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The Writer’s Almanac for Saturday, November 30, 2024

Posted on November 30, 2024 - Writer's Almanac

It’s the birthday of the man who said, “A successful book is not made of what is in it, but of what is left out of it”: Mark Twain, born Samuel Clemens in Florida, Missouri (1835). In 1867, he published his first book, a book of short stories called The Celebrated Jumping Frog of Calaveras County. It didn’t sell many copies, but two years later, he published The Innocents Abroad (1869), a humorous book of travel writing.

The Writer’s Almanac for Friday, November 29, 2024

Posted on November 29, 2024 - Writer's Almanac

Today is the birthday of Amos Bronson Alcott (1799), born in Wolcott, Connecticut, and also the birthday of his daughter, Louisa May Alcott (1832), born in Germantown, Pennsylvania. The father was a transcendentalist philosopher, abolitionist, and teacher; the daughter was the author of many books, most notably Little Women (1868).

The Writer’s Almanac for Thursday, November 28, 2024

Posted on November 28, 2024 - Writer's Almanac

It’s the birthday of poet William Blake, born in London (1757). He started seeing visions when he was a young boy — God in the window, angels in trees. He apprenticed to an engraver, and spent his life as a little-known printmaker and poet. In 1809, Blake opened an exhibition of his art on the first floor of his brother’s hosiery shop. He called the show “Poetical and Historical Inventions.”

The Writer’s Almanac for Wednesday, November 27, 2024

Posted on November 27, 2024 - Writer's Almanac

It was on this day in 1786 that Scottish poet Robert Burns borrowed a pony and made his way from his home in Ayrshire to the city of Edinburgh. The fall of 1786 had been an eventful one for Burns. He wasn’t making any money farming, and after he got his girlfriend Jean Armour pregnant, he decided he needed to find a way to support his new family — not to mention his illegitimate one-year-old daughter, whose mother was a servant in the Burns household and wanted money. Burns accepted a friend’s offer to work as a clerk in Jamaica, and was set to leave in September.

The Writer’s Almanac for Tuesday, November 26, 2024

Posted on November 26, 2024 - Writer's Almanac

It’s the birthday of science writer Jonathan Weiner, born in New York City in 1953. His parents grew up poor in Brooklyn, but by the time Weiner was in high school, his physicist father moved the family to Providence, Rhode Island, to accept a position at Brown. It was in Providence that Weiner’s love of biology developed, and he went off to Harvard determined to become a scientist. But it was there that his love of literature developed, and he graduated not with a degree in biology as planned, but in English.

The Writer’s Almanac for Monday, November 25, 2024

Posted on November 25, 2024 - Writer's Almanac

It’s the birthday of American steel magnate and philanthropist Andrew Carnegie, born in Dunfermline, Scotland (1835), the son of a weaver and political radical. His father instilled in young Andrew the values of political and economic equality, but his family’s poverty taught Carnegie a different lesson. At the age of 12, the boy worked as a milkhand for $1.20 per week.

The Writer’s Almanac for Sunday, November 24, 2024

Posted on November 24, 2024 - Writer's Almanac

It’s the birthday of the publisher and editor of The Little Review magazine, Margaret Anderson, born in Indianapolis, Indiana (1886). She grew up in the small town of Columbus, Indiana, but early on she decided that she didn’t fit into small-town life at all. So she moved to Chicago, which was the artistic capital of the Midwest at the time. In order to create a circle of artistic friends, she decided to start a magazine devoted to the avant-garde. She said that her plan was to fill the magazine with “the best conversation the world has to offer.”

The Writer’s Almanac for Saturday, November 23, 2024

Posted on November 23, 2024 - Writer's Almanac

It was on this day in 1644 that John Milton published a pamphlet called Areopagitica, arguing for freedom from censorship. He said, “I wrote my Areopagitica in order to deliver the press from the restraints with which it was encumbered; that the power of determining what was true and what was false, what ought to be published and what to be suppressed, might no longer be entrusted to a few illiterate and illiberal individuals, who refused their sanction to any work which contained views or sentiments at all above the level of vulgar superstition.”

The Writer’s Almanac for Friday, November 22, 2024

Posted on November 22, 2024 - Writer's Almanac

It’s the birthday of graphic artist, author, and film director Marjane Satrapi, born in Rasht, Iran (1969). Satrapi was a young girl during the 1979 Islamic Revolution, before her parents sent her to Vienna to escape the resulting fundamentalism and the devastation of the Iran-Iraq war when she was 14. Her graphic memoir, Persepolis, documents this period, telling the story of what it was like to be an Iranian girl growing up in this historic time, suddenly segregated from boys in school and forced to wear a hijab, or head scarf.

The Writer’s Almanac for Thursday, November 21, 2024

Posted on November 21, 2024 - Writer's Almanac

It’s the birthday of anthologist and writer Sir Arthur Quiller-Couch, born in Cornwall in 1863. Quiller-Couch published fiction and literary criticism under the pen name “Q” and was best known at the time for his publication of the Oxford Book of English Verse (1250-1900), a book that remained the most popular anthology of its kind for nearly 70 years.

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