OCTOBER LITERARY BIRTHDAYS
(Complete list of October authors here.)Featured Authors
Dylan Marlais Thomas, Welsh poet, Oct. 27, 1914 - Nov. 9, 1953
Born in Swansea, Wales, and considered one of the best English-speaking poets of the 20th-century, Thomas worked as a journalist and a book reviewer until he established his reputation as a poet in the 1930s. He was a heavy drinker and a wonderful poetry reader.
Works include18 Poems (1934), Twenty-five Poems (1936), The Map of Love (1939; poems and short stories), The World I Breathe (1939), Portrait of the Artist as a Young Dog (1940; autobiographical sketches), New Poems (1942), Deaths and Entrances (1946), In Country Sleep (1952), Collected Poems (1953), and the play Under Milkwood.
The Dylan Thomas Home Page, managed by the Dylan Thomas Centre, has biography, works, a life chronology, more. The Life and Work of Dylan Thomas, at Undermilkwood.Net, offers biography, bibliography, poems, prose, quotes.
Sylvia Plath, American poet, Oct. 27, 1932 - Feb. 11, 1963
Sylvia Plath was born and grew up in Massachusetts. She sold her first poem while in high school, graduated from Smith College in 1955, married Ted Hughes (who later was Britain's poet laureate for many years), and moved to England, where she published The Colossus (1960), her first book of poetry. The Bell Jar, an autobiographical novel, was written soon after this and published (1963) under a pseudonym.
Plath suffered from depression and a seeming need for perfection for most, if not all, of her life. While in college, she was hospitalised and given shock treatments; The Bell Jar parallels this period in her life. After she and Hughes moved to England, she began to write more furiously than before (and she had always been prolific) and with greater power and less restraint. She ended her life by gassing herself in her oven. Ariel was published after her death (1965), as were Crossing the Water (1971) and Winter Trees (1971).
The British Library's Sylvia Plath page has biographical info plus manuscripts, journal entries, poetry critiques, and more. Modern American Poetry offers some of her poems, commentary on some poems, and an article titled 'Two Views of Plath's Life and Career.' Both Poetry Foundation and the Academy of American Poets offer extensive biographical info and links to her poems. A November 2018 New Yorker essay titled "Sylvia Plath's Last Letters" looks at Plath's last years in the context of "a series of candid letters to her close friend and former psychiatrist, Ruth Beuscher."
Other October Birthdays
- Oct 1
- Russian novelist Sergey Aksakov (1791; d. 1859; Chronicle of a Russian Family)
- Louis Untermeyer (1885; d.1977), NYC-born poet and critic
- American novelist Faith Baldwin (1893; d.1978)
- Atlanta-born 1974 Pulitzer Prize winner and Librarian of Congress (1975 to 1987) Daniel Boorstin (1914; d. 2004)
- Oct 2
- Connecticut-born poet, insurance salesman, and Pulitzer Prize winner Wallace Stevens (1879; d.1955)
- prolific English novelist Graham Greene (1904; d.1991)
- Oct 3
- English poet and statesman Sir Fulke Greville, 1st Baron Brooke (1554; d.1628), also biographer of Sir Philip Sidney
- Mikhail Lermontov (1814; d.1841), Russian romantic poet and novelist (A Hero of Our Time)
- French novelist Henri Alain-Fournier (1886; d.1914)
- North Carolinian novelist Thomas Wolfe (1900; d.1938)
- Scottish writer and veterinarian James Herriot (1916; d.1995; All Creatures Great and Small)
- NY native writer and playwright Gore Vidal (1925; d.2012)
- Oct 4
- NJ-born Edward Stratemeyer (1862; d.1930), creator of the Stratemeyer Syndicate that produced over 1,300 juvenile novels, including the Nancy Drew, Hardy Boys, Tom Swift, and Bobbsey Twins series
- Kansas-born, Colorado-raised short-story writer, humorist, and reporter Damon Runyon (1884; d.1946);
- bestselling American author Jackie Collins (1941; d.2015)
- Anne Rice (1941; d.2021), born in New Orleans, author of vampire novels
- Chilean writer and political prisoner Luis Sepúlveda (1949; d.2020), who wrote children's books, travel stories, and novels, best known for his novel The Old Man Who Read Love Stories (1988)
- Oct 5
- Connecticut-born theologian and sermon writer Jonathan Edwards (1703; d.1758), whose major works adapt Calvinist doctrine to Enlightenment philosophy
- French encyclopaedist, literary critic, and man of letters Denis Diderot (1713; d.1784)
- John Addington Symonds (1840; d.1893), British historian and writer
- Austrian Jewish writer (U.S.-emigree) Frederic Morton, aka Fritz Mandelbaum (1924; d.2015)
- Czech playwright and political leader Vaclav Havel (1936; d.2011)
- French Canadian novelist Marie-Claire Blais (1939; d. 2021), who spent her later years in Key West, FL
- Oct 6
- Kentucky writer Caroline Gordon (1895; d.1981)
- Norwegian explorer and adventure writer, author of Kon-Tiki, Thor Heyerdahl (1914; d.2002)
- Oct 7
- Indiana-born poet James Whitcomb Riley (1849; d.1916)
- NJ-born African-American playwright and poet Leroi Jones (born Everett LeRoy Jones) aka Amiri Baraka (1934; d.2014)
- Australian novelist (author of Schindler's List) Thomas M. Keneally (1935)
- Australian-born British literary critic, poet, lyricist, novelist, and memoirist Clive James (1939; d.2019; born Vivian Leopold James), television critic for The Observer from 1972 to 1982 and later a comic TV presence for many years with his own show, "Clive James on Television."
