- Italian dramatist Carlo Goldoni (1707; d.1793)
- Rhode Island native, African American novelist, journalist, and reporter George Samuel Schuyler (1895; d.1977), best known for his satirical novel Black No More; Being An Account of the Strange and Wonderful Workings of Science in the Land of the Free (1931)
- author Frank Slaughter (1908)
- Anthony Burgess (1917; d.1993), essayist, novelist, and musician, author of A Clockwork Orange
- Trinidad-born journalist, novelist and travel writer Shiva[dhar] Srinivasa Naipaul (1945; d.1985)
- Feb. 26
- French novelist, playwright, and Romantic poet Victor [Marie] Hugo (1802; d.1885), exiled to the Channel Islands during Napoleon's reign, author of Les Misérables (1862)
- U.S. author, Lincoln's private secretary and biographer John George Nicolay (1832; d.1901)
- French writer Jean Vercors (1902; aka Marcel Bruller)
- sci-fi writer Theodore Sturgeon born Edward Hamilton Waldo (1918; d.1985)
- Feb. 27
-
Besides Longfellow, above,
- Boston-born African American dramatist and poet Angelina Weld Grimke (1880; d.1958)
- John Steinbeck, Calif. novelist and 1962 Nobelist (1902; d.1968) Steinbeck's California novels)
- Chicago native, novelist and short story writer James Thomas Farrell (1904; d.1979)
- Chicago author Peter DeVries (1910)
- India-born British novelist Lawrence Durrell (1912; d.1990), authored The Alexandria Quartet
- U.S. novelist Irwin Shaw (1913; d.1984)
- Feb. 28
- French essayist Michel de Montaigne (1533; 21 Montaigne essays)
- English cartoonist and Alice-in-Wonderland illustrator, John Tenniel (1820; d.1914)
- Russian poet in the Symbolist movement, linguist, and literary scholar Vyacheslav Ivanov (1866; old style birthdate is 16 Feb.; d.1949)
- NYC-born, Wisconsin-raised screenwriter, director, producer, playwright, novelist, and journalist Ben Hecht (1894; d.1964)
- English poet and critic Stephen Spender (1909; d.1995)
- Kansas native, physician, syndicated newspaper columnist, and historical novelist Don[ald] Coldsmith (1926)
- Feb. 29
- 3rd poet laureate of the U.S., also novelist and critic Howard Nemerov (1920; d.1991)