LITERARY BITS: January 4

 

1643 Physicist and mathematician Sir Isaac Newton (d. 1727) was born in Lincolnshire, England. His Philosophiae Naturalis Principia Mathematica establishes classical mechanics and Opticks analyzes the fundamental nature of light.

1785 Librarian, philologist, and collector of fairy tales Jacob Ludwig Carl Grimm (d.1863) was born in Hanau, Germany. The Kinder- und Hausmärchen (Grimm's Fairy Tales) he collected with his brother have thrilled children for centuries, and the Deutsches Wörterbuch (The German Dictionary) they began in 1838 was finally completed by other scholars in 1961—at 32 volumes.

1853 Solomon Northup finally regained his freedom after having been kidnapped and sold into slavery. His memoir Twelve Years a Slave became a national bestseller.

1864 Doctor and author Clara Emilia Smitt (d. 1928) was born in Stockholm, Sweden. An early women's rights activist, she published Kvinnans ställning i samhället (Women's Position in Society) and the magazine Helios, for spiritual and material well-being.

1877 American Modernist painter and writer Marsden Hartley (d. 1943) was born in Lewiston, Maine. A significant painter of the first half of last century, Hartley also wrote poems, stories, and essays (Twenty-five Poems, Adventures in the Arts: Informal Chapters on Painters, Vaudeville, and Poets, etc.)

1878 Writer and poet Alfred Edgar Coppard (d. 1957) was born in Folkestone, England. He is noted for his influence on the short story form (Fearful Pleasures).

1883 Politically radical author and poet Max Eastman (d. 1969) was born in Canandaigua, New York. He edited The Masses and co-founded The Liberator, both socialist magazines, and wrote extensively about Russia (Reflections on the Failure of Socialism).

1901 Historian, journalist, and socialist Cyril Lionel Robert James (d. 1989) was born in Tunapuna, Trinidad. World Revolutions is an account of the Communist International, The Black Jacobins studies the Haitian Revolution, Minty Alley was the first novel by a black West Indian to be published in England, and Beyond a Boundary is considered one of the best books on the subject of cricket.

1940 Novelist, playwright, and critic Gao Xingjian was born in Ganzhou, Jiangxi province, China. He received the Nobel Prize for Literature in 2000 “for an oeuvre of universal validity, bitter insights and linguistic ingenuity.” His works include Chezhan (Bus Stop), Bi'an (The Other Shore), Lingshan (Soul Mountain), and Taowang (Fugitives). Buying a Fishing Rod for My Grandfather: Stories, a collection of six short stories, is also available in English.

1943 Historian Doris Kearns Goodwin was born in Brooklyn, New York. She is noted for Lyndon Johnson and the American Dream, the best-selling The Fitzgeralds and the Kennedys, Team of Rivals: The Political Genius of Abraham Lincoln, and No Ordinary Time: Franklin and Eleanor Roosevelt: The Home Front in World War II, which won the 1995 Pulitzer Prize in history.

1943 Novelist and short story writer Hwang Sok-yong was born in Changchun, Manchuria. His works include Mr. Han's Chronicle, On the Road to Sampo, Princess Bari, The Old Garden, and The Guest. His epic novel Chang Kil-san was serialized over a period of ten years and is still a best-seller.

Happy reading!