Literature
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Toni Morrison *II 18 1931 — The Live You Give
Toni Morrison, born Chloe Anthony Wofford on February 18 1931, in Lorain, Ohio, U.S.A., was the writer noted for her examination of Black experience (particularly Black female experience) within the Black community. She received the Nobel Prize for Literature in 1993. Morrison grew up in the American Midwest in a family that possessed an intense…
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Bertolt Brecht *II 10 1898 — The Life You Give
Bertolt Brecht, born Eugen Berthold Friedrich Brecht, on February 10 1898, in Augsburg, Germany, is the poet, playwright, and theatrical reformer whose epic theatre departed from the conventions of theatrical illusion and developed the drama as a social and ideological forum for leftist causes. Until 1924 Brecht lived in Bavaria, where he was born, studied…
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William S. Burroughs *II 5 1914 — The Life You Give
The elder statesman of literature’s Beat Generation — and, by extension, of the American underground culture — few figures outside of the musical sphere exerted a greater influence over rock & roll than novelist William S. Burroughs. A provocative, controversial figure famed for his unique cut-up prose aesthetic, Burroughs lived the rock lifestyle years before…
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Virginia Woolf *I 25 1882 — The Life You Give
Virginia Woolf, born Adeline Virginia Stephen, on January 25, 1882, in London, England, is the writer whose novels, through their nonlinear approaches to narrative, exerted a major influence on the genre. While she is best known for her novels, especially Mrs. Dalloway (1925) and To the Lighthouse (1927), Woolf also wrote pioneering essays on artistic…
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Rubén Darío *I 18 1867 — The Life You Give
Rubén Darío, born Félix Rubén García Sarmiento, in Metapa, Nicaragua, on January 18 1867, is the influential poet, journalist, diplomat, and leader of the Spanish American literary movement known as Modernismo, which flourished at the end of the 19th century. He revivified and modernized poetry in Spanish on both sides of the Atlantic through his…
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Yukio Mishima *I 14 1925 — The Live You Give
Mishima Yukio, born Hiraoka Kimitake, January 14 1925 in Tokyo, Japan, was a prolific writer who is regarded by many critics as the most important Japanese novelist of the 20th century. Mishima was the son of a high civil servant and attended the aristocratic Peers School in Tokyo. During World War II, having failed to…
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J. R. R. Tolkien *I 3 1892 — The Life You Give
J. R. R. Tolkien, born John Ronald Reuel Tolkien, January 3, 1892, in Bloemfontein, South Africa, is the writer and scholar who achieved fame with his children’s book The Hobbit (1937) and his richly inventive epic fantasy The Lord of the Rings (1954–55). At age four, Tolkien, with his mother and younger brother, settled near…
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Rudyard Kipling *XII 30 1865 — The Life You Give
Rudyard Kipling, born Joseph Rudyard Kipling on December 30, 1865, in Bombay [now Mumbai], India, is the short-story writer, poet, and novelist chiefly remembered for his celebration of British imperialism, his tales and poems of British soldiers in India, and his tales for children. He received the Nobel Prize for Literature in 1907. Life Kipling’s…
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Jean Genet *XII 19 1910 — The Life You Give
Jean Genet, born Dec. 19, 1910, in Paris, France, was a criminal and social outcast turned writer who, as a novelist, transformed erotic and often obscene subject matter into a poetic vision of the universe and, as a dramatist, became a leading figure in the avant-garde theatre, especially the Theatre of the Absurd. Genet, an…
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Rainer Maria Rilke *XII 4 1875 — The Life You Give
Rainer Maria Rilke, born December 4 1875, in Prague, Bohemia, Austria-Hungary [now in Czech Republic] was the poet who became internationally famous with such works as Duino Elegies and Sonnets to Orpheus. Rilke was the only son of a not-too-happy marriage. His father, Josef, a civil servant, was a man frustrated in his career; his…
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Mark Twain *XI 30 1835 — The Life You Give
Mark Twain, born Samuel Langhorne Clemens, on November 30, 1835, Florida, Missouri, U.S.A., is the humorist, journalist, lecturer, and novelist who acquired international fame for his travel narratives, especially The Innocents Abroad (1869), Roughing It (1872), and Life on the Mississippi (1883), and for his adventure stories of boyhood, especially The Adventures of Tom Sawyer…
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C. S. Lewis *XI 29 1898 — The Life You Give
Clive Staples Lewis, born November 29, 1898, in Belfast, Ireland [now in Northern Ireland] was scholar, novelist, and author of about 40 books, many of them on Christian apologetics, including The Screwtape Letters and Mere Christianity. His works of greatest lasting fame may be The Chronicles of Narnia, a series of seven children’s books that…
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William Blake *XI 28 1757 — The Life You Give
William Blake, born Nov. 28, 1757, in London, England, is the engraver, artist, poet, and visionary, author of exquisite lyrics in Songs of Innocence (1789) and Songs of Experience (1794) and profound and difficult “prophecies,” such as Visions of the Daughters of Albion (1793), The First Book of Urizen (1794), Milton (1804[–?11]), and Jerusalem (1804[–?20]).…
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Stefan Zweig *XI 28 1881 — The Life You Give
Stefan Zweig, born November 28, 1881, Vienna, Austro-Hungarian Empire [now in Austria], is the writer who achieved distinction in several genres—poetry, essays, short stories, and dramas—most notably in his interpretations of imaginary and historical characters. Zweig was raised in Vienna. His first book, a volume of poetry, was published in 1901. He received a doctorate…
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Astrid Lindgren *XI 14 1907 — The Life You Give
Astrid Lindgren, born November 14, 1907, in Vimmerby, Sweden, is the influential writer of children’s books who created such memorable characters as Pippi Longstocking. Lindgren’s great popularity began in 1945 with the publication of Pippi Långstrump (Pippi Longstocking), the first of several books with Pippi as a main character. This strangely dressed girl living alone…
Sila Blume 