About stories of all kinds
Two-hundred and five years ago today, January 17, 1820, the third Brontë sister was born. Named Anne, she, like her older sisters, first published under a male pseudonym: Acton Bell. She worked as a governess as well as writing poetry and novels. She wrote two novels, Agnes Grey and The Tenant of Wildfell Hall, the… Continue reading “pretended to be deeply absorbed”
170 years ago today, 16 October 1854, Oscar Wilde was born in Dublin. He became a popular playwright during his life, also writing many short stories, some poetry, and perhaps most famously today, the novel The Picture of Dorian Gray. “Let us go to the theatre to-night,” said Lord Henry. “There is sure to be… Continue reading “a rather nice excuse”
Dear Schober, I hear you are not happy and have to sleep off the frenzies of your despair... Although this makes me extraordinarily sad, it does not surprise me in the least, since such is the lot of almost every sensible person in this miserable world.Franz Schubert, 21 September 1824 letter to Franz von Schober… Continue reading Dear Schober
I'm not by any means a morning person, but I can sympathize with Richard Hannay here, the narrator of this Buchan tale: if you must ruin part of the day with unpleasantness, why not morning which is already a grim prospect to face anyway? Certainly, I've always thought I'm much more motivated and awake to… Continue reading “anyhow depressed and only half-awake”
There's nothing like reading to disabuse one of the notion that they are unique, alone in the universe, an anomaly unto themselves. Yet, at times, in the insulation of our own consciousness, we are inclined to imagine ourselves the sole inhabitants of the universe. In a way, we are the only inhabitor of our own… Continue reading “set down in some old book”
It's Aldous Huxley's 130th birthday today. He was born July 26, 1894 in England and became a respected writer and philosopher, nominated for the Nobel Prize in Literature multiple times throughout his life. Huxley's writing has insight into human nature and its social dynamics and development, from the famous Brave New World to his seemingly… Continue reading “to say what one thinks”
Ann Radcliffe, then Ann Ward, was born 260 years ago today: July 9, 1764. First published at age twenty-five, within the next ten years she became the most highly paid professional writer of the 1790s and her works had an incredible influence on popular culture, novels, and writers of that time and for many years… Continue reading ‘I can see as if in a glass’
No, the title isn't a typo for "memory," though perhaps that would also be appropriate: I have for you today a Bloomsday Meme/Quote. June 16, 1904 is the setting for all 265,222 words of James Joyce's Ulysses: 120 years ago today. As a milestone anniversary, I can't very well let it go by without posting… Continue reading Bloomsday Memery: 120th Anniversary of the Events of Ulysses
Today 160 years ago, Nathaniel Hawthorne died. Born in Salem in 1804, he was a writer of short stories and novels, American consul, and friend to contemporary writers of fiction and non-fiction alike. Among these contemporaries were Herman Melville, Ralph Waldo Emerson, and Henry Wadsworth Longfellow. His style is characteristic of what might now be… Continue reading ‘that I did not die then’
160 years ago this week, Richard Harding Davis was born. He became an American war correspondent for over three significant wars in his lifetime, also writing short stories and championing Theodore Roosevelt's campaign for the United States presidency. I stumbled upon his work accidentally, finding a copy of Once Upon a Time in a thrift… Continue reading “the one charge you cannot deny”
Fictitiously Yours 