- American novelist Anita Shreve (1946; d.2018), author of The Weight of Water (1997), The Pilot's Wife (1998), and Fortune's Rocks (1999), among others
- Oct 8
- Indiana native poet and politician John Hay (1838; d.1905), best known for his Pike County Ballads
- British novelist, essayist, poet, philosopher, and orator John Cowper Powys (1872; d.1963)
- sci-fi writer Frank Herbert (1920; d. 1986; author of the Dune series)
- NYC-born painter and children's author Faith Ringgold (1930)
- author of the Goosebumps series, R[ichard] L[awrence] RL Stine (1943), born in Columbus, Ohio
- Oct 9
- Tadeusz Różewicz (1921; d.2014), Polish poet, dramatist and writer
- Australian writer and the first female president of Smith College Jill Ker Conway (1934; d.2018)
- Ciaran Carson (1948; d. 2019), Northern Irish poet, best known for a collection titled Belfast Confetti (1989)
- Oct 10
- Finnish playwright, novelist, and poet Aleksis Kivi (1834; d.1972)
- Yugoslavian novelist and 1961 Nobelist Ivo Andric (1892; d.1975)
- English playwright and 2005 Nobel Prize winner Harold Pinter (1930; d.2008)
- Oct 11
- Danish poet and short-story writer Steen Steensen Blicher (1782; d.1848)
- François Mauriac (1885; d.1970), French novelist, poet and playwright, and 1952 Nobelist
- Elmore Leonard (1925; d.2013), American crime writer
- Oct 12
- American writer, born New Orleans, George Washington Cable (1844; d.1924), who wrote short stories and novels of Creole and Negro life as well as books about antebellum Louisiana
- French playwright Maurice Donnay (1859; d.1945)
- Italian poet and translator Eugenio Montale (1896; d.1981)
- Connecticut native, African American novelist, short story writer, and children's author Ann Lane Petry (1908;d. 1997), the first black woman in America with book sales of more than one million copies
- South Carolina-born, Harlem-raised playwright, novelist and actress Alice Childress (1920; d. 1994), well-known for her children's book A Hero Ain't Nothin' But a Sandwich (1973)
- Cleveland-born playwright, actor and director Charles Gordone (1925; d.1995), who won the Pulitzer for No Place to Be Somebody
- Massachusetts author, psychiatrist, and 1973 Pulitzer Prize winner (for Children of Crisis) Robert Coles (1929)
- African American newspaper columnist William J[ames] Raspberry (1935; d.2012), longtime syndicated columnist for the Washington Post
- Oct 13
- Pennsylvania-born novelist and Pulitzer Prize winner Conrad Richter (1890; d.1968)
- Louisiana-born African-American poet, novelist, anthologist, children's author, and librarian Arna Bontemps born Arnauld Wendell Bontemps (1902; d.1973; wrote 100 Years of Negro Freedom)
- American playwright, screenwriter, and film producer and director Frank Gilroy (1925; d.2015), who won a Pulitzer Prize for his play The Subject Was Roses
- Oct 14
- Masaoka Shiki (1867; d.1902), Japanese haiku and tanka poet and diarist
- New Zealand short story writer Katherine Mansfield (1888; d.1923)
- Massachusetts-born poet, playwright, and painter e. e. cummings (Edward Estlin; 1894; d.1962), known for his individual style and his satirical indictment of modern materialism
- Oct 15
- Roman poet Virgil (70 B.C.; d.19 B.C.)
