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The Writer’s Almanac for Sunday, September 22, 2024

Posted on September 22, 2024 - Writer's Almanac

It was on this day in 1862 that President Lincoln issued the Emancipation Proclamation, declaring slaves in rebel states free as of January 1 the following year. The war was not going well, and the emancipation of the slaves was meant to build morale in the North. Lincoln waited for a Union victory before he announced it. The Union Army beat back the Confederates at Antietam, the bloodiest single day of the war. Five days later, on this day in 1862, Lincoln read the Emancipation Proclamation to his Cabinet.

The Writer’s Almanac for Saturday, September 21, 2024

Posted on September 21, 2024 - Writer's Almanac

It’s the birthday of fiction writer Stephen King, born on this day in Portland, Maine (1947). He started in early on the business of writing, when he was six or seven years old, writing stories based on movies he had seen and then selling them to friends.

The Writer’s Almanac for Friday, September 20, 2024

Posted on September 20, 2024 - Writer's Almanac

It’s the birthday of the 14th poet laureate of the United States, Donald Hall, born in New Haven, Connecticut, in 1928. He started writing poems when he was a kid at his grandparents’ farm in New Hampshire. When he was 16, he went to a writing conference and met Robert Frost, and later that year, he published his first poetry.

The Writer’s Almanac for Thursday, September 19, 2024

Posted on September 19, 2024 - Writer's Almanac

It was on this day in 1819 that 24-year-old John Keats wrote the ode “To Autumn.” It is one of the most anthologized poems in the English language. He wrote to his friend: “Somehow a stubble plain looks warm — in the same way that some pictures look warm — this struck me so much in my Sunday’s walk that I composed upon it.”

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.

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