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The Writer’s Almanac for Wednesday, September 18, 2024

Posted on September 18, 2024 - Writer's Almanac

It’s the birthday of French physicist Jean Bernard Léon Foucault, born in Paris (1819). He invented the gyroscope and took the first clear photograph of the sun, and he introduced and helped develop a technique of measuring the absolute velocity of light with extreme accuracy. He is probably best known for originating the pendulum that demonstrated the earth’s rotation.

The Writer’s Almanac for Tuesday, September 17, 2024

Posted on September 17, 2024 - Writer's Almanac

It’s the birthday of poet William Carlos Williams, born in Rutherford, New Jersey (1883). His father was a businessman, born in England, and his mother was Puerto Rican. His mother spoke and read to him in Spanish. He went off to school in Switzerland and France and learned French. But then he came back, went to medical school, and settled in Rutherford, where he was born, and lived there more or less for the rest of his life with his wife, Flossie. He practiced medicine full time and wrote his poems during breaks, on scraps of paper, without time to revise.

The Writer’s Almanac for Monday, September 16, 2024

Posted on September 16, 2024 - Writer's Almanac

It’s the birthday of scholar and critic Henry Louis Gates, Jr, born in Keyser, West Virginia (1950). He is known for his books on literary history, and he wrote about the life and work of Phillis Wheatley, the first published black poet in the United States, in The Trials of Phillis Wheatley: America’s First Black Poet and Her Encounters with the Founding Fathers (2003).

The Writer’s Almanac for Sunday, September 15, 2024

Posted on September 15, 2024 - Writer's Almanac

It’s the birthday of the mystery novelist and playwright Agatha Christie, born in Devon, England (1890). Her first few books were moderately successful, and then her novel The Murder of Roger Ackroyd came out in 1926. That same year, Christie fled her own home after a fight with her husband, and she went missing for 10 days.

The Writer’s Almanac for Saturday, September 14, 2024

Posted on September 14, 2024 - Writer's Almanac

George Frideric Handel completed the Messiah oratorio on this date in 1741. Librettist Charles Jennens had finished the text in July, and he handed it off to Handel with great expectations. He wrote to a friend, “I hope [Handel] will lay out his whole Genius & Skill upon it, that the Composition may excel all his former Compositions, as the Subject excels every other Subject.” Handel worked at a furious pace, doing nothing else but composing from morning to night, and completed the oratorio in only 24 days.

The Writer’s Almanac for Friday, September 13, 2024

Posted on September 13, 2024 - Writer's Almanac

It was on this day in 1814 that Francis Scott Key was inspired to write the words to “The Star-Spangled Banner,” by witnessing the British attack on Fort McHenry in Baltimore Harbor. It had been a dark summer for the young United States. Just three weeks previous, on August 24, British troops had set fire to much of Washington, D.C., including the Capitol, the Treasury, and the president’s house.

The Writer’s Almanac for Thursday, September 12, 2024

Posted on September 12, 2024 - Writer's Almanac

It’s the birthday of English poet Robert Southey, born in Bristol, England (1774). He was one of the leading poets of his day, along with Samuel Taylor Coleridge and William Wordsworth, and was poet laureate of England. Today, we’ve forgotten almost everything he wrote except for one short children’s story he published anonymously called “The Story of the Three Bears” (1837).

The Writer’s Almanac for Wednesday, September 11, 2024

Posted on September 11, 2024 - Writer's Almanac

It’s the birthday of fiction writer William Sydney Porter, better known by his pen name, O. Henry, born in Greensboro, North Carolina (1862). As a young man living in Texas, he was convicted of embezzlement and sent to federal prison. While he was there, he began to write and publish short stories, which a friend in New Orleans would forward to publishers, so that no one would know the author was writing from prison.

The Writer’s Almanac for Tuesday, September 10, 2024

Posted on September 10, 2024 - Writer's Almanac

It’s the birthday of one of the best-selling poets in America, Mary Oliver, born in Maple Heights, Ohio, a suburb of Cleveland (1935). When she was a teenager, she dropped out of college and made a pilgrimage to Edna St. Vincent Millay’s estate in upstate New York, and although Millay had been dead for some time, her sister Norma still lived there. The two women hit it off, and Oliver ended up living on the estate for several years.

The Writer’s Almanac for Monday, September 9, 2024

Posted on September 9, 2024 - Writer's Almanac

It’s the birthday of novelist Leo Tolstoy, born into nobility near Tula, Russia (1828). Besides the pain of losing his mother as a young boy, his childhood was one of relative ease: He read books from his father’s extensive library, went swimming and sledding, listened to stories, and played in the fields and woods on his family’s large estate. After his father died, he lived with relatives and then enrolled at the University of Kazan.

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