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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.

The Writer’s Almanac for Sunday, September 8, 2024

Posted on September 8, 2024 - Writer's Almanac

It was on this day in 1920 that the first transcontinental U.S. airmail service began, from New York to San Francisco. The Wright brothers made their first flight in 1903, but it took a while for them to convince the U.S. government that airplanes were a technology worth pursuing. The brothers approached the government three separate times in 1905 hoping to interest them as a customer, but to no avail. The military finally agreed to purchase a plane from the Wrights in 1908, but it crashed during flight trials, killing the military observer and injuring Orville Wright. A year later, the flight trials resumed, and this time the government actually purchased the plane.

The Writer’s Almanac for Saturday, September 7, 2024

Posted on September 7, 2024 - Writer's Almanac

It was on this day in 1927 that the first successful television image was demonstrated, by the inventor Philo T. Farnsworth. Farnsworth was a Mormon farm boy from Utah, and he grew up in a log cabin. When the family moved to a house in Idaho, Farnsworth was amazed that the house had electricity — he had never seen it before.

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