- Massachusetts-born novelist Helen Hunt Jackson (1830; d.1885; also listed as born on Oct. 18 and Oct. 14)
- comedic British novelist (Sir) P[elham] G[renville] Wodehouse (1881; d.1975), who wrote the Jeeves and Wooster series
- (Baron) C[harles] P[ercy] Snow (1905; d.1980), British novelist and scientist, most famous for his lecture The Two Cultures (1959)
- Ontario native (naturalised U.S. citizen) and American economist and political writer John Kenneth Galbraith (1908; d.2006)
- Arthur Schlesinger Jr. (1917; d.2007), historian and winner of the 1946 Pulitzer for History for The Age of Jackson and the 1966 Pulitzer for Biography for A Thousand Days: John F. Kennedy in the White House
- Mario Puzo (1921; d.1999) New York City-born author of Godfather fame
- Italian novelist (born Cuba) Italo Calvino (1923; d.1985), author of Italian Folktales
- Evan Hunter (1926; d.2005), who is also crime writer Ed McBain
- Oct 16
- Compiler of the first American language dictionary, Noah Webster (1758; d.1843)
- Oscar Wilde (1854; d.1900), Irish wit and author
- U.S. playwright Eugene O'Neill (1888; d.1953)
- Günter Grass (1927; d.2015), German novelist and playwright
- Oct 17
- Jupiter Hammon (1711; d.1806?), the first American black to publish poetry
- German dramatist Georg Buchner (1813; d.1837), who influenced naturalistic drama of the 1890s and later expressionism
- British novelist and scriptwriter Elinor Glyn (1864; d.1943) whose romantic fiction was considered scandalous
- American novelist Nathanael West (1903; d.1940), remembered for two dark satires, Miss Lonelyhearts (1933) and The Day of the Locust (1939)
- American playwright Arthur Miller (1915; d.2005), who wrote Death of a Salesman and The Crucible, among others
- longtime Ebony editor and black history writer, born Mississippi, Lerone Bennett, Jr. (1928; d.2018)
- Les(lie) Murray (1938; d.2019), leading Australian poet whose work celebrated the rural world
- Oct 18
- German Romantic dramatist and poet [Bernd] Heinrich [Wilhelm] von Kleist (1777; d.1811 by suicide)
- Thomas Love Peacock (1785; d.1866), English poet, essayist, novelist
- Northwest cowboy, reporter, poet and novelist H(arold) L(enoir) Davis (1894; d.1960), who wrote Honey in the Horn
- NJ-born poet, novelist, dramatist, and performer Ntozake Shange (1948; d.2018), born Paulette Williams, whose choreopoem for colored girls who have considered suicide/when the rainbow is enuf opened on Broadway in 1976
- Brooklyn-born playwright Wendy Wasserstein (1950; d.2006), Pulitzer Prize winner for The Heidi Chronicles
- novelist Terry McMillan (1951), born in Michigan and author of Waiting to Exhale and How Stella Got Her Groove Back, among others
- Oct 19
- Sir Thomas Browne (1605; d.Oct 19, 1682), British physician and baroque-style writer
- French writer [Pierre Ambroise Francois] Choderlos de Lacloc (1741; d. 1803), whose epistolary novel Les Liaisons dangereuses (1782) inspired the popular movie Dangerous Liaisons
- British poet and essayist [James Henry] Leigh Hunt (1784; d.1859), who is remembered primarily as the champion of Keats, Shelley, and Tennyson
- Lithuanian poet and playwright Vincas Kreve-Mickievicius (1882; d.1954)
- Ohio-born novelist and short story writer Fannie Hurst (1889; d.1968)
- Guatemalan poet and novelist Miguel Angel Asturias (1899; d. 1974)
- English spy novelist John Le Carré nee David John Moore Cornwell (1931; d.2020)
- Oct 20
- English author Thomas Hughes (1822; d. 1896), who wrote Tom Brown's School Days
- Welsh novelist Daniel Owen (1836; d.1895)
- Arthur Rimbaud (1854; d.1891), French poet
- one member of the Ellery Queen writing team Frederic Dannay (1905; d.1982) born Daniel Nathan in Brooklyn, NY
- newspaper columnist and author Art Buchwald (1925; d.2007)
- native New Jerseyian and former U.S. Poet Laureate Robert Pinsky (1940)
- Oct 21
- English Romantic poet and critic Samuel Taylor Coleridge (1772; d.1834), famous for the poems The Rime of the Ancient Mariner (1798) and Kubla Khan (1816)
- French poet, statesman, and man of letters Alphonse [Marie Louis de Prat] Lamartine (1790; d.1869), whose poetry strongly influenced the French Romantic movement
- California-born sci-fi and fantasy writer Ursula LeGuin (1929; d.2018)
- Oct 22
- Russian poet, novelist and 1933 Nobel prize winner Ivan Bunin (1870; d.1953)
- Russian writer, translator and children's poet Samuil Yakovlevich Marshak (1887 O.S., 3 Nov. N.S.; d.1964)
- Dámaso Alonso (1898; d.1990), Spanish philologist, critic and poet
- NY-born Pulitzer Prize winning playwright, screenwriter, and actor Sidney Kingsley (1906; d.1995)
- U.K. novelist (born Iran) Doris Lessing (1919; d.2013)
- Oct 23
- English poet and physician Robert [Seymour] Bridges (1844; d.1930)
- memoirist and Ladies' Home Journal editor Emily Kimbrough (1899; d.1989), born in Indiana, wrote Our Hearts Were Young and Gay with Cornelia Otis Skinner about their trip to Europe
- Chicago-born novelist Michael Crichton (1942; d.2008), who wrote The Andromeda Strain (1969) and Jurassic Park (1990), among others
- Canadian Gordan Korman (1963), author of more than 90 children's and young adult books, including series such Macdonald Hall and Swindle Mystery
- Oct 24
- NYC-born playwright Moss Hart (1904; d.1961)
- British (naturalised U.S. citizen) poet Denise Levertov (1923; d.1997)
- Elaine Feinstein (1930; d.2019), British poet, novelist, and biographer, inspired by her Jewish heritage and the work of female Russian poets
- Oct 25
- French writer and statesman (born Switzerland) [Henri] Benjamin Constant [de Rebecque] (1767; d.1830), whose Adolphe (1815) was important in the development of the psychological novel
- English poet and historian Thomas Babbington Macaulay (1800; d.1859)
- Chilean novelist Eduardo Barrios (1884; d.1963)
- Pittsburgh native, historian, constitutional scholar, and history writer Henry Steele Commager (1902; d.1998)
- Oklahoma-born, Minnesotan poet John Berryman (1914; d.1972)
- Illinois native, novelist, New Yorker writer Harold Brodkey (1930; d.1996)
- Minnesota-born, NC-raised, long-time Baltimore resident Anne Tyler (1941), Pulitzer Prize winning novelist
- Oct 26
- [Desiderius] Erasmus (1466; birthdate also listed variously as 27 and 28 Oct, and year as 1467; d.1536), Dutch humanist and writer, the most influential writer of his time, publishing editions of Greek and Latin classics as well as the Church Fathers' writings and his original work
- Charles Sprague (1791; d.1875), Boston banker and poet
- British aviatrix and memoirist Beryl Clutterbuck Markham (1902; d.1986), whose memoir is titled West With the Night (1942)
- Yorkshire-born novelist and playwright John Arden (1930; d.2012)
- American writer Pat Conroy (1945; d.2016; The Prince of Tides)
- Louisiana-raised novelist of family life Robb Forman Dew (1946; 2020), granddaughter of poet John Crowe Ransom
- London-born poet, Poet Laureate, and biographer Andrew Motion (1952)
- Oct 27
- Besides Dylan Thomas and Sylvia Plath (see above),
- Enid Bagnold (1889; d.1981), author of National Velvet
- Massachusetts-born reporter and author Neil Sheehan (1936; d. 2021), New York Times reporter on the Pentagon Papers and author of A Bright Shining Lie (1988), about the Vietnam War, which won a National Book Award and a Pulitzer Prize
- NJ-born humorist Fran Lebowitz (1950)
- Oct 28
- Ivan Turgenev (1818 O.S., 9 Nov. N.S.; d.1883), Russian novelist, poet and playwright
- Velimir Khlebnikov, pseudonym of Viktor Vladimirovich Khlebnikov (1885 O.S., 9 Nov. N.S.; d.1922), a central part of the Russian Futurist poetry movement
- British novelist Evelyn [Arthur St. John] Waugh (1903; d.1966), who wrote Brideshead Revisited, among others
- Ghanaian novelist and essayist Ayi Kwei Armah (1939)
- Oct 29
- James Boswell (1740; d.1795), Scottish diarist, lawyer, and biographer who wrote The Life of Samuel Johnson (1791)
- Guillermo Valencia (1873; d.1943), Colombian poet, translator, and statesman
- French playwright and novelist Jean [Hippolyte] Giraudoux (1882; d.1944), who penned La Folle de Chaillot (1943; The Madwoman of Chaillot)
- English novelist Henry Green (1905; d.1973) aka Henry Vincent Yorke
- Oct 30
- British playwright (born Dublin) Richard Brinsley Sheridan (1751; d.1816)
- French poet and political journalist (born Constantinople) André Marie de Chénier (1762; d.1794, by guillotine)
- Russian novelist Fyodor Mikhailovich Dostoevsky (1821 O.S., 11 Nov. N.S.; d.1881), whose novels include Crime and Punishment (1866) and The Brothers Karamazov (1880)
- French poet and essayist Paul Valéry (1871; d.1945)
- Idaho-born poet and critic Ezra [Weston Loomis] Pound (1885; d.1972)
- North Dakota-born novelist and poet Larry Woiwode (1941)
- Oct 31
- English diarist John Evelyn (1620; d.1706), who also wrote treatises on air pollution, horticulture, architecture, and other subjects, but who is most remembered for his Diary (first published in 1818)
- British Romantic poet John Keats (1795; d.1821)
- jockey and novelist Dick Francis (1920; d.2010)